We Are All Going to Be Judged for our Performance of Good Works

As we wrap up the first part of this series let’s look at how we measure our performance. Spiritual gifts just like our salvation flow from the redemptive work of Christ that has been freely given to us. Our responsibility is to be good stewards over our gifts (I Peter 4:10-11). Gifts are expressions of grace and therefore demand faithful stewardship. Grace never abolishes responsibility; it creates it because the believer’s new life necessarily expresses itself in obedience.

Ephesians 2:8-9 is a scripture we are all familiar with when it comes to our salvation. Paul says: “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” If you stop reading, then you would think all we have to do is wait to go to heaven so we can be with Jesus and be saved. However, Paul did not stop, but he went on to say in verse 10 “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Good work is the goal, not the ground, of salvation.

We have a responsibility to use the spiritual gifts that we have freely been given to help us in our journey of faith. At the same time the use of our gifts results in good works that will benefit others. Grace + faith = good works and that is faith in action just like Abraham (James 2:21-26). James insists that faith which does not act is not faith at all. James and Paul agree that genuine faith produces obedience.

God becoming man wrapped in human flesh as the last Adam was to redeem us from the curse. It’s why the gospel is about the birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, outpouring of the Spirit and second coming of Christ to rule. It’s a comprehensive message. You can’t separate Christ first coming in the flesh as a man to his second coming as a man to judge us according to our faithfulness in fulfilling the will of God for our lives.

Resurrection from the dead and eternal judgment are inextricably tied together. (The subject is fully covered in Lessons 18 through 22 in the Foundation Publications School of Discipleship, www.foundationpub.org).

It’s when we untether our salvation from the second coming of Christ that we get a gospel devoid of sacrifice and good works. In the Bible judgment is tied to faithful service and reward. We are not saved by our works, but we will be judged according to our faithful service to God. Works are evidence of allegiance, not currency for salvation. The Bible is clear that we will be judged for our works and faithful service while in this body (Matt. 16:27; Romans 2:6-8; II Cor. 5:10; I Peter 1:17).

Justification by faith does not negate works, but James said it should fuel our desire to love God and lovingly serve others (James 2:14-26). Paul in the context of talking about resurrection from the dead says in 2 Corinthians 5:10 that: “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.”

Jesus tied reward in the age to come to faithful service.

Go read Jesus' parables because they are all about hard work, faithfulness, endurance, mercy and treating others justly, but also about being rewarded. How we live this life of faith matters and the fear of the Lord is living our lives in the light of a future judgment when we will stand before God giving an account of how we lived out our lives in this body. Paul likened it to a race that we each must run, and he told us to stay focused on the reward of our obedience (I Corinthians 9:25-26). It’s the full circle of faith.

In the Bible, stewardship is another way of talking about how you live your life. In the New Testament, the word steward is rooted in a Greek word meaning the manager of a household. A steward planned, managed the work, the finances, the strategy and the records of the master. For stewards, the important thing was faithfulness. They had to be efficient managers of the master’s resources. A steward never owned the property or resources; he simply managed them for his master and was required to manage those resources faithfully.

We have all been given spiritual gifts and we must be faithful stewards by discovering them, developing them and doing our part.

If you ever worked for a corporation then you know everyone must go through a performance review. You have some companies that do this quarterly, but normally it’s done annually. The performance review consists of you first examining yourself. You are examining yourself by the measures that are laid out for you to keep you on track with the purpose of the mission.

The purpose of a performance review is to make sure you are not doing your own thing, but you are staying within the guidelines of the mission. It’s a measure of your stewardship concerning the work duties that have been assigned to you. It’s about how you performed your assigned tasks and can determine if you are rewarded or disciplined.

We are told many times in scripture to examine ourselves. Galatians 6:4-5 in the Message Paraphrase Translation it tell us to: “Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.”

We don’t save ourselves and we don’t get to choose our gifts. Our salvation is based on the free grace of God declared through the message of the cross. The word produces faith in our hearts and we are justified and redeemed by the power of the blood. Our part is to surrender to the grace of God and when we do, we receive the gift of salvation. Now within the gift of salvation is wrapped our spiritual gifts which have also been freely given to us. Our responsibility is to unwrap these gifts through discovery. To develop our spiritual gifts and do our part.

Paul in Philippians chapter 2 most graphically instructs us on the proper attitude we should have in living out what is called the cruciform life of faith. It’s the same attitude that Christ displayed in humbling himself by becoming a man and in humility surrendered to the will of God for his life. Paul is using Christ life as an example. Jesus did not have to try and become God, because he was God. He humbled himself and that’s what we are called to do. Humble ourselves and surrender to the will of God for our lives.

The scriptures are clear that to as many as receive Christ that they are adopted into the family (Eph. 1:4-5; Gal 4:4-7). John called it being born from above (John 3:3), Peter called it being given the divine nature (I Peter 1:23) and Paul called us new creations (II Corinthians 5:16-17).

We don’t have to try and be a child of God, but we must surrender to his Lordship.

In like manner we are each given spiritual gifts, and we don’t have to try to get those gifts because it’s part of the package of our salvation in Christ. What we must do, however, is discover our gifts, develop our gifts and do our part. In Philippians 2:12-13 Paul was telling us this exact message that we must: “work out” our “own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” It’s what the goal of this book is which is for you to become all that God has intended for your life.

To become all that God wants for us means that we need to continually examine ourselves. We must learn to live this life of faith in the light of our coming resurrection with Christ where our works will be examined. Performance is about using our spiritual gifts in faithful service to Christ. Ultimately, we will stand before God. Hebrews 9:7 says, “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.”

