Will not all face final judgement? Were the doors swung open before that day; or has that day already come and gone? Where does the second death fit in?
The Icon of the Anastasis displays Christ standing over the battered and broken gates of Hades, with the Lord pulling Adam and Eve by their wrists out of their sarcophagi, and on both sides to Christ's left and right are the Old Testament saints.
The imagery points to the Harrowing of Hell.
The oft-repeated understanding throughout history largely looks to this as the freeing of the Old Testament saints; they are freed by Christ and they are with Him now as He lives and reigns at the right hand of the Father--even as we too shall between death and the future resurrection of the body.
Judgment won't come until the Last Day, when Christ returns and all the dead are raised. But the devil is already defeated and bound, which is why he rages even though his doom is certain. The binding and defeat of the devil means the devil's power is broken. The chains of slavery have been broken. In Christ is salvation and freedom from death and the devil. The raging of the devil doesn't precede his defeat, but follows his defeat--it is in his hopeless rage that he schemes his schemes and plots our downfall. But in Christ we are, as the Apostle says, more than conquerors. Greater is He who is in us than he that is in the world. The devil rages BECAUSE he has but "a small season" (Revelation 20:3), as his doom is already certain and sure, it is written, it's in the books, the Victory of the Messiah is already accomplished:
Christos Anesti!.
The New Testament brings together Christ's death, His resurrection, His ascension, His coming again as part of a whole.
The Christ came in order to lay down His life for the world, that through Him salvation would come; by His resurrection He has conquered the world, conquered the devil, conquered sin, death, and hell itself. Having ascended He has taken up His Throne as King Messiah having been given all power, dominion, and everlasting kingdom. Christ reigns and rules even now, through His Church, through the power of the Gospel through which God's kingdom continues to break into the world: there is freedom and redemption and salvation as God reconciles and redeems and brings us into His Household of grace, His Church. And when our Lord comes again, in glory, He comes as Judge, and the dead shall be raised. After all is accomplished, when the last enemy (death) is defeated, He shall hand all things over to the Father, God will make all things new and shall be all in all.
This is described often as "Now and Not Yet", we are living in the last days--which have been the last days since the Lord's first coming and will continue to be those last days until He comes again and makes all things new. This present age and world order is perishing, it has an expiration date (we just don't know when). We are living the time of the conclusion of this sinful and fallen age; in this way yes Judgment has already come, as Jesus says, "And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil." (John 3:19). The reality of Judgment is not merely a future thing that happens at the consummation of this age, it's the reality of God's Law which condemns all men in their sin. Thus Jesus says He did not come to condemn, but condemnation was already present, there is already a judgment against the world. And, in truth, we see that judgment in Christ's crucifixion: The judgment against sin is applied to Him, the Guiltless and Sinless Victim, the very Spotless Lamb of God.
Apart from Him the condemnation remains, the judgment against us that we are sinners stands against us--in the Law. The Law that was meant to bring life instead brings forth death on account of sin. The commandment that should free me to love instead condemns me because I do not love.
When we contemplate the Last Day, the Day of Final Judgment, the reality of our sin should make us tremble--for we know the Law and the Law's condemnation against us because of our sin. But the Gospel, the Apostle says, means that "whoever puts their trust in Him shall never be put to shame" (Romans 10:11), and therefore, "Whoever calls on the name of the Lord" both Jew and Gentile, salve and free, great and small, male, female, barbarian, Scythian, everyone who looks and calls upon Christ "shall be saved". He ignores none, He abandons none, He wills that all should be saved, that all find repentance, that all should live; as He said to us through the Prophet Ezekiel, "Do I delight in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, Do I not rather that he repent and live?"
For we serve the God of the living, not of the dead.
The God who made heaven and earth and all things therein.
The God who declared all creation good.
The God of life, not death, who makes life, not death.
The God who will, even though death has become the plague and tyrant over and against His creation, put an end to death forever and shall bring all creation into the fullness of life with Himself forever. He will be all in all.
Judgment and condemnation is simply what it looks like for us to be naked in our sin exposed as such by the frank honesty of God's commandments. We are constantly under the shame of our nakedness in the garden--a shame because of sin, the nakedness not of the body but of our guilty conscience.
Salvation means that even through Judgment God keeps us and holds us. We are not perishing with the perishable, but will be raised up and be made imperishable. The perishable must be made imperishable, the mortal must put on immortality. And God is going to take the perishable and make it imperishable. Christ is risen from the dead, the first-fruits of the resurrection; and at His coming all that are His shall be likewise raised up, transformed "in the twinkling of an eye" "at the last trumpet", the Lord descends with a shout and the shofar blast of the archangel. The dead in Christ shall rise, and we who are alive then will likewise join them as we are brought up before the returning Lord at His Parousia. He shall judge all, the quick and the dead. He will open the books, but in the end He is the Book that matters. For it is not in the books of our broken works that shall keep us, but rather in the Lamb's Book of Life, all whose names are written in Christ.
In Christ death is defeated and we have the assurance of salvation in Him alone.
Outside of Christ we continue to collude with our own death, and the end of that results in our sharing the same fate as this perishing age. What St. John in his Apocalypse poetically describes as a "lake of fire and sulfur" (sulfur being regarded as a divine purification agent in Antiquity, sulfur indicates burning and purifying), and calls "the second death". We often describe this final and ultimate fate of the wicked by the word "Hell". Though "Hell" is used in other ways as well, such as referring to Hades/She'ol on the whole, and also referring to Gehenna specifically.
-CryptoLutheran
