Judgment of What, or Whom?

What does it mean to be known by God? Why does God say, “I never knew you?” How can it be that a God that knows everything could say: “I don’t know who you are?” Is it more important that you know God or that God knows you? 

We’re moving today to the fourth parable about the end of the age. In the so-called Olivet discourse we’ve been discussing the question (still hanging): What does it mean to be known by God? At the end of the 10 Virgins parable, as the five foolish virgins return from their midnight sortie to look for oil, the bridegroom says: “I don’t know who you are.” What does he mean? 

Some clues to the answer may be found in this fourth parable, known as The Judgment:  

“But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. And all the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, just as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, but the goats on the left. 

“Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? And when did we see You as a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? And when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of Mine, you did it for Me.’ 

“Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, you accursed people, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or as a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it for one of the least of these, you did not do it for Me, either.’ These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Matthew 25:31-46) 

We also know this parable as the parable of the sheep and the goats. Sheep and shepherds appear throughout the Bible, all the way from Genesis to Revelation. Many of the heroes of the Bible—Abraham, Moses, David, for example—were involved in the business of herding sheep. Jesus uses sheep as an illustration in his parables to teach us much about God.

Sheep have strong flocking and herding instincts, a survival mechanism that I believe has spiritual implications. Flocking makes it harder for predators to destroy the group. Sheep follow their leader even to the point of death if the leader walks off a cliff. They’re very social and they need to see each other. Their eyes can actually swivel backwards, to see a little bit to the rear as well as to the front and the sides, which helps alert them to predators and keeps them aware of the rest of the flock behind them. 

This flocking instinct of sheep makes it easy for humans to control them. Sheep are so docile and domesticated they would probably not survive in the wild. A sheep that becomes isolated from the flock is either ill or lost. It would be against its nature to choose to leave the flock. Meanwhile, left to its own devices when the shepherd takes off after the stray, the inclination of the flock will be to band together and in doing so will remain relatively safe. 

The relationship between the shepherd and the flock is a very intimate one. Jesus said that the sheep know the shepherd by his voice, and the shepherd knows each of the sheep by name (John 10). In situations of distress, hearing our name being called brings relief. It tells us that someone is looking out for us. 

Goats, on the other hand, are a different species from sheep. They are capricious, impulsive, unpredictable, devious and contrary. They’re never content with what they have. They hate to be confined. They’re not good followers. Each wants to be its own leader. Their herding instinct is weak. In Scriptural metaphor, goats represent people destined to end up in the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, along with anyone whose name is not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. 

Why were the sheep and the goats surprised at the judgment that they received? Sheep are born sheep and goats are born goats. Goats just don’t belong in the kingdom. But why? Why should they be excluded from all hope of salvation? In the Scriptures, goats were used as sacrifices and as “scapegoats,” loaded with the sins of Israel and taken to the desert and left to die, taking the sins of Israel with them. Biblical scholars differ about whether the scapegoat is a metaphor for Jesus, the bearer of the sins of mankind, or for Satan; but regardless of that, sin seems to be the hallmark of goats. 

On the face of it, this judgment passage seems to be quite simple. Good people end up in the kingdom while bad people end up in a bad place. We seem intuitively to know, however, that all of us have a certain amount of both good and evil in ourselves. In this passage, the distinction is absolute and binary. You’re either one or the other. 

Everlasting punishment in a burning hell hardly seems consistent with the loving God of Jesus, and seems also out of proportion to the crime of neglecting to visit one’s criminal neighbor in jail. The passage hints at a connection to something being judged at a far deeper level, at the very root of evil. It hints that something is being finished here that was begun at the foundation of the earth:

 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, each one’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each one’s work. If anyone’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet only so as through fire. 

 Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are. (1 Corinthians 3:12-17)

Being “burned up” here refers to their work, not to the people themselves. Fire is a way of testing the quality of people’s work. Even if the work is a poor quality, and therefore succumbs to the flame, the person responsible for it (says this passage) will still be saved. The passage also asserts the presence of God’s element—the spirit, the inner light, the “eternity” inside of each of us. That this would be consigned to the flames is flatly rejected in the passage. Judgment is our salvation, not our destruction: 

 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him. The one who believes in Him is not judged; the one who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light, so that his deeds will not be exposed. But the one who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds will be revealed as having been performed in God.” (John 3:16-21) 

Is it possible that the judgment referred to in this fourth parable refers not to individual judgment but to the judgment of evil itself? If so, then this metaphor is not an individual metaphor, not a personal metaphor about you or me, but about the ultimate good or ultimate evil. We think of God primarily as being in the business of uniting, and the devil of being in the business of dividing. Jesus gathered the sheep into a single unit. But individual goats were not necessarily excluded from that unit. What was excluded, apparently, was evil itself. 

Jesus said he would bring sheep “not of this fold” into it. Clearly, God is in the business of gathering, of bringing together, of forming community—a community known as the kingdom of heaven. Adam and Eve were part of that community, that fold, that flock, yet they were driven out—secluded, separated from it. Community, then, is identified with good and with goodness, in contrast to separation, individualization, and isolation, which are identified as evil.

Of all the themes that Jesus included in his preaching and teaching, the importance of community of the kingdom of heaven and in particular its importance in the here-and-now is not just paramount: It is antithetical to the individualistic, pious, personal salvific message that we call the gospel today. In this parable of the sheep and the goats, we see that the kingdom of heaven is not a group of like-minded people all working toward a common goal; it is a flock of sheep led by an individual leader, a shepherd, the Lord of hosts. 

It is a central element in the gospel message that the sheep—the kingdom people—are all things to all people. They become servants to others, as the Apostle Paul put it. They’re less concerned about their own personal relationship with God, of what God thinks about them, or their standing before God, than they are about what is going on with the world and what is happening in the lives of those who do not see themselves as being part of the kingdom, those “others”. 

In fact, everyone must come through the door of the sheepfold. Does that mean everyone must become a Christian to get through it? It might seem so, given that Jesus himself said: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life” but this statement is not about his name or him as a person. It’s a broader concept, more descriptive than prescriptive. The way to the kingdom is via the message of Jesus, but even if you don’t know that Jesus was the messenger, his way to the kingdom is still open to you. His truth that he is your God is true for you, and his life of teaching and humility, love, and sacrifice, is also livable to some extent by you. The way is through him because He is the dispenser of grace.

The parable of the lost sheep not only accurately describes the relationship between God and his people, and the intimacy of that relationship and the nature and the voice of God, and God’s persistence in communicating with us, but also the relationship between God and other people. But then how, if at all, does the relationship between God and those others differ between those of God and his own people? 

Christians believe that only through Jesus can anyone enter the fold, that only through Jesus can the process of oneness, of reconciliation, of joining the flock, occur. Then what about all the people who lived before Jesus, or even those who live and die today without ever hearing the name of Jesus? The gate, the door, the narrow way is the only way into the sheep pen into the kingdom of heaven. If you climb in through the window, John says, you are a fraud or a thief. 

Jesus said that he was the door and anyone can go in and out. Why can you go both in and out of the sheep fold? And how does this relate to others? God said: 

 Therefore this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says concerning the shepherds who are tending My people: “You have scattered My flock and driven them away, and have not been concerned about them; behold, I am going to call you to account for the evil of your deeds,” declares the Lord. “Then I Myself will gather the remnant of My flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and bring them back to their pasture, and they will be fruitful and multiply. (Jeremiah 23:2-3)

What about those other lost, outsider, isolated sheep? How are they faring and what needs to be done to bring them into the fold? Kingdom people don’t seek conflict, not even with enemies—whom Jesus said we are to love. They do not set themselves apart on the basis of theology, liturgy, practice, or ritual but on the basis that kingdom principles reflect the life and the work and the teaching of Jesus, who stood accused and convicted of spending time with sinners, the poor, the sick, and the oppressed—those mentioned in this fourth parable, who are on the outside of the mainstream. 

