Monthly Archives: July 2025

IS HELL REAL? – 3

Apologetics, ,

Yes, hell is real! Yes, hell is a place of eternal torment for those who reject God! Yes, unholy people will spend eternity in hell!

How, then, can unholy people be made holy, to live with God eternally and escape punishment in hell?

There is much confusion in the Christian world about holiness, what it is and how we, unholy sinners, can become holy. Unfortunately, even respected Christian preachers and writers have muddied the waters by presenting their own ideas rather than Biblical truth about the holiness God requires for us to spend eternity with Him.

For many, to be holy requires hard work… for example, we must scour and scrub our past clean by repenting of every sin we have ever committed. We must cut off all “soul ties” and renounce all “generational curses”. We must “plead the blood” over our family and friends. We must renounce our connection with our father’s involvement with Free Masonry, or any other form of witchcraft or Satanism…and so on.

Worst of all, in all their lengthy requirements, there is no Biblical evidence of any of these practices.

First, let’s look at this notion logically. In the Old Covenant between God and Israel, God required perfect obedience to His instructions for His people to be acceptable to Him. He gave them a sacrificial system to deal with their failures. It didn’t work! Israel as a nation failed miserably to live within the boundaries of His covenant.

To all humanity, God have the law of conscience. Everyone is born with God’s moral law written on their conscience. So, when Gentiles sin, they are equally guilty before God because they know the difference between right and wrong.

Romans 2:14-15 NIV
[14] “(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. [15] They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them”).

Despite Gentiles having the law of conscience or Jews the Mosaic law, all are guilty before God.

Romans 3:9-10, 18 NIV
[9] What shall we conclude then? Do we (Jews) have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. [10] As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;…
[18] “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

So, what did God do? He condemned them all to eternal punishment. Was this the end for Israel and all humanity? No!

Romans 11:32 NIV
[32] “For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.”

God stepped in and paid the price for all human rebellion.

Romans 5:6-8 NIV
[6] “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. [7] Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. [8] But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Christ’s death for us means that God had wiped our slate clean because of His mercy. He has absolved us of all guilt and made us holy. Yes, He has made us holy! Jesus did away with the law as a way to be holy because it is impossible for sinful humans to obey the law perfectly. Instead, He presented His own blood as a sacrifice for sin so that all who believe in Him are made holy.

Hebrews 10:8-10 NIV
[8] “First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them”—though they were offered in accordance with the law. [9] Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. [10] And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

We can never make ourselves holy. We can never live up to God’s standards by our own efforts. No amount of cleaning up our past or disconnecting from the present can produce holiness. Jesus has made us holy through His own blood.

How can we, then, confirm God’s holiness in us?

To conclude our logical argument, would God who made us holy, leave it up to us to achieve holiness by our own efforts? That makes no sense.

Does He require us to go through the rigmarole some Christian writers propose for us to be holy? No!

Holiness is both a done deal and an ongoing process.

Hebrews 10:14 NIV
[14] “For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”

God has provided three ways to help us to live holy lives, not to make us holy but to live out the holiness He has provided through the death of Jesus.

First, He has given us His Word.

Psalms 119:11 NIV
[11] “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”

David knew the value of God’s law in his life as a protection against sin.

Jesus confirmed the truth that we are being made holy by God’s Word. He prayed that His disciples would be sanctified through God’s Word.

John 17:17 NIV
[17] “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.”

Second, the Holy Spirit works in us through the Word to sanctify us.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 NIV
“May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”.

“These verses highlight the dual role of God’s Word (the truth) and the Holy Spirit in the process of sanctification.” (Google)

Third, God uses discipline, i.e., hardships and suffering, to work in us for our good.

Hebrews 12:9-11 NIV
[9] “Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! [10] They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. [11] No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”

God’s discipline, in the form of suffering, gets to the heart of our sinfulness…our flesh, our old sin nature.

1 Peter 4:1-2 NIV
[1] “Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, (a more accurate translation is “in the flesh”), arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body (in the flesh) is done with sin. [2] As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires (“the flesh”), but rather for the will of God.”

God’s purpose is to restore the image of Jesus in us. He, therefore, works, in the” all things” for our good…

Romans 8:28-29 NIV
[28] “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

[29] For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”

So, Paul urges us, not to try harder to make ourselves holy, but to stay away from the filthy things that spoil the holiness we already have in Jesus.

2 Corinthians 7:1 NIV
[1] “Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.”

Our role is not to make ourselves clean but to keep ourselves clean by “walking in the light”.

