The Bar of Judgment

The scriptures often refer to judgment as the "bar of God" or talk about the "judgment bar". Well, I took the bar exam last week, and the metaphor makes so much more sense. The merits of my education were being judged and my worthiness to be an attorney was being weighed. Had I learned properly to "think like a lawyer"? Do I know enough?

There is one big difference between California's bar exam and God's bar exam, though. Grace. California's bar examiners don't care what I had to go through to get to where I am, and they're disinclined to cut anyone any slack. God, on the other hand, is merciful and loving. He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows and has power to save us. And all we have to do is come to Him.

Moroni gives a great description of this in his final chapter.

Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.
And now I bid unto all, farewell. I soon go to rest in the paradise of God, until my spirit and body shall again reunite, and I am brought forth triumphant through the air, to meet you before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead. Amen.
Moroni 10:32, 34

The judgment day is described as a good thing. Standing before God is the "pleasing bar". It's not pleasing because of our own efforts. It's pleasing because of God's grace. And God is willing to cut us a lot more slack than some anonymous bar examiner.