That is why the fact that God knows you is more important than that you know God. Jesus is the door. Everyone enters, one by one, through the narrow way. It is the way of grace. They are allowed passage because the shepherd knows them. But how is it that God knows them? How does he know all those who are on the outside of the fold, as well as those who are in the inside of the fold? 

It just so happens, as we learn from this parable of the sheep and the goats, that God has met them before. As they approach the door to the fold, they encounter the shepherd standing there at the narrow way. Walking down the path of grace, God recognizes them. “I know you,” he says, “I’ve met you before.” 

“How is it possible?” is the reply, “I don’t recall ever meeting you before.” 

“Au contraire,” God says. “Don’t you recall that when I was hungry, you gave me something to eat; when I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink; I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and in prison and you visited me? In the kingdom of heaven, I am the one you ministered to. That’s where we’ve met before.”

And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of Mine, you did it for Me.’ (Matthew 25:40) 

God knows me. He knows me without my personal piety, he knows me because I have met him in the needs of others. How then did God know you? He met you before on the road of life, in the person of the sick, the hungry, the thirsty, and the naked. This then is the judgment: That you and I encounter him in the needs and the requests of others, and that when we respond to those needs, we meet God. We meet God in our goodness, we meet God in our work for others. 

This is illustrated In Genesis 18. Abraham is sitting by the Oaks of Mamre when three strangers who have been on a long journey come up to him. He gives them water to wash their feet and prepares for them a dinner of goat meat, bread, butter and milk—all the essential food groups, and he feeds them. This illustration is mentioned here:

 Do not neglect hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it (Hebrews 13:2)

It turns out that the three strangers were indeed angels who had come to give Abraham the message that he would become a great nation and have a son. 

How then does God know you? He meets you through your goodness, he meets you through the needs of others, unaware that by helping the least, you will meet the most. 

David: The parable shows the dangers and the difficulty of trying to be very specific, because our own language gets in the way. It does indeed seem to be a binary judgment: You’re either one or the other—good or bad. The parable implies that, but it also quotes God as saying: “…to the extent that…” (emphasis added) you did good (or bad) to them, then you did it to me”. That seems to me to make it conditional: “If you did x amount of good (or bad) to them, then you did x amount to me.” Surely, we know that bad people do good things sometimes, and good people do bad things sometimes. 

I like the idea that what’s being judged here is not the individual but evil itself, though this too is an interpretation, and it is so easy to misinterpret the human translation of God’s Word. Don seemed to suggest that isolation is evil but community is good; but if that is the case, where does that leave the ascetics, the anchorites and others whom we tend to revere as holy people? I can see that some forms of isolation could be evil, but is it evil if it is simply somebody’s way of trying to improve their relationship with God? What’s wrong with that?

Robin: You could certainly see a possibility. Someone with gifts of apostleship might be considered a holy person but if they did nothing for anyone else, what’s their value? Something I heard at a funeral many years ago has stuck with me. We all know someone—whether it’s a relative, a friend or whomever—to whom if something unfortunate happens and they pass away, we have questions, such as “Will we see them again?” We don’t know how God will judge. But we do know God will judge rightly 

Donald: I believe that is spot on. I have to trust God’s judgment. I know that God will judge in a fair way. 

What is a holy person? Is it all about works? You can always judge yourself against somebody who is more holy, if holiness is measured by works. I’m grateful that I’ve had a career that has allowed me to be involved in developing people’s lives. My career matched what a good person does, if I did it properly. As a physician, Don is in a position to do good for others, but is somebody in a car factory not as holy? I don’t think it’s a holy thing. I think it’s a matter of doing good. The car worker is doing good, too—we need to get cars to get to work! But I find this whole topic to be challenging. 

Sharon: This is the Social Work parable for me. It might even go back to genetics. I have preached many sermons on this parable. I’ve always been fascinated about the fact that both groups are in denial: Those doing it are being selfless so naturally that they don’t even know they’re doing it; the others who are so intrinsically selfish don’t even know they’re not doing it. This gets to the core of the Great Controversy: Are we here for ourselves? Are we here to control the environment and control what we do? Or are we so naturally selfless? 

