Justification Not From Here But From There (PS.119:89)!

NICENE CREED

and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead

Why does Christ come again, and why isn’t it sufficient that we go to Him? Why does He judge the world again, since the Bible says He has already judged the world in His first coming (Jn.12:31; 16:8-11)?

Christ’s first coming was not with glory but with humility to demonstrate God’s perfection in human weakness (2Cor.12:9), by which He humbled the proud, displayed in His victory over the fruit of their works, which is death (Rom.6:20-21, 23). It was necessary for Christ to take on the nature of our shame (Rom.8:3-4), in all humility to bear its reproach and die in our weakness as a man to be the substitute for sinners and to represent the fallen race before God (Phil.2:5-11), in all innocence and as a sinless soul without corruption (Heb.2:10-18). Through His death and burial, the works of the devil in us were judged and sentenced (1Jn.3:7-9; Jn.3:17-19). This is where the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed are nuanced regarding the purpose of judgment in the second coming (2Tim.1:8-10; 4:8).

The Apostles’ Creed seems to suggest that all judgment comes from Christ’s exaltation with the words “from thence or ‘there’ He shall come to judge” (2Cor.5:10; Col.3:4; 1Tim.6:12-16; 2Tim.4:1), but the Nicene Creed seems to leave room for the present judgment of every man (Jn.3:17-18, 36; 1Jn.3:13-15; 5:10-12), according to the cross (Tit.3:4-7; Rom.2:2-16; Heb.9:26-28), while emphasizing the glory with which Christ is coming to judge above that by which He has already judged (Tit.2:11-15; 1Jn.2:28; 1Pet.5:4). In other words, it’s because of the judgment that was demonstrated at the cross that He is coming again to judge with a different judgment than that of the substitution of Himself at the cross (Jn.12:46-48). Therefore, He is removing the signpost of His mercy of substitution in the atonement that warns every man to flee the wrath that is to come and is bringing in a new judgment without mercy (1Jn.1:5-2:2; Heb.10:26-31; Matt.9:10-13; 2Cor.6:1-2).

Therefore, the Apostles’ Creed is correct to say “from there,” which is Christ’s seat of glory, that He is coming to judge the living and the dead. But with the distinction in the Nicene Creed, we are free to expound this with an open door to God’s mercy in the present judgment of all things through the benefit of Christ working in the church as the light of the world, because the present judgment is in the mercy of His coming in humility apart from the perfection of His glory (Heb.9:28). Therefore, now is the time to behold Him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (Jn.1:29, 36). This is how God is going to judge the living (1Pet.4:6). While every sinner is born in total corruption of sin, in the person of what they are as the creation of God through Adam’s iniquity (Isa.45:7; Rom.9:17-24), some of these same sinners are chosen for salvation to be regenerated by the Word of life and the Spirit of truth (1Pet.1:3-5, 22-25; 1Jn.1:1-4; Jn.14:16-18; 15:26; 16:8-15).

Therefore, those who are alive to God in the Spirit of truth are the true worshipers of the Almighty who reigns (Jn.4:22-24), and He reigns to forever live to make intercession for them who worship in spirit and in truth because the love of Father is in them to glorify the Son (Rom.8:27; Heb.7:25). These children are growing in their love for God by forsaking the love of the world (1Jn.2:15-17). Those who love the world are the children of the devil and of the darkness of the nature of Satan’s lie (1Jn.2:21; 3:10-15), which is subject to obey the nature of God’s wrath (Rom.1:18-19; 2:5-10), which is in them by the giving of them over to destroy their own soul in the hatred of true life (Rom.1:20-32; Pr.8:33-36). Therefore, the nature that is working in them is not life, but death as the consequence of original sin in Adam’s fall (1Jn.5:12, 16; Rom.6:20-23). So then, those who die in Christ are raised to be judged as the living because they are counted as just through the substitution of Christ’s death as the atonement for their sins (Acts 24:14-16; Lk.14:13-14; 20:36; Jn.5:28-29; 11:25-36; Matt.22:30-32; Rom.6:5; Rev.14:13; 20:6). But this judgment doesn’t mean that will escape the things done in the body, for those who are called the living must appear before the judgment seat of Christ to an account of the stewardship of what was done in the body (2 Cor.5:9-11; Rom.14:7-10; 1Cor.3:11-17; 2Jn.8; Rev.22:12).

But the resurrection of condemnation is a judgment apart from God as the Father of the spirits of just men made perfect (Heb.12:5-9, 22-29; James 1:16-18). The resurrection of the dead is a resurrection of condemnation without hope (Rev.20:11-15). Those of this resurrection are without hope because they are without the Advocate (1Jn.1:5-2:2), and they are without the Advocate because Christ preached peace while they were still in their sins (Rom.5:6-8; Eph.2:17), and rendered them without excuse by His own judgment to give them time to repent (Rom.1:18-20; Rev.2:18-21), as His sign was clearly portrayed in all the world (Matt.12:38-45; 1Cor.11:26; Rev.14:6-8; 1Pet.4:17; Rev.11:7-12; Matt.28:18-20; 1Cor.11:27-34; Matt.25:31-46; 26:28-29; Lk.22:14-18). Therefore, all judgment has been committed to the Son by means of this sign (Jn.6:32-33, 44-51), through which the promise and the threat comes upon the sons of men (Jn.6:52-58, 60-66), for those who never sought to deposit their soul into the bank of Christ’s economy of eternal life to exchange its corruption for the incorruption of Christ’s eternal spirit will have no interest to bank on for their retirement in eternity (Matt.16:24-26; 25:24-30; 1Cor.15:45-52; Matt.10:38-42; Isa.57:19-21; Rev.14:9-13). Now, therefore, in the application of this knowledge, are you prepared to stand before God in the judgment with the Advocate as the propitiation of God’s wrath and to avoid the power of the second death (Rev.2:11; 20:6, 14; 21-8), and to appear before Jesus as the Mediator of your soul to be clothed with the new heavens and the new earth as the place that Christ has gone to prepare for those that loved His first appearing (Jn.14:1-6; 2Tim.4:8; 2Pet.3:10-13; Rev.21:1)?

There are suggestions elsewhere in the New Testament of an affirmation of faith made at baptism. 1 Pet. 3:21 is often cited in this connection, but the true meaning of the words συνειδήσεως ἀγαθῆς ἐπερώτημα εἰς θεόν seems to be “the pledge to God of a good conscience.” On the other hand, it is highly probable, as was pointed out in the previous chapter, that St Paul’s remark, “If you confess Jesus as Lord with your mouth, and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from “the dead,” should be referred to baptism: if so, we probably have a fragment of the baptismal confession as well. The actual confession made seems to be overtly mentioned in 1 Tim. 6:12 (τὴν καλὴν ὁμολογίαν), as well as in Hebr. 4:14 (“Let us hold fast our confession—κρατῶμεν τῆς ὁμολογίας”).

 J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, Third Edition. (London; New York: Continuum, 2006), 42.