What Do The Books Say About You?

What Do the Books Say about You?

Don’t rejoice because evil spirits obey you; rejoice because your names are registered in heaven.

Luke 10:20

I saw the dead, both great and small, standing before God’s throne. And the books were opened, including the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books. . . . And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire.

Revelation 20:12, 15

Imagine the scene in your mind. Jesus, the Judge, is on his throne in heaven. And in front of him on one side is a tall stack of books. On the other side of him is one book. This is the scene at the end of time described in Revelation 20. The large stack is the books with everything we’ve done during our lives recorded in them. The single book is the Book of Life—a list of the names of all those who are in Christ.

The Book of Life is a record of the names of all those God calls his own. It is a list of all those who know him and love him. Ephesians 1:4-5 tells us whose names are in this book: “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.”

So if your name is in the Book of Life, does that mean the record of your life in the books is irrelevant? No. What is written there provides confirmation that you are connected to Christ in a saving, transforming way. Our deeds are not the basis of our salvation—they are the evidence of our salvation. The books provide an accounting of all the things God’s grace has empowered us to do and become because of our connectedness to Jesus.

What’s written in the stack of books will not determine where you will spend eternity. What matters is that your name is in the Book of Life—written there by the hand of God, never to be erased.

DISCUSSION STARTERS

If you read what was written about your day today in “the books,” what would it say?

What or who determines if your name is in the Book of Life?

What would you like to have written in the books about your life?