2 Corinthians 5:10

THE CHRISTIAN AT THE JUDGMENT SEAT

‘We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body.’

2 Corinthians 5:10

Not so much a universal judgment hour is in view here, with its dread appeal to the universal conscience, as an investigation within the family circle of the disciples— a forum domesticum—the Lord’s particular scrutiny of His servant-brethren.

I. He has not left them unreminded in their service time that all these things are placed in their hands to hold, in the inmost truth of the matter for Him. The books must all be opened. And the opinion of the Supreme Examiner must be announced—to be remembered and to take effect for ever—yes, even amidst the conditions of the world of bliss.

II. There is serious reason why, precisely in our own period of time, this aspect of our years on earth should be put in prominence before us. Never was there an age whose characteristics have seemed in many respects so to cross and contradict each other, as do those of our own. It would be easy to argue for any one of many quite opposite assertions about the present day, and to maintain with equal plausibility, for example, that it was more strenuous or more purposeless, more light-minded or more overcast with a certain gloom than its forerunners. But we need not linger over comparisons or subtle equipoises of that sort before saying with confidence that for innumerable minds, above all in the more recent generations, born into a time already used to wide invasions of materialistic thought, one imminent danger of to-day is an oblivion of the whole ideal of the Christian life, not least upon the side of its grave but magnificent responsibility. The awe of responsibility is not felt as it was, even where the Lord is duly worshipped. The presence of Jesus Christ as Possessor and as Observer in the whole life, and over the whole field of gift and circumstance, is more feebly recognised by Christians. The confidence of faith in the eternal, now and here, and also in the eternal, as it looks upon us from beyond the tomb as a boundlessly living life to come, whose heart and bliss is the unveiled face of Christ, and whose law is His everlasting service—this is not quite what it was in the current consciousness of Christian hearts. So there is need to think, to watch, to pray, till we get back into the power of that recollection again, alike for the animation of our hearts with the joy which is native to the Gospel, and for that purposeful remembrance of the eternal Master, and of His scrutiny to come, which is anything rather than a contradiction to that joy; no more such than fuel is a contradiction to the flame.

III. Is there not occasion for the appeal?—Is the presence of things eternal felt in anything like the old force in our modern habits of thinking and of behaving? Is it a dominant power in the current ideals of the English home? Do we parents present as we should to our sons and daughters the prospect of life in its noble Christian gravity, its lofty aspect as the discipline and palœstra of our being, in which, through faithful service here of God and of man, the whole responsible personality is to be trained for inconceivable activities and utilities, day without night, in the upper life, in the heaven of the sight of God? Are our common habits at all disciplined and informed by the elevating, the invigorating restraints of that recollected prospect? Or are they allowed to drift as they will from comfort to comfort, till the day knows no deliberate worship, and the week knows no Sabbath other than an interval of all too selfish indolence?

God grant us a revival, deep and large, of the Christian ideal of duty, not least within the home.

—Bishop H. C. G. Moule.

Illustration

‘Two variations upon the English appear to be called for by the Greek of the Apostle. For the words “We must all appear,” we do well, with the Revisers, to read “We must all be made manifest.” It is to be not merely the putting in of an appearance, an adsum, a formal muster before the Prince’s chair; it is to be a making manifest, an opening out of characters, a showing up of all that the Christian has come to be through the use of faculty and circumstance, a disclosure and display of it before his Master, and his fellow-servants, and himself. Again, for the words, “done in the body,” we must unquestionably read, to be literal, “done through the body.” And why not accept the literal here as the true? The things in respect of which the man is to be made manifest are the things of his conduct in mortal life. And how can conduct in its development be more vividly presented to our thought or more significantly than as the things done through the body?’