The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants. (Rev. 11:18)
Judgment is often considered destructive, hurtful, and disparaging. Here, however, judgment is connected to protection, self-guidance, reward, and flourishment. Judgment may be frightening to the ungodly, but a source of comfort to those that love and serve God. We can be encouraged by the truth that God will make the world right again and that injustice will be eradicated. And we can be free knowing that judgment is ultimately God’s work, not ours.
J. R. R. Tolkien once stated, “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
Where might we see God’s judgment as life-giving? How might this perspective bring our hearts to rejoice in the ways of God, even when our flesh might yearn for something else? How does this perspective open our hearts outward, loving God more and our neighbor as ourselves?
Though we deserve God’s wrath, God offers his judgment as a potential gift of restoration and an expression of his love so that we might join him and his kingdom.
Listen to God’s loving correction and await the gift of divine love.
Jeremy Summers is an ordained Wesleyan pastor with a doctorate in spiritual formation. He is passionate about discipleship and church multiplication, and probably drinks too much coffee.
© 2022 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
