31 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. 33 And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; 36 I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? 38 When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? 39 Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40 And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’
41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; 43 I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’
44 “Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ 45 Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Introduction
Over the last month and a half, we have looked at Jesus’s words to His disciples about the destruction of the Old Covenant, His judgment that would soon come on the temple and on Jerusalem, and the last few weeks, we have looked at his parables to His disciples, about being patient and faithful as they await this judgment to come. Now, having said all that, He gives them a glimpse into the heavenly places and shows them how God judges from His heavenly throne.
The Sheep and the Goats (v. 31-46)
Jesus tells them that when He, the Son of Man, comes in His glory with His holy angels, He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him and He will separate them like a shepherd dividing sheep and goats. He’ll put the sheep on His right and goats on His left. And before we go any further, we have to ask, when is this going to take place. What exactly is Jesus talking about here? He has just spent the last two chapters of Matthew prophesying an event that will come within this generation to Jerusalem. But everything here sounds very much like the Final Judgment. Why is Jesus talking about the Final Judgment now when everything has just been about Jerusalem?
We have to consider what the Bible does with prophecy. There are many times something a prophet prophesies has an immediate near-fulfillment to the people he is speaking to in his own day, and there is a greater, late-fulfillment much later on. In the book of Jeremiah, written by the prophet Jeremiah centuries before Jesus, as Israel is about to go into exile as punishment for her idolatry, he gives Israel this prophecy about a new covenant:
31 “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
This passage is given to his immediate hearers informing them that God is going to give them a new covenant after their return from exile, which is The Restoration Covenant. God brings Israel back from exile and restores her, restores the worship of the temple and the city of Jerusalem. But there is also another way the Bible uses this prophecy that we are more familiar with. In Hebrews 8, the apostle uses Jeremiah’s prophesy about the Restoration Covenant and applies it to the great and final new covenant, made in Christ’s blood. The Bible itself gives Jeremiah’s prophecy a double-meaning, a near fulfillment and a later fulfillment.
In our passage today, the later fulfillment is the more obvious one. At the end of history, at the resurrection of the dead, when Jesus physically returns to judge the quick and the dead, He will divide between the sheep and the goats, and each will be judged according to their deeds. We are very familiar with this fulfillment of Jesus’s words here.
What we are less familiar with is the near-fulfillment of His words. Jesus has already told us in Matthew 24 that He is sending His apostles out to all the nations of the oikoumene, the Greco-Roman world. And once they have preached the victory of His kingdom to all these nations, He would return in judgment, and all these things would take place. He has sent out his disciples before, and given them His authority, including the authority to heal and cast out demons, and this is before Pentecost in Matthew 10 and Matthew 11. They were to go without money and be either received by the villages and cities of Galilee and Samaria and treated to their hospitality or not. And if they are not well treated in these places, they were to shake the dust of those places off their feet, because it would be better for Sodom and Gomorrah than those places when His judgment comes.
This same process is being repeated and amplified after His resurrection. Instead of Galilee and Samaria, Jesus is sending His apostles to all the nations of the oikoumene, and that same process, if they receive you, great! If they do not receive you, fiery judgment worse than Sodom and Gomorrah is coming. That process took place in the New Testament age, the 40-year overlap of the Old and New Covenant, the period in which the Book of Acts took place and the whole New Testament was written. And there was a very real judgment upon the nations that did not receive the apostles, and there were great blessings for those who did. You have to remember the promise that God gave way back in Genesis to Abraham, I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. That promise belongs to God’s people, not to any particular race of people. In other words, Jews do not inherit this promise because of the DNA in their bodies, it is inherited by those who believe. This is a major point of the entire New Testament. That promise belongs to the church, not to anybody because of their membership in an ethnic group. And those nations that blessed the church, particularly in this period, would be blessed, and those nations which cursed the church would be cursed. And there was no nation that cursed the church worse during this period than Israel. And their punishment was the most severe.
