The Judgment Seat of Christ: Every One of Us Shall Give Account

The church at Rome was fighting about dinner.

One believer sat down to his meat and gave God thanks. Another would not touch it and ate herbs, and he gave God thanks too. One man kept a certain day holy. His neighbor treated every day alike. Instead of leaving it there, they started sizing each other up. The one despised. The other judged.

You would expect Paul to settle the menu. He doesn’t. In Romans 14 he reaches right past the argument and points at a throne:

“But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” (Romans 14:10-12)

That is how Paul ends an argument between Christians. He reminds them where every one of them is going to stand.

You do not hear many messages on the judgment seat of Christ. But Paul brings it up twice: once to believers who were judging each other, and once in 2 Corinthians 5 to believers who needed to think hard about why they served at all. It is the same event seen from two angles. And both of them have your name on them.

What the judgment seat of Christ actually is

The word behind “judgment seat” is bema. It means an elevated platform, the raised step where a judge sits to hand down his decision.

Let me give you the good news first. No one standing at the judgment seat of Christ will be in danger of hellfire. Nobody there faces the lake of fire. This is a judgment of saved people only: every believer from all the ages, including those who are born again and still alive when the rapture comes.

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” (2 Corinthians 5:10)

It is a divine evaluation of your life as it pertained to the things of the Lord. It begins soon after the rapture, and it will be finished by the time the Lord returns at the end of the seven-year tribulation to set up His thousand-year reign of peace. How long does it take? The Bible is silent. It could be seven years. It could be seven seconds. I don’t know, and I am not going to pretend I do.

What I do know is that it is serious. Your works will be inspected and your stewardship accounted for. Your motives will be laid open: why you did what you did after you were saved, and why you didn’t do what you didn’t.

While you are in Romans 14, notice something. Paul calls it the judgment seat of Christ, and in the next breath he quotes the Lord saying every knee shall bow to Him and every one of us shall give account to God. If you ever need a text to prove that the Lord Jesus Christ is God, there is one.

Not everyone will stand at the bema

What about the little ones who have not reached the age of accountability? They are safe in the Lord. When the trumpet sounds, they are out of here with us.

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)

Only those genuinely converted in this life will stand at the judgment seat of Christ. No one who has died lost in his sins will be there. Those who die lost, and those still lost and left behind at the rapture, face a different throne entirely:

“And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” (Revelation 20:11-12) “And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” (Revelation 20:15)

That is the final judgment of God on mankind. Everyone judged there goes into the lake of fire. If you are saved, you will be there only as a witness. You will not be there in judgment.

Make sure which throne you will stand before

I can know I am saved. I can believe you are. But only God knows the heart, so I am not going to take it for granted.

You may be thinking you have heard this a hundred times. There is a problem if we get tired of hearing the old, old story. If you can just about quote it, good. Share it. It does you no good to know it and keep it to yourself. Write these verses down, too. You never know when you will be sitting across from somebody who needs them.

Jesus told a religious man who taught the Bible for a living:

“Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” (John 3:7)

Without that new birth, here is where you stand:

“And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;” (Ephesians 2:1) “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” (Romans 3:10-12)

There is only One who is good, and that is God. Outside of Christ there is nothing good about you or me, divinely speaking. We have nothing to offer Him except to repent and trust Him. And then everything changes.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Salvation does not depend on me. He is the One who died. He is the One who shed His blood and rose from the dead. The resurrection is the proof that the Father accepted the sacrifice. What is left to you is to repent, which means turning from sin toward God, and to trust Christ as your Lord and personal Savior. It is a finished transaction.

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.” (John 5:24) “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10) “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13)

Some folks get confused here and make a particular prayer the thing that saves you. Calling on the Lord from the heart is how that faith gets expressed. But it is not the prayer that saves. It’s God that saves. Confessing with your mouth is the verification of what has already taken place in your heart.

Others go the other direction. They take “faith cometh by hearing” and insist you cannot be saved unless somebody preaches it out loud to you. What about a deaf person? Hold that line and you have just passed judgment on millions of people who cannot hear. The hearing happens in the mind and the heart. It can come through sign language or a gospel tract.

If you are not saved, take this seriously. Your last breath could come at the end of a long illness, or a truck could hit you tomorrow. It could be tonight, or ten years from now, or twenty. None of us knows.

That is the single most important issue you will ever face. Get it settled.

If it is settled, the judgment seat of Christ is your next appointment. So look at it the way Paul did, from both sides.

Romans 14: You are not the judge of another man’s servant

“Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand.” (Romans 14:4)

The backdrop here is Christian liberty. Paul says the same thing to the Corinthians:

“All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” (1 Corinthians 6:12)

The believers at Rome were passing harsh judgment on one another over personal preferences, starting with food and holy days. Interesting, isn’t it? It sounds a lot like us.

Everybody is at a different place in his spiritual walk. Our tendency is to judge somebody else’s walk by our own. The Romans did it, and many still do: they build their spirituality on a list of dos and don’ts and then grade their fellow believers by that list.

