Will People Have To Pay For Past Sins At The Great White Throne Judgment?
Q: Will we have to pay for past sins during the white seat judgment?
A: If you mean believers – those who put their trust in Jesus Christ, God’s elect people, the people of God who are found in Christ – the answer to that is absolutely positively no. We will not have to pay for our past sins during the Great White Throne judgment.
First of all, I would question whether or not believers, those who are in Christ, will even appear before what’s called the Great White Throne Judgment, as it’s described in the latter chapters of the book of Revelation. I don’t even think we will appear there.
Number two, the Great White Throne Judgment is very interesting, as it could correlate to ancient Roman and Jewish cultural traditions. In Revelation 20, we see people who are standing before the Great White Throne. In a Roman court, the prisoner stood while being sentenced. They didn’t stand while they were on trial. They stood when the trial was over and they were being sentenced. I think that’s more the sense of the Great White Throne Judgment.
But no, there’s nothing in the age to come that will require any further payment for the sin of a believer. That would also include any mistaken ideas of purgatory that our Roman Catholic friends might hold.