In I Corinthians 3:10-13 Paul warns us to: “Let each one take care how he builds upon” the foundation of Christ. “For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.”

All of us are going to be held accountability to God for how we live out our journey of faith and use our spiritual gifts. The scriptures teach us that we will each have to go through a final performance review with Christ. One of the main practices of the New Covenant is meeting together as the body of Christ. Paul said it’s to be a time when we identify with the body and blood of Christ through what we traditionally call communion. Jesus and Paul taught this as something that was to be central to our spiritual lives.

The bedrock of the New Covenant was established upon this reality the night before Jesus was crucified. Paul gave us an admonition in I Corinthians 11:28 that as we do this to: “Let” each “person examine himself…and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.”

A personal examination is not us walking in a sense of guilt and shame, but one of personal accountability:

• It’s about identifying with the blood of Jesus as the source of our forgiveness and his

broken body as the source of our healing.

• It’s about self-examination, but not self-condemning.

• It’s an attitude of humility and thinking of ourselves in a sober realistic way concerning

God’s gift of grace, but also about his purpose for our lives.

• It’s living transparent before God and acknowledging our dependence on Christ to

fulfill his calling upon our lives.

• It’s making sure that our motivation is true to the character of Christ.

• It’s knowing that one day we will have to give an account to Christ about how we have

used our gifts.

• It’s about making sure that we are good stewards of the grace of God in our lives.

• It’s also about knowing that we are just a part of the body, and we need others to

accomplish the will of God.

Let me wrap up this chapter with Paul’s words to the Corinthain believers in chapter 9:24-26 where he said: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air.”

It’s what the goal of this book is which is to help you to run your race utilizing all the spiritual gifts made available to you through the grace of the one sacrifice of Christ. (Foundation Publications School of Discipleship is a free resource found at www.foundationpub.org. Lesson 1 through 22 cover the foundational doctrines laid out in Hebrews 6:1-2.

We can never be Jesus because he is set apart on his own as a first fruit or prototype since he alone is God.

Luke in his gospel and in the book of Acts emphasizes Jesus’ reliance on the Spirit as the model for the church. New covenant ministry is impossible apart from the Spirit. We are not little gods nor little Christ, but Jesus is our example, and

we are his disciples called to follow in his footsteps. Discipleship means adherence to Christ, not absorption into divinity. We need to be filled and empowered with the same Spirit so that we too can accomplish the will of God for our lives. As Paul says, “our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant…of the Spirit” (II Cor. 3:5-6).

The heart of the New Covenant is about living, abiding and demonstrating the love of the Father through the cruciform life. Participation in Christ means conformity to his death-shaped life. It’s living a life intertwined with the life of the Spirit by daily eating the flesh and drinking in the blood of the covenant. Jesus did not act by drawing on divine privilege but by living in radical dependence on the Spirit. It’s taking up our cross and following in the footsteps of our Lord who came as an actual man because the Spirit empowers believers to live out the cruciform pattern of Christ. Jesus said: “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master” (Matthew 10:24). If Jesus needed the Holy Spirit, then as his disciples we are dependent on the Spirit to walk in our spiritual gifts.

Let’s look at the opening of John’s gospel. John 1:14: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John’s focus is on God becoming man through the gift of Christ sacrificial life. The truth that was veiled or hidden under the Mosaic Law has come in the person of the Messiah. John’s gospel put a central focus on the place of the Holy Spirit.

• It’s only John’s gospel that tells the story of Nicodemus and our need to be born from

above through the new birth of the Spirit. He shows that our new life in Christ is

energized by the Holy Spirit.

• It’s only in John’s gospel that the woman at the well in Samaria is recorded where Jesus

speaks of true worship of the Father in spirit and truth. He talks about the living waters

of the Holy Spirit flowing through our lives.

• It’s only in John’s gospel that the Spirit is spoken of in terms that can only be described

as God. Large portions of John chapters 14 and 16 are dedicated to understanding

the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The mystery of the Godhead is clearly spoken of in the

gospel of John as no other book in the entire Bible.

Now the Bible does not tell us everything about how to live life. Does the Bible tell us where to geographically live? Where to work? Who to marry or not to marry? The Bible does not tell us a lot of things about the decisions that we have to make daily. The million-dollar question is how do we make these important daily decisions? I’m going to call this subjective truth, and this is where the Holy Spirit plays a role in our daily lives.

Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father and sent the Holy Spirit to be with us here as the third person of the Trinity until he physically returns at his second coming. John 14:18 Jesus said: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” In verse 26 he said: “the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” In John 16:13 Jesus said when: “the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”

The primary role of the Holy Spirit is to lead us into the objective truth found in Christ.

The Holy Spirit keeps us centered on the redemptive work of the cross and our common foundation. The Holy Spirit also has an active role in aiding us, convicting us of sin, teaching us, empowering us to operate in spiritual gifts and speaking to us of things to come which is subjective truth (John 16:6 - 13).

John in his first epistle says that we have all been anointed and given the Holy Spirit. In 1 John 2:26-27 it says: “I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.” The scripture is not telling us we don’t need teachers to help us understand. It is telling us that just as the prophet, priest and king were all anointed under the Old Covenant in the same way under the New Covenant all believers are given the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

The anointing safeguards believers from deception rather than eliminating the role of teaching.

The author of Hebrews in 8:10-11 says it this way: “I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” Again, it’s not saying that we don’t need teachers who help us to understand the word of God:

• It’s saying the Holy Spirit makes the redemptive work of the cross a reality in our hearts. • It’s saying that the Holy Spirit aids, supports and empowers us in our daily lives with spiritual gifts so that we can perform the good works that we have been called to operate in.