Hebrews 6:2-4

ETERNAL JUDGMENT

‘Of eternal judgment.’

Hebrews 6:2

In the incarnate life of the Son of God we have been allowed to see once for all what a perfect life might be, lived under the conditions of a world like this, such as we know it.

I. Who, then, is so capable of judging as He Who knows what man is, and what he can attain unto, how a man is tempted, and how a man is helped? If He Who knew what was in man, because He was Man, left us the Catholic Church, it surely is only fitting that with this knowledge He should ascend the Judgment Seat and pass the final judgment, not only on what we are, but on what we might have been. God be thanked, we may count on His sympathy. We do not need to erect a throne of compassion over against the throne of justice. For who so compassionate as He Who in all points has been tempted like as we are, yet without sin? But, if we may count on His sympathy, we feel, too, that we must reckon with His justice. We must not be for ever calling out, ‘poor human nature!’ We must not be for ever saying, ‘Man is frail and God is merciful.’

II. It cannot be a matter of indifference whether we accept or reject the estimate which God has made of our nature, the revelation which He has vouchsafed of our destiny, and the provision which He has made for our salvation. There are certain conditions in which neglect is the most serious fault which can be committed.

III. The sense of a judgment to come is a doctrine of present importance to all of us. So important is it that God seems to have provided within each of us that organ of self-consciousness which we call conscience, whereby we can look at God’s law, and look at our actions, and say of each of them whether they are good or bad.

Fundamental Christianity is Christianity as Christ taught it, where there is nothing superfluous, nothing which we can regard as negligible. And among the doctrines which take their place as absolutely essential to a right view of Christian life and character, is that highest sanction for human responsibility, which invests our simplest thoughts and actions with the importance which is enshrined in the certainty of eternal judgment, which every child is taught to anticipate, as he says in the simple word of the Apostles’ Creed: ‘From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.’

—Rev. Canon Newbolt.