We must all appear before the judgment 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 Corinthians 5:10. God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil. Ecclesiastes 12:14.

“Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written, ‘As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God’ ” (vv. 10-11).

We are making our way through Romans 14 and its extensive discussion of what Christians are to do when they find themselves disagreeing over matters that God has not specifically regulated in His Word. Paul has stressed the importance of our not judging one another in such cases (vv. 4, 7-9), but before we move on, we must note that the Apostle is not saying that we may never judge in any circumstance. In fact, he calls the church to make judgments when appropriate (1 Cor. 5). When believers are in public sin or are violating those standards about which the Lord has spoken plainly, it is right and necessary for Christians to judge others, and especially for church leaders who are tasked with maintaining the peace and purity of the church. Even here, however, those who judge must act in humility, remembering that they cannot see the offender’s heart but only his outward conduct. When church leaders excommunicate a professing believer for gross, impenitent sin, they do so hoping the sinner is yet regenerate and that God will bring him to repentance. Excommunication is not an absolute statement on the condition of a person’s soul but the church’s confession that as far as it can tell, that person is not a believer.

Ultimately, the judgment of the believer is the prerogative of God alone. This is why Paul highlights our Creator’s lordship in addressing the problem in the Roman church of the weak believer who looks down on the strong believer for eating meat and the strong believer who looks down on the weak believer for his commitment to vegetarianism. In today’s passage, the Apostle brings God’s right to judge His people to bear explicitly. Paul condemns people on each side for passing judgment on people on the other side when it is the Lord alone who has the right to evaluate the heart and discern the believer’s motivation in matters where He has left us free (Rom. 14:10-12). When we presume to view those who differ with us regarding minor issues as unacceptable to God, we are exalting ourselves to the position that only the Lord occupies. John Calvin comments, “It is an unreasonable boldness in any one to assume the power to judge his brother, since by taking such a liberty he robs Christ the Lord of the power which he alone has received from the Father.”

“Each of us will give an account of himself to God” (v. 12). We ought to be more concerned with how our thoughts and attitudes will be evaluated on that final day than with how God will measure the hearts of others.

Coram Deo

If we are in Christ Jesus by faith alone, the sin of judgmentalism will not keep us out of the kingdom. We will find ourselves repenting for this transgression, and the blood of our Savior will cover us where we fall short. Still, we must remember that God’s weighing of our hearts will determine the rewards we receive in heaven. We are granted heaven by grace alone through faith alone, but a judgmental spirit will reduce the blessings we will receive once we are actually there.

Passages for Further Study

Psalm 50:1-6
Ezekiel 34:11-24
Matthew 7:1-5
2 Corinthians 5:10

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. (10) For we must all appear.-Better, must all be made manifest. The word is the same as that in ('shall make manifest the counsels of the heart'), and is obviously used with reference to it.

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It may be noted that it is specially characteristic of this Epistle, in which it occurs nine times. The English version, which can only be ascribed to the unintelligent desire of the translators to vary for the sake of variation, besides being weak in itself, hinders the reader from seeing the reference to, or even the connection with the 'made manifest' in the next verse.Before the judgment seat of Christ.-The Greek word shows the influence of Roman associations. In the Gospels the imagery of the last judgment is that of a king sitting on his throne , and the word is the ever-recurring note of the Apocalypse, in which it occurs forty-nine times. Here the judgment-seat, or bema, is the tribunal of the Roman magistrate, raised high above the level of the basilica, or hall, at the end of which it stood.

(Comp.;;.) The word was transferred, when basilicas were turned into churches, to the throne of the bishop, and in classical Greek had been used, not for the judge's seat, but for the orator's pulpit.That every one may receive the things done in his body.-It would have seemed almost impossible, but for the perverse ingenuity of the system-builders of theology, to evade the force of this unqualified assertion of the working of the universal law of retribution. No formula of justification by faith, or imputed righteousness, or pardon sealed in the blood of Christ, or priestly absolution, is permitted by St. Paul to mingle with his expectations of that great day, as revealing the secrets of men's hearts, awarding to each man according to his works. 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap' was to him an eternal, unchanging law. The revelation of all that had been secret, for good or evil; the perfectly equitable measurement of each element of good or evil; the apportionment to each of that which, according to this measurement, each one deserves for the good and evil which he has done: that is the sum and substance of St. Paul's eschatology here and in.

At times his language seems to point to a yet fuller manifestation of the divine mercy as following on that of the divine righteousness, as in;. At times, again, he speaks as if sins were washed away by baptism , or forgiven freely through faith in the atoning blood (; ); as though the judgment of the great day was anticipated for all who are in Christ by the absence of an accuser able to sustain his charge , by the certainty of a sentence of acquittal. If we ask how we can reconcile these seeming inconsistencies, the answer is, that we are not wise in attempting to reconcile them by any logical formula or ingenious system. Here, as in other truths of the spiritual life-God's foreknowledge and man's free-will, God's election and man's power to frustrate it, God's absolute goodness and the permission of pain and evil-the highest truth is presented to us in phases that seem to issue in contradictory conclusions, and we must be content to accept that result as following from the necessary limitations of human knowledge. We must all appear; rather, for it is necessary that we must all be made manifest; that we must be shown in our real nature and character.

The verb is not the same as in, which occurs in. Before the judgment seat of Christ. The special final judgment is represented as taking place before the bema of Christ, although in the best reading is 'of God'. Paul might naturally use this Roman and Greek idea of the bema, being too familiar with it in his own experience (comp.;;; ). The things done in the body; literally, the things ( done) by the instrumentality of the body. Another reading (which only differs by a single letter from this) is, 'the proper things of the body' ( τὰ ἴδια τοῦ σώματος); i.e. The things which belong to it, which it has made its own.

Paul, always intent on one subject at a time, does not stop to coordinate this law of natural retribution and inexorable Nemesis with that of the 'forgiveness of sins' (; ), or with the apparently universal hopes which he seems sometimes to express (; ). Omnia exeunt in mysterium. According to that he hath done; rather, with reference to the things he did. The aorist shows that all life will be as it were concentrated to one point.

The Pelagians raised questions on this verse about the sinlessness of infants, etc., all of which may be left on one side, as probably nothing was more absolutely distant from the thoughts of St. Observe that each is to receive the natural issues of what he has done. There is to be an analogy between the sin and the retribution. The latter is but the ripe fruit of the former.

We shall be punished by the action of natural laws, not of arbitrary inflictions. We shall reap what we have sown, not harvests of other grain (;; ). Whether it be good or bad. Paul, who always confines himself to one topic at a time, does not here enter on the question of the cutting off of the entailed curse by repentance and forgiveness. He leaves unsolved the antinomy between normal inevitable consequence and free remission.