1 John 1:6-7 NIV
[6] “If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. [7] But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”

IS HELL REAL? – 2

Apologetics, ,

Having concluded that hell is real and the  destiny people choose when they reject God’s rule, I turn to https://www.gotquestions.org, article “What was Jesus’ teaching on hell?” for some help to answer this question, “Is hell real?”

Jesus gives us the clearest picture of hell in the Bible with many descriptions and warnings. He used a valley outside Jerusalem called “Gehenna” as a metaphor for hell.

Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom, was the city’s waste disposal site  outside Jerusalem which, in the Old Testament, had been desecrated by human sacrifice. It was called “Topheth” or “the valley of Ben Hinnom”. Gehenna was the place where garbage was burned, and where the fire never went out.

“Jesus consistently contrasted hell with the kingdom of God. Hell is the only alternative to an eternity spent in God’s kingdom. It is the opposite of perfect fellowship with God forever…” (gotquestions.org)

Hell is not a figuritive or symbolic way of describing the afterlife for the devil and unbelievers who follow him. Jesus taught that hell is a real place with real experiences of eternal darkness and fire. He warned of the terrible consequences of sin.

Mark 9:43 NIV
[43] “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.”

“According to Jesus, hell is a place for those who reject God, who rebel against His kingship and refuse His grace. Jesus’ parables consistently portray people rejecting God’s invitation to fellowship, and the only alternative to fellowship with God is an eternity in hell…”

Hell is the place of just punishment for rebels, those who side with devil and his demons in his rebellion against God…

Matthew 25:41 NIV
[41] “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

…for those who refuse to come under His authority and live within the boundaries of His kingdom and rule.

2 Thessalonians 1:8-10 NIV
[8]” He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. [9] They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might [10] on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.”

“Jesus does not portray hell as a pleasant place or even a neutral state. On the contrary, it is a place of torment (Mark 9:48). As the dark place outside of God’s kingdom of light, hell is full of pain and regret “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”. gotquestions.org

Mark 9:47-48 NIV
[47] “And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, [48] where “ ‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.’”

“Based on Jesus’ teaching, hell is not temporary, but eternal. Those who suffer in hell will suffer forever. “The fire never goes out,” Jesus said. There is no exit from hell, and no respite from it or comfort in it (see Luke 16:19–31).” gotquestions.org

Those who claim to have had a “near death experience” and have witnessed hell, describe it as a place of eternal regret, remembering lost opportunities to repent with the gnawing regret of   “if only…”

There is one more aspect of divine punishment which  Paul refers to in his description of the perversity of human behaviour.

Romans 1:21, 24, 28-29, 31-32 NIV
[21] “For, although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened…
[24] Therefore GOD GAVE THEM OVER in the sinful desires of their hearts TO SEXUAL IMPURITY for the degrading of their bodies with one another…
[28] Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so GOD GAVE THEM OVER TO A DEPRAVED MIND, so that they do what ought not to be done. [29] They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,
[31] they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. [32] Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them…”

If God has given these people over, not only to practise their evil desires but also to a depraved mind, which is…

“… A state of moral corruption and spiritual blindness where a person has rejected God’s truth and fallen into a state of wickedness. It is characterised by a departure from righteousness, an inability to discern right from wrong, and a propensity towards sin and evil.” (Google definition)

…then would it not be logical to believe that the burning but unfulfilled lusts that drove their behaviour in this life would follow them into afterlife? Imagine forever burning with unfulfilled sexual passion for perverse behaviour!

The greatest tragedy and the greatest justice is that God confirms human choice no only to live without Him but also to die without Him. God’s judgment is not arbitrary. His judgment is perfectly just, simply confirming the choices humans make in this life.

Romans 2:2 NIV
[2] “Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth.”

You see, God is perfectly just in demanding punishment for defying His holy standards because He is holy, utterly separate from and against sin, and for punishing those who defy Him since He requires His sons and daughters to be like Him.

However, not only does He require holiness because He is holy, but He went a step further. He reveals His grace by paying the debt for our sin Himself, so that we can be holy.

Romans 3:25-26 NIV
[25] God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— [26] he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be JUST and the one who JUSTIFIES those who have faith in Jesus.”

Therefore, He is being perfectly just by punishing those who refuse His solution to sin. Their choice is their punishment.

God has graciously warned us repeatedly in His Word, of the eternal outcome of rebellion. He has built the awareness of eternity into us. We know instinctively that there is an afterlife.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV
[11] “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

He calls us to repent, to come back to the way that leads to eternal life.

Acts 17:30-31 NIV
[30] “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. [31] For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

Therefore, those who spend eternity in hell have only themselves to blame.

To be concluded…

IS HELL REAL?

