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The Great Judgment-Day

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 2, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 46.

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The Great Judgment-Day

By Clarence Santee

The Standard That Will Measure the Lives of Men
By Clarence Santee
PERHAPS there are few thinking persons who believe in a God—and all do in some way (John 1:9)—but believe that that God will sometime bring them into judgment. They believe there will be a Judgment-day. Acts 17:31. If they will stop to consider, they will also agree that there must be some basis, or standard, by which this Judgment will be conducted. This is reasonable, as there could be no Judge or Judgment unless there were a standard to govern both.
Some one may say, “Christ is my standard, and His life will stand in the place of my life.” It will if it has been accepted. That life is compared to a “robe of righteousness.” “He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness.” Isa. 61:10. If I have accepted of that robe, then it has covered me. It will thereafter be seen, not my own robe.
That robe is composed of “righteousness.” What is righteousness? The psalmist says, “All Thy commandments are righteousness.” Ps. 119: 172.
From these texts, it will be seen that the robe of righteousness and the life of Christ are the same. Christ said, “I have kept My Father’s commandments.” John 15:10. That was “the life” that was the light of men. John 1:4. If you have accepted the life of Christ, you have accepted a commandment-keeping life. He had no other to give. And He will work in you the same life that He lived here for you.
If His life will atone for our sins in the Judgment, it must be because He obeyed the law that will be the rule of the Judgment. When our names are called in the Judgment, Christ will respond. When our disobedience is pointed out, He will present His obedience. When the life of the transgressor is demanded, He will present His blood. “The blood is the life.” Deut. 12: 23; Lev. 17: 11.
Christ takes our soiled garments of character, and covers us with His spotless robe.
This exchange must be made before our names are called in the Judgment, or it will be too late. Without the “wedding garment,” when the King comes in to see the guests, we will be “speechless.” Matt. 22: 11-13.
John Bunyan tells how “Christian,” on his way to the celestial city, as he entered the narrow way, received a suit of clothes, left for such travelers by the king of the country whither he was going. As he journeyed, two loud, arrogant men came from another way, and began conversation with him. He was not pleased with their boisterous ways, and drew to one side. Upon seeing this, they began to make light of him. They accused him of wearing some other man’s clothing. Meekly he answered that the clothes were not his own, and that they did not fit him as well as might be desired, but that he consoled himself with the thought that when he reached the country to which he journeyed, the king could not deny his own clothes. So he who has accepted the garment left by the King, and has put it on in place of his own, will have no cause to fear. As he faces the King in the Judgment, he can know that the King can not deny His own clothes.
Some one will say: “The law was abolished at the cross. Now we are under the law of Christ.” How much would this change, if true, involve?
In the “American and English Encyclopedia of Law,” page 755, I read:
“When a statute prescribing the punishment for a crime is repealed after such crime has been committed but before final judgment of conviction, though after a verdict of guilty, no punishment can be imposed, because the act must be punishable when judgment is demanded, and authority to render judgment must still reside in the court.”
Again, “American Decisions and Law,” page 596:
“It is well settled that a party can not be convicted after the law under which he may be prosecuted, has been repealed, although the offense may have been committed before the repeal.”
“The repeal of a law imposing a penalty, is of itself a remission of the penalty.”—Page 398.
These legal decisions are strong and just. We will apply them. “The repeal of a law imposing a penalty, is of itself a remission of the penalty.”
This agrees with the scripture, “Where no law is, there is no transgression.” Rom. 4: 15. “Sin is not imputed when there is no law.” Rom. 5: 13.
If the law was repealed, abolished, at the cross, all who lived before, even though the worst of sinners, must be saved; because “the repeal of a law imposing a penalty, is of itself a remission of the penalty.”
Further: Christ died for the transgressions of His Father’s law. If that law was repealed, the repeal itself freed every sinner who had lived before it was repealed, and Christ need not have died. And if we are now living, as some claim, under the “law of Christ,” we have no offering to atone for our transgressions of that law. Therefore as “without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. 9: 22), those living this side of the cross must be lost without mercy or remedy.
No, God does not change. The same law that governed the angelic hosts (Ps. 103: 20), will be the rule in the Judgment. Eccl. 12: 13, 14. Of that law, spoken by God Himself, He says, “My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of My lips.” Ps. 89: 34. “All His commandments are sure. They stand fast forever and ever.” Ps. 111: 7, 8.
God says that He will write His law in the hearts of those who come into the “new covenant” relation with Him. Heb. 10: 16.
That law is a law of love,—love to God and love to men. No wonder that the wise man, when used by the Spirit of God, exclaimed, “In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death.” Prov. 12: 28. We have seen that “all Thy commandments are righteousness”; therefore in the way of His commandments is the path that leads to the city of God, where there shall be no death. And the passport into that city is given in Rev. 22: 14: “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.”