Indeed, many today consider the very idea of judgment a great stumbling block. And so, the Last Judgment of Christ and sin itself have been greatly subjectified according to modern, cultural standards. But here’s the truth we affirm as Orthodox: without a correct understanding of sin and judgment, there’s no Christianity, no healing, no salvation, no life with God. We affirm in the Creed, “Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead….”
So, where’s God’s love in all this judgment, we may ask? The truth is that God’s love and His judgment are not incongruous paradoxes of God’s nature. Rather, they go hand in hand. God created us with a choice, with the opportunity for love and glory through life, koinonia with Him or rejection of that life. In His love, God created us for adoption as His children, co-heirs with Christ. He created us to be glorified even as we glorify Him. He enables us to participate in His divine life, in the relationship of unity and love that God the Holy Trinity is in His essence.
God in His great love and mercy toward us desires our salvation more than anything else. His divine will is clearly revealed in the Holy Scriptures: God “desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (I Tim. 2:4) through the life of Christ, Who, as the Logos (Word) of God, has been revealed as that Truth. Yes, the Truth is a Person, the God-man, Jesus Christ. No surprise then that the next verse in I Timothy says, “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus…”
God invites us into a communion (koinonia) with Him through His Son, Jesus Christ, that we too may “put on Christ” in the language we heard today in the ancient service of Holy Baptism: “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ,” in the words of St. Paul, “ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). In Christ, we become fellow victors with Him and all the Saints over sin and death. God has made a way for us to grow in holiness and thereby to participate in the life that He alone is—to live and not to die, by becoming inheritors of new life in Him, part of the spiritual race of the new Adam He’s created.
In Christ there are no “haves” and “have-nots.” God calls us all to glory through our healing and repentance; in other words, through correct judgment of what sin is and its consequences in regard to our life with God, life itself. We see in the Saints around us that growth in love and relationship with God is possible. But so too, we see in our world, in our “yes!” to sin, the possibility of rejecting that love, that life that God so graciously entrusts to us.
And this is where judgment comes in. Love can, by definition, never be forced upon anyone. Servitude is not love. Likewise, relationship, communion, is a participation. When we talk of the Final or Last Judgment, we’re acknowledging that God’s judgment is happening even now. Judgment began when God in His love for man rejected our first parent’s separation from life, love, and relationship with Him in their disobedience. He acknowledged their choice of death and its sad consequences. But through His Christ, He made a way that we would not remain in perpetual alienation from Him, from Life.
God, in His love for us, doesn’t leave us in sin and death. He repeatedly calls us back from sin and death to life with Him. He entered into human nature so He could renew that nature, fill us with new life, seal us with the Holy Spirit, as little Emiliane has this day, and enable our repentance and growth in His divine love and life, further up and further in the Kingdom of God.
At the present, before His glorious and fearful Second Coming, it is we who must, in a sense, judge ourselves through our choices for or against God. This doesn’t mean that we make it up as we go along: All such relativism and subjectivism of our sins, leads to fantasy, delusion, and our own prideful self-condemnation and willful separation from life with God and His holiness.
No, when we speak of judging ourselves, we mean that our pilgrimage of life with God is dynamic and active, we are repenting, we are bringing our sins before God in regular confession, we are praying for God’s mercy on us sinners, we are seeking His healing from our sin-sickness, we are confessing our negligence of our divine calling of adoption, we are repenting of our inaction towards our church, our neighbors, those in need of God’s truth.
This judgment of ourselves we do so that, come the fearful Last Judgment of Christ, we may be then spared from separation from Him, from Life. The Ikos of Canticle Six from Matins for this Sunday puts it this way, “O Lord supreme in love, as I think upon Thy fearful judgment-seat and the day of Judgment, I tremble and am full of fear, for I am accused by my own conscience.“
As we practice active repentance, we’re saved from condemnation at Christ’s dread Judgment Seat. At the same time, Christ in His mercy heals us of our sin-sickness, grows into the men and women of God He’s called us to be. By this mercy, we come to enjoy the blessed life with God, the filling of that void within us that only God is meant to fill and that only God can fill.
Back to the question about love: What we really need to ask is not how God can judge; He’s holy, He created us, He is the Author of life and love: of course He can judge us. How else would we ever understand these vital concepts? What we need to ask is: How is it love if we refrain from responding to God’s mercy? How is it love, if we look sin in the eye and don’t address it in our own lives when we know it’s incompatible with life with God? Or, how is it love, if we refrain from speaking the truth with others with given the opportunity? We can do so without judging them, as that is God’s place, but if we don’t understand sin’s consequences, or, if we subjectively decide that we can define sin ourselves, then we’re keeping ourselves and others from the very freedom from sin that leads to our and their healing, salvation, and eternal life with God. In short, denial of the reality of the Last Judgment, of the terrible consequences of sin, is a rejection of life itself and the possibility of glory. And that, is no love.
Now the season is upon us to take Christ’s words to heart and apply this teaching to our daily lives. Now is the time for us to purge the passions and sin from our lives, as we continue to struggle and grow to love and serve Him, His Church, and our fellow man. If we are to make the most of this holy season, we prepare ourselves, our families, our home life now so that we are ready to go into the desert with Christ during the 40 plus days of our Lenten journey with Him. Now is the time to prioritize Christ and His Church on our calendars. Now is the time, to become open to productive self-evaluation and judgment so that we can ask God for help in changing our ways to become the men and women of God He so lovingly desires for us to be.
We keep in remembrance the Last Judgment, judging ourselves in light of the Gospel and the revealed life of Christ through His holy Church, so that we may address the sin in our lives, confess it and find healing for our souls, participating more and more in the life of the Holy Trinity, that, on the Last Day, we may hear the words of Christ: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you.”
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday, 10 March 2013
Sunday of the Last Judgment
Epistle: I Corinthians 8:8-9:2
Gospel: Matthew 25:31-46
