This is a very solemn subject, and yet it is one most satisfactory the better we understand it. I believe every act of our lives will be set forth there; so that God’s grace and dealing with us with reference to our own acts will be known there. It is said in Rom. 14, “every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” The judgment seat is there referred to in connection with the admonition to the brethren, not to judge one another with respect to a day, or eating meat. I am disposed to think that only the deeds will be matters of manifestation; but so much is every act of our lives dependent on inward feelings, that it is in one sense hard to distinguish between deeds and thoughts. Acts always declare the strength of the thought or feeling. I believe all our doings shall be detailed there—not to us as in the flesh for condemnation, but to unfold to us the grace which has dealt with us, regenerate and unregenerate. In God’s counsel I am called before the foundation of the world, and therefore I apprehend that our whole history will be detailed there; and in parallel line, the history of His grace and mercy toward us. The why and the how we did this or that, will be declared then. It is declarative, and not judicial for us. We are not in the flesh before God—in His eye, blessed be His name, we are dead; but then, where we have walked after the flesh, we must see how we lost blessing, what a loss it has been to us; and, on the other hand, His ways toward us all, in wisdom, mercy, and grace, will be fully known and comprehended for the first time. Of course, there will be no replying, but each history will be like a great transparency. How you yielded and how He preserved; how you slipped, and how He rescued; how you approached danger and shame, and how He by His own hand interposed. I believe it will be the bride making herself ready, and I regard it as a wondrous moment. There will be no flesh there to receive condemnation, but the new nature will enter into the transcendent love and care, which in true holiness and justice, even in grace, have followed us every step of our journey. Passages in our lives, now utterly unexplained, shall be all seen clearly then. Tendencies of our nature, which we may not think would lead to desperate issues, and to curb which we may now be subjected to a discipline which we have not interpreted, will be fully explained there; and still more the very falls which distress us sorely now will be shown then as used to preserve us from worse. I do not believe that we shall get anything like a full view of the evil of our flesh till then. How blessed to know, that then, not only in the purpose of God it is done with, but it clings no longer to us; and, on the other hand, I believe the display of His grace individually to us will be so magnificent that even the sense of the evil of the flesh that were ours, if it were possible to intrude, will be prevented by the greatness of the other. Why do we not deny and mortify our members when we remember that hour! The Lord enable us to do more to the glory of His grace.
The subject leads the soul into a very full sense of our individual place, to think of each giving an account of himself to God.
I do not know that the judgment seat of Christ is used oftener than in Rom. 14, and 2 Cor. 5. In the former, to prevent private judgment; in the latter, to provoke to present well-doing and self judgment, in view of that day.