Dr. Ted Rubesh
Welcome back to our exploratory journey to the judgement seat of Christ. This is the final article in this series. In our last four articles we have been investigating what the Bible teaches us about “the Last Day.” Not “the last days,” mind you. Our concern has not been to figure how long the tribulation will be, or when the rapture will take place, or if the temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem one day. Our focus has been on something virtually all believers agree on. At the end of this current age, every human being who has ever lived will stand before the judgement seat of Christ, and we will be “assessed.” That assessment will take into account both the foundation of our faith and the stewardship of our lives. If our faith is found to have been built on faith in Christ, our eternal salvation will be confirmed. If the stewardship of our lives is built on those foundations, and has used the resources, skills and opportunities God has invested in us for His glory and kingdom purposes, we will be commended and abundantly rewarded. As followers of Christ, the ultimate prize-giving lies directly across the path of our eternal future; and attendance will be required! God takes our eternal commendation and rewards seriously, and we would be foolish indeed to dismiss, devalue or disparage them.
This leads me to some final questions as we close this series of studies. Why in fact does God take our works and our service for Him so seriously? What is the message that the final record of our life’s efforts communicates to the Lord? The apostle Paul says in Romans 12:1, “I urge you brothers in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – which is your spiritual worship.” What could be clearer? The archive of our sacrificial service to God is a powerful expression of our worship! The final record of our works will eloquently and effectively express how much we valued and esteemed Him in this life. Our works do not earn us our salvation. Rather they are meant to say to God how incredibly grateful we are for His free gift of our salvation and forgiveness, how thankful we are that we have been included in the story of redemption, and how appreciative we are for the rich resources He has invested in us and equipped us with to play our part in that story. The record of our service and our works for God will be perhaps the most profound measure of how much He was “worth” to us.
The Bible makes clear to us that one of the many ways the Lord will recognize and reward us for our service to Him will be by awarding us “crowns.” Crowns are mentioned five times in the New Testament, often in relation to our faithful service and ministry for the Lord. Whether these will be literal crowns or not, the point is that they represent rewards for the work and sacrifice we have rendered to Christ and His kingdom. And by extension they will become symbolic expressions of how much serving Christ was worth to us in our earthly lives … our ultimate “worship portfolio,” if you will.
Revelation 4:10 tells us that on that “last day,” when the elders in heaven “fall down before Him who sits on the throne,” they will “cast their crowns before the throne, saying … ‘Worthy art Thou our Lord and our God to receive glory and honor and power.’” I believe the elders mentioned there are representative of you and I as the people of God. Their actions will reflect our actions. Like them, we will cast our crowns before His feet. What a significant and beautiful way to worship God … to lay the symbols of our life’s service at His feet … as if to say to Him before the entire universe “YOU were worth all the sweat, work, frustration and sacrifice that these crowns represent; and so in deep appreciation of your love and grace, we lay them at your feet because you ALONE were worthy of it all.” What crowns will you lay at His feet on the last day?
And what will it say if you have no crowns to cast before Him on that day? Can you imagine the embarrassment of standing before the angels of heaven and the redeemed of the ages, now seeing for the first time with your very own eyes “the Lamb who was slain (for you),” now understanding for the first time the full extent of the incredible price Jesus paid so that you could be numbered among the throng … and yet having only a record of squandered opportunities and misused resources from your life to show how little you appreciated it? No wonder 1 John 2:28 challenges us to “continue in Him, so that when He appears, we may be confident and unashamed before Him at His coming.”
Thus, it is a serious matter! The Scripture clearly teaches that death brings life’s opportunities to an end. We realize of course that death closes the door of salvation to those who have refused to respond to God’s offer of salvation. As Bible-believing Christians, we rightly affirm that there is no opportunity to turn to Christ after death. God’s Word knows nothing of purgatory. But what we rarely take into account is that this principle is equally true for believers. Like every other human being, our present lives will end at either death or the second coming of Christ. What will that signify for believers? Three things are worthy of taking note as we close this series of studies.
Firstly, death will be the end of our opportunity to serve God in a broken world. After death we will never have another chance to move God’s hand through prayer to heal a hurting person, or to give a cup of cold water to the thirsty, or to share Christ with one who can still be saved from hell. If we have failed to use our God-given resources and energies for His eternal kingdom, those opportunities will now be gone … forever.
Secondly, death will be the end of our opportunity to improve the record of this life. When the “trumpet” sounds, it will signal both the beginning of eternity and the end of our earthly chance to shape what eternity holds for us. It will be “curtains” for our present age … no chance to retake our “A-levels;” no chance to improve a “simple pass” to a “distinction.” When the buzzer rings, the game is over. Death is the final deadline, and there will be no extension. To change the metaphor, at death the last chapter of our earthly autobiography will be finished and will go unedited and unalterable into the archives of eternity, to be seen and read by the angels, the redeemed, our families and by God Himself. The story of our earthly lives will be quite literally a closed chapter, and our commendation and reward will be based on its record (1 Corinthians 3:12-14).
Thirdly, the opportunity to change the record of our lives still lies in the present. I close with a true story from Randy Alcorn’s book “Money, Possessions and Eternity” that powerfully brings this truth home.
Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist who made his fortune inventing dynamite and other powerful explosives, which were bought by governments to produce weapons. When Nobel’s brother Ludvig died, a newspaper accidentally printed Alfred’s obituary instead. He was described as a man who became rich from enabling people to kill each other in unprecedented quantities. Shaken by this assessment, Nobel resolved to use his fortune to reward accomplishments that had benefited humanity, including what we now know as the Nobel Peace Prize.
“He who hath ears to hear, let him hear.” Nobel was given a unique chance to read an evaluation of his life at its end … but to still have an opportunity to change it. Put yourself in Nobel’s shoes for a moment and imagine how your final obituary will read one day, not as written by a biased friend or enemy, but written from the viewpoint of Heaven’s omniscient historian … God Himself. How will it read?
The good news is that as long as you live on earth, you’re still in the land of the living … and still in the land of second chances. I challenge you to ask God to help you to use the balance of your life to edit your final epitaph into a memorial that will truly honor God. You have the same chance that Nobel had to rewrite the end of your story and win the reward of a crown that will be worthy of placing at the feet of the Lord we love and serve. It will be the culmination of a lifetime … and your greatest act of worship.