But God is the judge, and every Christian will give account of himself to God. That means you have no right to take God’s place by condemning a brother over non-essential matters.

Romans reads like a prosecutor’s case. It moves through the accusation, the conviction, the judgment, and then the pardon and mercy of God. When Paul talks about judgment in this book, he means business.

That accountability ought to keep you from playing God in other believers’ lives. You are responsible for your own walk, not for policing somebody else’s conscience. I have said it before and I mean it: I am not the priest of your home. Your brother has a conscience. He has a walk. He will answer to God.

So will you.

“Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.” (Romans 14:13)

That is the only judging Paul leaves you. Judge yourself, so that you do not trip your brother.

2 Corinthians 5: God is weighing why you did it

The church at Corinth had a lot going wrong when Paul wrote his first letter. The second letter dealt with more problems, but it also commended them for what they were doing right. Here in chapter five, the subject is stewardship and motive.

You can have all the outward things in place. To everybody watching, you look locked on. But God is looking at the heart. If the motive behind what you do is not right, it means absolutely nothing. It is wood, hay, and stubble, and it will burn.

“Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 5:5)

Think of earnest money. When you buy a home, you put money down with the purchase agreement. That is the security, so the house cannot be sold out from under you. The Holy Spirit is God’s earnest in you.

“And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” (Ephesians 4:30)

The moment you were born again, you were sealed and made a new creature. Old things passed away. And because of that, Paul says:

“Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him.” (2 Corinthians 5:9)

That is not talking about salvation. It is talking about hearing the Lord say well done.

Then verse ten says “whether it be good or bad.” Bad there does not mean wicked, the way the lost are wicked. It means fleshly and worthless. What God finds good, you receive a reward for. What He finds bad, you suffer loss for.

Notice the phrase “the things done in his body.” The church is His body:

“Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:21)

So you serve Him as a faithful member of His church, because you get to and not because you have to. But your own body matters here too, and Paul is about to tie the two together.

Gold, silver, precious stones, or wood, hay, stubble?

“For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.” (1 Corinthians 3:11-13) “If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.” (1 Corinthians 3:14-15)

Christ is the foundation. Once you are born again, you are building on it. Gold, silver, and precious stones stand for faithful service, godly character, and right motives. Those survive the fire and bring a reward.

But do not serve the Lord with your eyes on the reward.

I have heard men tell stories from war. Some fellow would announce, “If we get in a battle, I’m going to win the Medal of Honor.” Typically, guys like that were the first ones to cower when the bullets started flying. The men who actually received it were usually the quiet type. Their mission was simple: stay alive to fight another day, and take care of the men on either side of them. When they saw a need, they acted on it, often without stopping to think it might cost them their lives.

The Christian who gets rewards from the Lord is not the one sitting there tallying up what he will get. Here is who God looks to:

“For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.” (Isaiah 66:2) “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (Micah 6:8)

God is looking for humility. If you think you somehow measure up, you are in for a sad awakening.

Then Paul brings in the temple:

“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16)

If you have been converted, the Spirit of God lives inside you. So magnify His fruit in your life:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23)

Read a few verses further and you land right back in Rome:

“Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.” (Galatians 5:26)

The crowns you will lay at His feet

“The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying,” (Revelation 4:10)

It starts with the twenty-four elders. Then the rest of the believers follow with the crowns they received at the judgment seat of Christ, and they lay them at His feet out of gratitude. Bible scholars have identified five crowns that may be awarded there. I want to show you two.

The first is the incorruptible crown:

“And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” (1 Corinthians 9:25-27)

This crown is for spiritual discipline: overcoming the flesh and running the race set before you. If you are simply faithful, if you endure, and if the fruit of the Spirit is growing in you, that all but guarantees you a crown.

The second is the crown of rejoicing:

“For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? For ye are our glory and joy.” (1 Thessalonians 2:19-20) “Therefore, my brethren dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved.” (Philippians 4:1)

This crown is for evangelism and for discipling others, for getting the gospel out whenever you can. Notice what Paul says the crown is. It is not a trophy. It is people: “Are not even ye?”

About a week ago we were coming home and stopped at the rest area just south of Sioux City. I like rest areas, and not only for the obvious reason. I like to find the workers, give them a gospel tract, and talk with them for a little while. There was a fellow there named Brandon. I didn’t know his name right off the bat. That came out once we got to talking.

Will you have anything to cast?

The Christians at Rome were busy watching each other’s plates. Paul wanted them looking up, toward the day each of them would stand alone at the bema and give account of himself to God.

That is where he wants you looking too.

To me, there is nothing worse than this: the crowns are being cast at the feet of the Lord Jesus, and you have nothing to cast.

So stop grading your brother’s walk. Settle where you will spend eternity. Check why you do what you do. Tell somebody about Christ this week.

Every one of us shall give account.

What will you lay at His feet?

Adapted from a message preached from Romans 14:10-12 and 2 Corinthians 5:5-11.