“I thought,” says one, “that no one can be sure of going to heaven till the great judgment-day.”
“Where are all God’s people who have passed away?” we reply.
“Why in heaven to be sure. ‘Absent from the body, and present with the Lord’” (2 Cor. 5:8).
“Do you think, then, that after being in heaven, some of them hundreds of years, they are to be taken out to have it settled whether they are to go there or not?”
“O, I never thought of that!”
All judgment is committed to Christ, the Son of Man (John 5:22); He is ready to judge both quick and dead (1 Peter 4:5). But Christians will never come into judgment as to their persons. It is true, we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, but it will in bodies like His own, not to be judged for sin, but to be manifested, and rewarded according to our works (2 Cor. 5:10; 1 Cor. 3:13-15). Christians are the church, and the church is His bride. He will judge the quick (or living) at the commencement, and the dead at the close of His thousand years’ reign. But Christ Himself bore the judgment due to the believer nearly nineteen hundred years ago, and thus we can rejoice in His blessed words: “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 (or judgment);
but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24).
Believers too are in Christ, and “there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ.” (Rom. 8:1).
Christ on earth had judgment before Him, not on His own account, but for us. This judgment He bore on the cross. Now He is in glory with judgment behind Him. Where does God see believers? In Christ. Then judgment must be behind us too.
“Death and judgment are behind us,
Grace and glory are before;
All the billows rolled o’er Jesus,
There they spent their utmost power.”