SAVED BY GRACE BUT JUDGED BY WORKS! HOW CAN THIS BE?

There is a lot of debate on the role of good works in the Salvation process. The big question (whose confidence is in proof-texting) is:

If our works are not important for our Salvation, how come we will be judged by our works and be rewarded accordingly?

The proponents of this school of thought support it by quoting these verses: Rev 20:12, James 2, 2Cor 5:10, and more. The most elaborate of all is Romans 2:5-11, and it is this I will use to make my case.

We need to first establish the context of Romans 2:5-11 because if we don’t, we risk equating Judgment to Salvation and yet the two are completely different. Seriously, why would a God who intends to save people through a legal court procedure come and die on the cross? Why not publicize the constitution and make sure all people run a performance based religion?

Should we then conclude that Mother Theresa and other heathen people from all cultures who did well with the law (Romans 2:14) share a destiny with Abraham the Jewish Patriarch who believed God and it was counted to him righteousness (Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:3; Galatians 3:6)?

These and more questions can be asked but many people still insist we are saved by grace, but we will eventually be judged by our deeds. It is this that has inspired me to do this presentation.

The passage in Romans 2:5-11 is the major narrative for those who advocate for Righteousness by Works:

• There is a day of God’s wrath and revelation of God’s righteousness (2:5)
• God will judge everyone according to his deeds (2:6).
• Those who do good will attain eternal life (2:7).
• Those who do evil will incur wrath (2:8).
• Those who do evil will suffer tribulation (2:9).
• Those who do good will receive glory (2:10).
• God will judge everyone impartially (2:11).

This entire passage handles the theme of JUDGEMENT and REWARDS/RIGHTS. However, it should be pointed out that it is not a passage that deals with how deeds are part of the process of salvation and eternal destinies. To solve the issue of whether we are saved by grace but judged by our works eventually, we need to answer this question: What is judgment according to the Bible?

In Theology, ‘Judgment’ can be categorized under the study of Eschatology, which is the study of last things. If we are to define JUDGEMENT, we would say that it means doing/giving JUSTICE. And JUSTICE means getting what one rightfully deserves.

In the Bible, God is pictured as a judge. The Bible says that He will one day judge the world. The fact that God is just assures us that when He acts as a Judge, He will administer justice perfectly. Many criminals enter earthly courts and walk out innocent, while many innocent people enter the same courts, are charged and thrown in prisons as guilty with crafted evidence.

The Good news is, with God it is not so. God is a just Judge who issues pure justice. His ability to do this involves other aspects/attributes of His character, including His ability to discern the truth in every situation and see into the hearts and minds of men, His wisdom, His strength, His authority, and His moral character in establishing what is right and wrong.

Proverbs 24:12 says,

“If you say, ‘Behold, we did not know this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?

This is what it means standing before God as a Judge.

In the Old Testament, however, for God to be a Judge (which we have seen as ‘Justice’) it does not mean good news to the guilty. For us to understand how this theme is presented in the Bible we need to draw from Paul in Romans 1:16-18:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth.”

In the mind of Paul, as a Jewish convert to Christianity, he perceived the concept of judgment as an expression of the wrath of God. In Romans 2:5, Paul writes,

“But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed”

God’s wrath (Judgment) is in proportion to His love. God is love, and God does all things for his glory (1John 4:8; Romans 11:36). He loves his glory above all (and that is a good thing!). Therefore, God rules the world in a way that brings maximum glory to himself. This means that God must act justly and judge sin (i.e. respond with wrath), otherwise He would not be God. God’s love for his glory motivates his wrath against sin. Divine wrath is God’s righteous anger and punishment, provoked by sin.

J. I. Packer summarizes:

“God’s wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is. It is, instead, a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil” (Knowing God, 151).

That is why the Bible says in Hebrews 10:31 that: “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” If we believe that we are all fallen sinners (Romans 3:10-20; Ephesians 2:1-3) and we deserve God’s wrath, one would ask: WHO IN HIS SOBER MIND CAN ASK GOD TO GIVE HIM AS HE DESERVES (God’s Wrath)?

In Romans chapter 1, Paul talks of the gospel as the power (Dunamis-enabling power) that saves sinners. He emphasises that the power that saves us is not ours but God’s power (Dunamis). In chapter 2, Paul refutes the attempt of sinners to save themselves through their works of righteousness after this power of the cross is installed (Romans 2:12). This is why in Romans 3, Paul introduces another righteousness different from the righteousness in Romans 2.

