What questions will God ask on judgement day?

To return to our parable, there is one thing specially to be noticed here, as showing the Lord's sovereignty and wisdom in connection with ministry. He gave differently to each, and to each according to his ability. Each one had a natural capacity which fitted him for the service in which he was employed, and gifts bestowed according to the measure of the gift of Christ for its fulfilment. "He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets, and some, evangelists, and some pastors and teachers." (Eph. 4) The servant must have certain natural qualifications for his work, besides the power of the Spirit of God. If the Lord calls a man to preach the gospel, there will be a natural ability for it. Then the Lord may create in his heart by the Holy Spirit a real love for souls, which is the best gift of the evangelist. Then he ought to stir up and exercise his gift according to his ability, for the blessing of souls and the glory of God. May we remember that we are responsible for these two things — the gift graciously bestowed, and the ability in which the gift is to be exercised. When the Lord comes to reckon with His servants, it will not be enough to say, I was never educated for, or appointed to, the ministry. The question will be, Did I wait on the Lord to be used by Him according to what He had fitted me for? or did I hide my talent in the earth? Faithfulness or unfaithfulness to Him will be the only thing in question.

"We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive according to that he hath done." Everything will come out there! there can be no disguise it all in the pure bright light before the throne of the discernment of Christ, where all the full intelligence of His mind will beam out on His people. It is not the question of being saved, but of how we, as saved ones, have been walking. Is it strange, since it cost Christ so much to accomplish that sacrifice, that when He gets His people home, He should say, "Now let us look at their walk, no question as to personal acceptance, but let me see whether they have walked according to my Father's thoughts, who would have His sons and daughters walking as those who are separated unto Him by the blood of His Son; as those bought with such a price, did they walk worthy of it?"

Finally the Judgment Seat of Christ will be a last retrospect of our lives. What will it disclose? Shall it be money-making, pleasure-loving, sinking down to mere domesticity, seeking ease that shall have to be faced? Will it be a question of quarrels, unkindness, a careless use of the tongue, that shall have to be remembered and faced? Shall it be found that we were mere doctrinaires, and not doers of the word or shall there be something in our lives for Christ, for God, for eternity? God grant that it may be so.

A. It is revealed distinctly that men will be judged according to their works. Old and New Testaments are equally clear. "For all these things God will bring thee into judgment" (Ecclesiastes 11:9). "For God shall bring every work into judgment with every hidden thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil" (Ecclesiastes 12:14). "God shall judge the secrets of men according to my gospel by Jesus Christ" (Romans 2:16). "The dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books according to their works … They were judged every man [each] according to their works" (Revelation 20:12-13). Such is man's portion, death, and after this judgment; for he is sinful and lost. But grace has intervened after the sin and before the judgment. God has sent His son to save all who believing receive life in Him Who died and bore their judgment on the cross, and who manifest life in a fruit-bearing course here below. Hence the Lord Who is to judge has Himself ruled that the believer comes not into judgment. Even while here he has passed out of death into life. But none the less must we all, the whole of us absolutely, be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things [done] by the body, according to what he did, whether good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10). This will be true of all, saint or sinner, not all at the same time, but each at the time and in the way and with the aim as well as result laid down in other scriptures. The careful reader will note "manifested" is the word where the faithful are included, "judged" is confined to those who refusing divine mercy in Christ must own judgment to be righteous.

Every one must be manifested before Christ's Bema, saints and sinners at their respective and due times: the saints already glorified to give account and receive according to their deeds; sinners, as they have violated conscience, transgressed God's law, or rejected His gospel, to come into judgment, whence none of them can be saved, for they have not life. Hence here it is said (Rev. 20:12) that "the dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books according to their works." If so, it was and could only be everlasting ruin, as inspired David expresses it (Ps. 143:2); and so in the N.T. judgment is contrasted both with life (John 5:24, 29) and with salvation (Heb. 9:27-28).

Yet my excellent friend Dr. B., after citing the affecting repetition in verse 13 ("and they were judged every man according to their works"), appeals to "the almost identical language of the Gospels and Epistles already quoted," which do not treat the judgment of the righteous and wicked as one whole. He asks, Are we to believe that Life's book was opened for no other purpose than to show that not one of those then raised and then judged was to be found in it? The answer is, that the text expressly declares that the dead, not some but all, οἱ νεκροὶ, were not merely "made manifest" as all saints are to be, but "judged" also, as no believer is or can be, if we accept the words of our Lord, "out of the things that were written in the books." This is inevitable perdition, as every believer saved by grace through the faith of Christ ought to know.

