The Gavel and The Bible
“So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.”
Romans 14:12
Many of us go about our days with no concern for an accountability for what we do. If we drive through a red traffic light then we are subject to being stopped by a law enforcement officer, given a ticket of some sort and told to pay a fine or appear before the judge and then pay a fine, which is usually even more than before unless you can prove that you did not do the crime.
What would your actions be like if you knew that everything you do is being recorded – I mean EVERYTHING – and then at the end of the day you would be forced to stand in front of a judge to review every action that you did that day? If there were anything during that day that was considered wrong, by the judge’s standards, you would then be assessed a fine for the offences.
Most of us would look at much of what we do as a “non-offence”. The problem is that we are not the judge. We don’t make the rules. We are subject to someone else’s rules.
Whether we want to be accountable or not, we will be.
Then, who makes the rules? God does!
How do we know what the rules are?
There are three different types of rules – all of which we are and will be accountable for.
1. Self imposed rules. These are rules that we know down deep in our beings what they are. Among those might be: lying, stealing, murder. . . I think you get the idea. How do we know these things are wrong? They are called “conscience”.
2. Socially imposed rules. Most people would call these “laws”. These may include some or all of the self-imposed rules. These are concepts that are usually you doing something wrong to another person. It may be anything from an offensive “gesture” to something that is actually physical against another person or government. Examples of these are traffic laws, tax laws and instituted social laws. These rules would normally be enforced by the local government/organization.
3. Spiritually imposed rules. These are rules that are imposed on us by God. They may include some or all of the aforesaid rules. God doesn’t really care much about traffic laws but the government that is “ruling” above us (regardless where we live) is instituted by God (John 19:11; Romans 13:1; Daniel 2:21) , as such we are required by God (unless the law is against laws instituted by God so that we would be sinning against God’s law) to abide by those laws (Titus 3:1; 1 Peter 2:13, 14) . These laws/rules would be found in the Bible or supported by statements or concepts introduced in the Bible.
So, now we are aware of our accountability for our actions (this even includes the thinking-about doing the actions – Proverbs 23:7; Matthew 5:8).
No, we aren’t going to be accountable to God – or most likely anyone else – at the end of the day, unless the end of the day signifies the end of your life.
The Bible tells us in Hebrews 9:27, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment”.
There is no conditional statement there. All men are required to die. As such, all men will be judged after his/her death.
You might say that, “I’ve been saved by Jesus Christ so I am not subject to any judgement.” That could not be further from the truth (Hebrews 9:27)! ALL men must be judged.
There will be two different judgments; one for the people who have rejected God’s gift of salvation through Jesus Christ (Revelation 20:11-15) and one for those who have received the gift of salvation – only through Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10, ).
If you would say that you haven’t accepted Jesus’ free gift of Salvation then please read no further here but read this article, then come back to this point and continue reading.
I picture our judgment as this*:
We are sitting in this huge room — all of us; everyone who has ever been born — and we can’t see any one wall around us.
In front of us is God sitting on His throne and Jesus (the righteous Judge) seated on God’s right hand side (Ephesians 1:20; 1 Peter 3:22).
To the side of God is positioned a “jumbo-tron” type monitor, or a video screen that is bigger than any theater screen ever made.
On that screen, God is showing us the record that He has of everything that we have ever done in our lives, each, one at a time. It is eternity and this may take a very long time to show all of us.
One by one, God calls us up to stand before Jesus to give account of the things that we have done with our life — good or bad (Revelation 22:12; 2 Corinthians 5:10; John 14:12)!
Everyone will be able to see our thoughts; the things that we did, that we thought were not being seen by anybody and everything that we did actually do (Ecclesiastes 12:14) .
There will be no partiality. Jesus, being the righteous Judge (2 Timothy 4:8; John 5:22), will judge us all by the same standard of laws.
For any one of us that has done anything wrong in our whole existence, we will be judged harshly, in fact, the penalty is going to be to spend eternity in the Lake of Fire where the Devil and his (fallen) angels will be also (Revelation 20:10-15; Matthew 25:41; Revelation 21:8).
In this Lake of Fire, there will be people crying from pain, such that no mortal man has ever felt, and gnashing of teeth in torment. This won’t be for just a few years, it is for all of eternity (Luke 13:28; Matthew 13:42).
On the other hand, there is Heaven.
We have all heard of Heaven. It is where God/Jesus lives. Jesus, when He was still living on earth, told us that He was going to His Father’s house where there are many mansions and that He was going to go there to prepare a place for us — those of us who received Jesus’ gift of salvation (John 14:2).
The way I see it; when we are judged, the good things that we did for Jesus and in His name and for His glory will make our mansion bigger or give us more “bling”, the bad things that we did or the times that we passed up to do or say something about and/or for Jesus will take away things from our mansions (2 Corinthians 5:10).
I imagine that some will end up in shacks and some may end up with rental properties . . . Well, maybe not so much, but I think you get the idea.
The whole idea of accountability takes on a whole new meaning. God doesn’t want us to serve Him because we feel we have to, He wants us to serve Him because we want to serve Him. Not out of a sense of servitude but more out of a sense of gratitude.
Christians Are Us 