Some mothers have an innate ability to care, just so naturally. There’s something about living a selfless life—a life all about serving, and relationships so sellfess that you’re just constantly wanting to give to other people naturally. It’s really nothing about what you’re getting back. It’s about who you are, and who you need to be as an extension of an ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

I don’t think we educate for this. I don’t think you can. It’s not a skill set you can transmit to somebody. It’s realizing that you are not the center of the universe, not the most critical piece, but you’re one part of what could be good about the world if you’re living the selfless life that Christ wants us to live, if our character is completely dedicated to his glory. 

How you do that, how you walk with Jesus every day, is intrinsically centered on relationship wellness. Instead of using people, it’s about relational wellness. My prayer is to be a little more like my mother. Not that my father isn’t a good person, but I think some people are innately completely selfless in life. That’s the sheep I would like to be. But it’s not easy to transmit, and self continues to make warfare within me. I would like to be Christ-like and giving and not taking and not being focused on what I’m going to get in return. 

David: The only difference between Sharon and me is that she worries about it and as a Daoist, I don’t.

Donald: Should you?

David: The Daoist would say there is no point.

Robin: If you aspire to want to help others, if you pray about helping others, that’s not the same as worrying—or is it?

David: It’s a question of motive. Is it because you feel you have to help others in order to be saved? That would be the Christian rationale, I think, but the Daoist would say that if that’s the way you are—wanting to go out and help people—then great! As Sharon said, it is genetic. Some people are born that way, and some are not. Some people are goats, and some are sheep, and neither is aware of what they are—they simply are. They are on their Way, and they should do whatever they feel they should do.

Don: But I think Sharon raises a question (that Donald has also raised many times), and it’s a good one: Is this a matter of personality, of genetics, of an old man who shouts “Get off my lawn!” versus a Sweet Caroline? It’s a challenge for old man “Get off my lawn” to be sweet and kind and see the needs of others. Does that mean he’s a goat and not a sheep? Or can a sheep also be a “Get off my lawn” old man?

Sharon: I think goats can be sheepish. I don’t think we all have to be alike, or this world would be a really boring place. Those of us who’ve worked in geriatrics know that as we get older, what we were in our youth we tend to take to some extreme in our senior years. If we were young and grumpy, we’ll probably be grumpier in old age. If we were kind then, we’re probably sweet now and giving everything away including things we probably need to keep.

It’s complex. I believe that Jesus created the diversity because we need it. There’s often (not always) some sweetness in a grumpy old wo/man if you really get to know him or her. In general, if you get to really understand someone’s scars, if you really get to understand them, there’s some sheep in all of us and there’s definitely some goat in all of us as well. I’ve recently been told I’ve grown mean since the death of my husband. That’s a really frightening thought to me. But maybe when my husband was alive, he was the meanie, so I didn’t have to be. 

These things are extremely complex and social science is not a pure science. I would just say that accepting and loving everybody as they are and trying to be more Christ-like—more like our shepherd—is our challenge. I don’t worry about it. I live for Jesus, so I wouldn’t equate it to worry. But I would say that the goal for each of us, each day that we live, is to be more like our Savior in the selfless way that he lived. It’s simple to me in that sense.

Donald: Having been in education my whole life I know that a university only survives with a significant endowment. And my university is blessed to have very wealthy and generous friends. The people that are accumulating a fair amount of money actually give away a lot of money, including some grumpy old men. So we have to be real careful in how we imagine what a generous person looks like. 

Just being nice to people is actually going beyond the call of duty these days. It seems most people aren’t even nice. I think we have to be real careful as to what a godly person might look like. Because there are people who are driven, personality wise, who probably aren’t down at the soup kitchen yet are being very generous behind the scenes. It’s not for me to judge in any case. Where am I in this picture?

Reinhard: We cannot judge. God knows our hidden motives. It is not enough to dispense love to everybody: We also have to show by our deeds. Of the last three parables we discussed, the first one seemed to teach awareness, to be on guard for the master’s return; the second one taught us to be good stewards of the talents given to us. Today’s parable teaches us to become perfect Christians. 

