Bringing Clarity to the Term Christian – Part 7
“Christians were formerly under the judgment of God.”
Welcome again to Powerful God – Practical Faith, and our blog series entitled, Bringing Clarity to the Term Christian.
I trust you have been learning more about the nature of God and the nature of man as we go through this series, and that you are also getting a better understanding of our relationship with this great God in a way that you may not have understood before. I also hope that when we are done with this series, your understanding of what a Christian is will be deeper and much different than how our culture has re-defined it. I think what is primarily on my heart in doing this series is to show that there is, or should be, a significant “difference” between the life of a Christian and the life of one who is not. The term Christian “actually means something”, and when that distinction is so blurred that those looking at “Christians” cannot tell what is different in their lifestyle and conduct than their own, then the term Christian has no purpose and demonstrates no power at all? I believe God’s definition is clear, distinct and unambiguous. Personally, I want very much in my life to exemplify God’s definition of “Christian”. I pray that for those of you following this blog, God will give you the desire to do the same.
Having said this, we finally come to Statement 3 in our series. Let us begin by reminding ourselves of this statement again.
Statement 3:
A Christian is a person who was under the judgment of God for his sin.
If you have been following this blog for some time, you will probably not find this statement to be a surprise given what we have learned in our earlier posts. If man, as we learned before, became enemies of God due to his sin, it would certainly follow that man would be under God’s judgment. We discussed this at length in Blog Post #6, and explained God’s attitude toward sin and the sinner. But what does it really mean to be under the judgment of God? In reality, what does that look like? Well, as always, we go to God’s Word for the answer.
Now for many of you who have been reading my blogs, you will notice that I reference the book of Romans quite a bit. Although we will be referencing other passages from other books of the Bible, the book of Romans is very rich in its clarity of the Gospel message and in explaining the reality of sin and the necessity of Jesus Christ. With this said, we return again to Romans….
The initial statement of Romans 6:23a says……
For the wages of sin is death
Many of you may have heard this phrase before in some form or fashion but may not necessarily have fully understood what it meant. Although the meaning seems somewhat simple, the reality of it is quite dreadful and should give all of us pause when considering it.
Paul is stating here, as he does throughout Romans 6, that the payment, or what is owed to us for our sin is death. God’s judgment on the life of a sinner is death. Now what is necessary for us to understand is that “death”, in this context, has a profound meaning.
To most all of us, death generally means a loss or end to natural life. It is when a person’s physical life ends or expires due to age, illness or injury. This reality of physical death is also a result of God’s judgment on mankind from the very beginning, as we explained in our earlier blogs.
But the death spoken of here takes the sinner on a much more ominous path than an end to physical life. The scriptures teach us that for those who physically die in their sin, that physical death becomes the precursor to the “real” judgment, a term the Apostle John in the book of Revelation calls the “second death”.
The writer of the book of Hebrews, when discussing the sacrifice of Jesus Christ…(which we will also discuss later in this series), makes this acknowledgment:
……….it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment,……….
Hebrews 9:26-28 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
This means that all of us, including you and I, while on this earth, are on an initial path to physical death. Unless, we are now at the end of God’s timetable on earth, and are fortunate enough to soon witness the end of this age and time itself as we know it, death is inevitable and certain. This is the plight of all men, both Christian and non-Christian alike. However, physical death, although some believe to the contrary, is not the end for either the Christian’s or non-Christian’s existence. A conscious awareness of one’s self will always remain in mankind because of the nature of how God created us. However, according to the Holy Scriptures, there is a judgment still yet to be executed, which afterwards, will be an everlasting and dreadful end, indeed, for the non-Christian. The Apostle John, in the book of Revelation, a book which chronicles things which will be but have yet to come, gives us details about this judgment.
John writes…..
And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
Revelation 20: 12-15 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Again he writes…..
And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He *said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.” Then He said to me, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
Revelation 21: 5-8 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
In these passages we learn that physical death is not the end. The Bible never teaches annihilationism, the belief that as an act of God’s judgment, human beings are destroyed out of existence. John says that when God prepares to judge at the end of time, he will call back those who physically died, in order for them to be judged…finally. To those who have not been given eternal life, and have remained in a state of rebellion and sin against God, a horrific and terrible punishment, which culminates in total separation from their Creator, awaits them. This is the ultimate judgment of a Holy God against sin.
But remember statement #3…. A Christian is a person who WAS under the judgment of God for his sin. But because of the love God extended toward those believing in him, and because of the plan He put in place for their salvation, and redemption, There is no longer any impending judgment on them !
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
Romans 8:1 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
As we move along in this series, we will discover how incredibly awesome this God of ours is and the extent to which God sovereignly gives this gift of salvation to all who place their trust in him.. My payer is that for those of you who don’t know Jesus Christ, this blog will help lead you to a sincere trust in him.
I hope you all will continue to read.. we have so much yet to cover.
God Bless….
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