When
the Son of man shall come in his glory,
and all the holy angels with him,
then
shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
And
before him shall be gathered all nations:
and
he shall separate them one from another,
as
a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
And
he shall set the sheep on his right hand,
but
the goats on the left.
Then
shall the King say unto them on his right hand,
Come,
ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom
prepared
for you from the foundation of the world:
For
I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat:
I
was thirsty, and ye gave me drink:
I
was a stranger, and ye took me in:
Naked,
and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me:
I
was in prison, and ye came unto me.
Then
shall the righteous answer him, saying,
Lord,
when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee?
or
thirsty, and gave thee drink?
When
saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in?
or
naked, and clothed thee?
Or
when saw we thee sick, or in prison,
and
came unto thee?
And
the King shall answer and say unto them,
Verily
I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it
unto
one of the least of these my brethren,
ye
have done it unto me.
Then
shall he say also unto them on the left hand,
Depart
from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,
prepared
for the devil and his angels:
For
I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat:
I
was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
I
was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not:
sick,
and in prison, and ye visited me not.
Then
shall they also answer him, saying,
Lord,
when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked,
or
sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
Then
shall he answer them, saying,
Verily
I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not
to
one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
And
these shall go away into everlasting punishment:
but
the righteous into life eternal.
It is hard to imagine a
more terrifying scene than the one Jesus laid out for His disciples in Matthew
25. He had been building to this imagery
by using various parables to illustrate what the Kingdom of God is like, noting
the gracious generosity of the King toward those who put their trust in Him,
and the fearful consequences of rejecting the King’s grace only to stand in one’s
own sin before the Law of God. Here at
the end of Matthew’s 25th chapter, Jesus helped His disciples to
understand that there was no escaping the Judgment which is to come.
There’s a scene in one of
the later Marvel movies where Dr. Banner as the Hulk is hurtled through space
after a cataclysmic encounter, only to land in the middle of a house in New
York guarded by the mysterious Dr. Strange.
When everyone gathered around the disheveled Dr. Banner, all he could
mutter was, “Thanos is coming…” This
kicked off a long series of heroic struggles by the Avengers against the Mad
Titan to prevent a universe-wide apocalypse, and of course, everyone cheered at
the end of the saga when the selfless sacrifice of Iron Man defeated the “inevitability”
of Thanos. I find it interesting and
illustrative of our time that people fantasize about variations on the
Apocalypse, and humanity’s collective ability to stop it. In many ways, this wouldn’t be alien to Jesus’
listeners, many of whom likely thought that either God wasn’t really going to
judge the world; that if He did, it wouldn’t be during their lifetimes, or in
their locales; that it wouldn’t really impact the powerful or well connected; that
if all else failed, they could run away and hide somewhere; and maybe some of
them even harbored our modern hubris that if the strongest of us were to lead
the charge, we could even stop God’s judgement.
Like so many of our
fantasies, Jesus’s Word of Truth dispels our ignorance and our arrogance. In the end, when Jesus returns, it will be
unavoidable and inescapable. Every soul
on the planet, from the dawn of time to the end, will be gathered before the
throne of Jesus, and the great separation will be accomplished. The good will be gathered into eternal life,
and the evil will be condemned forever to hell.
Those who have lived by grace through faith in Jesus will enjoy the
blessed communion of the Triune God, together with all the saints and angels of
every time and place, for the sake of Jesus’ Vicarious Atonement for the sins
of the world through His life, death, and resurrection. Those who have rejected His grace shall stand
before the holiness of His perfect Law and be judged accordingly for every
thought, word, and deed—everything done and left undone—resulting in their just
imprisonment in the fires of hell, to suffer the infernal communion of the
devil and his demonic horde forever.
This Judgement is not only inescapable, it is inarguable; those saved by
grace are judged righteous for Jesus’ sake, according to His infinite
righteousness imputed to His people through faith alone, while those who stand
outside of Jesus’ grace and righteousness must be judged alone in their own
works against a standard of pure perfection.
There is no in-between, and no argument which assails such judgment. If all have sinned and fallen short of the
glory of God, then no one stands righteous on his own merits, no matter how other
people might relatively judge him. And if
a person stands in the satisfaction of Jesus’ righteousness earned through the
Cross of His Passion, there is no argument to overthrow the vindication of the
saints for Jesus’ sake.
This Judgment is coming,
and it is coming soon. If we were to
think we could avoid it by our own death, we continue to deceive ourselves—for as
the Apostle teaches us, to be absent from the body is to be present with the
Lord. And so, whether we stand before
the Great Judge at the hour of our death, or at the end of time, we will all
still stand before Him some day very soon.
In that day there will be no escape, no argument, no resistance—only the
justice of Almighty God perfectly applied to all people on the same terms and
by the same standards. There will be no opportunity
for the rich to bribe their way out, or the powerful to raise arms against the
Almighty; no cleverness of academic theorizing or sophistry of depraved
theologians will wipe away one jot or one tittle from the Word of the Living God. There, in the presence of Him who sees all
and knows all, who discerns the secret thoughts of the mind and the private
passions of the heart, we shall stand and know as we have always been known by
Him. We shall know then what has always
been true, and what the Word of God has been teaching mankind from the
beginning, without the dross and deception of fallen minds and corrupted
hearts. Judgment is coming, and it
hastens toward us every day, with every breath we breathe, inexorable and
unwavering.
Yet for the Christian,
this Day of Judgment is one that has already occurred. Two millennia past there came and died upon the
hill of Calvary the Only Begotten Son of the Living God, full of grace and
truth. For God so loved this fallen
world, that He sent His only Son to be its Savior, taking the sins of every
hand, eye, mouth, mind, and heart upon Himself, that the Judgment of God might
be poured out on Him rather than us. And
after having taken that Judgment in our place, He rose again the third day and
gave the gift of His salvation to all who would turn from their sins and
believe in Him. This Judgment was
everything we have earned, and Jesus’ grace is everything we cannot—the forgiveness
of our sins, eternal life, and salvation in His most holy name alone. There stands the Judgment of the Christian,
on a hill, long ago and far away, so that no one might fear the coming Day of
the Lord.
And so the Law and the
Gospel come to you on this last day of the Church Year, as we turn once again
to prepare our hearts for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ at Christmas. If that Day of the Lord fills you with fear
and trembling, turn to Him who has taken that Judgment already upon Himself,
and offers to you the peaceful riches of His unfathomable grace. For if the Judge who is to sit upon His
throne and separate the sheep from the goats is the same Savior who has given
His life for the life of the world, there is nothing for the Christian left to
answer, but the peaceful and thankful prayer, “Amen—even so, come Lord Jesus.”
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