"God Weighs Nations in the Balance"
Judgment isn’t a topic most people want to talk about, but as Christian Union founder and CEO Matt Bennett argues on these two episodes of Forerunners of America INSIGHTS, it isn’t something we can afford to overlook. In light of the challenging past couple of years, many believers think they are being winsome by offering a watered-down gospel that shies away from the tough but beautiful reality of a just God. Yet, it is precisely God’s perfect justice and righteous judgment that our world and our culture are hungering after but attempting to find apart from Christ.
Judgment is a theme we see throughout the entirety of Scripture, but many believers might be surprised to know that there are five different kinds of judgment from God: the judgment of the separation of the righteous from the wicked, the believer's judgment, church judgment, national judgment, and global judgment. In spite of our desire to look in the other direction, the existence of such judgments should, as host Dave Warn says, pose for each of us something of an existential threat. If we hold God’s Word to be just that—His revealed, infallible, and divine word to all creation, we all must reckon with the coming judgment that we each will face one day.
Though many are familiar with judgment that is for non-Christians, the more uncomfortable judgments we hear about in scripture are for believers as well as the church. 1 Corinthians 3 provides language to the reality that we will each stand before God to give account for all of our deeds. Though in Christ we need not fear eternal punishment, according to this scripture, we will receive greater or lesser rewards for our actions, compelling us, as Bennett argues, to consider the eternal consequences of our daily devotion and decisions today.
Christian Union is committed to teaching the full breadth of Scripture for exactly the reasons this podcast illuminates: following Christ is a full-life decision that must be taken seriously. All too often Christians settle for much less than what we are called to in the Bible through the work of Christ and by the empowerment of His Spirit. Christian Union wants to call Christians onward and upward in the daily apprenticeship of following Jesus, our Forerunner and King.
Matt Bennett Interview on Forerunners of America INSIGHTS:
Link to Part One
Link to Part Two
Listen to the conversation here.
