Quick
Return Home PageQuick
Return Home Pageby
A.E. Saxby
from
his book
God
in Creation, Redemption, Judgment
and
Consummation(1)
Two
of the parables of Christ are responsible more than anything else for the
prevailing views of future judgment. The catch phrases from these two parables,
which have been quoted more than any others, and upon which the terrific
structure of the doctrine of endless punishment has been erected, are possibly
the two phrases, one of which is found in the story of the rich man and
Lazarus, where Abraham is reported to have said, "Between
us and you there is a great gulf fixed"; and
the equally much quoted verse in the parable of the sheep and the goats,
which contains the sentence of the King, "These
shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life
eternal."
By means of these, and perhaps several other striking and isolated fragments,
the process of the reasoning out of the truth concerning future judgment
has been inverted. Instead of ascertaining from Scripture, by a general
survey of its teaching on this great subject, upon what principle God will
judge mankind, and then fitting in these parables in their proper niches,
the method of framing the teaching upon these parables has been followed,
and then making all the teaching of Scripture fall into line. It is little
wonder that the utmost confusion has resulted.
It goes without saying that we raise no objection to the use of these parables
in the way in which Christ intended them to be used. They present definite
teaching upon the points they were intended to elucidate, and they cannot
be avoided, or explained away. We hope in some future issue to deal exhaustively
with these parables, a task which is impossible in the present article,
since we are bent upon laying bare the principles upon which God will proceed
to
a judgment of the world which will leave out no single individual. In
doing so, however, He will be careful to do that which expositors of His
methods have most frequently failed to do. He will carefully observe
TIMES AND CLASSES in this universal judgment which none will escape.
Men have made Him too often like a judge, who, without discriminating between
the offenders of an assize ( a judicial inquest), has assigned to each
an identical sentence, and that the severest possible. In an amazing jumble,
which serves to show the prevailing lack of apprehension of the principles
and processes of divine judgment, sentences which are obviously directed
to a certain class, are pronounced upon all classes indiscriminately.
Take these two parables to which allusion has been already made. No "Christ
rejector"-- to use the phrase so common in
evangelical circles today-- will come under the treatment of either of
these parables. The story of the rich man and Lazarus presents to us a
condition of things prior to the present Gospel age, and the parable
of the sheep and goats sets forth a scene subsequent to the
close of
this age, immediately prior to the establishment of Christ's kingdom on
the earth. Both sentences are founded on works, a fact that must not be
forgotten in their application. Neither the two Jews who figure in the
first story, nor the sheep and goats who appear in the second parable,
represent men who knew anything of Christ at all as a Redeemer proclaimed
to them for their salvation.
We take no exception to the principles embodied in the parables
being applied in similar conditions. Doubtless the selfishness of those
who are possessed of the God-given standards of action towards their poor
brethren (both were children of Abraham, the context proves this fact)
will be faced in the future with the sure judgment upon such selfishness.
Let the Sermon on the Mount serve to remind us that the rewards of obedience,
as well as the penalties of lawlessness, will be meted out to every one
who is given the privileges of relationship in any way to God. Then we
shall learn the lesson of the parable in its all-round application, and
we shall not be awarding eternal life to poverty, and eternal torment to
wealth, as so often has practically been done in expounding this parable
in the popular fashion.
It is much the same when we approach the other parable to ascertain its
meaning. Here are sheep which as well as goats have not known Christ. These
are not the sheep of John 10, for they know the Shepherd's voice
(v. 4), and
they know the Shepherd (v. 14); whereas the sheep of
the Matthew parable are represented as ignorant of the Shepherd.
Again in the first parable the scene has been projected into eternity,
whereas both the rich man and Lazarus were in hades, to which, it
must be remembered, Christ Himself descended in spirit, while His body
was in Joseph's tomb. It is equally clear that the sentence meted out to
both sheep and goats is limited to the Millennium and their case will be
reviewed at the Great White Throne. For, as we pointed out, these two companies
are figures of men of flesh and blood on the earth at the time of the return
of Christ to set up His millennial kingdom.
Both these parables, then, have to do with the PROCESSES OF THE AWARDS
OF JUDGMENTS WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST.
