Divine judgment

“ By considering the divine judgments man is guided to the consideration of the divine justice; and by considering the divine benefits and promises, man is led to the knowledge of God's mercy or goodness, as by effects already manifested or yet to be vouchsafed. ”

“ A belief of the head in the sacrifice of the Prophet of Nazareth availeth naught; the Christ mind and life must be born in the soul.”
“How dost thou view the day of judgment?”
“Judgment is set up within man, and is continuous. The divine Image, or Truth, is a tribunal in every one, and until the personal and outer life cometh into full conformity, judgment is never ended. ”

“ The judgment will be general. All men, though they have been already judged privately, will stand before God’s judgment-seat, and be judged together and openly.
The Divine Judge will equally make known the good works of the just and the evil deeds of the wicked, so that the former may publicly receive their merited praise and reward, and the latter may be put to open shame; and men and angels may know and confess the justice of the Divine Judge.
The law by which men will be judged is that first commandment of Christ, the law of love which contains in itself all the other commandments. ”

“ There is one precious privilege which the Gospel of Jesus Christ has extended to those that believe and obey it—their sins go to judgment beforehand. It is written, "Some men's sins go to judgment beforehand, while others follow after." ”

“ Also, that the righteousness of God in his express sovereign power, wisdom, and love, may be known in the Divine word, the Sent of God to manifest and execute Divine will both in mercy and judgment, the two great witnesses, the messengers of God in this approaching day of the Lord upon us. ”

“ "In forming a judgment of ourselves now," Edwards writes, "we should certainly adopt that evidence which our supreme Judge will chiefly make use of when we come to stand before him at the last day. ... There is not one grace of the Spirit of God, of the existence of which, in any professor of religion, Christian practice is not the most decisive evidence. ... The degree in which our experience is productive of practice shows the degree in which our experience is spiritual and divine." ”

“ And if you say that the Holy One, blessed be He, judges man without justice, we have learned that when Judgment prevails on man and he is righteous, it is because of the love of the Holy One, blessed be He. ”

“ Then the call to judgment will be joyful to you; for you shall then be justified and acquitted before the whole world, at that great and general judgment, and have an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and it shall be well with you for ever. Now, "say to the righteous, it shall be well with him;" not that it doth so appear at present; for through many tribulations we must expect to enter into the kingdom of heaven; And many are the troubles of the righteous, but the Lord will deliver them out of them all. ”

“ The whole passage, read by a soul awake to itself, and to the holiness of the Judge of men, will contribute from its every sentence something to our conviction, our repentance, our dread of self, our persuasion that somehow from the judgment we must fly to the Judge. ”

“ And we learn from the passage, what experience also teaches, that it is the peculiar privilege of the Church, to know what the Divine judgments mean, and what is their tendency. ”

“ The young, with their elastic tread, are striding to the judgment; the old, with their tottering limbs are creeping to the judgment; the rich in their splendid equipages are driving to the judgment; the poor, in rags and barefooted, are walking to the judgment. The Christian making God's statutes his song, is a pilgrim to the judgment; the sinner, treading upon the mercy of Jesus, and trampling upon His blood, is hastening to the judgment. "We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ." ”

“ How can you stand before the judgment-seat of God, after having in this manner confessed through your whole life upon earth that God is good, and His law is perfect, and yet through that whole life have gone counter to your own confession, neither loving that God, nor obeying that law? "To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin." ”

“ And it is the law of heaven that you shall not be able to judge what is wise or easy, unless you are first resolved to judge what is just, and to do it. That is the one thing constantly reiterated by our Master—the order of all others that is given oftenest—'Do justice and judgment.' That's your Bible order ”

“ Each one of us is an actual part of the Divine, and thereby is his own arbitrator, ruler, and judge. And, that being so, it is absurd to imagine that we are incapable of understanding the Divine plan. ”

“ God shall bring every work into judgment. Note, 1. There is a judgment to come, in which every man's eternal state will be finally determined. 2. God himself will be the Judge, God-man will, not only because he has a right to judge, but because he is perfectly fit for it, infinitely wise and just. 3. Every work will then be brought into judgment, will be enquired into and called over again. It will be a day to bring to remembrance every thing done in the body. ”

“ This, then, is the initial stage in the Christian character,—repentance and faith; and these are the initial doctrines, baptism, absolution, resurrection, and judgment. How may they be described? They all centre in the individual believer. They have all to do with the fact of his sin. One question, and one only, presses for an answer. It is, “What must I do to be saved?” One result, and one only, flows from the salvation obtained. It is the final acquittal of the sinner at the last day. God is known only as the merciful Saviour and the holy Judge. ”

“ But, while we entrust our several conditions to eternity, and reserve for the future examination what each conceives to be right in his own case, a bright flash of the truth has descended on the present. For a divine provision has supplied a judge for our own time. ”

“ I look upon that principle, though it may be subordinate in some respects, as divine, as coming through revelation, and as necessary in its place as any other principle that can be mentioned which is connected with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They are all alike to me—all alike necessary and divine. Divine wisdom has prompted their practice, and has inspired the servant of God who presides and whom God has chosen to be His mouthpiece in our midst, to reveal them, one as much as another, unto us as a people. ”

“ God hath appointed a day wherein He will judge the world in righteousness, by Jesus Christ; [1] to whom all power and judgment is given of the Father; in which day, not only the apostate angels shall be judged, [2] but likewise all persons that have lived upon the earth shall appear before the tribunal of Christ, to give an account of their thoughts, words, and deeds, and to receive according to what they have done in the body, whether good or evil. ”

