Judgement Sunday, 2021

Sermon for the week

Sermon from Pastor Bergman, preached at St Paul’s, Stockholm

TEXT: John 5:22-29

THROUGH JESUS

Each high mass that we celebrate includes a short prayer before the readings of the texts, the Collect, in which the topic for that Sunday is summarised in prayer form. That prayer usually ends with the words “Through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.” We must keep these words in mind and not let them become an empty phrase for closing the prayer. They are great and meaningful words, taken from the New Testament, where they are found in many places. They summarise the sacred and precious truth that it is only through Jesus that we get to know God, and only through him do we become and remain Christians. “I am the way and the truth and the life”, says Jesus, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14: 6)

True Christianity teaches us that there is no way around the side or past Jesus, only a way through him. Without Jesus we do not understand the deepest message of Scripture to us. With him everything is connected, and without him Scripture loses its inner context. Jesus is the core and shining star of the Bible.

The words “through Jesus” do not appear in the text of today’s sermon. But that very thing is there, practically in every row. The subject of our on Judgement Sunday sermon today is “through Jesus”. We let these two words summarise today’s message.

1. Through Jesus the world will be judged

“For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgement to the Son, that all may honour the Son, just as they honour the Father“ Although Jesus appears as a human being on the day of judgement, as the son of the Virgin Mary, it should still be unequivocally clear to everyone in the end that he is also the Son of God, like the Father in divine power and glory. Jesus says “All may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.”

None of the evangelists have taken such a strong stand on what Jesus says about his deity as the apostle John. The divinity of Christ is the major theme of his gospel. It also comes through here in our text when he talks about the judgement. Through Jesus the world will be judged: “He has given all judgement to the Son.” It is one of the Bible’s strongest testimonies that Jesus is fully God. He who is the Lord and creator of the world is also the one who will call us humans to the judgement seat to have our lives judged. Either we shall hear, as it is said in the great parable of Matt. 25: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father“ or, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire“ (vv. 34, 41)

Jesus the judge will judge with the highest degree of justice. He is God and makes no mistakes. Here on earth, judges can make wrong judgements. Here we usually have the opportunity to appeal, to go on to a higher court and finally to the Supreme Court to have a ruling changed. But when we stand before the judge Jesus, we stand before a court where nothing can be appealed. He is the highest authority; you cannot make an appeal. Nor would it be necessary either, because he is the perfect judge who already knows all the facts of the case. He is immeasurably fair and impartial. There is no risk of a miscarriage of justice based on incorrect grounds with Jesus.

It should now be safe and gratifying for us to have such a well-informed and legally secure judge, the best imaginable. But on the contrary, it can feel very worrying. For the very fact that the judge is so jurisprudential, objective and clear-sighted fills us with trepidation when we begin to consider more closely that we will one day be judged according to the highest justice. “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgement,“ it says in Hebrews. 9:27. Such words arouse discomfort and anxiety in us humans. Both death and judgement have something definitive and irrevocable about them. We are filled with anxious questions: How has my life been? How will it turn out for me? What will be my lot?

A common reaction that we humans have to the thought of death and judgement is a gnawing concern that we have not lived as we should. The fact that we can worry about it shows that we are humans and not animals. We are moral beings with a sense of responsibility and conscience.

When we think about the judgement’s verdict and wonder how it will turn out for us, we usually bring out the balance scales. We put our good deeds in one scale and the bad in the other and hope that the good will outweigh the bad. But Jesus will not have any such scales when he judges the world. He only tells us that all shall come forward: “Those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgement.” Nothing needs to be weighed and tested. The verdict is already made.

Many who read the texts about the final judgement in the NT think that they give an overly rough and simplistic picture of reality. Everything is in black and white, about evil and good with nothing in between. The goats have only evil deeds, the sheep only good. And one might think that disagreeable, along with most others. Please might think- I’ve caused hurt, it’s true, but I’ve also done some good. People are not merely black or white, but grey, a mixture of both good and evil. Why does the judge not take this into account in the final verdict?

But when you think like that, you have completely forgotten who the judge is. It is not a human being who judges according to his human values ​​or the legal opinion of the majority of the people, but the judge of the world, Jesus, who judges according to God’s law. And at that point you are either evil or good, white or black. There is nothing in between. For the law of God requires perfect righteousness, goodness and love.

What to us is so harsh about the law is that it makes us all black. It says: “You have not loved God above all things and your neighbour as yourself. You have loved yourself above all things and your neighbour only when it benefits you.” Even if we had only violated one of God’s Ten Commandments, we would have shown through this one sin that we are among those who do not love God. Every sin is a violation against the love of God. James reminds us of this in his epistle when he writes, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.“ (James 2:10). Such is the law of God. It requires all or nothing. Either we love God and keep His commandments completely, or we do not.

