Who Gets to Judge?
Romans 14:10-12 · Mike Doyle · May 11, 2025
Romans (2022-25), No. 122
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926193924329

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

If you look at the verses that we have today, I entitled it, I had another title in mind, but it was too funny. My title is Who Gets to Judge? The title I was thinking about, Here Come the Judge. If you, who do you, but you, who do you judge? Why do you judge your brother? Or again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we all shall stand before the judgment seat of God. You is in, from a Greek standpoint, it's in the emphatic positions. So the focus is, hey you, pay attention. But as for you, in contrast to the Lord, it's you the believer.

Why do you, the weaker brother, judge your brother, your Christian brother? Why do you weaker brothers do that? Those, you know, the weaker brothers we found out last week were the ones that have all the rules about meeting days and all that kind of stuff. In the face of our common responsibility to him, how dare we judge each other?

Denny, it was a comment from Denny. So the phrase your brother is another reason for not judging. You see that connection? Just because he's your brother is a reason not to judge him. It's inconsistent with the recognition of the brotherhood of all believers.

So that kind of sets us up where we're gonna go today. You again, regard. The first question was to the weak and scrupulous Christian, you again. And the second question is addressed to the strong believer, and I call them free thinkers, because they do use their brains. And the word regard, It implies a disposition of severe, critical, and condemnatory thought process. And the contempt are never anything but sins, not to be practiced, but shunned.

And why? Because you're all gonna be, we all shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Now, this is where I have always thought that, boy, the Bema Judgment is a place where I'm gonna get rewarded, that's a good thing, but I'm also gonna be exposed, and that's not a good thing. It seems like that way. The best Greek texts have the judgment seat of God, not of Christ. The same author explains, we cannot suppose that by of God here, Paul means Christ and his divine nature.

The true way to mediate between the two expressions is seen in Romans 2.16, that says, on the day when according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men's hearts, the secrets of men through Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus. He's talking about all believers.

But Acts 17.31 says, because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom he has appointed, obviously that man is Jesus Christ, having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead. So what gives the authority to the Lord Jesus to judge he was raised from the dead? So when we believers stand at that platform, and it should be part of our spiritual environment always. This is one of those things that should be somewhere in your thinking a lot.

No one's gonna look at his brother with censorship or contempt. You might, and I must admit that being judgmental is one of my biggest problems. I struggle with it all the time because I don't know why, just maybe you're all like that. I look at somebody and say, or I look at somebody else and say, yeah, they're all, you know, I'm making a judgment. But at the Bema, none of us will look at each other with contempt or any censorship or anything like that.

I remember one time in the Tuesday men's Bible study, now some 45 years ago, Myles Stanford was conducting it, and some of the guys that came there were fairly new Christians, and one of the guys one day thought that he would give Myles a little bit of an accolade, which if you knew Myles Stanford, that was a kiss of death. Said, Myles, you know, when a beam of judgment is gonna happen, you're gonna be in the front row. And his response to that was, no brother, he said, I'm just gonna be happy to be there. All the mothers will be in the front row. And the reason they'll be there is because they did what God called them to do. I thought, oh, what a great answer. The moms get to be in the front row.

So verses Romans 2.16 and Acts 17.31 speak of the general idea of judgment.

However, you have to distinguish between the judgment seat of Christ, which is 2 Corinthians 5.10, where all saints will be judged, and the great white throne judgment where sinners will be judged, Revelation 20.11. As simple as you can make it, if you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, you get to go to the beam of judgment. If you don't, you get to go to the great white throat judgment. You're going to one of those two places. One of them is a place of rewards. The other one is a place of condemnation. It's a real simple equation. So the judgment seat of God has brought it here to keep us from judging others.

That's why Paul is using it. The many warnings against this in scripture would indicate that this is a thing that we're very prone to do. I just admitted that I do it. Do you know that you do it? I see you looking at me sometimes. We may be sure that everything is going to be examined and pronounced upon the divinely, in a divinely perfect way. This kind of helps us understand what's really going to go on there. The matter is really in much better and wiser hands than ours. because the Lord Jesus is going to be doing the judging.

Nothing is more weakening to the Christian vitality than a critical or judicial spirit. You see it not only in the church, but in any kind of human organization. If people are in it that have a critical spirit, that organization has a tendency to fall apart. And it's altogether contrary to the spirit of Christ. It indicates that one has grown away from the truth and the spirit of this dispensation or this time that we live in, which is grace. Grace is unmerited favor from God to us. Didn't earn it, he just gave it to us.

