To make the believers sins and their resultant punishment the issue at the judgment seat is to deny the sufficiency and efficacy of Christ’s death in paying the full penalty for all sin and completely satisfying God’s justice. Neither is the purpose to render judicial punishment for the believer’s sins, whether they be pre-conversion or post-conversion sins, or whether they be confessed or unconfessed. The point is: how did the believer life his of her spiritual life? Hoyt (2011:92) summarises it well: ‘The purpose of the judgment seat of Christ is not to consider the issue of salvation. This judgment is not to determine whether the believer is saved or not (the believer is already saved and there is now no condemnation – see Romans 8:1 again), but whether the works of the believer can be rewarded or be identified as worthless. Since, this is so, why are believers going to appear before the judgment seat of Christ?Īt the bēma-seat of Christ, believers’ works will be judged. Romans 8:1 teaches that there ‘is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’.
Believers have forensically and judicially been judged by God in Christ. Only Jesus (not the Dalai Lama, not Buddha, not Mohammed, etc.) could pay for our sins, because only Jesus was without sin and only Jesus died a substitutionary death for everyone. Jesus died a horrible death on the cross and shed his blood so that you and I need not pay for our sins. The Bēma-seat Judgement: Salvation or Rewards?īelievers have been saved by Jesus from the penalty and ruin of our sins. For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad (2 Cor 5:10).So then each of us will give an account of himself to God (Rom 14:10b-12)
For we will all stand before the judgement seat of Christ for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God”.Two New Testament texts specifically connect the bēma-seat to a judgment that Christ will perform: When Paul wrote his epistles, the ‘ bēma-seat’ referred to a podium on which judges sat when officiating at Greek sporting events to determine which participants should be rewarded. In the Roman world, the bēma referred to an official seat of a judge. The word means a raised place that you mount by steps. But this is unfortunate, for the Bible clearly teaches that believers can receive rewards when they appear before Christ. While more reasons can be added (see Hixson & Fontecchio 2013:223-224), the point is clear: this Biblical doctrine is frequently neglected and sometimes even shunned. Or it is sometimes thought that this doctrine of rewards leads to selfish motivations. Others mistakenly believe that the doctrine of eternal rewards contradicts salvation by grace alone. Despite this, why is there so little teaching about this important doctrine? Amillennial and postmillennial churches neglect this doctrine, because they see only one general judgement at the end. The doctrine of the judgement seat (in Greek: the bēma-seat) of Christ straddles not only soteriology (the teaching about salvation), but also ecclesiology (the doctrine of the Church) and eschatology (end times teaching).
0 kommentar(er)
