So, how does the judgement work when one has accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior? Like, we are all sinners and when Jesus returns, he judges us all, believers and non-believers the same. Wait, is the return describing Jesus walking the Earth again or when we die?
It's probably a bit of both. There's some sort of temporary state between now and the Resurrection of the Dead. The Bible doesn't say much about it, except that we'll be with Christ and it will be far better than this. What happens to the unrepentant during that time? It's not clear.
A believer recognizes that Jesus died for our sins.* He accepts Him as his Savior, because otherwise without him, he's in hell. Because hell is the absence of God. Dark, disorderly, without purpose, absence of light, etc.
Thus, he is saved because he has laid his sins on the cross and is washed clean with the blood of Christ. Is part of repentence living in a WWJD way? Because God is perfect, just, truth, light, goodness, etc., we strive to be these things to become closer to Him.
But we are wicked and live in rebellion to Him. We don't really deserve His grace and have amassed a debt that we can never repay. Even living a very nice and decent life isn't enough because no person is without sin. And becoming one with God again can't happen if you're imperfect, like a square peg into a round hole. So Christ takes all of that sin off you so when you die, you can rejoin God?
I wouldn't emphasize sin as a debt, though God's grace is absolutely a free and undeserved gift. In all discussions of atonement, it's surprisingly rare to see the words of the Man himself.
"... just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” - Matthew 20:28
This is right after a discussion on the nature of rulership. This is the ransom theory. It's rather fallen out of favor, and that's a tragedy. In a cosmic exchange, Jesus took the bullet for us. Not the wrath of God, but destructive powers of darkness, human and non-human, that held us in their thrall. God paid this ransom to the powers of evil, not because he owed it to them, but out of overwhelming love for his fallen creation. He took the sin of the world onto him, and exhausted it.
In doing this, he recreated the bridge between God and fallen man, so that we could rejoin that communion, imperfectly in this life, but eventually in full.
So on your day of judgment, which is aftet dying, Jesus reviews your transgressions, regardless of whether he has saved you or not? During this, you'd recognize how you truly don't deserve His mercy due to your sinfiul nature (and likely be blown away in the presence of the Lord, magnifying just how much you really don't deserve His Grace).
But because you have already accepted that He did this for you, He still lets you rejoin Him? Or do you just skip past the transgression review like Jesus is a club bouncer at the pearly Gates letting the homies through without a pat down? Seems more meaningful if the former. I would hope so.
What if you never attempted to be less sinful after the acceptance? Is that even possible with true acceptance that Jesus died for us?
It's hard to say for sure if we have to sit down with our sins on Judgement Day, but there are some Biblical hints that this is probably the case. I also find it interesting, though not definitive, that life reviews are a near universal feature of near death experiences.
But your logic is why I've slowly come to believe in something like purgatory. Not exactly the way the Catholics would articulate it, but if we die in sin (and we do), something has to happen so the unfiltered light of God doesn't simply vaporize us. That would mean we have to be not just forgiven of our sin (God has already done this), but be made clean so we don't sin any more. Maybe that's burned out of us in a single, terrifying instant, but I tend to think it's a more gradual process. Something like the Great Divorce. I suspect that may also be what happens if repentance has been half-hearted, it's just a much harder process.
Ok, so nothing can change anything at the review point for non-believers. Not because God is vengeful or doesn't love us, but because we are the ones who rejected Him. And recognizing Him as our Savior in His Glory now doesn't count because it would essentially be forced? God doesn't want a relationship by force, which is why He gave us free will to choose?
So even if we beg and plead and admit we were sinful, nothing can change now. Not because God wants us to be without Him, but because we have already chosen to disassociate with him by rejecting his love and the mercy he already showed us on the cross. And any desire for a relationship with Jesus in this moment wouldn't be genuine, it would be pure selfishness and forced because God revealed himself to you. He essentially removed your free will at that point.
This has been the general conensus, but I am a heretic on this point. I don't think death is
necessarily the end of the possibility for redemption. It's possible that some people have so completely, thoroughly shut God out by their own actions, they've made themselves unable to ask for forgiveness. I'm not convinced that's true, but it's possible.
However, for the rest of us... why DO we think that death is the end of God's love for the sinner? If this is the God who dies for his creation, the God who leaves behind 99 sheep to find even a single one of the lost, how can we put a limit on his mercy? Whe Paul said that nothing can seprate us from the love of God, he included death in that. Does God only love those who believe in him? Or did he die for every laast human, including sinners?
There is some Biblical basis for this, called the Harrowing of Hell. Catholics add some extra tradition to it, but the core event is Biblical. After his death, Jesus descended into the earth to preach the Gospel to the captives there. It's debated whether that only refers to the righteous dead like Abraham and Moses, but 1 Peter specifically mentions disobedient spirits.
So I have to ask: Are we so sure this only happened once? What if the Good Shepard seeks out his lost sheep every day until the Judgment, or even beyond that?
So many bits of Christianity are such ubiquitous fixtures in our country that I feel it's detrimental for a largely secular person. Like, you develop an understanding of the terms and phrases when young, but without any connection to/understanding of their meaning. God's Triunal nature is extremely confusing and obviously not something humans can relate to.
While I don't think it's wise for a Christian to
deny the Trinity, I suspect God cuts us puny humans some slack on fully understanding this one.
I never understood what Him dying for our sins meant or why it mattered, though knew the phrasing. It just sounded to me like this dude came down and died because we suck. Like he died just because of our sins, not also for them (which was essentially buying our debt we can't repay). It also makes it sound like we're all good regardless of recognition of it, which seems dangerous. Maybe that's why spreading the Gospel is important, haha.
Atonement is hotly debated. Always has been. There are a lot of theories, but I still go with ransom, because that's what Jesus himself said about the topic. The powers of darkness held humanity and all creation hostage, and Jesus offered himself in exchange to set us free.
While there's a possibilty of redemption even in the next life, it's still vitally important in this one. The Christian message isn't about escape into the afterlife, it's that God has come back in person to rescue his creation. God tasks us to begin working toward that now, in this life, and let his will be done on earth as in heaven.
