‘I saw the dead, both great and small, standing before God’s throne. And the books were opened, including the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books. The sea gave up its dead, and death and the grave gave up their dead. And all were judged according to their deeds. Then death and the grave were thrown into the lake of fire. This lake of fire is the second death. And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire’ – Revelation 20:12-15
Most people, if they acknowledge an afterlife, think the criteria for joining it is ‘being a good person.’ By contrast, Christian Orthodoxy proclaims that no one is good enough to earn heaven. ‘No one is righteous, not one,’ say the scriptures (Romans 3:10). Salvation is bestowed, as Martin Luther said long ago, ‘through grace alone, by faith alone, in Christ alone.’ Beyond this, there has been, at least in the western church, a distinct way of looking at Judgment Day. Hebrews says we die once, and then the judgment (9:27). Traditionally, western Christians have interpreted this to mean that if you embrace Jesus as Lord and Savior before you die, you are saved. If not, you are damned. Death forever seals the fate of the unbeliever.
The notion that salvation is possible through Christ alone, has never, at least in orthodox Christian circles, been in legitimate dispute. The faithful have always known that the conception of ‘all roads leading heaven,’ is a heresy that makes a mockery of the Cross (if there were any other way to salvation, why would God send Jesus to die?). But the conception of Judgment Day has not always been as clear. In the early Church, there were friendly debates about it. The Church Fathers engaged in lively discussions on the subject, often invoking an obscure passage in 1 Peter that speaks of Christ, after his death on the Cross, descending to Sheol, the place where, in Old Testament and Intertestamental theology, the dead awaited Judgment Day, to preach the Gospel (1 Peter 3:19-20; 4:6). Most Church Fathers believed this meant, at the very least, that Jesus offered salvation to all who had lived before him, who had not had the opportunity to hear his message. After all, the Fathers reasoned, God is nothing if he is not fair. This much then, was relatively easy to accept.
But there were some among the Church Fathers, especially in the Eastern portions of the Church, who took things a bit further, interpreting this Petrine passage to mean that Jesus, who entered eternity after his death on the Cross, preached to everyone who had ever lived or would ever live, either during or after their moment of death, thus providing everyone with a face-to-face opportunity to respond to his Gospel message. For such writers, the debatable point was whether everyone responded affirmatively to the Gospel or if only some did, but they agreed that there was some opportunity at the threshold of eternity for salvation.
Eventually, as the Roman Catholic Church emerged, such thinking was kiboshed in the west, leading to the traditional view of Judgment expressed above. But in the east, the possibilities for grace remained broader. What I find fascinating is that while today, this kind of talk can lead to charges of heresy, in the first six centuries of Christian history all of these positions were deemed acceptable.[1] The nature of Judgment, and the ultimate outcome, were considered mysterious, ultimately in God’s hands; it was okay to dream of various possibilities, even teach them, so long as you remembered that the source of salvation was Christ.
Regardless, I am sure that for many traditionally minded Christians, this still smacks of heresy. They (you reader?) may point to various scripture passages to refute such reckless dreaming, including, no doubt, the passage from Revelation 20 quoted above. Therein, John the Revelator envisions Judgment Day. Everyone who has ever lived is brought before God’s throne. Death and the grave (Sheol, where the dead await judgment) give up their dead, everyone stands before God, and the books are opened. There are two books, one that records our deeds, the other the Book of Life, wherein God records the name and story of everyone who belongs to the Lamb (Jesus). Those whose stories are not found in the Book of Life are judged on their works, which is bad news. Because the criteria for entrance into God’s eternal Kingdom is not being a relatively good person. Remember, ‘no one is righteous, not one.’ And so, the traditional view of Judgment Day makes it easy: come Judgment Day (whether that be when you die, or when Jesus comes again – Revelation 20 focuses on the latter, but encompasses the former), if your name is in the Book of Life, you have nothing to fear. But if it’s not, it’s the Lake of Fire, aka hell, for you.
But the fact that this wasn’t so clear to the Church Fathers, coupled with Peter’s strange comments about Jesus preaching to the dead, gives me reason to pause and ask, ‘What really happens on Judgment Day?’ What happens when people come face to face with the awesomeness and perfection of God and recognize their fallenness and imperfection? What is it that God seeks to accomplish on Judgment Day? In the Bible, the judgments of God are restorative, seeking to bring the sinner to an awareness of sin, that he might repent. And if that’s true, and it is, then we must wonder if there is more to the matter of judgment than the traditional view allows.
Such questions have blazed in my mind ever since my seminary days, when something happened that started me thinking like those imaginative Church Fathers. Some friends and I had travelled to spend the day in NYC. One of our stops was the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, where there was an exhibit of medieval tapestries. The unfortunate part of our visit was that we arrived 20 minutes before the Museum closed. We raced through the exhibit anyway. The tapestries were magnificent, wall sized, glorious works of art. There was one portion of the exhibit that focused on the theme of judgment – medieval conceptions of Judgment Day. They were dark and apocalyptic, with enough fire and brimstone to warm the heart of the most ardent fundamentalist. One depicted God on his throne with a serenely detached look on his face, as sinners fell into the fires of hell to be tormented by ghastly demons. It was clear that to these artists, God was a fierce, wrathful being, strident in his ways, indifferent to the plight of sinners. At the time, I was traditionalist in my thinking of judgement and hell, but nevertheless these tapestries seemed off to me. They just didn’t reflect the gracious God I had come to know in Jesus.
