Class Notes: 12/18/2022

The book of Romans part 99; Rom 2:5; The doctrine of judgment

https://youtu.be/tfv-doTCAUM

In our verse-by-verse study of Romans we finished Rom 2:5. Our expanded translation is "Because of your hardness and unrepentant heart, you store up and accumulate for yourself wrath against the day of wrath, even disclosure of just judgment from the God."

The words translated heart, hardness, unrepentant, and judgment in this verse brought up some categorical doctrines to look at and last time we finished the doctrine of unrepentance by looking at the word repentance.

This brings us to the word "judgment" that describes the destiny of all unbelievers. Rom 2:5."Because of your hardness and unrepentant heart, you store up and accumulate for yourself wrath against the day of wrath, even disclosure of just judgment from the God."

The last judgment is the alternative to salvation. This judgment is the expression of God's perfect righteousness and justice from His perfect holiness. God is perfect in His righteousness and perfect in His justice. God has found a way in time to keep His righteousness and justice from being compromised through imputation and propitiation.

God must judge unrighteousness so God must judge the unbeliever in eternity because they do not possess God's righteousness. If He doesn't then He would compromise His perfect holiness. Judgment on the cross propitiates the Father and the last judgment preserves the Father's holiness.

Everyone who rejects Christ as savior is included in this last judgment, it is the culminating judgment of history in which the unbelievers of the human race are judged and sentenced to the lake of fire forever. It is called the second death, the great white throne, and the last judgment.

In the final analysis there are only two categories of people in the human race. They are described in John 3:36, "He who believes in the Son has eternal life": believers in the Lord Jesus Christ; but, "he who does not believe in the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him":

Those who believe in Jesus are given God's righteousness but those who refuse to believe refuse to acquire God's righteousness so God's abiding wrath must perpetually remain on those who refused to acquire His righteousness so that God can keep the perfect righteousness and justice of his perfect holiness intact.

In the last judgment the unbeliever is under indictment. The unbeliever's indictment is based on their rejection of Jesus Christ as savior. "He who believes in him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the uniquely born Son of God."

John 16:9; also tells us that it is the unbeliever who is under indictment "Concerning sin because they believe not on me." They have rejected the propitiation of the cross.

Rev 20:15; "Therefore if anyone was found not written in the book of life he was cast into the lake of fire." The book of life in eternity was a registry of all people and when one dies without accepting Jesus their name is blotted out.

So that in eternity at the last judgment the book of life only has the names of believers left written in it. Rom 8:1; tells us that the believer in Jesus is not involved in the last judgment.

Everyone has one appointment with God but the unbeliever has a second appointment with God. The first is with the sovereignty of God that decides when each person will die physically and be removed from the earth.

The second appointment for unbelievers only is judgment "It is appointed unto man once to die, after that the judgment" Heb 9:27,28;

The second appointment to judgment occurs with the second resurrection when God resurrects all unbelievers at the end of the Millennium, after the Gog revolution. John 5:24-29;

Resurrected unbelievers are condemned on the basis of their human good deeds at the last judgment. Rev 20:12,13; they are judged from the books according to their good deeds.

The issue is a very simple when Jesus was on the cross their sins, their bad deeds, were poured out upon Jesus and judged but their good deeds, the human good production or the old sin nature was rejected.

God judges and condemns all of the production of the old sin nature both good and bed because it is all evil. The sins were judged but the human good: rejected. For those who reject Jesus Christ as savior they have their human good deeds recorded in a book.

At the last judgment no sins are mentioned because under the law of double jeopardy, a person can't be judged twice for the same offense, therefore no sins will be mentioned at the last judgment only the good deeds will be mentioned.

Their good deeds will be the basis for their indictment and judgment. Everyone who is there has rejected Christ as savior, therefore they are under indictment. Having rejected Christ as savior they have rejected the cross. But their sins were judged at the cross.

All Human good was rejected at the cross and their human good was written in a book that is brought up before them to demonstrate that when all their human good added up it amounts to relative righteousness that cannot have fellowship with perfect righteousness.

If God accepts any relative righteousness into heaven He compromises His perfect righteousness God is no longer perfect, satan wins his appeal and there is no salvation for anyone.

The unbelievers stand there at the last judgment without God's perfect imputed righteousness they only have only their own good deeds that were performed in the energy of the old sin nature.

Their own self-righteousness is brought up, judged to be insufficient, and they are cast into the lake of fire for eternity, and God's righteousness is not compromised.

The eternal status of the unbeliever is described as being in the lake of fire. Matt 25:41; Rev 20:14,15. A second description of the unbeliever in eternity is the second death. Rev 20:14; and a third is "dying in your sins" John 8: 21a,24.

This brings us back to our verse-by-verse study of Romans; where we will back up into verse 5 to get back into the stream.

Rom 2:5. Our expanded translation is "Because of your hardness and unrepentant heart, you store up and accumulate for yourself wrath against the day of wrath, even disclosure of just judgment from the God."

Rom 2:6; "Who" is the relative pronoun "hos" that refers to the presiding judge of the supreme court of heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge all unbelievers at the last judgment, John 5:22; Rev 20:12.
This verse is a quotation from Psalm 62:12; and Prov 24:12.

"will pay" is translated from the future active indicative from the verb "apodidomi," that means to pay back, to return, or to recompense. The verb refers to God's assessment of the unbeliever at the great white throne.

The future tense is a predictive future denoting something that will occur at a future time. The active voice tells us that Jesus Christ is the subject who produces the action of judging the unbeliever. The indicative mood expresses a declarative statement regarding the historical reality of the last judgment.

"to each" is a dative singular indirect object that refers to an advantage or a disadvantage from the adjective "ekastos", used here as a substantive and it means "to each" referring to each and every unbeliever.

In this case it refers to the huge disadvantage that it is to be an unbeliever. The adjective is used as the substantive specifically refers to the self-righteous unbeliever who because of their self-righteous arrogance is very confident that they will go to heaven because they have done very many good things in their life.

"according to his deeds" is the preposition "kata" plus the accusative plural of "ergon" that means works, deeds or production, plus the possessive genitive singular from the intensive pronoun "autos" referring to each individual.

God records every good deed produced by the unbeliever. They are all recorded in the books of good deeds, all of them are mentioned at the last judgment, all of them are examined thoroughly but all together they will still only add up to relative righteousness.

Therefore God's perfect righteousness tells God's justice to condemn to the lake of fire forever all of the accumulated human good along with the unbeliever who produced them.

Expanded Translation" Rom 2:6; "(Jesus Christ) who will render judgment to each one according to his works."

Note that sins are not mentioned in any of the passages that describe the last judgment. According to the doctrine of unlimited atonement all sins were judged in Jesus on at the cross so they are never mentioned.

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