The Holy Spirit would lead us on the other hand to be very careful not to stumble our brother and next week you're gonna have a treat. Brian White's gonna be here and he's gonna give the sermon and he'll be talking about don't be in a position where you cause your brother to stumble.

So am I not prepared? Think about this question. Am I not prepared to curtail my liberty a little bit for my brother's good. Will you do that? You know, sometimes you think you're so right that you don't give any quarter to anybody else. It's really a question of being in accord with Christ, not whether you kind of got your act together, but it's being lined up with him.

Romans 14, 6 says, he who observes the day observes it to the Lord. And he who eats does so for the Lord, or Bob pointed out to me last week, the word unto is really a great word to put in. Observe it unto the Lord, do it unto the Lord, and he gives thanks unto God. And he who eats not for the Lord, he does not eat, and he gives thanks unto God. Whether you've got a hang up or not, if you're sincere about what you're doing, you do, both parties do the same thing, they do it unto the Lord. So when the Lord's in view, it would be seen that the eater eats unto him, for he gives God thanks. And the abstainer abstains unto him, and he gives God thanks for that. either in life or, the truth is that we belong to him and not to ourselves.

That is such an important truth for us to understand, get a handle around that, that we are actually somebody else's property. When the Lord Jesus died on the cross, he bought you, he bought me, he owns us. So we live unto him. If we were a slave, we would live unto our master if we loved him. We belong to Christ. We don't belong to ourselves anymore.

Either in life or in death, living or dying, it is to him or unto him, whether one or the other. Therefore, we are his and this is grounded on his dying and living and resurrection This is the grand doctrine of this epistle and the basis of all Christianity. If every believer understands, I don't belong to me, I belong to him. And it's hard to change that mindset because when you talk to believers, what do they say? Christ died for me. So who's the center of that conversation? Me. He died for me. Well, he did do that, but that wasn't the main reason he did it. So the judgment seat of Christ, the beam of judgment, let's talk about that a little bit.

In Isaiah 45, it says, I have sworn by myself that word has gone forth from my mouth in righteousness and will not turn back, that to me, every knee will bow and every tongue will swear allegiance. Now, if you watch the news channel, they don't believe in this. Nobody believes in this. You don't really think at some point every knee is going to bow and every tongue swear allegiance.

Or in Philippians 2, 8, being found in the appearance of a man, he, the Lord Jesus, humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. Therefore, also God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every other name. And here it comes, the name that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

So you have to ask yourself the question, is the Bema judgment about me, the believer? Is that what it's about? It's not about me. It's not about me at all. It's about the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the purposes for the Bema is to worship and praise and glorify the Lord Jesus.

Now let me tell you how I think that's gonna work. I'm looking around to pick on somebody, pick on Gary. So Gary goes to the beam of judgment and he, everything about his life is laid out in front of the Lord Jesus. You know what you're gonna see? You're not gonna see Gary, you're gonna see the incredible grace and mercy that the Lord Jesus exhibited through Gary's whole life to bless him no matter what.

So it's about His glory. It's about His praise and His worship because in spite of all of us and who we are and where we came from and our sinning and judging and all that we do, the real issue at the Bema is to show the glory of God when He says, I'm rewarding you and I've been with you the whole way. And we look at that and see the glory of the Lord Jesus, where I should have been condemned a thousand times, all I got was grace.

Notice that the Bema is more than just issue of works worthless or good and rewards. It's much more than that. The Lord Jesus is the focus at the Bema and not the believer. It's about him. Every believer will give his or her own personal account or word of praise, thus glorifying Him as Lord. Is your knees gonna bow? Yeah. You proclaim Him Lord? Yeah.

And you're gonna think, my goodness, I'd have never persevered through my own life if I was the Lord Jesus. He should have condemned me so many times. Believers will glorify him for who he is, his essential essence and holiness, righteousness, grace, love, mercy. This is adapted from a talk that Hal Malloy gave in 1994. He knew. So just as the Lord will be our focus at the Bema, So should it be our focus in our lives today. If you recognize that your attendance at the Bema Judgment is for rewards and to glorify Christ, it changes your perspective.

You're not doing spiritual pushups all the time to try to increase your medal count. This isn't the Olympics. Whatever we do, we do it unto the Lord. whatever, we are not to live or die unto self. We are to live or die unto the Lord. We're His. Not to squeeze that in there.

His purpose in dying a living again, as we talked last week, that He might be the Lord of our lives. And the part that didn't get in there, is that we should demonstrate the fact that he is our Lord for everybody to see just the way we live because we know. So these believers who are judging and despising each other were not manifesting Christ Jesus as the Lord in their life. We've gone through this whole lordship salvation thing and that you have to make Jesus the Lord of your life. The issue is, is he manifested in your life as your Lord? Not because you made him so, but because that's what he is.