So when we look at this text in particular, we see the Son of Man on His throne. The only other place Jesus talks about the Son of Man sitting on His throne is in Matthew 19, where He tells the disciples what “the regeneration” will be like. The regeneration is the New Covenant. The Son of Man ascends to His throne at the very end of Matthew’s gospel.
And we start to see this in the text, the nations are gathered before the throne. Not just a collection of individuals, but entire nations. This is just like the apostles being sent out earlier in Matthew, not just a collection of individuals judged like Sodom and Gomorrah but entire villages and cities. The is a collective judgment upon nations happening here. One nation obeys Jesus and is counted as a sheep, another nation dishonors Him and is counted as a goat.
The nation that obeys Jesus is called blessed, invited to inherit His kingdom. And why? Just like earlier in Matthew, when Christ came, (represented by His apostles) came what did these nations do? They fed them and gave them something to drink, they gave them shelter and clothed them, they cared for them when they were sick, they came to them when they were in prison. That is who “the least of these my brethren” is about. His people, and His disciples in particular.
The nation that disobeys the opposite happens to: they are cursed, and the everlasting fire of Hell is prepared for them. They refused to feed the disciples, to give them drink, to clothe them, to shelter them, to care for them in illness, to visit them in prison. Their reception of God’s people, or rather total lack thereof, results in that nation being judged with eternal torment and Hellfire.
What Jesus is describing here is a corporate judgment, a national judgment, something the Bible is filled with. God judging this or that nation. But it is not as though at this time there will not also be a judgment of individuals. Earlier in Matthew, Mt. 16:27-28 Jesus says:
27 For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works. 28 Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.”
There is individual judgment that is going to take place as well. And that passage is further evidence that this particular “coming of the Son of Man” is something that at least some of the apostles will live to see happen.
None of this takes away from the Final Judgment. The Final Judgment at the last day will operate exactly like this. The Apostle Paul speaks of this in Romans 2:
3 And do you think this, O man, you who judge those practicing such things, and doing the same, that you will escape the judgment of God? 4 Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? 5 But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, 6 who “will render to each one according to his deeds”: 7 eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality; 8 but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—indignation and wrath, 9 tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek; 10 but glory, honor, and peace to everyone who works what is good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 11 For there is no partiality with God.
Conclusion
When we read this passage about the sheep and the goats, we should understand its particular meaning in the context of Jesus’s ministry to Israel and the world shattering events as the Old Covenant went down in flames. But this does not take away from its application to the Final Judgment every single one of us will face, any more than understanding Jeremiah 31 is about the Restoration Covenant, but Hebrews uses it to explain what the New Covenant is like. We must understand God’s judgment is absolutely certain, that His judgment is coming, and that we will be judged according to our deeds. A lot of evangelicals and protestants don’t like that kind of language, despite the fact that the Bible uses it, because it sounds like works righteousness. The thing is, it is not talking about earning salvation. It is talking about the good works you do because you believe in Jesus. Jesus is the one who saves us, there is nothing we can do to earn it. He earned it. Our good works are simply evidence that we really do believe. James says faith without works is dead. No one says they believes something, then consistently behaves in a way that shows they believe the opposite of that. We call such people “hypocrites.” Christ calls us to live a life of faith and faithfulness. This does not mean we are never going to sin ever again, otherwise God would not give us provision to confess our sins and repent of them. What it does mean is that He sanctifies us more and more, He gives us grace that we would have greater victory over sin and over unbelief. So when we hear about Christ sitting on His throne and judging us by our works, it should sober us, but it should not cripple us. We know that everything we say, do, and think will be brought before Him, and this should bring us great joy. We should want Him to call us blessed. We should want what we do to be evaluated by Him and called “good.” We should want to hear “well done, good and faithful servant.” So go from here, knowing that the good works you do are not in vain. They are done to the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, and always remember, that it is He who will one day sit in judgment over you.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen!