In this lesson we will go on to see the remaining aspects of the believers' experience and enjoyment of God as the Father in the love of the Triune God.
Jude 24 tells us that God is able to guard us from stumbling and to set us before His glory without blemish in exultation. This verse clearly indicates that although the believers are charged in the preceding verses to build up themselves upon the faith, to keep themselves in the love of God, and to have mercy on and save those who are wavering, only God our Savior is able to guard them from stumbling and cause them to be without blemish, that is, to have no other element as a mixture besides the holy nature of God. The more we are saturated with the Father by experiencing and enjoying His divine dispensing, the more we are guarded from stumbling and are delivered from our natural, human elements, from our flesh, from our self, and from the things of the world, so that we may be set before His glory without blemish in exultation at the Lord's coming.
In order to make us holy that we may be without blemish, God not only disciplines us but also judges us. First Peter 4:17 says, "For it is time for the judgment to begin from the house of God; and if first from us, what will be the end of those who disobey the gospel of God?" First Peter is concerned with the Christian life under the government of God. God's government is universal, and in His governing He judges all His created things so that He may have a clean and purified universe (2 Pet. 3:13) for His expression. In the New Testament age, this judgment begins from His chosen people, His own household. According to the context of this verse, the sufferings the believers undergo in fiery persecution are used by God as a means to judge them that they may be disciplined, purified, and separated from the unbelievers and not have the same destiny as they. Hence, such disciplinary judgment begins from God's own household, and it is not exercised just once or twice but is being carried out continuously until the Lord's coming.
The judgment in 1 Peter 4:17 is not for condemnation to eternal perdition; it is judgment for discipline, a discipline in this age to purify our life. This judgment is a fiery ordeal, a burning furnace (v. 12), to purify us and remove any dross. We can be compared to gold, but we still have a certain amount of dross from which we need to be purified. No teaching or fellowship can accomplish this purification. The disciplinary judgment of the burning furnace is necessary to carry it out. Hence, God puts us into a burning furnace, into fiery ordeals, to burn away our dross that our life may be purified. Thus, we may be saved through the difficulty of persecution from God's destruction of the world. This is the way God exercises judgment on the believers in His governmental administration. On the one hand, God is gracing us that we may live a life that suits His righteousness under His government. On the other hand, through discipline He judges anything that does not match His government. Therefore, today we believers are under the daily judgment of God. When we are under God's judgment, we also enjoy His dispensing in His love.