John Bevere - How Jesus Investigates Our Lives

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Back to the point, Paul is only writing to Christians here. Now look at what he says in the next verse: "Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well-pleasing to Him." I remember when my boys were teenagers; they were all sitting around the table one night, and I made the statement, "Hey guys, let me tell you something: you can never do one thing to make your mom and I love you any more than we love you." I said, "Let me tell you something else: you can never do anything to make us love you any less than we love you." You could see them revel in that, right?

I let them think about it for a second, and then I said, "But you are in charge of how pleased we are with you. You can never do one thing to make God love you any more than He loves you, and you can never do anything to make Him love you any less. He loves you, but we are in charge of how pleased He is with us." That's why Paul said, "My goal is not just to be pleasing, but well-pleasing." Why? For we—now remember, we here are only Christians—"must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad." Come on, church, let me hear from you! Or bad? He's talking to Christians here. Every one of us is going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

Okay, now listen carefully, because this is really important: what I'm about to say. At that judgment, we will not be judged for our sins. If I say, "Thank God for that!" Why? Because our sins have been eradicated by the blood of Jesus. We will be judged on how we lived this life as believers. Now, whenever you say the word "judgment" to Christians, they check out because you know where their mind goes—it goes to condemnation.

If you look at the Greek word for judgment, it is the Greek word "krima." Ninety percent of the time that appears in the New Testament in regard to Christians, this is what it means. This is the root word; this is the definition of "krima": a decision resulting from an investigation. That's what the word judgment means when it talks about Christians. So Jesus is going to do an investigation of all our lives as Christians, okay? In that investigation, He's not only going to examine our works—not only going to examine our words—but our motives and our intentions.

First Corinthians 4:5 says, "Hey, don't judge anything before the time until Jesus comes," and He reveals our darkest secrets and brings our private motives to light. Right? Then he says, "Then God will give each one whatever praise is due." The sinners will not get any praise from God. Paul cannot be talking about the sinners' judgment. He's talking about the Christians' judgment. There sure is quiet right now in our Methodist Church here. Now, He's going to do an investigation on our lives, and remember, as a result of that investigation, He's going to make decisions over us. Because remember, the word judgment means decisions. Now, Hebrews chapter 6 tells us that those decisions He's going to make are called eternal judgments or eternal decisions.

So you know what that means? There are never going to be any changes to the decisions, any revisions, any alterations. They're going to stand forever. You know what the Bible tells us? The decisions He makes over us, as a result of those decisions, we're going to receive rewards or we're going to suffer losses. And the Bible's very clear: the rewards that we can receive and the losses we can suffer range from ruling and reigning beside Christ forever and ever—can you imagine being on His board, talking about how this galaxy is going to be developed?—all the way to having everything we did burned up. The former would be the full reward; the latter would be no reward, while everything else is a partial reward. Are you with me? So you know what this tells me? What we do with the Cross does indeed determine where we're going to spend eternity—heaven or hell. We all know that as Christians. However, the way we live as believers determines how we're going to spend eternity.