If someone were to call you judgmental how would you feel?  I think that in our current culture that would be one of the worst things that could be said of us.  It is politically incorrect to be judgmental, but then, that conviction is itself a judgment, isn’t it?  If we point that out to someone who labels us as being judgmental that person may not appreciate it.  The fact remains that all of us, Christians and non Christians, believers and non believers of all different stripes make judgments about what is right and wrong, desirable and undesirable, true and bogus.  Human beings have the capacity and desire to make judgments and not simply to live by instinct.  That is one of the things that distinguishes us from animals. 

          The challenge is to make judgments that are true, that comport to reality, and that are right.  That statement reveals my bias that I think there is such a thing as right and wrong, which some say is a wrong assumption, thereby revealing their judgment that there is no such thing.  There is no way to avoid exercising judgment, but Christians believe that they are free from making ultimate judgments about the fate of persons or earth because that is the prerogative of God. 

          The two most universal creeds of the Christian church: The Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed affirm in almost identical language that Jesus Christ shall come again to judge the living and the dead.  I want to explore the great comfort and freedom that issues from that basic Christian conviction.

          If you read through the places in the Bible where God’s judgment is mentioned, you find that in many cases it is spoken of in a very favorable light.  When Hannah was blessed with a son in response to her prayers for a child she sang a song of praise to God very similar to the song Mary sang when she became pregnant with Jesus:  Hannah sang: “God will guard the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness; for not by might does one prevail.  The Lord!  His adversaries shall be shattered; the Most High will thunder in heaven. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king and exalt the power of his anointed.” (1 Sam. 2:9-10) The Psalmist celebrates God’s judgment with these words: “Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it.  Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord; for he is coming, for he is coming to judge the earth.  He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with his truth.” (Ps. 96:10-13) 

          Don’t we all yearn for the day when justice prevail on earth and the violent and haughty are brought low and the kind and the humble exalted?  We would like to see a world where God’s truth and grace are revered and where the forces of violence and hatred are transformed by the power of God.  Christians pray for that day when they follow Jesus’ example and say, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  And we work for that kind of world by seeking to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God.

          The writers of the Bible saw evidence of God’s judgment and justice at work in their time and not only at the end of time. The passage in Amos that we read is a vision that Amos saw of summer fruit.  The Hebrew word for basket is gayitz and the word for end is qetz, so what we have here is a pun. Amos observed mistreatment of the needy and the poor, deceit in the scales at the market place, debtors being made slaves, and he warned that it spelled the end for his people.  His words proved true.  Not long after he spoke them, the Assyrian Empire conquered Israel and sent the northern tribes into exile.  In that case God’s judgment had a negative side to it for the people who had ignored God’s clear call for justice and compassion for the poor, the widow and the orphan.

          How about in our current time and recent past?  Can we discern the hand of God at work in judging wrong?  That question is asked by Steven J. Keillor in a book titled God’s Judgments, which challenges the current interpretation among secular historians that sees claims of divine providence and divine judgment as empirically unverifiable, if not also naïve, irresponsible and dangerous.  We have seen examples of persons being quick to say that an event like the emergence of Aids or the 9/11 attack as the judgment of God.  We tend to shy away from anyone who purports to know the mind of God in such matters.  But in doing so we seem to buy into the notion that God is not involved in the lives of individuals or nations and we are left to our own devices.  Think for a minute about what Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural Address as he reflected on the war that dragged on.  I quote from portions of that speech delivered March 4, 1865 to illustrate that Lincoln saw the hand of God in what the nation was enduring: “Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained.  Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease.  Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.  Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.  It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged.  The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.  The Almighty has His own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!  If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs, come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him?  Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.  Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’”

          Lincoln saw the war as God’s judgment on the nation for two and a half centuries of slavery.  Lincoln read the Bible extensively as you can see from several quotes from the Bible in this speech. He also took in the viewpoint of the prophets and other biblical writers who discerned the hand of God at work in judging peoples for their waywardness.  That is how Israel understood their defeat at the hands of the Assyrian and later the Babylonian Empires who sent them into exile.