Thinking such thoughts, I turned a corner and saw a tapestry entitled, ‘Joseph is Recognized by his Brothers.’
Perhaps you know the story, if not from the Bible, at least from the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical. Joseph’s brothers had treated him horribly, tossing him in a pit, selling him to traders, causing him to become a slave and prisoner in Egypt. But God was with Joseph and, following the passage of many years, raised him up to be second in command in Egypt, a hero who saved the land from a ravaging famine. The famine was so bad that all the nations came before Joseph for grain.
Joseph’s brothers came too.
They didn’t recognize him at first, but he recognized them. Eventually, after messing with their heads, he revealed himself to them. The brothers were of course terrified. The tapestry I saw at the Met majestically captured that moment of terror. It captured the brothers’ emotions and actions. One was trying to run away. Some looked to Joseph for mercy. Some keeled over as if dead. One looked heavenward for mercy from God, expecting none. The tapestry revealed that for the brothers, this moment was nothing other than Judgment Day. They knew they were guilty. Joseph was completely within his rights to execute them on the spot, and they knew they deserved it.
But then, as I continued to assess the brothers’ reactions, I saw something else: Joseph. For him, this was no time for revenge. It was a time for restoration. It was not a time to say, ‘I told you so.’ It was a time for grace. Joseph was reaching out to his brothers. He was stooping to lift those who had fallen onto the floor. His eyes were filled with mercy. It was as if he were crying to them, ‘Wait! Don’t run away! Don’t you see? I know what you did. But I still love you! Come close to me. Take my hand. Everything will be alright. It’s not too late for us!’
And then, in my mind’s eye, I saw the brothers’ reaction to all this (this is all in the Bible, BTW, not just on the tapestry). I saw them turn to Joseph. I saw them hugging Joseph and one another, weeping and filled with a crazy, unexpected, lunatic joy. They had expected Joseph to be their harsh judge. He turned out to be their savior.
I was awestruck. There have been moments in my life when I have felt as if God were speaking to me. This was one of them. I was overwhelmed by a feeling that God wanted me to know something about His heart. Standing before that tapestry and looking into Joseph’s face, I realized I was not just looking into the face of Joseph. I was looking into the face of Jesus. And I knew that Jesus was inviting me to consider the possibility that he might be more merciful that I had ever imagined.
I wrestled with this experience for a long time. Eventually I authored a book about it, Grace at the Threshold. After many years of thinking, praying, and studying, I have come to believe that there may indeed be possibilities for grace beyond our expectations. That there may indeed be some – those who never had a chance to hear the Gospel; those who heard it, but under conditions where they could not possibly accept it; those who had been shipwrecked in the faith, those who, for whatever reason, God in his mercy and sovereign power chooses to extend grace – who will one day look into their Judge’s face and, like Joseph’s brothers, find their Savior there. That perhaps, on their day of Judgment, some whom the pious had chalked up as lost causes will fall to their knees and cry, ‘My Lord and my God.’ And yes, God – and it is his decision after all, not yours or mine – will accept them.
But what about the Book of Life? It says your name has to be in there. Well, Revelation never tells us when the names are written in it, only that they are. God can write a person’s name and story in his book any time he pleases. He is God after all.
Does this mean all will be saved? I would love to think so, but alas, I doubt it. There are many passages in scripture that suggest that not everyone makes it in the end. John records that those whose stories are not found in the Book of Life (i.e., there are some whose stories are not) are thrown into the ‘Lake of Fire.’[2] Sadly, there are those who will, even at Judgment Day, persist in their resistance to grace. Like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, they will clutch their ‘rings’ even as they fall into the fires of Doom. As much as I would like everyone to be saved (which is hardly wrong of me, God desires the same thing, see 2 Peter 3:9) I fear not everyone will.
And so, even as I revel in the possibilities of grace, I ask you to consider one more thing. Each day we make choices that determine both who we are and who we will be, choices that, among other things, take us closer to farther from Jesus. It seems possible that, through such choices, we can harden our hearts to the point where we become impervious to grace.
And so what we most need to know is this: Jesus, the Savior of infinite grace, the one who is both your Judge and Savior, is, right now, reaching for you. He is saying to you, no matter who you are, where you have been, or what you have done, ‘Come closer! It’s not too late for us. I know what you’ve done. But I still love you!’ His quill is in his hand, ready to inscribe your story in his Book of life.
I don’t know for certain what your judgment day will be like. But I do know how you can be sure that you will make it through. You can take the hand of the one who loves you, the one who will always love you, the one who died on a Cross to prove his love for you. And you can do it right now.
Why wait another moment?
Under Christ’s Mercy,
Brent
[1] For example, Gregory of Nazianzus, who chaired the Council of Constantinople, a crucial Church gathering that affirmed the Church’s official position on the humanity and divinity of Christ, believed in the apokatastasis, or the Universal Restoration of all things, including that all of humanity would be saved through Christ. While holding this view, he was dubbed ‘The Defender of Orthodoxy.’
[2] What precisely ‘the Lake of Fire’ is lies beyond the scope of this already overly long post. Traditionalists believe hell means conscious eternal torment. Conditionalists believe it means judgment followed by the cessation of existence. Either way, its not good.