Before we receive our eternal allotment it is proper that we should render our account of the manner in which we have lived, and of the manner in which we have improved our talents and privileges. There is a necessity, or a fitness that we should appear there to give up our account, for we are here on trial: we are responsible moral agents we are placed here to form characters for eternity. This fact, to which Paul now refers, is another reason why it was necessary to lead a holy life, and why Paul gave himself with so much diligence and self-denial to the arduous duties of his office. It is proper, fit, necessary that we should all appear there. Here, as in other truths of the spiritual life-God’s foreknowledge and man’s free-will, God’s election and man’s power to frustrate it, God’s absolute goodness and the permission of pain and evil-the highest truth is presented to us in phases that seem to issue in contradictory conclusions, and we must be content to accept that result as following from the necessary limitations of human knowledge.īarnes' Notes on the BibleFor we must - (δεῖ dei). If we ask how we can reconcile these seeming inconsistencies, the answer is, that we are not wise in attempting to reconcile them by any logical formula or ingenious system. At times, again, he speaks as if sins were washed away by baptism ( 1Corinthians 6:11), or forgiven freely through faith in the atoning blood ( Romans 3:25 Ephesians 2:13) as though the judgment of the great day was anticipated for all who are in Christ by the absence of an accuser able to sustain his charge ( Romans 8:3), by the certainty of a sentence of acquittal ( Romans 8:1). At times his language seems to point to a yet fuller manifestation of the divine mercy as following on that of the divine righteousness, as in Romans 5:17-18 Romans 11:32. Paul’s eschatology here and in 1Corinthians 4:5. The revelation of all that had been secret, for good or evil the perfectly equitable measurement of each element of good or evil the apportionment to each of that which, according to this measurement, each one deserves for the good and evil which he has done: that is the sum and substance of St. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” ( Galatians 6:7) was to him an eternal, unchanging law. Paul to mingle with his expectations of that great day, as revealing the secrets of men’s hearts, awarding to each man according to his works. No formula of justification by faith, or imputed righteousness, or pardon sealed in the blood of Christ, or priestly absolution, is permitted by St. That every one may receive the things done in his body.-It would have seemed almost impossible, but for the perverse ingenuity of the system-builders of theology, to evade the force of this unqualified assertion of the working of the universal law of retribution. Matthew 27:19 Acts 12:21 Acts 18:12.) The word was transferred, when basilicas were turned into churches, to the throne of the bishop, and in classical Greek had been used, not for the judge’s seat, but for the orator’s pulpit. Here the judgment-seat, or bema, is the tribunal of the Roman magistrate, raised high above the level of the basilica, or hall, at the end of which it stood. In the Gospels the imagery of the last judgment is that of a king sitting on his throne ( Matthew 25:31), and the word is the ever-recurring note of the Apocalypse, in which it occurs forty-nine times. The English version, which can only be ascribed to the unintelligent desire of the translators to vary for the sake of variation, besides being weak in itself, hinders the reader from seeing the reference to 1Corinthians 4:5, or even the connection with the “made manifest” in the next verse.īefore the judgment seat of Christ.-The Greek word shows the influence of Roman associations. It may be noted that it is specially characteristic of this Epistle, in which it occurs nine times. The word is the same as that in 1Corinthians 4:5 (“shall make manifest the counsels of the heart”), and is obviously used with reference to it. Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(10) For we must all appear.-Better, must all be made manifest.
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