son remains: only Christ can so judge. Verse 5 explains why when it says that Christ "will bring to light the hidden things of dark ness." The word here for "hidden things" is a reference not to unex pected things that may pop up all of a sudden or come out of the woodwork, but they are things that we know about but that we are ashamed of, so we have swept them under the rug. Christ knows this, and He knows how hard we try to hide them or dress them up so they appear to be acceptable. Christ will reveal all of this and only He can then adequately judge whether we have had our heart right before Him. Man may use the expedient form of judgment that may help our wit ness toward the world as in I Cor inthians 5 and 11, but such judg ment can never be compared with nor take the place of the judgment that Christ will render. Only Christ knows the heart well enough for lasting spiritual judgment. Let me illustrate the inadequacy of man's judgment. If a person is on trial in a court of law in Los Angeles, it would be foolish for a group of citizens to meet in a home and conduct their own trial. These people would undoubtedly have limited knowledge of all the per tinent facts. No matter how strong ly they felt, or angry or irritated they were, without access to all material—even what may be re ferred to as "hidden things" — their judgment would be unaccept able. And further, if they did reach a verdict of what use would it be. Society will tolerate only the deci sion of a duly constituted court of law. Their citizens could not be
gin to carry out their sentence. About all they could do is share results of their kangaroo court with their friends and neighbors and then pass on their own bias in the matter. For good or for ill, the courts of our land have been charged with the responsibility of evaluating and passing the final sentence upon in dividuals. And, thank Cod, Christ has the prerogative of holding court and rendering the decision on the faithfulness of Christian stewards. About all man can do is speculate in a limited way the testimony of a church and, as is often the case, foolishly usurp Christ's authority and pass some temporary sen tences. Notice another phrase "will make manifest the counsels of the hearts." "Counsel of the heart" suggests the concept of deliber ately arrived at patterns of thought. These are not just casual thoughts that we have. It is not day-dream ing. It is not the problems we may have with our minds when we sim ply let it ramble and it gets off into areas where it ought not to get. But the idea here is that men at times set their minds to think evil thoughts, or men set their minds to deceive people. Christ is going to reveal the counsels of the heart, the deliberate patterns of thought that were used to either fool other people or perhaps to destroy another person's life through poor teaching. Now, only Christ would know what is going on behind this facade we set up to impress peo ple. Only Christ Himself can be the qualified judge. Judging others is a risky busi ness. Thank God, we are not called on to decide who is or is not a Page 11
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