Apologetics, ,

Jesus spoke of hell as a real place, a place of burning and torment which will never end. Why would God be so cruel? Why would He think up such a horrible way to punish people just because they don’t believe in Him? Does the punishment really fit the crime?

First, we must understand that God created humans for Himself. He owns every soul born on planet earth. He made them for a purpose, to be a mirror of His glory to the whole world, reflecting Him by the way they lived.

Psalms 24:1 NIV
[1] “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it… “

He created them for a purpose, and He paid for them when they chose to disconnect from Him and connect with His arch enemy. He had every right to pull the plug…but He didn’t.

1 Corinthians 6:20 NIV
[20] “… you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”

He blew His own breath into the first man, giving him a part of Himself, His divine life. He created humans in His image, a shadow of Himself so that He could communicate with them. He opened the circle of His Godhead to allow humans access and fellowship with Him…Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Privilege on steroids!

He prepared an entire universe, and a planet for humankind, the universe functioning in perfect harmony and unity, and the earth equipped with everything humans needed for a perfect life. He gave humans the power to multiply through the pleasure of physical union, and the mandate to manage the earth and its creatures in partnership with Himself. Honour, privilege!

On top of all this, His plan was to prepare His human family for an eternal existence with Him by serving their apprenticeship on earth. Righteous living on earth would qualify them for eternal life in glory. Why would God do all this? He wanted to love and be loved!

One of the gifts God gave to all humanity was the gift of choice, free will, self-deternination, which echoed a part of His own nature. This gift was the core of the human being, a risky attribute that God intended to guide humans towards obedience and love freely given to their Creator. Freedom to choose meant that the ball was in their court. They could decide whether to stay connected to God or not.

Together with the gift came the possibility and the warning. Choice means that there are at least two alternatives from which to choose…good or evil. Good and evil are not tangible things, they are the motives and outcomes of choices based on the disposition of the chooser.

God created the first pair with His own disposion towards good, simply meaning living by the choices that work… functional living. He wanted them to have good lives, full of His favour and blessing with no obstacles.

They had the option to follow that disposition or to be enticed to choose the opposite way, the way of disconnection from God which would result in dysfunctional lives.

We know the outcome!

By lies and deception, the devil hoodwinked the first pair into believing that they didn’t need God. They could be free to make their own rules, come and go as they liked, do as they pleased, without the restrictions of righteousness and truth to guide them. He told them what they could be… their own authority… without revealing the small print. He told them how to walk away from God…just disobey His one instruction.

It’s the small print that revealed the consequences. God had been honest with them. “You will die!” He told them, “if you trespass outside the boundaries of everything my love has provided.” The devil not only contradicted God’s warning, but also sowed doubt in their minds about God’s love by insinuating that God was lying to them.

The choice was… “Who do we believe?” This choice was more than a simple decision to eat some “forbidden fruit”. The implication was far deeper.

Satan had always desired to be the supreme authority, Lord, in God’s place. He tried to replace God in heaven and was summarlity evicted from God’s realm. His only option was to win over to his side God’s highest creation, the human race, so that he could be Lord over them.

So, by deceiving Eve and, through her, Adam, into believing that God was shortchanging them, the whole human race was implicated. Their disobedience spelt rebellion, and rebellion brought on them the death penalty God had warned them would happen if they disobeyed Him.

This seemingly small act of defiance had huge implications. Through Adam, the human race inherited his nature. They are dead to God. Now humans can no longer choose righteousness. They can only choose between the various options of sin, rebellion, and disobedience. It would take a mighty intervention from God to restore our ability to do the right thing.

Now, hell was not designed to punish humans. It was the fitting place reserved for God’s arch enemy and his followers. The trouble is that those who side with him must share his guilt and his punishment. This means that the human race has chosen its destiny by default. It also means that man, not God, chooses hell for his eternal destiny…and God says, “Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you!”

So, what is hell really like? Does the Bible tell us anything about hell, enough to warn us of its terrors?, Let’s look at some Scriptures.

To be continued…

TURN AROUND AND COME HOME

Bible Study, ,

There’s a word in the Bible that I think many of its non-Hebrew readers sadly misunderstand. The Hebrew word is “shuv” or spelt, alternatively, “shoob”, often translated “repent”.

TURN BACK/RETURN/RESTORE/REPENT: Shuv. Verb. (Strong’s 7725).

“The Hebrew word שׁוּב (shuv) primarily means “to turn back,” “to return,” or “to go back.” It can also signify repentance or turning away from sin. The noun form of “shuv” is teshuva (תְּשׁוּבָה), which is commonly translated as repentance.
Here’s a breakdown of the different aspects of “shuv”:

Return/Turn Back:
This is the most basic meaning, referring to a physical or metaphorical return to a place, state, or condition.