They're living unto self. You have two choices, you know. You either get to live unto yourself or unto God. You don't, how do I say this? You don't get to live on the yellow line. down the middle of the highway and you decide to go left or right, you're either living for yourself or living for the Lord Jesus, one or the other. You go past that center line so fast you don't even know it's there. They were not living unto the Lord, their hearts were focused upon themselves and not the Lord.

That's what judgment is. So now that Christ has revealed God, understand that Christ is the one that revealed to us who God is, it is of the deepest result that we insist only on what his grace and what makes for edification. If you understand who you really are in Christ and what he's done, then you understand you live under grace and the edification of other believers is a spiritually natural environment for you. The Lord has written, as I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow. So then each one of us shall give account of himself to God.

I personally am glad that that's going to happen. You know why? Because once it's over, Christ is in glory. And I'm learning about memory these days, being older. I forget all of that and so does he. All he thinks about is the glory of God. That's all we'll think about going forward. That's really cool.

However, just look at what he's not saying. Paul is not saying that you better not judge or you will be judged at the Bema. He's not saying that. He's not saying that believers will have to confess and give an account to God. Why not? Why aren't you going to show up at the BEMA with your sins? If you had a briefcase, well, you'd have it on about 45 thumb drives. Why don't you show up with your sins? Do you know?

It's because Christ has taken care of them, all of them. So it's not an issue of sins. It's not an issue at all. It's an issue, was the Lord Jesus able to live his life through me? So he's not saying that believers will have to confess. You're not gonna go there and confess, oh, I did this on Thursday and this on Friday. It's not the kind of thing it is. It's not a court. It's not a tribunal concerning your works, whether you're good or worthless, bad or evil.

And it's not gonna address the issue of whether the bema, the judgment seat of Christ, is a place and time of tribunal or court, or a place and time of rewards. Let me ask you this. What are you gonna get rewarded for? And what is the reward? Or maybe make it a trick question. What are the rewards? Christ alone.

However, Romans 14.10 is saying Paul is asking them to think about what they are doing right now in the present, judging or despising others based on what the Bema judgment tells you. Then Paul is asking them to think about what they will be doing in the future at the Bema. What are you going to be doing there? Is it consistent with what you're doing today?

They'll all be standing before Christ in one accord. All of us will be there. They'll all have a unity of mind and purpose. How cool is that? We are all going to have, at the beam of judgment, a unity of mind and a unity of purpose. The purpose is to glorify Christ. Their focus will not be on themselves, but totally on the Lord Jesus. They all will be glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ. So based on that information, how should you live today? That's the point he's making. Paul is essentially saying to them, if this is God's ultimate purpose for you, then why aren't you fulfilling that purpose right now? That's the argument.

Don't you know that judging and despising is diametrically opposed to glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ? And therefore stop judging one another, but judge that you don't spiritually hinder your brother in his desire to live unto the Lord and glorify him. Imagine. What would it be like to live in a body of believers that you knew everybody around you had one purpose in mind, and that was to help you live unto the Lord, that that's what they did? How inconsistent to one to judge and another to despise.

We shall each give an account, and this is about ourselves and nobody else. To bring in Christ truly is due settlement of every question. That's the other cool thing. Once the bema is over, all the questions are settled. So what's in play then? Christ is magnified and glorified. And you know what the Bema is designed to do? It's designed you to get ready to be the bride. You see that? So who purifies the bride? Who does that? Do you do it yourself? It says that you make yourself ready. but it's the Lord Jesus that purifies His own bride so that when the wedding feast of the Lamb happens, she's perfect just like He is. That's the goal. That's the goal.

So there won't be, I had a guy one time say, well, boy, a thousand years into eternity, I'll still be feeling sorry for my sins. I said, no, you won't. He said, why not? I said, if you can think about yourself a thousand years from now, then you're not saved.

It brings into Christ truly is the due settlement of every question, to him all bow and believe, as all unbelievers must bow on that day when he shall judge the quick and the dead. That's the great white throne. A believer does not come into judgment, but he shall be manifested there, and he'll give an account. When those who do not believe give an account, it is a judgment for them. You see this difference? We're gonna go to the Bema to magnify and glorify the Lord, and I'll add, and to be rewarded, and I'll tell you in a minute what I think those are. If you end up going to the great white throne, It's all judgment. It's all judgment.

