1Cor 4:5-6 - Secrets and Revelations

5-6 Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God. 6 I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another.

Because God is the ultimate judge of all things, including the true value of the works of all the saints, we are not to judge the hearts of our fellow saints before the time. When God reveals the secrets of men’s hearts they will be plain for all to see, including and especially ourselves. For we do not even know our own hearts as God knows them. We can know something of ourselves by the grace of God, but we dare not pronounce definitive judgement on what we cannot fully understand. God has perfect understanding and can therefore judge perfectly and impartially. And He will.

There will be many glories in heaven, each according to the rightful judgements of God. These are glories to which all the saints were severally appointed before creation. Some will be greater lights and some lesser, according to the good pleasure of God’s decrees. But all will be lights in God’s heaven - so that the very dimmest will be every bit as transported by delight at being what God made him to be as will the very brightest. Yet it will be through the sanctification of the Spirit and by way of the fiery judgment of God that they will come to their final place.

Finally, though we never judge the heart of another saint, we must necessarily judge the fruit. Our judgment is not unto condemnation, for we are not fit to pronounce dispositions. We cannot tell a person either that he is saved, or that he will be inevitably be lost. We can tell a person how to be saved, or to examine himself in the light of the word of God and see if he is truly in the way. In doing so, we are comparing fruit with seed - that is all. We must not do more, but we dare not do less and still think we are conducting ourselves lovingly towards God or men.

Note that the problem, in the end, was not viewed by Paul as springing from any of the teachers themselves. Paul had spent 18 months with the Corinthians some years earlier and Apollos had been teaching among them. Peter, so far as we know, never taught them. So Paul takes the ones most familiar to them personally (himself and Apollos) as the prime examples to which is applied all the foregoing reinforcement about the primacy of Christ and the servanthood of all believers, including the Apostles and leaders.

In other words, they are to get a grip. God is God, Christ is God and everybody else is a sinner saved by grace and being made experientially holy through the obedience of faith as God’s gift from eternity in His Son. And the amazing thing is that all of this truth about creation, the fall, the plan of redemption, the incarnation, the atonement, the sanctification and glorification of the saints - all of this is written in God’s book for us to see or to search out. There are deep and wonderful things about our God in there. And there are hints about some things that are secret unto God alone.

The reason for appearance of evil in a perfect and good creation, the certain identity of the reprobates, the date of the parousia, the inner motivations of the heart - these are all things reserved unto God alone to know in this present age. We can be aware that there are reasons and dates and dispositions, but not what they are.

What a shame that fallen human nature, when it sees a line drawn by God, immediately wants to cross that line when it had no desire to do so until it became aware that there was a line to cross. And so, knowing there are secret things, our sinful minds are inflamed to want to know the secrets. But the man of faith understands and strives to obey - trusting in God to do what is right and at the right time. And the saint does not go looking for what God has not revealed, but for what He has made known. He has made known His character, His glory, His precepts and His overall purposes in creation and redemption. These are found in the Bible and we are not to go beyond what is written there - applying it to our own hearts first, and secondly in love for the good of all men, especially those who believe.

When we look for what God has said, and we look to God in all things and for God in all the saints, then He is closer to becoming all in all to us, and we shall be experientially reconciled to Him. In time we shall become more and more like Him, which will make us less and less like our old selves. When we come to understand that everything is wrought and given to us in Christ because God chose us from eternity to be found in His Son, and when we begin to see that all good and noble and worthwhile things find their source in God through Christ by the Spirit - then we are left with no reason to be puffed up - for we are saved by grace alone, and we are all saved exactly the same way. We repent and believe. We die with Him and are raised to newness of life in Him. We were all blind, deaf, palsied, lame, leprous, demonized, dead beggars and we have been made alive together with Him.