But notwithstanding all this, there is a reward for the righteous, a reward for their works of faith and love, whether in a doing or in a suffering way, and that not principally to be enjoyed here, but hereafter:  “Great is your reward in heaven.”

Paul was as great a maintainer of the doctrine of God’s free grace, and of justification from sin by the righteousness of Christ imputed by grace, as any one that ever lived in Christ’s service from the world’s beginning till now; and yet he was for this doctrine:  he expected himself, and encouraged others also to look for such a reward for doing and suffering for Christ, which he calls “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”  Surely, as Christ says in a case not distant from this in hand, “If it were not so, he would have told us.”

Wherefore a reward I find, and that laid up in heaven; but what it is I know not, neither is it possible for any here to know it any further than by certain general words of God, such as these:  “Praise, honor, glory, a crown of righteousness, a crown of glory, thrones, judging of angels, a kingdom, with a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”

Wherefore, though in the day of judgment thou shouldst there slight all thou didst on earth for thy Lord, saying, “When, Lord, when did we do it?” he will answer, “Then, even then when ye did it to the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me.”

Sinners judged.

“There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust.”  For as the just go before the unjust in name and dignity and honor, so they shall, in the last day, go before them in the resurrection.

Now then, when the saints have risen out of their graves, given up their accounts, received their glory, and are set upon their thrones—­when they are all of them in their royal apparel, with crowns of glory, every one presenting the person of a king, then come the unjust out of their graves, to receive their judgment for what they have done in the body.  “We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one,” both saints and sinners, “may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.”

“And the windows,” or floodgates, “of heaven were opened.”  This opening of the floodgates of heaven was a type of the way that shall be made for the justice of God upon ungodly men, when Christ has laid aside his mediatorship; for he indeed is the sluice that stops this justice of God from its dealing according to its infinite power and severity with men.  He stands like Moses, and as it were holdeth the hands of God.  Oh, but when he shall be taken away, when he shall have finished his mediatorial work, then will the floodgates of heaven be opened, and then will the justice and holiness of God deal with men without stint or diminution, even till it has filled the vessels of wrath with vengeance till they run over.  “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,”