There is one thing more, which closes the reign of Christ; it is the judgment of the wicked dead. Every one, from the first person who died in his sins, will then be judged; the dead must then hear the voice of the Son of God, and come forth. So particular is the instruction, that they are called "the dead, small and great." If they should be at the bottom of the sea, they must come up; wherever they are, in the grasp of death and hell (or hades), they must be delivered up. If they have fallen, and perished in some secret place, without a human eye to see them in the article of death; if they have fallen into a ravine, or perished in the desert, or their burial-place never have been known to man, it matters not; death and hades (the place of departed spirits) must give them up at the command of Jesus. These dead — meaning all unsaved people, dead in trespasses and sins will be brought up at the resurrection of judgment; they will be judged, each person, small and great, according to their works. They will stand before God. The books will be opened. One book — the book of remembrance, I doubt not — is to show the judged ones at a glance their own history: "I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes." Another book will be there, which, I believe, is the Bible. Jesus said, "The word that I speak unto you shall judge you in that day." There will be a third book — the Book of Life — to show them that their names are not written therein, to convict them that they never received Christ for eternal life; for there could not be written in the Book of Life the names of any who are without Christ. Christ is "the life," and those who are in Christ have their names written in that book. These three witnesses the book of remembrance, the Bible, and the Lamb's Book of Life — will silence for ever those who stand before that throne; and with deepest anguish and remorse will they hear the Lord's "Depart," and be cast away for ever from His presence; for "whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire." Then death, the last enemy, shall be destroyed. The last act in the reign of Christ will be to cast death and hades into the lake of fire. They will no more be wanted. The last enemy is thus destroyed; the victory of Christ is now complete.

Hence the Lord pronounces them a generation of vipers. "The tree is known by his fruit." It was a bad tree, and no good fruit would He expect from it. "O generation of vipers," He adds, "how can ye, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you, That every idle word (that is, I suppose, everything betraying contempt for God) that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned" (vers. 34-37). What God insists upon is testimony to Jesus. These idle words betray the heart's rejection of Jesus, and slight the Holy Ghost's testimony to Him. "By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." It is with the mouth that confession is made unto salvation; and the words that leave out Jesus prove that the heart prefers its sin to Him. The words of the mouth evidence the state of the heart. They are the outward expression of the feelings, and they show a man in one way as much as his conduct does in another. If the heart is evil, the words are evil, the conduct is evil: all therefore comes into judgment.

Another consideration perhaps may help some as connected with this, and confirmatory of it, founded on Matthew 25, where the nations are called up before the Son of man when He sits as King upon the throne. It will be remembered that he tells those whom He designates as the sheep that, inasmuch as they did what they had done to His brethren, it was really to Him; as, on the other hand, the insults fell on Him which were aimed at them. These acts of kindness, or the contrary, will be owned by the Lord here. It is no use for people to call it the general judgment, or the judgment of our works. It is not. The one principle before us in this scripture is His dealing with the living Gentiles, or the nations according to their ways with His brethren; and it will require real power of God to act aright then. The pressure against His messengers will be enormous. If any receive them well, it will be from faith. I grant that the measure of their faith is small. That to honour His brethren is virtually to honour Himself, they do not themselves know. When they stand in presence of the King, how astonished they are that He should regard what was done to the messengers of His gospel in the last days as if done to His own.

The Gentile will not be judged on the same ground as the Jew, nor the Jew on the same ground as the nominal Christian. Each will be dealt with on his own distinct ground and according to his light and privilege. There will be the few stripes and the many stripes as in Luke 12. It will be “more tolerable” for some than for others, as in Matthew 11. The Judge of all the earth will do right, but man is responsible and his responsibility is measured by the light and advantage afforded him. All are not huddled together carelessly, as though they were all on one common ground. On the contrary there is the most accurate discrimination, and no one will ever be condemned for slighting and refusing advantages which were not within his reach. But the very fact that there will be a judgment at all, proves, even were there no other proof, that man is responsible.

The question of the heathen, who have ne’er been favoured with the message of the grace of God, will naturally arise in the mind of the reader. That they will never have to give account to God for the way in which they have treated a Gospel which they have never heard goes without saying. It is a principle of Scripture that where little has been given, little shall be required, but to whom much has been given, from him much shall be demanded (Luke 12:48). The heathen can only have to give account for the way in which they have treated whatever light they may have had given them of God. The difficulty which arises in the minds of men in connection with their accountability to God has its origin in the fact that in the heart of each lurks the latent desire to at all costs justify himself. It is natural to him as a sinner, and is a great proof of his fallen condition.