Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth.
Romans 2:2
In my job as a history teacher, truth is very important. A lot of the work that my students undertake involves looking at historical sources, and trying to find out about the past from them. I press upon students that sources are usually created with a specific purpose, which is often trying to prove one point or another. It is, therefore, important to try and study a wide range of sources if we are going to get any where near a true picture of what happened in the past. I also have to warn the students about simply discarding a source because “it is biased” (or “biast” as I frequently see in their exercise books!), and encourage them to try to look beyond this natural bias to see what we can uncover from the source. One of the things that always amazes my students is just how hard it is to get to a true picture of the past, because there are so many conflicting statements. Many books even disagree on something as simple as dates!
Luckily when it comes to God’s judgement of us, there are no such problems with evaluating truth. Whilst history text books might disagree on key historical details, God wrote the text book for his creation, so he is well placed to carry out judgement! He laid out the standards by which we should live, and he set out the rules for his people. He also knows all that we do, and all that we think. When we are judged, therefore, we can be sure that we are being judged according to the same, unchanging standards that are applied to everyone. We can also be confident that we will all be judged fairly. Whilst some history books, particularly biographies, are heavily biased, because the writer is a fan of the subject, or strongly dislikes the person being written about, we can trust that God is fair and just. He does not have favourites. He loves all his people, and wants us to love him back. We are not judged according to our works, after all, but according to the simple fact of whether we believe in Jesus (see John 6:29).
We can rest assured, then, that God is our judge. He is fair and he is just, and we can be confident that we will be judged solely based on truth when it comes to the day of our judgement. This is something we can be thankful for!