The Highway Forums General Discussion Devotional Quotes The Judgment According To Works

I love this quality of Biblical instruction written and proclaimed below. I would hope others would say Amen to this quality of instruction.

“But it is not only in Revelation that we read of this judgment according to our deeds. Paul, the champion of salvation by grace and justification by faith, did not hesitate to say that “God will give to each person according to what he has done” [Rom. 2:6] and that “each of us will give an account of himself to God.” [14:12] Later he tells the Corinthians both that a believer’s reward in heaven will be more or less according to how faithfully he served the Lord on earth (1 Cor. 3:14-15) and that they must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive what is due him for the deeds done while in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10). Our Lord Jesus spoke similarly. We read him saying, in Matt. 16:27, that when the Son of Man comes in his Father’s glory he will reward each person according to what he has done. We have many other such statements. I won’t weary you with reciting them all: they are found in the OT and the NT alike. I have commonplaced my Bible on this theme at John 5:29 and have listed there in the margin some 23 texts, but could have listed many more. Suffice it to say that it is the teaching of the Bible that, as Peter puts it (1 Pet. 1:17): “Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.”

Clearly we do not get to heaven on the strength of our own works. We get to heaven on the strength of Christ’s works on our behalf and those works alone. But it remains a fundamental principle of God’s justice that “whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap.” And that principle is demonstrated in two different ways in the last judgment. In the first place, real believers will have lived lives of real godliness; not perfection but real godliness. In saving sinners the Lord transforms their lives. He recreates them to walk in good works. That is why again and again the Bible can distinguish between the saved and the lost according to the kind of lives the two respective groups live. In this way works or conduct, reviewed at the Last Judgment, vindicate believers. They prove their faith in Christ. In the second place, it is clear that God’s perfect justice requires that there should be distinctions made at the Last Judgment between members of the two classes: those who are saved and those who are lost. Just as in hell some will be beaten with few stripes and some with many, in heaven the reward of some will be greater than that of others. It may well be – it is no doubt the case – that our good works are Christ’s work in us, and that we cannot take credit for them because we could not perform them without his help; nevertheless, Christ will reward those gifts in keeping with their measure. He will crown his own gifts, in other words, in keeping with their measure. Mystery, perhaps; fact indeed! “Let few be teachers,” James warns Christians, because teachers will be judged more strictly. That is, a greater opportunity to influence the thinking of other believers means, inevitably, a greater accountability for whether that work is done poorly or well. And greater accountability can only mean a greater or lesser reward in heaven.

Heaven will not be a place where everyone occupies the same rank. The angels don’t occupy the same rank now; believers don’t live in equal faithfulness, they don’t have the same place or spiritual rank in the body of Christ now and they won’t in the world to come either. There is much that will be the same in heaven for every believer. It is for us all a place of joy and rest, of fellowship with God and with the saints, of the fulfillment of life. But it will not be the same life in every respect. That the Bible makes very clear. Some will rule ten cities and some but one. The Christian’s reward will be linked with and proportionate to his or her faithfulness and obedience. [Bavinck, Ref. Dog., iv, 728]”

An excerpt from the sermon entitled, The Judgment According to Works, Revelation 22:6-21, May 10, 2009, By Rev. Dr. Robert S. Rayburn

Is this from Robert S. Rayburn, SR. or Robert S. Rayburn, JR.?

Dear Brother: There is only one Robert S. Rayburn as of this time.