PRESENT CONFESSION OF SINS AND THE JUDGMENT-SEAT

PRESENT CONFESSION OF SINS AND THE JUDGMENT-SEAT

The answer to your question about our sins now confessed being brought before the judgment-seat of Christ, is, I apprehend, that they will be brought out there. Our confessing them now shows that we are in the light partially, which then fully will lay all bare. Our forgiveness now - that is, our sense of it and consequent rest of spirit, is according to our confession, the depth and sincerity of it. But in that day not only is the sin set forth, in order to show the grace of God, but also to make manifest to us how we have missed our own blessing by our waywardness. Now, the more comprehensive our confession, the more full and blessed our sense of forgiveness, and of the righteousness of God in which He can forgive us, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. In that day it is not for forgiveness at all, but to display to us His holiness and grace. Everything is brought out: it is not judicial but declarative; we are manifested before the throne of Christ; the whole history of His grace toward us is set forth, and the whole of our conduct also. What we ^[p. 61] may not have understood therefore in our history is now explained; and where we have failed to see our own conduct in its true light, as seen by Him, and therefore with only partial confession; or where it has not been seen at all, and therefore with no distinct confession - for sometimes I suppose we get, if I may say, a general indemnity from the Lord, when the heart does not condemn. We reach Him by faith; but I am sure there is not full power or full nearness to Him, except as there is a conscientious repudiation of the works of the flesh which would cause distance between Him and us, and which He, by His word addressed to us, would wash away. There is a difference between the forgiveness which gives rest to the conscience, and the washing and wiping of the feet which assures the heart that there is not a shade of distance between the Lord and it. Peter exemplifies this when he sees the Lord after His resurrection. His conscience is relieved by it, but it is not until after the dinner (John 21), the moment of social nearness, and the subsequent converse with Him, that Peter is restored to full confidence, and all sense of distance removed.

At the judgment-seat all comes out in its history; and it is both wonderful and necessary in order to present to us a full account of the way and manner of God’s grace; and also His holiness, in letting us suffer loss when we have slighted it by walking in the flesh, and not in the Spirit of Christ in which, in His grace, He had set us.