The righteousness in Romans 2 is Dikaiosune tou nomos (Righteousness of Law) and the defining characteristic of this righteousness is the acts in line with the Torah, including all Jewish diets, rites and rituals together with the covenants. This is the debate in Romans 2. This is why Paul says that whoever does the law as it demands shall surely gain this Righteousness of the Law (Dikiaosune tou nomou).

The Righteousness of the Law is one in which God gives us life (not eternal life though), he glorifies us (not in heaven) and it is one in which we legally merit things. So it is not a righteousness for our salvation but for our social survival.

When Paul gets to Romans 3, he turns the attention to Dikaisune tou Theou (Righteousness of God) and he adds that the defining characteristic of this righteousness is one apart from the law. It is God’s righteousness not that of the law, and it is this righteousness (Dikaiosune tou theou) that is the standard of God’s Judgment (Justice). The proper rationale for his wrath is to those outside it. This righteousness can only be accessed in JESUS CHRIST and it is by Grace through Faith (Ephesians 2:8-9; Romans 1:17).

This means that not everyone will come into the judgment.

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24).

To this, the Apostle Paul adds: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Our souls rest forever upon these eternal words of our God.

Many people are mistaken to think that all people – believers and non-believers – will come into Judgment. Apart from Romans 2:6-11, they reference scriptures like 2Corinthians 5:10; Romans 14:10; Revelation 22:12 and other. But all these scriptures refer not to Judgment (ruling on eternal inheritances) but to the believers appearance before the Judgment Seat. And the Greek word the Bible writers use is ‘Bema’.

It appears in classical Greek to identify the judge’s seat in the arena of the Olympic Games. The bema was the seat whereon the judge sat, not to punish contestants, but to present awards to the victors. When Christians stand before the bema of Christ, it will be for the express purpose of crowning victors in Christ. There is no idea of inflicting punishment. These have nothing to do with eternal destinies whatsoever. Read 1Corinthins 3:9-15 (emphasis on Vs. 15 that says: If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire).

So believers in Christ shall not come into Judgment of eternal destinies due to two reasons:

• The judgment and the judicial-wrath of God as far Christians are concerned has already been passed and it has been exercised on JESUS CHRIST at the cross and in his eternal death (1John 4:10; 1Thessolonians 1:9-10; 5:9; Romans 4:15; 5:8-9; 13:3-5).
• Since Christians (believers in Christ alone), are guilty sinners naturally deserving God’s wrath, they cannot appear in court because by believing Jesus Christ they have denied, rejected and refuted what rightfully belongs to them (wrath of God and Death) and are now gifted with eternal life (Romans 6:23).

When we talk of Judgment, we must look at it in the perspective of the cross and Salvation. We must understand that Jesus died on the cross to satisfy the law. As you may or may not know, for Jesus to qualify as the second Adam (Romans 5), he (God) had to go through these stages:

• STAGE ONE: He had to become flesh (John 1:1-3, 14, Philippians 2:5-11) in order to represent flesh. This meant that he had to be as vulnerable to sin (Hebrews 2:18, 4:15, Mathew 4:1-10) as we are in order to represent us but also maintain a sin free life both in practice and in thought (John 8:46).
• STAGE TWO: Jesus had to obey the LAW in letter/dot, practice and thought (Mathew 5:27-28). Jesus had to be perfect in obedience to the Law because that is what the Law demanded from the fallen human race that he had come to save. After he had obeyed, he had to credit his perfect obedience on the account of all sinners. This is why the Faith and obedience by which we are saved (eternal purposes) is not ours but his (Romans 3:22; John 8:46; Philippians 2:8; Romans 5:18).

This is also why Apostle Paul says in Romans 3 that the righteousness by which we are saved by is apart from the law, and in Ephesians 2:9, he emphasizes that: not by works lest any man should boast. Look at Galatians 2:16: “yet who know that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law, because by works of the law shall no one be justified.”

It is his obedience and his Faith that the lord imputes or credits on the account of a guilty sinner and we are saved. As we (all the human race) suffer from what is called: imputed disobedience (we are disobedient even before we do right or wrong just by being human) so are we saved by putting on our account what is necessary for our salvation but we naturally cannot provide.  A new born baby is disobedient not because of what it has done or not but because of its kind (Genesis 1:11-12 = plants, Genesis 1:21, 24-25 = Beasts/creatures, Genesis 1:26, 28 = Humanity).

