Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Matthew · About this commentary
The Sheep and the Goats
Matthew 25:31-46
31 “But 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. · WEB
The last teaching in the book: a judgment of all nations decided by six ordinary kindnesses that neither side remembers.
"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" Matthew 25:31.
The final passage of the last discourse is not a parable, though it contains one image. It is a description, and it belongs to Matthew alone.
"Before him all the nations will be gathered, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats" Matthew 25:32. Mixed flocks grazed together all day and were parted at evening — a routine, unhurried business, and the shepherd never has to think about which is which.
The criterion is the astonishing part. Six items, all of them physical, none of them religious: food, drink, welcome for a stranger, clothing, care in sickness, a visit in prison Matthew 25:35–36. Nothing about doctrine, nothing about miracles, nothing said in his name. And every one is a small thing that costs an afternoon.
"Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you?" Matthew 25:37. Neither side recognizes its own record. The righteous are genuinely puzzled, which is what distinguishes them — they were not performing, and they kept no ledger. The others are equally puzzled, and their surprise says as much: they would certainly have helped had they known who it was. What they missed was not an opportunity to serve Christ but a hungry person in front of them.
"Because you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me" Matthew 25:40. The identification is total and it is the answer to both surprises. He is not saying such acts are like serving him. He says they were.
"Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels" Matthew 25:41. The destination was prepared for the devil and his angels — it was not made for people, and no one is native to it.
"These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" Matthew 25:46.
The verse is the sharpest statement of the outcome in the Gospels and it repays reading closely. Two things are called eternal, and they are not the same kind of thing: one side receives life, which is the whole point — it is given to one group and not the other, and a punishment consisting of unending conscious existence would be a form of the life only the sheep are said to get. Scripture uses eternal this way regularly of an act whose result is permanent rather than of a process that never finishes: eternal redemption and eternal judgment are not still being carried out Hebrews 9:12 Hebrews 6:2, and the eternal fire that fell on Sodom is not burning now Jude 1:7. The prophets describe the end of the wicked as a burning that leaves neither root nor branch and ashes underfoot Malachi 4:1–3, and Scripture's own summary sets the alternatives as perishing and life John 3:16 Romans 6:23.
What is beyond dispute is that the separation is final, that it is made by him, and that it is made on the evidence of how people treated those with nothing. Honest readers have long differed over the duration of the punishment; none of them differ about the standard, and the standard is what the passage is for. It is the last thing he teaches before the plot to kill him begins in the next verse.
held with reason What this mark means