Paul says, “For the law brings wrath“ (Rom. 4:15). The Bible’s reaction to sin and evil is what the Bible calls wrath. The NT speaks of the judgement of “the wrath to come” (Matt. 3: 7, 1 Thess. 1:10). The law cannot save us from that judgement. It only makes things worse; it strikes us down and kills us. We sing in a hymn:

Whither shall I flee from God and His eternal law?
It governs me no matter where I go.
How shall I face the Lord
on the dreaded day of judgement? (Swedish Church Hymnal, 260)

It is helpful to stop and seriously consider the question that the hymn is asking.

Through Jesus the world will be judged, the sheep separated from the goats. Which group will I end up in? Is there even any point in thinking about it? You might think that because you cannot know how you will be judged on that day that you should instead just hope for the best.

But the great and surprising thing that Jesus tells us in today’s text is that already here and now we can be told how it will turn out for us on the day of judgement.

2. Through Jesus, we completely avoid the verdict of condemnation.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgement, but has passed from death to life.” These are great and wonderful words that we should not only memorise but also keep in our hearts as the most precious of all. Thus through Jesus we can be freed from judgement and belong to those to whom Jesus already here and now says: You will not come under any judgement!

It is plain to see that on the last day there will be no escape from the verdict of condemnation and eternal damnation. It’s too late for all that. Instead, deliverance takes place here and now. And how does it happen? It happens when we hear and believe the gospel. Jesus says “whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life” Then and only then do we avoid judgement. When Jesus speaks here of “my word”, he is referring to the saving word of the gospel.

The law tells you the truth about your life- that you are under wrath for your sins, and that you can not in the least bit save yourself. But the gospel tells you something completely different, namely that through Jesus Christ you can be free from all that troubles and burdens you, truly free – not partially but completely free- it is complete and thorough. Christ’s Atonement, His grace and forgiveness are comprehensive. It encompasses everything: the outer and the inner, body and soul, thoughts, words and deeds, the whole of life. Jesus’ words come with a total acquittal, a “justification”, using the biblical term. Jesus’ words are full of life and power. They give what they say. Jesus says he who hears and believes “does not come into judgement but has passed from death to life.”

But how can Jesus overturn the guilty verdict that God’s law requires? Because he has received the judgement due to us. He tasted the curse of the law in our place and has taken the law’s penalty, our death and our punishment, all so that we would pass from death to life.

Therefore to everyone who today fearfully wonders “Where shall I flee from God and his holy law?” we can say – You can flee to Jesus Christ! Listen to him! Through him, you avoid judgement altogether. He was sent to earth to bring about this deliverance and to give it to you. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17).

So- even here and now- goats, through faith in Jesus, become sheep who are placed on the right side, black becomes white, evil becomes good. Therefore, on the Day of Judgement, there is nothing to judge in those who have passed from death to life through Jesus. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus“ says the apostle (Rom. 8: 1). There are no sins to point out, examine and judge, for they are all forgiven, cast into the depths of the sea, as the prophet Micah says (7:19) or as God himself says: “I will not remember your sins” (Isa. 43:25).

With the zeal of love towards us, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.“ The dead are the spiritually dead. The apostle says to the church in Ephesus, “And He has made you alive, who were once dead in trespasses and sins“ (Eph. 2: 1 MKJV). Belief in the gospel is likened to a resurrection from the dead.

When you hear and believe the gospel, you do not have the judgement before you. You have it behind you. You are already condemned, crucified, dead and buried with Christ and raised with him to live a new life. All that remains is what Jesus talks about last in our text: the bodily resurrection.

3. Through Jesus we will be able to experience a joyful resurrection.

“Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out.” This is not about the spiritually dead, but about bodies lying in the grave.

The body also receives the stamp of eternal life through the gospel when we hear and believe the gospel. It must arise and be united with the saved soul. And even if should we not lie in a grave when the Lord comes, yet our bodies will be transformed and “clothed in immortality” (1 Cor. 15:53). This is how we become completely restored both in body and soul. The hidden life, which we have carried within us, then breaks forth in unimaginable splendour and glory.

The day of wrath, Dies irae, is called the day of judgement in an old Latin hymn. In view of all that we receive through Jesus Christ, Luther called the Day of Judgement “The Dear Last Day.” The gospel turns Dies irae into something great and cherished. God grant that we all have the grace to see it that way. Amen.

S Bergman
(Translated from Swedish by Rev Harris)