May 21 I Tuesday

1 Chronicles 13-15

John 7:1-27

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due to us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad”    —2 Corinthians 5:10

I wonder if any other verse in the New Testament challenges us quite like the opening verse. Many people take the idea of “judgment day” lightly, but the Bible clearly states that there will be one. We would be naive to think that there will not be one because the injustices of life on earth demand that there will come a day when right is vindicated and wrong is condemned. The whole human race through its history will each be accountable to that judge—God.

This raises the question of on what criteria we will be judged. Thankfully, it is not guesswork, for God created in our world a moral law that is both revealed in Scripture and naturally evident to us. God gave the Law through Moses to the Israelites, but for the rest of the world, Paul tells us: “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law,...They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts” (Romans 2:14-15). Even before God gave the law to Moses, people knew that murder, theft and adultery were wrong because the moral law was already written in their hearts. The written law simply gave a concrete expression of it.

Like the physical law of nature, the moral law is created and embedded within the human psyche and consciousness. If we try to defy the physical law of physics by jumping off a building in the hope that we can fly, we will discover that we cannot break that law, and instead that law will break us as we hit the ground.

Because we have this natural awareness of what is right and wrong, Paul says that people are without excuse. We can try to corrupt our mind and conscience so we no longer know what is right or wrong.
We can even violate it to an extent that it ceases to be effective within us. But this does not suspend the final judgment for anyone; the whole human race will one day be held accountable.

God’s judgment day is inevitable because inherent in all of us is a moral consciousness that is not a result of conditioning, but a result of creation. No one is exempt. Though we must all one day face the Judge
and give an account of our life, God has made it clear the criteria of His judgment and how we pass it—by the blood of the lamb.

Prayer: Dear God, thank You that Your law is written in my heart. Challenge, correct and chastise me into a deeper knowledge of Your love for me.