Much more could be said to support the view here presented of these parables,
which are illuminative of the just and impartial adjudication of the Son
of Man, to whom is entrusted this great work of Judgment. Upon these fragments
the teaching of the endlessness of punishment has been built up. Against
this teaching we have the fact that, all through Scripture, both by statement
and ensamples, the opposite principle is inculcated, that of judgment unto
victory, of judgment issuing in salvation.
These parables do not deny this principle, but take their subsidiary part
in the judgments of the ages, by means of which Christ establishes His
kingdom.
In "The Eternal Saviour Judge,"
by Dr. James Langton Clarke, taking as his keynote the Septuagint version
of Isaiah 19:20, "Judging He shall save,"
the author gives much food for thought, by bringing the Old Testament types
of judges and judgments under tribute, to make it clear that the great
Antitype, in the person of Him who is to judge the quick and the dead,
will judge with a view to salvation, no less than did these types of Himself
in the Old Testament. Thus the revelation of Scripture is that THE SAVIOURHOOD
OF CHRIST IS CO-EXTENSIVE WITH HIS JUDGESHIP.
This is in entire accordance with His own announcement, that He came,
NOT TO CONDEMN the world, but to SAVE THE WORLD. According to the popular
conception of the functions of His judgeship, He will spend, not only the
day of Judgment-- in its protracted scenes of age long administration--
in judging men, but He will also be occupied throughout eternity in a ceaseless
punishment of their sins. The utmost such teaching will accord Him in the
province of the unseen world, is, that His possession of the keys of hell
(hades) and of death will make Him the Jailer of the souls He once died
to save. On the contrary, He will eventually become the Emancipator of
the prisoners in that prison house, which, in the prophetical visions of
the Old Testament, He is repeatedly seen opening with ease and triumph.
"For
God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the
world through Him might be saved." The structure
of this sentence is exactly the same as the passage, where Paul tells the
Corinthians that he was sent "not to baptize,
but to preach the Gospel." Everybody understands
that he makes the negative object the subordinate one. He does not rule
out baptism, but it is subservient to the greater purpose, that of proclaiming
the Gospel. Similarly, in the sentence we have quoted out of the third
of John, the negative purpose of judgment is subsidiary to that of salvation.
He has come to save. That is His outstanding and ultimate purpose, but,
as an adjunct, nay, as a means to that end,
"judging
He will save." The usual application of this
passage reverses the order, and makes His Saviourhood transient and in
many cases ineffectual, but His judgeship eternal and overwhelming.
With what vast responsibilities and engagements God has delighted to entrust
Him. "The Father hath given ALL THINGS
into His hands." (John 3:35). Where the
nail was driven in, the end of a world-wide scepter of dominion rests,
never to be resigned, until He has subdued all things unto Himself and
deposited His great trust intact, back into His Father's hands.
What a vastly different issue is this from the partial rule, the eternal
chaos, the hemispheres of heaven and hell, which tradition awards the Man
of Calvary. How far different is His Father's purpose for His Well-beloved--
a universe subjected, adoring, established at last in an indestructible
allegiance, based on holiness and love, to the Father of Spirits!
To those who know the Man of Calvary, it ought to be sufficient that the
Father has "COMMITTED ALL JUDGMENT UNTO THE
SON." We can do little more here than enumerate
those successive judgments which Scripture sets forth for us.
What is He doing in this age but bringing forth judgment unto victory,
applying, through the Spirit, that judgment which was passed at Calvary
upon the sin and self life of His people? Utterly mistaking the purpose
by the addition of the words "to come,"
the believer has missed the significance of the third function of the Holy
Spirit in the passage "When He is come, He
will reprove the World of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment."
The
perspective here is backward, not forward. Calvary's triumph is to be practically
registered in the believer by an unqualified acceptance of the sentence
of death upon the old creation in him in all its parts here and now, so
that he may say, "I am crucified with Christ,
nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ Iiveth in me."
