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LEGAL PRECEDENTS ON THE PRACTICE

Do you ever see those criminal-justice dramas on TV, where the assistant DA goes into the courtroom to argue a case? And attorneys for both sides are called to the bench. “Approach!” When they get there, the judge leans forward and says to the prosecutor: “I’m sorry, Mr. McCoy, but your objection has no foundation.” But then, still covering the microphone, she says to Sam Waterston: “However, if you can give me a case precedent which covers this specific argument, I’ll take it under advisement.” And Mr. McCoy, thinking hard, says, “How about ‘Jackson vs. Mission County,’ Your Honor?” He cites the particulars of the case, or the judge retires to chambers for a brief recess, and looks it up herself. And if it turns out that “Jackson vs. Mission County” is pertinent to the case, if it’s “on point,” as they say on Law and Order or The Practice, then Jack McCoy and Ellenor Frutt get their ruling. Because if it’s established law, already ruled upon, if it’s in the books, then we all go by those books.

In a way, that’s where we are on this Friday, as we close up our own books in studying the issue of justification and obedience. We’ve been here three weeks, and although we certainly haven’t exhausted the subject, maybe all of us are exhausted and needing a change of venue, as the courtroom dramas like to say. But especially this week, as we’ve considered the doctrine many Christians call “Once Saved Always Saved,” it’s been good news to discover that when a person comes to Jesus, God declares them to be justified — guilt-free. They’re acquitted, pronounced innocent. Not because they themselves are innocent, but because Jesus does two things for them: He pays their penalty on the Cross, and allows His own perfection to be credited to their account.

I have to accept this as truth, not because of “Jackson vs. Mission County,” but because the Bible says so. And it really nails down that this verdict is instantaneous, everlasting, eternal, and irrevocable.

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

That’s Romans 8:1.
“He that hears My word and believes Him that sent Me has everlasting life and shall not come under judgment but is passed from death to life.”

John 5:24. And of course, Christians everywhere can quote by heart, and rejoice in the good news, that when we turn to Jesus and confess our sins and trust in Him, He’s got the biggest eraser in the universe, and He causes those sins to be gone. Unless you’ve got both hands on the steering wheel right now, on your Friday commute, you’re probably leafing in your own Bible faster than I can over to that landmark verse: First John 1:9. Here it is, for those of you on the freeways:

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

What this tells us is that when we repent and cast our lot with Jesus, trust Him with our spiritual fate, our life . . . friend, our sins are gone! Blotted out! That very moment they are deleted! With no recycle bin to pull them back out of later. You can have complete assurance of this, despite how the prosecuting attorney, the great Accuser called the devil, objects in the courtroom. Why? Because the Bible says so. Here’s Acts 3:19, and this is the great Apostle Peter talking, by the way:

“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.”

Notice the sequence: Repent . . . turn to God . . . sins wiped out. Again: “blotted out,” as some versions have it. Colossians 2:13 is an important verse here, and if you’ll permit me, let’s read it from the exciting paraphrase entitled The Message:

“When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive — right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ’s Cross.”

I’m sure the court reporter is taking note of the fact that this is a present-moment promise. “All sins forgiven . . . now! The slate wiped clean . . . now!” When you come to Jesus, friend, your innocence is permanently established at that very moment in time. We said yesterday that you could depart from Christ, but that He will never depart from you, or change His mind, or pull back His mercy, or seek to have His own sentence of innocence — for you — overturned.

With all of this good news echoing through the courtroom, then, you can understand that all of us who are Christians could file away in the back room any thought of a final Judgment. That kind of thinking is obsolete, it seems. All God’s people are declared eternally justified the moment they accept the gift of His Son, so why would it be necessary, at the very end of time, for there to be a time of Judgment? That question’s already been “asked and answered.” And especially if you are a Christian concerned about the issue of peace and assurance, confidence in salvation, you might read all of these wonderful Bible verses and decide that if there is a Judgment, it must be strictly for someone else: the lost, perhaps. And we begin to construct a theology that allows the people of God to bypass the final Law and Order episode playing on the universe’s big-screen television.

But you know, there’s only one problem with that NBC theory. Here it is: the Bible plainly says that there’s a Judgment. And that all of us are going to be present for it. Saved and lost alike.

You can find this in the Old Testament. Ecclesiastes 12:13, 14:

“Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”

Is there a loophole there, some fuzzy legal language we can parse our way out of? I don’t think so. And the New Testament doesn’t give us any political cover either. James 2:12:

“Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom.”

And we recently spent a whole four weeks studying Revelation chapter 14, where three mighty angels announce at the close of time: “The hour of [God’s] judgment has come.” Chapter 22 has Jesus announcing:

“Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with Me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done.”

Even Paul, who writes so compellingly about our eternal salvation and about “no condemnation,” tells us in Romans 12:10:

“We will all stand before God’s judgment seat.”

And we have even Jesus telling us a story about sheep and goats: people who are kind and loving, and people who aren’t. Rewards are given out on the basis, notice, of things people do: cups of cold water, prisoners visited. He tells a parable about a wedding feast where the king — that would be God — comes in to see who is properly attired. There’s a judgment scene, and some people are thrown out into the back alley.

Well, friend, the answer is a simple one, and it’s one which brings assurance, not fear. Two things. First, even saved Christians who have full assurance of salvation face a kind of Judgment, where we answer to Jesus for what we’ve done with all the blessings He’s given us. Did we witness, or fail to? Did we encourage others with our holy lives, or lead people astray? Second Corinthians 5:10 warns that even God’s children will give an answer to those questions:

“ . . . that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.”

However, the NIV scholars point this out:
“This accounting has nothing to do with justification, which is credited to the Christian fully and forever through faith in Christ; instead, it refers to what we have done with our lives as Christians.”

But the bigger question to be addressed in the Judgment, the one which does involve eternal salvation, is this: are you in Christ? Are you in relationship with Jesus Christ? Do you have a faith experience with Him that is real? There are those who do, and God knows that. “I know My sheep,” Jesus says, and He knows His sheep instantly and eternally. But there are those who invoke His name, who play the game, who talk big about their religiosity but who do not actually trust in Him for salvation. Calvary is a slogan to them but not a reality.

And so the Bible tells us that — not for His own sake, but for the sake of the watching universe — the full truth is finally revealed. Some are faking it . . . and some are living it. Some have real faith, which does lead to obedience and discipleship and cups of cold water. Others don’t. Sheep and goats. And yes, Jesus even points to the deeds, the good deeds, the obedience, and says to Satan, the great Accuser: “Look at this person! They are living in a trust relationship with Me and have been for a long time. Look at the fruit! I knew all along that they were trusting Me, but now even the demons of hell can see that I am right in saving them.”

You know, friend, when a person is innocent, and they know it — when they have absolute assurance that they’re not guilty — they actually look forward to Judgment. “I want my day in court,” they say. Especially when they have a lawyer as good as the one you and I have had assigned to us.