There's no benefit to going there, it's just, it's an account that you didn't believe in the person and work of Christ for your Savior, and so you necessarily would be condemned. As they confess no Savior, so they can no longer hide their sins. The believer does not need judgment to vindicate the Lord Jesus. He's already been vindicated. The unbeliever does because he refuses the grace that's offered to him.

Therefore, admirably perfect are the ways of God with both in everyone and in everything glorifying himself by Jesus Christ our Lord. It's gonna be about the Lord Jesus. So wrong feelings falsify the judgment, as on the other hand, if the eye is single, the whole body shall be full of light. We've talked before about these verses. When Christ is the object, when Christ is the object, the path will be unmistakably clear.

We need one to guard our hearts, and only one can do that. And he has called us to liberty, But we need to watch that this liberty never be perverted to license for ourselves any more than to slight others, too. We need to watch. How do we watch? That's what we're gonna talk about.

First is, love is the bond of perfectness. It is a good thing that the heart is established in grace. If your heart and my heart is established in grace, The watching is easy, because if it isn't gracious, we don't want it. The Lord Jesus is also the truth, and he has put everything in the light of God. And you know by just a simple reading of God's word, that's really what's going on. But conscience must be listened to, a correct conscience, And the strong must be careful not to weaken or wound another conscious, whatever his own, no matter what his own conviction is, it doesn't matter. He belongs to God. For if because of me your brother is grieved, you walk no longer according to love. Can be intimidating.

So I'm not gonna repeat the verses every time they show up, but this is 2 Corinthians 5.10. Each believer will be rewarded. Verse six, and since you have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let each exercise them accordingly as he has used his gifts to good account. God has blessed each one of us with a measure of faith and gifts, and we are responsible for what he gave us. to live that way.

If you look, here's how Paul responded. I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Did you think it's just a matter of letting the grace of God be with you and function in your life? Is it that simple?

1 Timothy 4.10 says, For it is of this we labor and we strive. This word strive is to strive to exhaustion because we have fixed our hope on the living God who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers. When you were entitled to nothing, where nothing but the grace of God could save you, the grace of God has given you heaven. given to you free.

But money and talent has been given to us, and we have to trade with it, we have to deal with it, so that we may be counted worthy, one to rule over five cities and another to 10 cities. What this is talking about, there are two aspects at the Bema. One is, from the Bema going forward, there's the millennial kingdom.

And we as believers are gonna rule and reign with the Lord Jesus. And the metaphor used is, how many cities are you gonna rule over, five or 10? Tell us, we are rewarded according to our righteousness on the earth. He's coming to reign in righteousness on the earth, millennial kingdom. And therefore our righteousness settles us to a place according to it, one, five cities, another 10. Based on the rewards at the Bema Judgment, earthly responsibility, you will be involved and we'll all be involved in the administration of the millennial kingdom.

However, it's very striking as soon as Christ takes to himself his great power to reign, the first wave of his power is to gather all his own unto himself in bodies like his bodies of glory. It's a rapture, it's the very first thing he does. The first demonstration of that day is for our great benefit. But no true heart could limit the day of Christ's glory to his own immediate benefits. I want to make a comment about that because the day of Christ, when he appears in glory, no blessing can be consummated or anything be in its right place until Christ is in his place and that he should come as the one desire of the bride. You notice none of this happens until Christ is glorified.

So that's got to happen. And under that umbrella, The body of Christ will help on the earth for a thousand years to help him administer it. But you already have heaven. When did you get that? The day you believe. You didn't have to earn it. So your place, our place in eternity is already set. And you didn't have to earn it. You got it for free.

This is a sort of, actually these next couple of slides, Roger and I have had a discussion about them. And Mrs. Doyle even said, what are you talking about? Acquaintance with Christ and reconciliation. We need to know the Lord in order to understand scripture. No problem there. We need acquaintance with him in order to understand his sayings.

See the difference? What was the big, big complaint that Jesus had about, or God had about the Old Testament Jews? What was the one thing he really criticized them about? They didn't know my ways. To know somebody's ways mean you gotta know them. You gotta know how they do things, how they function.

The judgment seat. will determine our place with Christ in the kingdom as regards to earth. Heaven has already been given to us by grace. Union is now, presentation will be at the Bema, the marriage will be public, and declare the relationship that's already been established between us and the Lord Jesus. It's already set in concrete. The verse today prepares us for the coming of Christ. It gets us moving in that direction. It is devotedness that tells on people, and that is the result of acquaintance. How many of you guys gave your wife a Mother's Day cards today? You don't have to raise your hands. But the point is, the devotedness is the result of acquaintance. How do I know my wife's a good mom?

