Now, there would be no sense in, or reason for, judging the believer, even if it were not said by our Lord that the believer shall not come into judgment. Because, what would he come into judgment for? If any go into judgment, it is a reality. It must be so if God were to enter into judgment with even believers. Were they never guilty of sins? And if these sins come into judgment, they cannot escape punishment; and if they are judged, they are lost. But if Christ has borne their sins, where would be the object or wisdom of putting them on their trial after they are acquitted and justified? And we are justified now by faith. All believers are. Every Christian is. It is not a question of peculiar views. I hate peculiar views. Peculiar views are the errors of men. It would be a most shameful thing to count God's truth to be “peculiar views.” The only thing a Christian should care for is God's truth. It is only the language of an enemy to count that “peculiar views.” If there are those that try to blacken it and call it peculiar views, their blood must be on their own heads. The language is the language of an adversary. We have nothing to do with running after new views, or innovations of any kind, and God forbid that we should care for one single thing that is an innovation. I call an innovation anything that is a departure from God's word.
It is not the antiquity of sixteen or seventeen centuries, but we go to the very beginning, to the apostles, and to the Lord Himself; and there is the source from which we may draw and know for ourselves immediately, just as truly as if we had the apostles there before us. The apostles were certainly not more inspired when they spoke and preached than when they wrote; but it was what they wrote that was made to convey down the stream of ages divine truth with the utmost possible certainty. There is a great advantage in having what is written. You can come and come again. Even if you listened to an apostle, or to the Lord, you might forget. You might slip away from His words and put in some of your own. There is nothing more common than this every day, even with very accurate people—and they do not carry absolutely every word—and it is too serious a thing not to have the word of God. It is of the utmost importance that we have it written. What we want is the truth first-hand—from the people inspired to give it—and that is just what we have; and the simplest man is responsible to weigh and consider it.
It may be said, he is a weak soul. Well, we are all too apt to think too much of ourselves, especially if men have a little ability—they are apt to over-estimate what they have. There is nothing more common than this, and nothing more dangerous. Whereas, if a man is really a weak soul and does not think much about himself there is far more readiness to learn, unless he is an obstinate man, and, even though he knows but very little, thinks a deal of himself; and there is nothing so dangerous as that, especially when such an one lifts himself up against the word of God. When a man is brought to God, he is made nothing of in his own eyes. Would to God we always stayed therewith the sense of our own nothingness! Would to God that it did not evaporate by our getting peace There is always a danger of a person forgetting that there was a time when he counted nothing that he thought, said, or felt, was worth thinking about. We are meant to keep the humility of that always. The best and truest form of real humility is the sense of the presence of God and of the infinite value of the word of God. There is nothing so humble as bowing to God's authority, there is nothing so humble as obedience—obeying God. And at the same time, nothing gives greater courage, nothing gives greater confidence, nothing gives greater firmness, and this is exactly what we want—to be nothing in our own eyes, and to have perfect confidence in God's word. And faith should produce this in every believer.
Not only then does the Lord lay down that the believer “comes not into judgment,” but He declares what the end will be. Not that there will be only one resurrection. Were there but one resurrection, there might be no wonder that there will be only one judgment; but to confirm the fact that there will be no judgment of the believer—no sitting in judgment on him to decide his lot for eternity—there are two resurrections spoken of in that very same passage in the fifth chapter of John; and I would commend that chapter to anyone who has not duly weighed it. There it is shown that there will be a “resurrection of life” for those that have life for their souls already; there will be a “resurrection of judgment” for those that have not life but sins, and not merely sins but unbelief, the refusal of that life. They rejected the Son of God! For them there is judgment, and for them there is a special resurrection at the close of all. For those that have life now, in the Son, there is “the first resurrection,” a life-resurrection. Other saints too will share in this, for though not at the same moment, their resurrection, nevertheless, will have that character. All that are Christ's that are in their graves when the Lord comes will rise together, and the living that are on the earth at that time will be changed, while others who die afterward will follow, as we learn from The Revelation, which is my reason for guarding the statement. They all have a resurrection of life, except those that do not die but will be brought into the change without resurrection; but the change will be equivalent to resurrection, so that it may be all called in a certain way a “resurrection of life.”