Repentance/Turning Away from Sin:
In a spiritual context, “shuv” signifies turning away from a sinful path and returning to God. This is a key concept in Jewish tradition, especially during the High Holy Days (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur).

Movement:
The word can encompass various forms of movement, including turning, returning, going back, or even changing direction.

Source/Origin:
“Shuv” can also imply a return to one’s source or origin, as seen in Genesis 3:19 where God tells Adam he will return to the dust from which he was taken.”…

“No one and no thing in this universe can turn back what God has done. YHWH moves forward and creation moves forward. There is no turning back. YHWH is the Creator, the Rescuer, and the Saviour, and no one can take that from Him.

Nevertheless, YHWH gave humans the gift of choice. We can choose to follow after Him and we can choose to turn away from Him. No one can reverse what God has done, but we can certainly ignore it.”…

“Turn Back to God: Repent and Return
Shuv was a well used word for the prophets. It was the core of the repeated  message: Stop the way you are going and turn back to YHWH! If you continue on the bad path, no good will come of it:”

“Let the wicked abandon his way, and the unrighteous person his thoughts; and let him return [w-ya-shov] to YHWH, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” Isaiah 55:6-7

“All through history humans have done things to upset YHWH, but He has always been merciful to those who make an effort to follow Him. The message was quite simple. For those who turned back to Him, YHWH would turn His anger away from them:”

Hosea 14:1-4 (see also Isaiah 9:12-21)
“Return [shuva], Israel, to YHWH  your God, for you have stumbled because of your wrongdoing.”
“Take words with you and return [w-shuvu] to YHWH. Say to Him, “Take away all guilt and receive us graciously, so that we may present the fruit of our lips. Assyria will not save us, we will not ride on horses; nor will we say again, ‘Our god’ to the work of our hands; for in You the orphan finds mercy.”
“[YHWH:] I will heal their apostasy, I will love them freely, because My anger has turned away [shav] from them.”

(Sourced from https://hebrewwordlessons.com article “Shuv, restore, TURN BACK,” dated 30 May 2021)

The word “shuv” and its derivatives are used throughout the Old Testament in many contexts to convey the idea of returning to the Lord. Like sheep, His people continually wandered from the path, forsaking the Lord and His covenant and turning to the idols of their neighbours…and so He called “Come back to the path. Come back home.”

The concept of “shuv” in Scripture is bound up in the history of Israel’s journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. For forty years, God’s people journeyed through a vast, hostile, and uncharted wilderness, dependant only on the presence of God in the pillar of fire at night and cloud by day. There were landmarks along the way which also aided their passage through the unknown territory.

These Hebrew people understood language according to their experience, not abstract but from what was experiential, visible and tangible. So, they understood life as a journey through an uncharted wilderness, full of dangers and the unknown. To navigate their way, they would need to follow the landmarks and stay on the path, guided by the One whose presence was with them.

God had given them His covenant, His “Torah”, His instructions which were the “landmarks” they were to follow if they were to stay on the path. If they strayed from the path by disobeying His instructions, they were in danger of dying in the wilderness, lost and without provisions or directions for the journey.

A common misunderstanding of repentance in the western mind has an emotional content not found in the Hebrew word, the idea of feeling sorrow for sin, almost apologising to God for what we have done, as if that were enough to set the record straight.

To “shuv” then, was not to say sorry to God for being lost but to return to the path of obedience from which his people have strayed. This is the background to God’s plea through Isaiah’s words…

Isaiah 30:15 NIV
[15] “This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.”

To complete our Biblical understanding of repentance, we must also examine the Greek word, “metanoia”, translated “repentance”, used in the New Testament writings.

“In Greek, metanoia (μετάνοια) primarily means “a change of mind” or “repentance”. It signifies a fundamental transformation of one’s perspective, a turning away from old ways of thinking and acting, and a reorientation towards a new way of life. In a theological context, it often refers to a spiritual conversion or a turning towards God.” (Google definition)

Before we can return from the wilderness of rebellion and disobedience, we must be convinced that God is right and we are wrong. This demands a choice, a deliberate change of mind about our state before God…then follows our return to the path of obedience to God’s instructions, a return from darkness to light.

So, on the day of Pentecost, Peter called the Jews assembled from every part of the Roman Empire to celebrate the ingathering of the harvest, to “shuv” by giving attention to the truth about Jesus, their Messiah, changing their minds about Him, and returning to the full revelation of God’s mercy through Him.

