A Question

"What if someone says they don't believe we'll be judged by the Law?"

The Bible makes it clear that there will be a Day of Judgment. The Scriptures warn, “Though hand join in hand [though the whole world says otherwise] the wicked shall not be unpunished…” (Proverbs 11:21). However, there are those who question the standard of judgment--will it be the Ten Commandments--the moral Law? Some say that it will rather be the words of Jesus that will judge mankind. This belief is based on John 12:48: “He that rejects me, and receives not my words, has one that judges him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.”

Humanity will be judged by the words of Jesus, but remember that the Scriptures say that God would “magnify the law and make it honorable” (Isaiah 42:21). This was the essence of the teaching ministry of the Messiah. The religious leaders had twisted the Law and demeaned it so that its original intent was lost. But Jesus magnified it. He showed them that lust was adultery, and that anger without cause violated its holy precepts, etc. He reminded them that not one jot or title of the Law would fail.

When Paul preached on Mars Hill he warned the idolatrous Athenians that God would judge the world “in righteousness.” They had violated the First and Second of the Ten Commandments and he therefore warned then that God was not “graven by art and man’s device.” The “righteousness” of which he spoke is the righteousness which is of the Law: “For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law” (Romans 2:12, italics added). James 2:12 also warns that the moral Law will be the standard of judgment: “So speak, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.”

Those who may be tempted to say that the “law of liberty” isn’t the moral Law but “the law of Christ,” should look at the context. The preceding verse says: “For he that said, Do not commit adultery [7th Commandment], said also, Do not kill [8th Commandment]. Now if you commit no adultery, yet if you kill, you have become a transgressor of the law” (James 2:11).