But there is also a “resurrection of judgment” for all those that despise Christ, for all that are sinners against God, for all who have refused the Savior, from the beginning of the world up to that time; and the resurrection of judgment is at the end of all time. Not so the resurrection of life; and the reason why it is not is this—that those that rise in the resurrection of life rise to reign with Christ, before the winding up of all things. The wind up of all will be after all the ages have run their course so that the last sinner may be included in that awful resurrection— “the resurrection of judgment.” We need not call it a “resurrection of damnation,” because the word used is distinct from that. In effect it comes to that, but that is not the force of the word. It is always better to stand to the exact word of God, even if we do not understand it. We owe it honor and reverence, whether we understand it or not. His word must be right, it must be wise, and the best, the only one that is really good and reliable absolutely.
This may seem a long preamble, but it is necessary, perhaps, to make the force plain of what I am going to remark here.
In the spurious Book of Enoch, and which the learned people maintain that Jude quoted from, the doctrine taught is this, that the Lord “comes with ten thousands of his saints to execute judgment upon them.” There you see is the error that betrays the devil in the forger, for I do not in the least doubt that that document has been forged from this very verse. It has every mark of having been written by a Jew subsequent to the destruction of Jerusalem, who still buoyed himself up with the hope that God would stand by the Jews.
And so He will in the end, but in a way totally different from what he, the writer, supposed. For there is no true acknowledgment of Christ. He is simply acknowledged as the Messiah from a Jewish point of view, but there never will be deliverance for the Jew in looking for the Messiah according to their thoughts. It is the Messiah of God, the Anointed of Jehovah, the true Messiah that came, and they rejected Him. But when He comes to deliver them by and by, they will be brought to say, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” They will then give up all their unbelief, they will welcome Him, and He will come and deliver them, and He will save them out of all that strait of trouble in which they will then be.
But He will not judge His own people. He was judged for them, He bore their judgment on the tree, and He will never judge them. Nor is there one word in the Bible—Old or New Testament—that insinuates in the most distant manner that the Lord will inflict judgment on His own people. That He will judge His people is a common thing in the Old Testament. But that will be, as a King, their difficulties, their disorders if there should be any; and He will also vindicate them from their enemies. It is in that sense that He will judge His people.
Moreover, God carries on a moral judgment now in respect to His children. “If ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning [here] in fear.” This is still going on. The Lord dealt with the Corinthians in this way. When they were in such a bad state, and profaned the table of the Lord, coming boldly and taking the bread and the wine as if they had been in a good state, the Lord laid His hand on them—some were sick, some fell asleep—were removed by death. All this was a temporal judgment. That is what the Lord does now, and that judgment is for our good and profit.
We see the same thing in a family. It is the judgment that a father carries on in his family, or any person charged with the care of youths put under him—young persons of either sex. Well, there is a judgment for their good. That is a totally different thing from what is called in John 5 a “coming into judgment.” It is even a different word employed—a different form of the word. From Psa. 143 it is evident that the Old Testament saints knew better than that. At any rate, the Spirit of God gave them better knowledge, for there it says, “Enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.” If God were to enter into judgment with the believer, it would be all over with him, because even the believer would be bound to say, I don't deserve to be saved. And if God were to look at all the faults in a believer's life, He might say, If that is what I have to look at, I have no reason to save you, you do not deserve it. But the ground of a believer's salvation is not that he deserves it, but that Christ deserves it for us. Christ has completely met all God's nature, and, further than that, He has borne all our sins and iniquities in His own body on the tree. God will not judge them again as if they had not been sufficiently borne, as if the judgment at the cross were not an adequate one. God will never say that about what Christ endured, and that is just what faith lays hold of. Therefore the uniform doctrine of the Bible—of both Old and New Testament—is this, that believers are not to come into that future judgment which the Lord will execute at the close of all things; but because we have now life, and are God's children, He watches over, and cares for us, and carries on a moral judgment; and besides this, the Lord Jesus carries on now a judgment of the church.