How
many believers want a salvation without judgment! A ticket for heaven without
a sentence executed upon the old man! This made Paul say to the Ephesians,
"For this ye know, that no unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an
idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." This
is in a real fashion an age of judgment unto salvation with age-during
glory. (2 Tim., 2:10-13). In the power of His Cross, within the domains
of spirit, soul and body, He is establishing His kingdom within (the
Kingdom of God is within) His people, that he may presently proceed
to establish it in the universe.
To all such as know Him as One who walks in the midst of the Seven golden
lampstands, with feet that shine like brass as if they burned in a furnace,
the scene of the JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST holds no terrors. When
manifested before that judgment seat (2 Cor., 5:10), the holiness, without
which no man shall see the Lord (Heb. 12:14), will create a boldness, and
humility, that will rob the scene of all terror.
Passing swiftly over the great tribulation, when the cup of His earthly
people, and of the nations of the earth will overflow with His wrath, we
come to the judgment of the living nations. This has been erroneously called
the "last Judgment."
We agree with Dr. Clarke, who thinks that it ought to be called the first
rather than the last. It is, as he says, "THE
INAUGURAL JUDGMENT OF THE VISIBLE KINGDOM."
It ushers in His kingdom of millennial glory. The scene in Matt. 25 is
not the Day of Judgment, but ONE INCIDENT in that day or period.
It will be followed by a thousand years of His reign as Messiah and King.
All through this period He will be Judge, as well as King, with rod of
iron seeking to subdue all things unto Himself, through the power of His
Cross.
Where we believe the thread of revelation has been missed, is at the Great
White Throne, which has been mistaken for the close of His kingdom, instead
of an episode therein. It introduces a final and severer judgment into
His kingdom, as well as a wider triumph and larger rule. Beyond the thousand
years, and the Great White Throne, is that age of His final victory at
the close of which He will deliver His perfected Kingdom to His Father
to receive His "well done."
We have written of this vista of His rule through the ages, in other pamphlets.
We will be content here, therefore, to point out that all these judgments
and administrations founded on the triumph of the Cross of Calvary are
WITHIN
THE BOUNDS OF HIS KINGDOM. Here is the missing link of eschatology.
That which is predicated of time has been projected into eternity. By the
time that God is all in all, described as "THE
END," judgment will return unto righteousness,
and the victory of the Cross be extended to the utmost bounds of the heavens
and the earth. (Eph. 1:10, Col. 1:20).
No word concerning the functions of Christ is quoted more frequently than
the announcement that He is "THE SAME YESTERDAY,
AND TODAY, AND FOREVER." Ordinary theology
would have us believe that He who died for the sinner, regards him with
compassion and desire up to the time of that sinner's death, even though
he be unrepentant and indifferent to Divine love, but one minute after
death that His love is changed to anger, and He pursues the sinner with
relentless and resistless fury for evermore.
How
opposite this is to the Shepherd who seeks "till
He find it"; to the Father who waits till
the last boy away from the homestead returns. The truth in these glorious
words is, that "for the ages"--
so is the phrase-- He is the same: Saviour of men, seeking the lost with
undiminished compassion; Judge of mankind, arraigning every transgressor
before His bar, pulling down that He may build, destroying that He may
plant: King of the ages, Holder of the keys of hades and of death, Vanquisher
of death, Spoiler of His enemies; Worker of all things new, Head of His
ransomed race, unsatisfied, unconquered, and unwearied till, with its subjects
penitent, subdued, adoring and satisfied in Him, He delivers up His kingdom
to His Father that God may be All in All.
Let the reader ponder again that parable of husbandry which God gave to
His people of old, when they could not believe that He would bring to pass
"His
strange act" of judgment upon them. (Isaiah
28:23-29). He pictures the ploughshare doing its rough work, until the
cartwheel bruises the harvest, and He enunciates the principle of His judgments
in the words "He will NOT EVER be threshing
it." Nay, not one grain shall fall to earth.
He is the same yesterday, and today, and for the ages. Judgment shall "return
unto righteousness." The storms of Divine
wrath will finish their work, and there will be a great calm. They began
at Calvary, and, through the administration of One who bought the right
to save through His sufferings for a world, love will conquer.
Go
to Top of Page 
Return to Introduction Menu Back
to Main Library
Go
to All in All List Go
to Content List
Go to More Questions
Go to Reconciliation Listing