Judgment is Coming: A Meditation on Matthew 25 for the Last Sunday of the Church Year

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 25^th 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.”