Judgment

 Just because God hasn’t done something doesn’t mean He won’t. I think it’s because we see God through the prism of flesh and project our own flightiness and short attention span onto Him that some insist God will never judge the ungodly, that they’ve gotten a pass for this or that reason, and that they’ll skate for having sought to damage and destroy the household of faith.

If thinking God has amnesia is the best some can do, then that’s cold comfort indeed. Perhaps it’s just me, but it’s taking a pretty longshot gamble to assume God won’t remember to judge an individual when He keeps His covenant for a thousand generations. We confuse mercy for indifference and patience for forgetfulness. This is why so many are downright shocked when God proceeds with judgment.

Jude 14, “Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”

Yes, Jude references Enoch. Not necessarily the book of Enoch, as some will likely conflate, but Enoch himself, who prophesied about the men Jude was warning the household of faith about. That said, I have nothing against anyone reading the Apocrypha, as long as you allow two minor stipulations. First, before diving headfirst into the Apocrypha, you must know the Bible backward and forward, and second, the Apocrypha cannot at any point supersede the Bible or be deemed a greater authority. Those are the two stipulations; if we adhere to them, I take no umbrage with anyone broadening their knowledge base.

What I do take umbrage with and quite vehemently is someone arguing against what Jesus said with something written in the book of Tobit or the book of Judith. Even at the risk of sounding like a broken record, Jesus is preeminent, His words are preeminent, His counsel is preeminent, and His direction is preeminent.

What should leap from the page isn’t the reference to Enoch but the interconnectedness of the Word of God, wherein, time and again, scripture is used to interpret scripture, and those of the past are brought to mind as examples to undergird the point Jude is trying to get across.

The mention of Enoch aside, there is a discernable theme to the words of Jude, seeing as within this one verse, the term ungodly is used no less than four times. It is self-evident that when God comes with ten thousands of His saints to execute judgment on all, the only metric He will use will be godly and ungodly. That’s it; nothing more. Not what denomination you belonged to, not whether or not you grew out your beard, not whether you were a dog person or a cat person, not even if you wore a wedding band or decided against it. Were you godly? If yes, then you will not suffer the judgment of the ungodly.

Elementary and basic as the following might seem to some, you cannot be godly, possess godliness, or be deemed so without the presence of Christ in your life and without having reconciled yourself unto the Father through the Son.

I understand that theological heavyweights such as Oprah would beg to differ, but Jesus said that no man comes to the Father but by Him. If this is the case, and we know it to be so, and godliness cannot be achieved, and salvation cannot come by any other, then the judgment God will execute with His ten thousands will be broad and sweeping.

It won’t be out of spite or vindictiveness; it won’t be to prove a point; it will be because His righteous judgment demands it, and He said it would be so millennia ago.

Jude insists that those who will be judged will not be a part but the whole. He stresses that judgment will be executed on all, and all who are ungodly will be convicted of all of their ungodly deeds. Neither you nor I determine what ungodliness is, just as it is not you or I who determine what godliness is.

God determines it all, from who is godly to who is ungodly to what the metric of judgment will be. From those who mocked Him, thinking there would be no repercussions, to those who committed ungodly deeds in ungodly ways, choosing to bypass repentance because their sin was more precious to them than the blood of Christ, all will be judged and convicted, not by the ultimate power in the universe, but by the One who spoke the universe into being. That He also happens to be the supreme power in the universe is nothing to scoff at, either.

Given that everyone always wants to remind us how much God loves us, and He does, we tend to forget who God is. We focus so much on His love that we relegate His power, authority, and omnipotence to some far corner of our minds, rarely, if ever, considering these truths.

If men think they can play games with God, they’ve got another thing coming. If men believe that if they obfuscate and pretend long enough, God will be tricked into granting them entrance into heaven, the day His judgment will be executed will be frightening.

If the god you serve is made up of only the attributes, your flesh approves of, like love and mercy, then by definition, you serve a god of your own creation. If you’ve ever had someone quote the Bible to you and your first reaction was to wag your finger and insist that your god would never do that, then perhaps your god wouldn’t, but the God of the Bible would.

The worship of idols is not a new thing, far from it, but the worship of idols while pretending to worship the One True God is a phenomenon only recently encountered.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.