We find, besides the Father judging individually His children, that the Lord Jesus takes up the things that pertain to His name among those that are assembled together. He is Head of the church, and He has a watchful eye that the things that are done under that holy name should be real, should not be hypocritical, that His name should not be profaned. If our ways are unreal, and we go on badly, He deals with us in the way of discipline, and for the very reason “that we should not be condemned with the world.” There you have the reason. If He did not do that, you might raise a question as to whether they would be lost.
Now, then, the author of this spurious Book of Enoch understood not a word of all this. He was not a believer. He was a false man—he would never have forged if he had not been. He was a forger of the worst kind. No forgery so bad as that which pretends to give us the word of God. It is very bad to be deceitful in anything, but if deceit is carried on in the things of God, there is none that is worse in its consequences, there is none that more distinctly dishonors God. And that is the case here.
“Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to— “what does scripture say? to “execute judgment upon all.” That is not the saints. The “all” are totally distinct from the saints. The saints had been caught up, and now come with Him who executes the judgment on all the sinners to be found in that day. “To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all” —to make it perfectly plain who are meant—all “that are ungodly among them.” There it is, to obviate any argument, for there are people who are not great in the truth, who are always ready for an argument! Here we see it is “to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them” (that is, these “all”) “of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodlily committed.” And not only ungodly deeds; there is another thing that the Spirit of God attaches great importance to— “hard words which ungodly sinners spoke against him.” Words that gainsay God's mind, words that say the thing that is false of God. Job's friends did that. Job himself bowed to God. He had not many words, he made a confession of his folly, he said the thing that was right. But his friends had not spoken the thing that was right of the Lord. I do not think that the Lord was putting the stamp of His approval in the same way on all that Job said. He often spoke haughtily, and unhappily, about God, and fretted about himself; but the Lord does not refer to that. Job broke down and confessed his nothingness. His friends did not break down. Job did, and, in consequence, Job was restored, and had to pray for those, his friends, who were not as yet restored.
But here it is plain that ungodly words are just as bad in their own way as ungodly deeds. Sometimes an ungodly word does more harm than an ungodly deed. For instance, an ungodly deed might be an act of unrighteousness in a man, but an ungodly word might be a slurring of Christ. That is worse, and particularly if people receive it. People are quite ready to cry out against an ungodly deed. Even worldly men can very well judge ungodly deeds, and the same people would be deceived by hard and ungodly words against the Lord and His grace and truth.
In this Book of Enoch to which I have referred there is not a word about the “hard speeches.” This shows that it was simply a natural man; a man who, no doubt, had this phrase before him, but he did not understand it. He evidently did not understand either about the saint or about the sinner. He did not understand about the saints, because he made them objects of judgment as well as the ungodly. It is just like the theologians now. They do not believe what I am now saying. But there is one word, in leaving that subject, that I should wish to add. “We shall all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ.” Everything, good or bad, will come out, for the believer as well as for the unbeliever. But that is a very different thing from judgment. That is not called judgment—that is “manifestation,” which is not the same thing as judgment. Manifestation of all our ways will be a very good thing for us. How apt we are to overrate ourselves. There may be something that we perhaps flattered ourselves about while we were here alive, and we never saw how foolish we were till risen from the dead and standing before the judgment seat of Christ. There it will all be manifested. Where we thought that we were wise we shall see, that we were very foolish. And so in everything we may have allowed ourselves a little latitude, and tried to excuse ourselves, we shall there be obliged to acknowledge it as all wrong. That is for our good. It is a blessing to do it in this life, but it will be all the fullest and richest blessing there. All will be out then. Then we shall know even as also we are known. We shall have no thought different from God about a single thing in all our lives. But that is not judgment. Judgment is where a person stands to be tried, and to be convicted of his guilt. That will be the case with everyone who has not been justified by the Lord Jesus Christ and His incomparable work on the cross.
But there is a second point where this forger could not copy the text before him aright. He only speaks of “ungodly deeds.” Hard, ungodlily spoken “words” to him did not seem of very much account, so he left out the ungodly “words.” The first part seemed the only right thing to him. Consequently, he mutilated the scripture. He could not even copy it truly, and thus has given us a false version of it.
In other words, Jude never got this prophecy of Enoch from a mere tradition, or from this book at all. He got it from God. How, I do not pretend to say. But he did. W. K.
(To be continued)