The Coming Glory

Meanwhile, He has given us the Spirit as the earnest and thus we are filled with confidence. If we die, it is but absence from the body, to be at home with the Lord. With the Apostle all this became a motive for service. "Wherefore we labor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of Him." 2 Cor. 5:9. How could he help laboring for such a Lord? To have been marked out for glory, to be assured of the presence of the Spirit, so filled the Apostle with adoring gratitude that he was very gladly willing to spend and be spent for Him.
(2.) Then comes the judgment seat. "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ." This includes saints as well as sinners, not that all will stand before the Lord together, nor with the same issues. Those who believe in Jesus and are at peace with God through His work, these are in the possession of eternal life in His Son and beyond judgment. Christ cannot judge His own handiwork. But it all must be told out that we may know the real truth as to His grace and as to ourselves, that any rewards that are due for faithful service may be dealt out by the Lord. How solemn it will be for some to stand before Christ; what confusion of face there will be, what eternal ruin! They will stand in all the nakedness of nature, without a rag in which to appear, without a single plea, only to be righteously expelled from Him into eternal woe! The thought of it quickened the Apostle and became a second motive for service and ministry. "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." Does it act thus with us? Satan seems determined in our day to remove this motive for service altogether. Never were the terrors of the judgment to come so softened, not to say openly denied. Men doing this act falsely and become tools of the enemy. Paul had the future with its tremendous and appalling issues fully before his eyes, and it had the effect of making him even more zealous in his labor for Christ among men.
(3.) The third motive is by no means the least, but rather the spring of all. "The love of Christ constraineth us." He thought of Him coming down to where men were and walking here in an attitude of reconciliation toward men.