Judgment assumes a measuring standard. My wife and I had Pennsylvania driver’s licenses when we moved to North Dakota. The state required a test to get a North Dakota driver’s license.
We were driving a red Volkswagen Beetle. The examining officer was unusually tall and had trouble fitting the passenger’s seat. He asked me to drive down the road. After less than a mile he directed me to return to our starting point where my wife was waiting to take the same test.
Before he signed to approve the road portion of my driver’s license, he mumbled about the car being a death trap. He approved my wife’s road test without her ever getting into the car! The standard for passing the test that day was low!
On the other hand, my tenth-grade teacher’s punctuation tests were hard, and the standard to pass them was extremely high. She gave ten sentences to punctuate. She marked the whole sentence wrong for any mistake. I got a 20 percent on her test. On the retest, virtually the entire class got a mark of 0 percent!
The standards for passing God’s righteousness test are impossibly high and ridiculously easy. How so? It is the difference between earned righteousness and credited righteousness.
The earned righteousness standard is infinitely higher than my tenth-grade teacher’s punctuation tests. God’s character is the standard. “He is the Rock; his deeds are perfect. Everything he does is just and fair. He is a faithful God who does no wrong” (Deuteronomy 32:4 NLT).
To fellowship with Him as an equal, we must be similarly perfect. Everything we do must be just and fair. We must be as faithful as He is and do no wrong. One misstep on our part and God marks our whole lives as failures.
We are guilty of multiple errors daily. We live in a land of continual moral failure and zero righteousness when deeds and motives are considered. We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s exalted standard (Romans 3:23). The just penalty is death (Romans 6:23).
The righteousness of the Son of God is the same as the Father’s. “But to the Son he says, ‘Your throne, O God, endures forever and ever. You rule with a scepter of justice. You love justice and hate evil. Therefore, O God, your God has anointed you, pouring out the oil of joy on you more than on anyone else’” (Hebrews 1:8–9 NLT).
How God judges is our choice. Attaining God’s righteousness standard can be ridiculously easy. Jesus told us to repent and believe the good news (Mark 1:15). The good news is that Jesus came to earth to seek and save lost people whose righteousness and justice are deficient.
To be saved, we must turn from living for ourselves to living for Jesus. We must trust in His death on the cross as our substitute. He, the just, died to pay the penalty for the unjust (1 Peter 3:18).
When we receive this undeserved gift of God, our sins are forgiven, and we have eternal life (John 3:16). Jesus’ righteousness is credited to us (2 Corinthians 5:21). We become new people (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Our highest value should become doing what God wants. Because it isn’t always, we do that to different degrees—some of us do it better than others. God notices and will reward us accordingly.
Jesus will judge both unbelievers and believers based on their earthly deeds. He will judge unbelievers at the Great White Throne Judgment (John 5:22, 27; Romans 2:16, Acts 10:42; Revelation 20:11–15). He has recorded everything they have ever done in His books (Revelation 20:12). He will settle all accounts and give them what their deeds deserve.
Because they didn’t believe in Him on earth, they are already condemned (John 3:18). They didn’t value doing what God wanted during their earthly lives. They hid from God’s light (John 3:19). All of them will be punished in the lake of fire, some more than others, based on what their evil works deserve (Romans 2:6).
At the Judgment Seat of Christ, Jesus will judge the recorded works of believers to determine just rewards (Romans 14:10–12; 1 Corinthians 3:12–15). He will reward believers to the degree they did what He wanted.
As there will be degrees of punishment, there will be varying rewards based on how faithfully believers used their spiritual gifts to advance God’s Kingdom and bore spiritual fruit by abiding in Jesus (John 15:5, 8). God judges based on how well we did His will. See additional free spiritual growth resources for Christians.
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