The Final Judgement
This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares. Romans 2:16
Paul has stressed that we cannot escape God’s judgement (2:1-4); that it will be a righteous judgement (2:5-11) according to our works and will take into account the direction of our lives (what we ‘seek’) and that it will be impartial, being the same for Jews as it will be for Gentiles. In both cases, the greater our moral knowledge, the greater our moral accountability will be. Now he adds three further truths about judgement day.
First, God’s judgement will include the hidden areas of our lives: ‘God judges people’s secrets’ (2:16). Because God knows our hearts (Luke 16:15; Hebrews 4:12f) there will be no miscarriage of justice on that day.
Second, God’s judgement will take place ‘through Jesus Christ’ (2:16). Jesus stated openly that the Father had entrusted all judgement to Him (John 5:22,27) and He regularly spoke of Himself as the central figure on the day of judgement (Matthew 7:21ff; 25:31ff). Paul declared in Athens that God had both fixed the day and appointed the judge, the man He had raised from the dead (Acts 17:31). Peter had preached to Cornelius’ household that ‘God appointed [Jesus] as judge of the living and the dead’ (Acts 10:42).
Third, God’s judgement is part of the gospel. God will judge ‘people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares’ (2:16). The good news of God’s salvation shines even more brightly when seen against the dark background of His judgement.
Clearly the morality of the law is a basis for divine judgement. Paul’s thrust has been that God has no favourites; that Jews and Gentiles will be judged by Him without discrimination; and that both groups have some knowledge of His law. It follows that no one can claim complete ignorance. We have all sinned against a moral law we have known. We may have come to know this moral law by general or special revelation, by grace or nature, outwardly or inwardly, in the Scripture or in the heart. All human beings know something of God (1:20) and of His goodness (1:32; 2:15) but to one degree or another we have stifled this knowledge to serve our own ends (1:18; 2:8). As a result we all come under the righteous judgement of God.
If God will judge all humanity on the basis of His law, the laws within that ‘law’ are true for all people for all time. In our pluralistic society this is a highly contentious issue. With the variety of ethnic, national and religious traditions represented in most Western nations, agreement on an underlying moral code is all but impossible. The tendency has been to base law on the common good but this invariably comes down to the will of the majority imposed on the minority, particularly on the weak and indefensible minority as in abortion and euthanasia.
Christians have a clearer pathway. We know God’s law is the basis for both the final judgement and God’s judgements in history. Just as minor tremors often precede a major earthquake, God frequently brings a measure of judgement on earth as a sign of His displeasure and warning of the greater judgement to come. Our part is to delineate and articulate those laws in a way that hopefully makes the world listen. Support ministries who do that. They find themselves on the frontline, not only defending the gospel but sounding a warning of what faces us all.
Paul denies there is ‘salvation-value’ in the Mosaic law and the covenant of which it is part. It is not enough, and never has been enough, to try to obey the law. Only perfect obedience to the law would suffice to justify a person before God (and only Jesus has ever done that). Any insistence on perfect obedience is a departure from the Jewish view but this is just what Paul has implied by putting Jews and Gentiles on the same footing with respect to works and judgement in 2:1-16. The enormity of God’s Son being crucified led Paul to take a far more pessimistic view of human sin than was typical of Judaism. He saw God’s sole answer to the sin problem was Christ’s crucifixion and our faith in that finished work.