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 hungered, 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.
The shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, 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 hungered, 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.
The shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or maked, or sick, or in prison, and di not minister unto thee?
The 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 unto life eternal.
-Matthew 25:31-46
Much has been written and said in our time about this passage. Most of what I have read recently has been built on a wrong premise. To posit that these verses touch on individual salvation is off the mark, because the New Testament is plain that personal salvation is based on faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross, not on good works (see Ephesians 2:8-9; Romans 3:28; 1 Peter 1:9). I am convinced that this scenario is in fact, as it states, a judgment of nations.
The Greek word translated "nations" here is ethne, the singular form of which, ethnos, translates as both "nation" and "people group" or "multitude". It is helpful that some nations include more than one ethne (the now defunct Yugoslavia was a good example).
Another reason to believe that this discourse does not deal with the salvation of individuals is that by the tme this scene is set, that is, Jesus having returned in glory and sitting on the throne of David, the believers in Christ will already have been resurrected and glorified (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). This is true whether one is pre-, mid- or post-trib in his eschatology. So born-again believers will not be in either of the two groups rpresented above.
Additionally, it is clear that, if believers are to rule and reign with Christ (Revelation 5:10; 20:6), then it stands to reason that there would be people other than they over whom they might rule. There will be natural people on earth during Christ's millenial reign. These are the people who will be tempted by the Satan again when he is loosed from the pit for a short time at the end of the millenial period (Revelation 20:3, 7-8). These natural folks are those who have escaped the terrifying destructions that immediately precede the Lord's triumphant return.
Not a saved one among them, so when the goats are consigned to hell, they are getting what they signed up for by rejecting Christ. The sheep, on the other hand, get an amazing mulligan because they were part of nations that did right by the criteria set forth by Jesus Himself in Matthew 25. They get to come into the millenial reign of Christ, even thought they are not "saved" in the personal sense, but they come in as groups. Their conduct will be pretty circumspect because, after all, Jesus is visibly ruling from Jerusalem, aided by those of us who received His amazingly gracious offer of eternal salvation.
So how do these nations qualify? What is it that Jesus is either rewarding or punishing in this passage? It all seems to come down to how nations deal with His brethren. So before we go any further we need to determine who Jesus' "brethren" are.
First there are His natural brethren. Jesus was a Jew, and so the Jews of that time, and forward, are His natural "brethren." So we might say, first of all, that a nation will be judged in terms of how it relates to the Jews within its borders. If the Matthew 25 scenario had taken place in, say, Nazi Germany, "goat" would be the determination. On the other hand, the U.S. (despite individual pockets of anit-semitism- remember we're talking about nations here) has done very well. I think any fair-minded American Jew with a sense of history would have to say that the U.S. has been the most accepting and affirming of the sons of Isaac of any nation. Obviously, Islamic nations are way behind the eight-ball with this criterion. But that is not to say that things could not change before the final curtain.
This criterion could be expanded to the treatment of Jews in other nations as well. I know the U.S. was somewhat late to the struggle in World War II, and that its motives were not necessarily that altruistic; but what a sense of historic destiny must have struck the Allied soldiers who liberated concentration camps: "I was in prison and you visited me; I was naked and you clothed me; I was hungry and you fed me")!
Then there is the larger construction: the nation of Israel itself. Many a nation will find itself burned up in the Matthew 25 judgment because it kicked national Israel to the curb. Again, the Islamic nations stand closest to the fire on this, but there have been exceptions: post-Sadat Egypt has honored the long-standing non-aggression pact with Israel (although Mubarek's successor may not). When Britain, who had the mandate in Palestine, began to get cold feet and back away due to Arab pressure, it was left to Harry Truman and the U.S. to recognize the fledgling Zionist nation. Coincidentally or not, there is this: before that time, it was said that "the set never sets on the British Empire." Now, sixty-plus years later, it could be said that the sun never rises on the British Empire.
Today many of us are very concerned with the mindless nonsense of trying to force tiny Israel into more land concessions in the interest of negotiating"peace" with a bunch of ethne who have never abandoned their hateful ambition of driving the Jews into the sea. How does one negotiate peace with an entity who denies your right to exist? I think that the U.S., despite many flaws, had always been a sheep nation, but we are in danger of losing that status over this and other issues, which we will treat in upcoming installments.
Finally, with regard to Jesus' brethren, there are His spiritual brothers, the Christians (see Matthew 12:49-50; Luke 8:21; Romans 8:29; Hebrews 2:11). The first question is, how does the nation treat its own Christians? Again, most of the Islamist nations are in real trouble here. The communist states used to be considered the worst institutional persecutors of Christians (and they were inhumanly brutal). You'll note that the Soviet Union no longer exists (there are forces within that would like to see it reform). God sometimes judges nations in time as well as in eternity, as we will explain in a subsequent post.
Freedom to worship is an extremely important criterion here. The issue that led to the ultimate destruction of Pharoah's Egypt was his refusal to let the Israelites go and hold a religious feast unto the Lord in the desert (Exodus 5:1-4). A government that infringes on the God-given right of the people freely to worship is an outlaw system in the eyes of God.
In the U.S., we have a Christian history that begins with the Founders. Many of us view with alarm the crumbling of the national moral consensus that was based on the Bible, and the incomprehensible willingness of irresponsible judges to agree with the offended few, that Christian symbols and statements do not belong in the public eye. We need be watchful and prayerful here.
There is also the issue of Jesus' Christian brethren in other nations. How have nations reacted, for example, when atrocities such as the murderous institutional persecutions of black Christians in southern Sudan were perpetrated by the Arab Muslim government seated in the north? How has a nation represented Christ by encouraging and sending mssionary efforts abroad (not sent by the government, but not impeded by it either)?
You see that there is an urgent call to and basis for prayer for our nation and other countries with regard to these Scriptural issues.
Next: Psalm 2: going after the Great Satan and the Little Satan
