Judged By Our Deeds

Jeremiah: 17:9-10 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it? ¹⁰ “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct,  according to what his deeds deserve.”

God does not change.  Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forvermore.  God has always said we will be judged by our deeds.  Jesus did not change that on the cross, He just gave us the means to do righteous deeds by following Him surrendered fully to His strength that comes to us by His grace.  This is the same thing the Apostles wrote about as can be readily discerned if the whole counsel of God is incorporated.  None of the words recorded of God’s are ever contradicted by what an Apostle wrote in the New Testament.

Romans 2:5-8 But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,  who “will render to each one according to his deeds”;  eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality;  but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—indignation and wrath

Many people believe that only a profession of faith in Jesus Christ is required for eternal life.  While such a step is indeed required and must be done first in a genuine walk with God,  there is much more to the Good News than a profession of faith.  We are not saved by faith alone as scripture makes abundantly clear.  Indeed our deeds matter, not as a substitute or replacement to faith, but as a required addition to our faith.  Contrary to what many are taught about salvation, the imputed righteousness of Christ does not cover our evil deeds after we come to faith.  Please see my posts about the Righteousness and Righteousness and the Tools of Grace by clicking these links.  This is a follow-up to an older post of mine called Faith Alone?

We will absolutely positively be judged by our deeds.  We should fear God and walk uprightly in obedience to the commands of the Lord, knowing that we all will face Him in judgment in the future. 

Rev 22:12 “Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what they have DONE.  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.  Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city.  But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie.   Sadly the apostate church loves to hear the lie that their sins do not matter to their salvation.  They take pleasure in their unrighteousness (sin) and believe “the lie” because God has sent upon them the delusion in these last days. 

2 Thess 2:11-12 For this reason, God will send them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie.  Then all who have not believed the truth but have taken pleasure in unrighteousness will be condemned.

Most that believe in faith alone and that our deeds do not matter, are under this delusion sent by God.  God never excuses sin, that is the very reason He sent Jesus and gave us Grace, so we could indeed defeat sin and be sanctified and purified in His presence.  Jesus did not die so we can take pleasure in our sins.   Wake Up Church you are nothing but foolish virgins!.

The law of sowing and reaping applies on judgment day.  Sow evil, reap condemnation.  Sow righteousness, reap the love of Christ.  We won’t be able to say we simply believed in Jesus and get into heaven.  Jesus, the judge will tell us exactly what He said He would tell us in Luke 13:27  “I tell you, I do not know where you are from; DEPART FROM ME, ALL YOU EVILDOERS.’”  It is those that DO EVIL that are turned away, not simply those that don’t believe.  Let’s consider what else Jesus said about the second coming and His judgment of the world at the end of the age.

Rev 20:12-13 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had DONE as recorded in the books.  The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and everyone was judged according to what they had DONE. 

Rev 14:11-14 And the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever. There will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name.”  This calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God who keep his commands and remain faithful to Jesus.  Then I heard a voice from heaven say, “Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.”  “Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”   

John 3:19-21 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.  All those who do evil hate the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.  But those who live by the truth come into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

Here is the crux of this debate if you want to call it a debate, the cherry picking of bible passages to support a lie of Satan.   All the verses that speak about us not being judged or condemned if we “believe” in Jesus do not contradict the fact that we will ALL be judged for our deeds.  Most have been taught that the “belief” verses, ones like John 5:24, Romans 8:1, John 3:16, Romans 10:8-9, Joel 2:32, Ephesians 2:8-9; trump all the other passages that speak of judgment and our entrance into the kingdom of God.   The mistake is that when the words “believe” or “call upon the name of the Lord” are used, these words in the original Greek or Hebrew imply a much deeper heart driven surrender and compliance to live for Jesus than how we use the term “believe” today.  We have to apply context and the whole counsel of God.  Let’s look at some of these passages cited to teach the errors of Eternal Security,  OSAS, or a “rewards only”  judgment; an error that is leading many down the broad path to destruction along with the unbelieving. 

Jn 5:24 “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.  If we took this verse by itself it would appear there is no judgment for those that believe in Jesus.  But read a few more verses and we see this:

John 5:26-29 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.  And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. ”Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice  and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.  This provides more detail and appears to contradict the prior passage, but it does not, since the WORD in infallible.  The correct context is that once we come to a saving faith, through our belief, we will practice righteousness (opposite of evil doer) and be declared righteous at our judgment because we would have done what is good. 

Remember, this was directed as a warning to “believers”, people professing Jesus as Lord. 