Acts 2:37-38 NIV
[37] “When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” [38] Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Since, in the course of life from early childhood, we have gathered ideas and beliefs about ourselves and God that are wrong and misleading, repentance isn’t just a once-off decision but a lifestyle of change. Every time we encounter a conflict between error and truth, we return to the path by exchanging our false beliefs for the truth we learn in Jesus. It’s an ongoing process as we grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes, the revelation of truth and the joyful transformation it produces may be the reason for a flood of tears but tears are not repentance. They are the fruit of repentance, a grateful response to God’s mercy that has not condemned but redeemed the reoentant heart.

WHAT WILL GOD SAY ON JUDGMENT DAY?

Gospel, ,

On the day of judgment, will God question every person about every thought, word, and deed they have ever done throughout their entire life? This sounds like an earthly court scene…bring the witnesses, bring the evidence, then argue the case between prosecution and defence. What a long, tedious process that would be, considering the fact that God will judge all the people of every generation throughout all time!

Fortunately, God is not contained within the boundaries of time. What is a process on earth taking time is instantaneous in the spirit realm outside of time. Since God is all-knowing and omnipresent, all judgment can happen in an instant.

Although we have no detailed description of what will happen on judgment day, there are hints of the event and the process in Scripture and, perhaps, in the experience of those who have had glimpses of the other side.

Revelation 20:11-13 NIV
[11] “Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. [12] And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. [13] The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done.”

Heavenly events are impossible to describe in earthly language. What is a process on earth is instantaneous in heaven, something that is outside the scope of human experience here in time.

“The books were opened…” Is this meant to be taken literally, especially in a story full of imagery? For example, David refers to the book of his life written in God’s “book”.

Psalms 139:16 NIV
[16] “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

What is divine knowledge in the mind of an omniscient God appears as information contained in a heavenly library of books.

Somehow I think that God the Father will not say anything! Now, I know that’s contrary to the thoughts and ideas we have of judgment day, but let’s look at the Scripture for answers.

First, the Father has assigned all judgment to the Son.

John 5:22 NLT
[22] “In addition, the Father judges no one. Instead, he has given the Son absolute authority to judge…”

2 Timothy 4:1 NLT
[1] “I solemnly urge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who will someday judge the living and the dead when he comes to set up his Kingdom…”

Second, the Son will call all people to account for one thing…unbelief, lives lived in complete disconnection from Him by choice.

John 3:18 NLT
[18] “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son.”

Third, He will judge by the standard of His Word.

John 12:47-48 NIV
[47] “If anyone hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge that person. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. [48] There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day.”

Fourth, all human sin is the fruit of unbelief. When He judges unbelief, He judges the fruit of all the actions that humans engaged in that are evidence of their unbelief.

Humans express their rebellion by defying God’s instructions. Both the Old and New Covenant records confirm this truth.

Psalms 50:16-17 NIV
[16] “But to the wicked person, God says: “What right have you to recite my laws or take my covenant on your lips? [17] You hate my instruction and cast my words behind you.”

John 3:19-20 NIV
[19] “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”
[20] Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.”

Therefore, the verdict on all humanity is “guilty”…the crime, unbelief in the Son of God…the evidence, rebellion and disobedience… the sentence, eternal death, separation from God.

Works are the record of everyone’s life, contained within the omniscience of the Judge. The marvel of His perfect justice is that He has no need to call the witnesses or to pass sentence. The record speaks for itself. Every person will have every thought, word, and deed instantaneously exposed to the light.

Ephesians 5:12-14a NLT
[12] “It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret. [13] But their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them, [14] for the light makes everything visible…”

Not the Judge, but the words spoken by the Judge, to the guilty, in this life, that they refused to obey, will be the standard by which He will judge each person. Everyone will know that their sentence is just because it is based on their choice.

” There is a judge for those who reject me and do not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day.”

1 Corinthians 3:13 NLT
[13] “But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value.”

There is one exception to the guilty verdict passed on every sinner… yes, guilty as charged but absolved from guilt through faith in Christ Jesus.

Romans 5:9-10 NIV
[9] “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! [10] For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!”

Justified…by His blood! Reconciled…by His death!

The glorious message of God’s mercy is that…

Romans 8:1-4 NIV
[1] “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, [2] because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. [3] For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, [4] in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

There, now you’ve got it! There is no escape from judgment, no escape route from hell except through faith in Jesus and His sacrifice for sin.

…and Jesus will have no need to say anything! Our own deeds will condemn us and our choices cement our eternal destiny. Let’s do what Joshua counselled…

Joshua 24:14-15 NIV
[14] “Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness… [15] But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve… But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”