Well, I've been watching her do it for all these decades. I know she's good at it. Why? Because I know her. Look at him. Now, this is where the controversy started. One hour of looking at him, beholding his glory in the word will do more for you than two hours reading the word. Roger called me up yesterday and said, what is that? Donna said, I don't understand what you're saying. Let me try to explain it.

In the body of Christ, in the world of grace, there are things that are really good and things that are better, and things that are the best. The really good things are salvation, and God's word, and the capacity to study Him. The better thing is, is that I spend more time, and increasingly more time in God's word to learn. The best is I spend time in God's Word so that I can know Him personally.

Personally. Now. That motivates everything we do. I'm not saying that, oh, gee, I'm going to spend two hours and I go from one hour to two hours. No, that's not the point. The point is, why do you read your Bible? It's a good thing that you read it. and you should read it every day. And I think in families, you ought to read it out loud every day.

But why do you read your Bible? Do you read your Bible so you can pass the test? Do you read your Bible so that you can give the class? Do you read your Bible so that you can't look stupid the next time somebody asks you a question about the Bible? Do you read the Bible just because the guys around you read the Bible? Why do you do it? The secret is I read the Bible to know Christ personally.

The revelation of him through the words. I've talked about this before where one of the privileges I have being able to teach is the time I get to spend with the Lord. And it's not a grind. It's I really like the time and the time goes away. I mean, every other day I say to Donna, what happened to the day? Where did it go? Not because I'm all wrapped up in how smart I'm getting. I'm all wrapped up and I get the privilege of spending this time in God's word with the Lord, with him personally.

Ephesians 1.17 says that the God of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of wisdom, and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. This is epinosis, personal, intimate knowledge. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of His calling. The hope of his calling is the bride.

What are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints? You realize you're an inheritance? And the richness of his glory is you? And that is the surpassing greatness of his power towards us who believe. These are in accordance with the working and the strength of his might. He wants you to know him a lot more than you want to know him. You want to know about him. But as you grow spiritually, that's what happens. There's a transference from knowing about him to just knowing him. Let me give you some examples.

The Queen of Sheba in the presence of Solomon, 1 Kings 10.4. When the Queen of Sheba perceived all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food of his table, the seating of his servants, the attendance of his waiters, the attire, his cupbearers, his stairway to which he went up into the house of the Lord. There was no more spirit in her. What happened to her? She was so taken up with this man that she just had, I'll show you in a minute a picture. Then she said to the king, it was true.

It was a true report which I heard on my own land about your words and your wisdom. Nevertheless, I did not believe the reports until I came and my eyes had seen it. And behold, half was not told me. And you exceeded in wisdom and prosperity the report which I heard." We hear reports about the Lord Jesus all the time. But until you go and see him, meet him, half, you haven't learned half yet.

See that? Here's another example. David said, one thing I have asked from the Lord that I shall seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in his temple. I want to go there and I don't ever want to leave. Interesting, illustrating in the joy of the Lord. To the Hebrews, it was entering the holiest of all.

To the Gentiles, it's beholding the glory of the Lord Jesus in 2 Corinthians 3.18, a believer. The testimony now is, in fact, that we're waiting for the Lord, anxiously waiting for him.

When he calls, I have some illustrations. These are, except for the dog in the bottom, these are three pictures of people who have been deployed and they came home, and this is the first time their kids have seen them since they were gone. And if you were in the military or around people in the military, you recognize how much you miss your family. and how much they miss you, and when you're on the tarmac and they get off the plane. Look at the faces of this little girl, or your dog, or your pet, how excited they are to see you who haven't seen you in a while. You know the old joke? I gotta tell this. If you lock your wife and your dog in your trunk, and you drive around for five hours and you open up your trunk, which one's happy to see you?

In closing, instead of a believer shrinking from the judgment seat, on the contrary, it would be a cheering thing for us to know that every part of our history From boyhood up to the moment we leave this world, we'll be all brought out there. Not brought out to condemn us. We cannot be condemned. But to show us what objects of grace we have been all the way. So that when that declaration is made as to what God has been to us from our babyhood up to that moment, Our hearts will be filled with his unwary grace, which has flowed us every step of the journey.

JBS. Let's close. Father, I guess my prayer today is that we would all have such a heart for knowing you. We recognize that you're so careful in your words. put our lives on the basis of loving you and being loved by you, that we all may grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, that we can behold his glory in a mirror, his word, and come away just awed by who you are. We thank you, Father. We pray in your son's precious name, amen.