Rev 3:1-3 These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.  Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God.  Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.  These words were spoken by Jesus to those that BELIEVED, that called him Lord yet Jesus made clear they needed to repent and turn from their evil ways.  If all sin was already paid for and there was no condemnation for those that believed in Jesus, He didn’t need to say this.

Rev 3:15-19 I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot.  So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked……Therefore be zealous and repent.  A lukewarm Christian is one that believes but has no deeds to confirm that profession of faith.  We cannot sit in the balcony of Christendom resting on a false assurance of salvation because we said a prayer on time.  Do this and we will be vomited out which means being denied entry into the kingdom God.

Rev 2:23 I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.  Again Jesus tells us we will be repaid for our deeds, he knows our heart.  If we come to faith yet continue to practice evil, and do not repent and be sanctified, we will perish.    We should indeed fear God and obey his commandments, which Solomon told us was the whole duty of man (Ecc 12:23).   Obeying and Doing are very much a critical part of our walk.  To finish the race, we started with our faith, we must endure to then end with not only our faith but our deeds. 

There are many warning that Jesus and the Apostles wrote to ensure we would not be deceived about His judgment of us on the last day.

Romans 2:13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.

Romans 8:13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

Gal 6:7-9 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. People reap what they sow.  Those who sow to please their sinful nature, from that nature  will reap destruction; those who sow to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.

2 Thess 1:7-9 This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels.  He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.  They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might

1 John 3:7 Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous;

 2 Cor 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive what is due them for the things DONE while in the body, whether good or bad.

Matthew 16:27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward everyone according to what they have DONE.

Col 3:23 Those who do wrong will be repaid for their wrongs, and there is no favoritism

Here are a few of the most stark and chilling passages about living a lie about our judgment:

Hebrews 10:26-31 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left,  but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.  Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.  How much more severely do you think those deserve to be punished who have trampled the Son of God underfoot, who have treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who have insulted the Spirit of grace?  For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,”  and again, “The Lord will judge his people.”  It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. The Lord will judge HIS PEOPLE, those that believe in Him shall be judged and we are clearly shown our deeds are critically important.  Following is a verse that directly refutes OSAS and Eternal Security teaching but also reminds us that we will all be held to account and judged by our deeds and that simply believing that Jesus is Lord is woefully insufficient to enter the kingdom of God.

Hebrews 6:4-8 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit,  who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age  and who have fallen  away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.  Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God.  But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.  Once we are Born Again and truly have the Spirit of God in us,  we are to be DONE WITH SIN.  Thankfully we have repentance but we are told we will be known by our fruits.  Are you producing good fruit or are you producing the thorns and thistles spoken about in this passage?  Those that produce thorns and thistles in the end are burned!

James 2:1 4-26 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if people claim to have faith but have no deeds? Can such faith save them?  Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?  In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.  But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”    Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.  You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.  As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.  This passage in James, should by itself put to rest the idea that a simple believe if Jesus is all we need to “finish the race”.  James openly mocks such thinking by comparing that thinking to what demons think, and they clearly are not going to enter life with the Lord.

2 Peter 2:4-10 For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment;  and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly;  and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly;  and delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked —  then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment,  and especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority.   We can obey Jesus.  Peter tells us right here.  God will not spare us from our evil deeds.  It should never come to this if we are a true Christian that is Born Again.  If we are truly Born Again we will not keep on sinning.  If we keep on sinning, call ourselves a Christian, the Apostle John told us we are a liar and the truth is not in us.

THE REALLY GOOD NEWS: I  have some very good news for us.  Even if we have been phony Christians to date, God through his mercy and grace has provided us a path towards reconciliation.  I am always reminded of the story of Jonah and the Ninevites.  The Ninevites listened to the warnings of pending judgment and repented.   We have the same opportunity to repent now, before He comes again or before we he takes us from this earth, but the choice of life or death is ours to make.

Jonah 3:10  When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.  We have a merciful God, He wishes that nobody shall perish, and even if we DO or have DONE evil things, He in His love for us, provides us repentance as part of his provision of grace.  If we exercise sincerely and TURN from our sins, we are cleansed and made pure and his judgment will be cancelled.  That is what happened here to to Ninevites.  Jonah preached to them as the Lord spoke, the King got it, and proclaimed a fast and that all evil be turned from.  God relented and did not bring the promised destruction upon them.  We have the same opportunity.  But time is short.  When the trumpet of God sounds, it is too late.  If He requires our soul early through an accident or disease,  it is too late.  We must be ready always. 

You must cling to your faith always and not allow yourself to be shipwrecked by false teachings.  Faith is the foundation of your walk with God.  Without faith, nobody can please God.  But you cannot be deceived by the false teachers of Grace any longer.  If you are practicing sin, not earnestly seeking to obey the commands of Jesus and you think you are saved, I believe the verses shown and discussed above should give you ample reason to reconsider your position.  Perhaps you have believed a lie, one that you have heard hundreds of times, maybe thousands of times from messengers of Satan disguised as angels of light.  The lie that your sin doesn’t matter to your salvation and that you are saved by faith alone is indeed a strategy of Satan proved successful in ensnaring Adam and Eve into the first sin.    Your deeds do indeed matter and if you have no righteous deeds, have nonexistent or spotty obedience to the commands of Jesus, you are not saved my friend.   

If you don’t feel guilt when you sin.  ALERT ALERT.  That is the role of the Holy Spirit to convict you of your sin, to bring you towards repentance.  If you don’t feel that, I question whether you have the spirit. Paul tells us in Romans 8:9 But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.  We clearly are not to remain in guilt, the feelings of guilt are to call us to repentance.  To confess our sins, repent and turn away from it.  This is the process of sanctification.

I have heard many a false teacher tell us that we should have no guilt about our sin.  That is a perversion of God’s word.  It is true that once your sins have been confessed and repented of, they are forgiven and one should not remain guilty as the sin is remembered no more by God.  But God purposefully gives us the feelings of GUILT so that we will know we have sinned and draw us towards repentance.   Jesus told us in Luke 13:3 I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.  Thank God for the Spirit and the guilt we feel for our sins, it is part of His love for us to bring us into his kingdom.

Many falsely accuse me of following a works salvation.  I don’t believe that or preach that at all; as without the call of God I would have never come to a saving faith.  God showed me mercy, he rained His grace upon me.  I finally reached a point in my life that somebody or something that God sent my way, brought me towards repentance.  Once I repented, my eyes were opened and my true walk began.  Jesus is the author and finisher of our salvation.  We cannot save ourselves but this does not relieve us of our command to OBEY Him.    Jesus told us that only those that do the will of His father in Heaven would enter the kingdom of God.  The will of His Father is that we are sanctified (1 Thess 4:3) and that we listen to His Son (Mark 9:7). 

If we are truly following Jesus we will be like His sheep.  We will know him and hear His voice and follow His guidance.  Jesus described in detail the costs we would have to pay to follow Him, to deny ourselves and to endure suffering and that it was not for the faint of heart.  Paul told us the same in his teachings on crucifying our flesh and picking up our cross daily.  Peter spoke at length about our need to suffer and the difficulty of being saved.  To chunk it all up, following Jesus means to OBEY HIS COMMANDMENTS.  If we don’t obey, we are not following Him.  We deceive ourselves about our faith and our salvation.  I pray that many will wake up to the deception that is prevalent among many Christians and many churches.  

The nugget of wisdom that God has revealed to me relates to what GRACE really encompasses.  GRACE  and all that it entails (mercy, forgiveness, repentance, desire to obey, fear of God, guidance by His spirit) is the enabler of our salvation.  This is how the works of the devil are defeated, thru Grace.  We have aimed way too low in God’s eyes.  Paul told us to AIM FOR PERFECTION.  If we are falsely taught that we cannot obey, the gospel is being taught in error.  Grace is the power given by God to obey his commandments and to call us to repentance when we do stumble.  This is how we stay on the narrow and difficult path to life.  We are saved by Grace through our faith.  Any gospel that teaches that we cannot obey or that we don’t have to obey the commandments of Jesus is a false gospel.  These are the teachings we are warned about and repeatedly told not to be deceived by them.

Titus 2:11-13  For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men,  teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age,  looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,  who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works.

Jesus is coming soon for a pure and spotless bride.  He will judge the living and the dead by their deeds (whether or not they obeyed Him) to determine who goes into heaven.  I exhort you to examine your walk, ask the Holy Spirit to guide you in all truth, to show you where you are disobeying and what you need to repent of.  Once He shows you, repent, mourn/weep over this sin, ask the Lord to give you strength to overcome it.  You can indeed do ALL things, even obey, if you trust and walk fully with the Lord.  He will answer our prayers and our cries for help, but we must sincerely seek him and His righteousness first in our lives.  We cannot continue to play religion and worship Him with our lips but not our actions.  Jesus told us this was vain worship and was doctrines of men, not of God.

Mark 7:7 This people honors Me with their lips,  But their heart is far from Me.  And in vain they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. 

Jesus told us in the great commission (Mat 28:20) to teach everyone to OBEY ALL that He has commanded.  That is what I am doing and I apologize to nobody for honoring His command.

MAY GOD BLESS YOU RICHLY!