Judgment Day for the Redeemed

There is a passage of Scripture that has captured my imagination. It is 1 Corinthians 3:10-15. I call it the “Three Little Pigs” passage, because verse 12 is reminiscent of that nursery rhyme. The passage gives a unique insight into what Judgment Day is like for somebody who has been saved by Jesus. I have written snippets about this topic in the past. In this blog I would like to give a more complete treatment. Here is the passage:

 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. ¹¹ For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. ¹² Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— ¹³ each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. ¹⁴ If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. ¹⁵ If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

1 Corinthians 3:10-15 (ESV)

It surprises people when they here that Judgment Day is a judgment of our deeds. This is said in several places in Revelation and is correctly stated in the Athanasian Creed, if you are familiar with that. What throws people off is the assumption that Judgment Day is about whether we are saved or not. For people who don’t have the forgiveness of their sins through Jesus, it is about that. But for those who have forgiveness, their salvation has been known for a long time. In fact, people could have been in the Heaven for millennia by the time Judgment Day rolls around. They are not going to be kicked out of God’s presence at that time.

So why should redeemed people go through the Judgment Day process at all? And what is “the process”? 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 tells us quite a bit. Let me set the stage.

Jesus returns from Heaven with all those who had previously died that were connected to Him (“in Christ” is a phrase frequently used in the Bible to describe that relationship). Everybody (living and the dead, saved and the unsaved) is resurrected or transformed into a new body as described in 1 Corinthians 15. The Redeemed are collected to be near Christ (this is the real Rapture) and are then seated on Christ’s right as described in Matthew 25:31f. Throughout this process the universe has been unraveling as God is changing everything. The Earth is eventually consumed by fire. It is not clear of where we are relative to this. The judgment of Judgment Day then proceeds.

Matthew 25:31-46 gives a general overview of the judgment. I’ll write about this next time. While is seems like a group judgement in that passage. Paul shows that it is very individualistic in the passage above. What happens?

It seems that we all will experience this “fire” that essentially reveals and evaluates everything that has happened in our lives here on Earth. I say “everything”, but it is actually everything minus what has been forgiven through our connection to Christ. The process shows whether we have “built” on the foundation of Christ with a life that is “gold, silver and costly stones” or “wood, hay and straw.” What constitutes “gold, silver and costly stones”?

These precious things are obviously metaphors. Paul urges us to live lives “worthy” of Christ. People who still have sinful natures will never truly be worthy of Christ’s sacrifice or of His presence and glory. But what we are asked to do is to be active being good stewards of everything God gives us in life (time, talents, money, body, the planet, our knowledge of God, etc.), to carry our the “good deeds prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10), to grow in the characteristics of God’s nature (2 Peter 1:4, et al)and to do all of this by the power of the Holy Spirit and with a humble and loving nature (Luke 17:10, 1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

Wood, hay and straw would constitute living as Christian and treating grace as cheap, straying into an attitude of self-righteousness and entitlement, ignoring the work of God’s kingdom, being a selfish steward and the like. The Day will reveal God’s evaluation of all of this. The fire referenced here, as well as by John the Baptist (Matthew 3:11) and Jesus (Mark 9:49), destroys the remembrance of such things and leaves only what God considers to be rewardable, if anything.

We are saved by grace. Without Jesus nothing we do can eclipse our sin. For some, even with Jesus, they have no reward; but they still have eternal life. They enter the New Heaven and Earth, but “only as through fire”. For the wiser disciple their life was not meaningless. They too are saved by grace, but they will also have a reward. What is the reward? Not much is said, but you can put a general idea together. I’ll save that for another blog.

Clearly, it is desirable to have a reward. So we want to keep this balance in our minds. We serve God because we love God and, as God’s nature seeps into our souls, we love people. We consider God worthy of our all and we do our best to give Him our all. None of this is done to save ourselves or to merit anything. We serve because we believe in the cause we are serving. We know that we are blessed to be saved by grace. We understand that if salvation rested on us somehow our sinful nature would mess it up. We leave this life expecting eternal life and no more. We receive more because God is good.