I attended a church in Texas once where one of the deacons was a county judge. He would sometimes talk about cases that appeared before him. Oftentimes guilt or innocence was cut and dried. Other times, it was difficult to determine. In most cases, there was always a question about the fine he should give to the defendant.

One of my daughters is an attorney, and I hear about the cases she is involved in. In many cases, the judge has some very difficult decisions to make.

We do not have to be a part of the legal profession to realize that being a judge is a hard job. We see it all the time on our TVs or read about it in papers or online. All of us have heard of cases and said that we would not have decided it as the judge did. Sometimes the judge blows it. But other times, we realize that we don’t have all the information the judge had at his disposal. Maybe he made the right decision. Being a judge is an awfully subjective profession.

Take, for example, the case found in Acts 18:12-17. There was a judge by the name of Gallio in Corinth. The Apostle Paul appeared before him because he was accused by the Jews of disturbing the peace of the community. Evidently, they were saying that Paul was promoting the illegal religion of Christianity. It was causing dissension among the Jews, as people were leaving the synagogue for the new faith. Perhaps they were adding that this was not good for the community as a whole.

What should the judge have done? He wanted to keep the peace. How should he have handled this problem?

In this case, Gallio threw out the case. Christians have read this account and shouted, “Great decision!” No way should Paul have been punished for preaching Christ.

But a disruption of the peace occurred immediately. Gentiles in the city grabbed the Jewish leader of the synagogue and beat him, right in front of Gallio’s judgment seat. We can assume that there was anti-Semitism at work here. Gallio had displayed a somewhat hostile attitude towards the Jews, and these Gentiles saw it as an opportunity to mistreat a prominent Jew. It is telling that Gallio did not care that this man got beaten, right before his eyes.

As Christians, we probably read this and do a quick about face. A good judge wouldn’t allow assault and battery to happen in his courtroom and say nothing, would he? We liked one part of Gallio’s decision, but then concluded that he is a terrible judge.

We don’t know why Gallio responded the way he did. Did he hate the Jews? Was this ruler of the synagogue a nuisance, often wasting Gallio’s time? Did Gallio want to teach him a lesson? Did Gallio know that some of the Gentiles in Corinth were listening to Paul, and this beating would let the synagogue know that he wouldn’t put up with additional false accusations? If that was the case, in his mind, one man getting beaten up was the lesser of two evils. Maybe Gallio’s superior had told him he needed to get the Jews in Corinth under control, and these false accusations against Paul were another example of the problem.

We don’t have all the information. We want to evaluate what Gallio did based upon our system of jurisprudence. The Roman Empire had a different way of handling things.

Even if we think, no matter the background of Corinth and Gallio, that half of Gallio’s actions on that day were terrible, I believe we can all see that judges in every age have a difficult task. Some will say a given decision was good. Some will say the same decision was bad.

Recently, I was in a conversation with some other believers about the Judgment Seat of Christ. We started discussing what that judgment seat will be like. Think of all the issues. How much did each believer know? How many years was he a believer? What truths did he reject? What era of the church age did he live in? What were the mental capacities of each believer? How was his home life? How much freedom did he have in his country? Who was a teacher of the Word of God and who was not? What were each person’s motives? The list could go on and on and on.

Can we even begin to imagine how difficult such a task would be? Every experience we have with judges in this world and in the Scriptures tells us that they make mistakes. To think of any of them ruling at the Judgment Seat of Christ would be unthinkable.

But none of them will be the Judge on that day. At the end of his life, Paul reminded us that Christ, the righteous Judge, will be the One we appear before (2 Tim 4:8). Every verdict about eternal rewards will be perfect. There won’t be any vacillating on any of our parts, thinking He got some things right and some things wrong. I know that He will point out things about my life that did not please Him, but I am glad He will be the One doing the judging. He is a just, loving, and merciful Judge!