The Judgment Seat of Christ

I came to Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 5 expecting to find assurance about life after death. The assurance is there, but something else comes into the picture that I had not expected, namely, judgment. Paul says that while we are at home in our bodies, we are away from the Lord and that he would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. But the point of living and dying, he says, is not to be either in the body or home with the Lord. The point is to please the Lord. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive what is due them for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad” (2Corinthians 5:10). The term “judgment seat” sounds more than a little foreboding. Who wants to be judged?

Well, there is something comforting about knowing we will face judgment if you look at this life as the time for sowing what we will reap. This life takes on meaning from knowing that it has eternal significance. Henri Nouwen wrote this about the meaning of life.

“Our short lives on earth are sowing times. If there were not resurrection of the dead, everything we live on earth would come to nothing. How can we believe in a God who loves us unconditionally if all the joys and pains of our lives are in vain, vanishing in the earth with our flesh and bones? Because God loves us unconditionally from eternity to eternity, God cannot allow our bodies – the same as that in which Jesus, his Son and our savior, appeared to us – to be lost in final destruction.

“No, life on earth is the time when the seeds of the risen body are planted. . . . This wonderful knowledge that nothing we live in our bodies is lived in vain holds a call for us to live every moment as a seed of eternity.”

We will face judgment after we die, and that is a good thing. We will receive what is due us for the things we have done while in the body in this life. God wants to give us good things. "What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived— these things God has prepared for those who love him" (1Corinthians 2:9).

“Nothing we live in our bodies is lived in vain” if we are living it to love God. I want to be ready for my appearance before the judgment seat of Christ. How about you? Are you ready? How are you living your love for God?