          Keillor in his book suggests that Lincoln’s perspective has a biblical wisdom to it that most secular historians fail to appreciate or acknowledge.  He dares to look at current calamities and suggest that a nation’s or group’s disregard for the justice and truth of God may have very sad consequences which are meant to lead those facing them to change their ways and seek God’s mercy.  No modern president I know of has showed the courage of a Lincoln to suggest that harsh events we face may be due to the error of our ways, and that we best repent and seek justice and ask God’s healing mercy.  Jimmy Carter warned over thirty years ago that our insatiable thirst for oil posed a real threat to our security and future as a nation because we would become increasingly dependent on foreign sources for oil whose governments and policies might be at odds with our interests.  We turned a deaf ear to his warning.  I wonder what would have happened if we had taken his warning to heart.

          There is another side to God’s judgment that has to do with individuals and the end of time.  In many places in the Bible we read of a day of reckoning in which we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive our due reward or chastening.  That is what Paul says in the passage we read from 2 Corinthians 5:10.  What is the purpose of God’s judgment?  Is it solely to determine who will enter into eternal life with God or not?  Theologian L. Berkhof  in his Systematic Theology says it is much more than that.  God’s judgment will serve the purpose of displaying before all rational creatures the declarative glory of God in a formal, forensic act, which magnifies on the one hand His holiness and righteousness, and on the other hand, His grace and mercy. (p. 731)  Berkhof also points out that Scripture ascribes the work of judgment particularly to Christ.  In His capacity as Judge, too, Christ is saving His people to the uttermost: He completes their redemption, justifies them publicly, and removes the last consequences of sin. (ibid p. 732)  When Paul asks, “Who will bring any charge against God’s elect?” He goes on to answer, “It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?  It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.  Who will separate us for the love of Christ?  Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”  (Romans 8:33-35)  He goes on to say that nothing in heaven or earth will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:39) 

          The great good news is that God’s mercy triumphs over judgment and that we are offered forgiveness and the very righteousness of Christ and are thus free from condemnation.  Nonetheless, it appears that for Christians who are under the umbrella of God’s grace there is still an accounting and, subsequent to that, what appears to be a kind of assignment for responsibility in God’s kingdom.  Jesus said that to whom much is given much is required, and that those servants who have been faithful with what God has entrusted to them on earth even more will be given.  That seems to be the point of the parable of the talents found in Matthew 25.  That same chapter has also the parable of the great judgment in which Jesus says that how we treat the least of those who are members of his family is how we have treated him.  And how we treat him determines whether we enter into eternal life. (Matthew 25:46)  When mother Theresa went out each day to serve the poor she knew that in doing so she was serving Christ, and so she did it with great love.  Every day presents us opportunities to serve Christ as we listen to, serve, pray for and affirm the persons God puts on our path.

          So what are the implications of what we have discovered?  We believe in a God who is just in judgment of nations and peoples and so we should seek to live in such a way that we are not chastened because we have lost our way.  With the humility of Lincoln we should be willing to examine ourselves and to pray for God’s mercy and correction and to make amends in any way we can.  We can take comfort that God’s justice will win out. Therefore we need not take vengeance for God will repay in due time and in correct measure any wrongs done. That is what Paul says in Romans 12:19, in which he quotes Leviticus 19:18 which reads: “You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people. But you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.”  Jesus said that is the second great commandment after the first which is to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.  In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus made it clear that the good neighbor was an outsider who responded to the needs of a person across barriers of faith and group at no small cost and risk to himself.

          Not only does God judge nations, but also individuals.  Jesus Christ is God’s agent for judgment, and Jesus is loving and compassionate beyond our imagining.  It was his lavish mercy that got him into hot water with the religious leaders of the day who were excessively judgmental and all too sure that they could decide on God’s behalf who was clean and who was not.  If they had only received his message they could have left the judging to God and focused on loving, serving and praying for all people, clean and unclean, upright and fallen, Jew and Gentile.

          Here is gift that we don’t want to miss.  The judgment of God gets us out of the judgment seat.  When I think of how much time and emotional and mental energy I have wasted in judging others I am saddened.  My role as a follower of Jesus is to share his good news in word and deed, to serve him by serving others.  He plays the role of dividing sheep from goats.  My role is to love the just and the unjust, to show them mercy like that of God whose rain falls on us all.  That is enough to keep us challenged and growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ all our days.