“ He whose heart is bent upon serving God, doing His will and practising the moral precepts of our Lord, will soon recognise and feel within his mind and heart that the doctrine proposed by our Lord is and must be divine. ”

“ That God is just, and what it is to be just, I can learn from the just lives of the just men about me; but how just God is, to what unconceived perfection, to what unexplained developments that majestic quality of justice may extend in Him—of that I can form no judgment that is worth anything from the justice I see in my fellow-men. ”

“ Sore difficulties beset us in working out a clear and harmonious theory of the judgment and its issues. But blessed be God that we can rest in the belief that all will be, in ways that we see not, so wisely and righteously ordered by the Judge of all the earth, as to satisfy the yearning heart, not of the great Father only, but of the Redeemer of humanity, and to fill the universe with praise. Here as elsewhere, when we are bewildered and perplexed by thoughts too high for us and which reach too far, we find a sure refuge and rest in faith. ”

“ If there seem to us to be some irregularity in the present decisions of Providence, yet these, instead of shaking our belief of God's justice, may serve to strengthen our belief of the judgment to come, which will set all to-rights. ”

“ All the things of God's law are weighty, but those are most weighty, which are most expressive of inward holiness in the heart; the instances of self-denial, contempt of the world, and resignation to God, in which lies the life of religion. Judgment and mercy toward men, and faith toward God, are the weightier matters of the law, the good things which the Lord our God requires (Mic. vi. 8) ; to do justly, and love mercy, and humble ourselves by faith to walk with God. This is the obedience which is better than sacrifice or tithe; judgment is preferred before sacrifice, Isa. ”

“ But do not submit to him, while you work at the righteousness that is accomplished in the inner man, where stands the judgment seat of Christ, together with His undefiled sanctuary, that the testimony of your conscience may glory in the cross of Christ, who has purged your conscience from dead works, that you may serve God with your spirit, that you may know what you worship, according to Him who said, We worship that which we know. ”

“ Those who arrived at an understanding of this important point, were thus led to see the sacred, unchanging character of the divine law. They saw, as never before, the force of the Saviour's words, “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law.”717 The law of God, being a revelation of His will, a transcript of His character, must forever endure, “as a faithful witness in heaven.” Not one command has been annulled; not a jot or tittle has been changed. Says the psalmist: “Forever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven.” “All His commandments are sure. ”

“ And which way can these souls possibly be comforted, but by a divine testimony, (not that they are good, or sincere, or conformable to the scripture in heart and life, but) that God justifieth the ungodly: him that ’till the moment he is justified, is all ungodly, void of all true holiness? Him that worketh not, that worketh nothing that is truly good, ’till he is conscious that he is accepted, not for any works of righteousness which he hath done, but by the mere, free mercy of God? ”

“ Let them be just, and rule in the fear of God; let them act with such wisdom and conscience that there may appear a holy divination in all they say or do, and that they are guided by principles supernatural: let not their mouths transgress in judgment, for the judgment is God's. 2. It may be taken as a promise to all good kings, that if they sincerely aim at God's glory, and seek direction from him, he will qualify them with wisdom and grace above others, in proportion to the eminency of their station and the trusts lodged in their hands. ”

“ Belief in the inspiration of Scripture, in the Trinity, in the divinity of Christ, in original sin, in justification by faith alone, in the obligatoriness of the two sacraments, in the resurrection of the body, in the last judgment, and in the eternal blessedness of the righteous and the eternal condemnation of the ungodly. ”

“ Religion which asserts this divine order, this transcendental order, is objectively "the Law of the Lord," which, proceeding from the eternal reason and will of God, is the principle and reason of things. ”

“ Who are responsible to judgment? Answer: All who know the truth, whether they submit to it or refuse.
Proof:
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. (Mark 16:16) .
For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things? (2 Cor. 2:15-16) .
But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things. ”

“ To reveal the universal and perpetual law of grace, which God's common beneficence to the children of men, such as puts them into a better state than that of devils, gives us some ground to expect. The divine authority likewise, which in this book commands our belief and obedience, is universal and perpetual, and knows no limits, either of time or place ”

“ And when we speak of the day of God's judgment, we add the word last or final for this reason, because even now God judges, and has judged from the beginning of human history, banishing from paradise, and excluding from the tree of life, those first men who perpetrated so great a sin. ”

“ Convinced of sin we [224] may be, and convinced of righteousness we may be—so far at least as to feel most keenly that the distinction between sin and righteousness is real, wide, and of eternal consequence—but is the prince of this world judged? has the power that claims us as the servants of sin and mocks our strivings after righteousness been, so far as we can judge from our own experience, defeated? For this is the final test of religion, of our faith in Christ, of the truth of His words and the efficacy of His work. ”

“ There is no more escape from the one than from the other. It is part of the burden of both the Old and New Testament message that a day of judgment is appointed for the world. God's kingdom shall extend universally; but a judgment in which the wicked are judged and the righteous rewarded is necessary and in order that the kingdom of everlasting righteousness may be established upon the earth.
3. THE CONSCIENCE OF ALL MANKIND CORROBORATES THE TEACHING OF THE SCRIPTURES WITH REGARD TO THE CERTAINTY OF A COMING JUDGMENT. This is true of both the individual and universal conscience. ”