So we are disobedient by proxy and this is what this text in Romans 5:19 is all about: “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous” So it is true OBEDIENCE has too much to do with how we are saved but it is not our obedience. Friends, Christ obeyed the obedience of your salvation, you now must obey for other purposes but not Salvation (Romans 3:31, James 2:13-20).

• STAGE THREE: After this perfect obedience and Faith of Jesus Christ, Jesus had to pay the penalty or the debt of the sinner which is none other than death. The Obedience of Jesus Christ secured us from the guilt of disobedience because by the sin in us, (active or inactive), we qualified to be candidates of death and death eternal. So after Jesus had saved us from the guilt of disobedience, he had to redeem us from death.

The Bible is clear when it says: FOR THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH, BUT THE GIFT OF GOD IS ETERNAL LIFE (Romans 6:23). Note the wording and the contrast. Sin as we have seen is not what we have done or not done, but since the fall, it became our kind therefore Death is our wage. It is not what we are given but what we merit, deserve and all we owe to God. (This is why practically innocent babies die).

Death is our wage regardless of how obedient we are, even the most obedient Pharisee and most pure Buddhist has to die. Jesus had to die in order rescue and redeem us from the powers of death also. For a cross without a resurrection is a SALVATION (obedient saints destined for Death) without a REDEMPTION (saints living or sleeping in graves but destined for eternal life). This why Jesus said: ALL AUTHORITY IN HEAVEN, ON EARTH AND BENEATH EARTH IS NOW MINE (Mathew 28:18). And Apostle Paul together with us the saints asks: O Death where is your victory, where is your sting (1Corinthians 15:54-55).

Look at this verse: THE STING OF DEATH IS SIN, AND THE POWER OF SIN IS THE LAW (1Corinthians 15:56). For since the sting of Death is SIN and JESUS had no SIN, Jesus therefore did not die a practical sinner (of what he did or deserved as any of us) but a vicarious sinner (representative human of his kind). 2Corinthians 5:21 says: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” After all he had dethroned sin by castrating it by his perfect obedience (the power of sin is the law).

He crowned this by the miracle of the resurrection and now the second half of Romans 6:23 that says: BUT THE GIFT OF GOD IS ETERNAL LIFE makes sense. Eternal life is a gift to whoever dares to believe this gospel. Now let me ask: If eternal life is a gift, how does one with gift stand in judgment? We all know what a gift is (something we do not deserve and one we have not influenced) how do we then defend that in judicial courts?

Friends, one day Jesus was asked which of the laws was the greatest and he answered that they were two: the first was to love God with all your heart, mind, soul and might, and the second one was to love your neighbor as you love yourself. These two commandments, however, are not the Good News (Romans 1:16), because no one can keep them in the first place. People are fallen and simply incapable of loving God or others with all their soul, heart or at least as themselves.

In a real sense, these laws are the bad news: that is God demands of us more than we can give. And since we can’t give, therefore we cannot be saved. The good news is that; ever since Jesus died on the cross, guilty but believing sinners like you and I are Saved by Grace through Faith and not by works lest any man should boast. Judgment has nothing to do with salvation but has everything to do with making sure those who rejected the Gospel of Righteousness by Grace through Faith get what THEY DESERVE.

As for us Christians, we have nothing to present and no work or good deed to reference to as we enter heaven. Whoever doesn’t take the gift then qualifies to get his rightful WAGE which is none other than the judicial wrath of God and ETERNAL DEATH. Remember all our works of righteousness are stinking-filthy rags to God the Judge (Isaiah 64:6). Paul after discovering this truth of the Gospel made a comment about his good works and said:

INDEED I COUNT EVERYTHING AS LOSS BECAUSE OF THE SURPASSING WORTH OF KNOWING CHRIST JESUS MY LORD. FOR HIS SAKE I HAVE SUFFERED THE LOSS OF ALL, AND COUNT THEM AS REFUSE (GREEK WORD: EXCRETE), IN ORDER THAT I MAY GAIN CHRIST. AND BE FOUND IN HIM, NOT HAVING A RIGHTEOUSNESS OF MY OWN, BASED ON LAW, BUT THAT WHICH IS THROUGH FAITH IN CHRIST, THE RIGHTEOUSNESS FROM GOD DEPENDS ON FAITH. (PHILIPPIANS 3:8-9).

I can’t say more.

God bless you, I invoke TRUTH, REASON and FAITH

Am Pr. I.T.WHITE (+256-793-822833)

The Gospel Hawker