Our Master—God—knows us inside, but I think this parable is about what is visible on the surface: Do we help the needy, feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, and visit the incarcerated? This takes extra work. When we see a beggar or homeless person, do we just give money? Not always. It takes us out of our comfort zone. We don’t feel comfortable. But if God asks us to do this kind of work with our fellow man, it is to help make us whole in the eyes of God—being aware of his coming, taking care of the talents given to us, and putting in extra effort to look after the outcasts. That’s not only what we preach, it’s what we should do. I think that’s what God wants from us.

David: I agree, I think that what was being taught in all these parables is the difference between what is good and what is evil, not who is good and who is evil. You cannot divide people into a binary good and bad, because we’re all a mix—there’s a continuum of good and evil in all of us. But there is there is a binary division between Good and Evil in and of themselves. A thing is either Good, or it’s not. It can’t be a little bit Good. Looking at the whole message and mission of Jesus from that perspective seems to me to make a great deal more sense than trying to apply it to individuals.

Michael: I agree that it’s very tricky to separate the two. Dr. Weaver also seems to imply that that’s not the purpose of the parable. But then he followed the parable by quoting from Corinthians about throwing the works of someone into the fire as a way to test the works and perhaps to perfect them in a way. In the Bible fire is often a metaphor for grace. So is it about throwing the evil works of someone into the fire in order to improve them? I don’t think I understood that.

Don: We’ll talk more about that soon. 

Anonymous: I would like us to develop the new idea that it is the works or the deeds of evil people that are going to be burnt and not the people themselves. That is a very radical teaching.

Don: I just read from 1 Corinthians, that’s all. I didn’t come up with the theory.

Anonymous: I refer to that verse many times as proof that everybody will be saved. But do we have any other proof? So much of the Bible would need to be re-interpreted if that’s the case. Which is a good idea—a great idea! I hope we are mistaken in thinking that not everybody will be saved and some will be burned. If we are born as sheep or goats, then it’s not a problem. It’s not our mistake if we don’t measure up.

Don: Is it possible for a sheep to become a goat and a goat to become a sheep? I think that’s really the essence of the parable. We all want to end up on the right-hand side. We don’t want to end up on the left.

Anonymous: It’s like the stony ground in the parable of the seed: Is it possible for it to become fertile? If you look at someone’s life before and after conversion, before and after knowing Christ and walking with Christ, you would think it’s possible.

Don: Kiran preached a sermon on stony ground recently and convinced me that the seed has transformational power in the soil; that if you leave even stony ground to the seed, after a while it becomes better soil. A week later I drove by an asphalt parking lot, abandoned for at least a decade, that had become almost a lawn from the grass seed that had blown onto the parking lot and germinated and it tore up the asphalt. In another 10 years would become a lawn and might not even have any residue of a parking lot. 

Anonymous: Isaiah says that the desert will become gardens and fields. 

Don: Right. Isaiah 55 talks about the transformational power of the seed.

David: That transformational power is in the Word. The seed is the Word. The Word of Jesus in the gospels is teaching the difference between Good and Evil. The parable that we read today is very specific: If you don’t visit the sick, if you don’t give to the poor, etc., those are Bad things. If you do, those are Good things. 

So to the extent that you hear the Word, learn it, and take it to heart, you become to that extent less of a goat and more of a sheep. We can’t be perfect. We can’t be just like Jesus, but we can try. I think that’s the purpose of the Scripture and the purpose of Jesus’s mission and his message: To show us the difference between Good and Evil. That’s the transforming power of the Word, the seed that can transform stony ground into fertile soil.

Michael: But the problem is, it’s a parable of judgment, and this analysis doesn’t seem relevant to judgment. I agree with David and I think what he is saying is we’ve got morality wrong. I think Jesus is making the point of what is Moral (Good) and what is Immoral (Bad) in people. That’s great, but it’s a parable of judgment, and this discussion doesn’t say much about judgment.

Robin: is it possible that because we are born with the affinity to sin, perhaps we are born having the proclivity to be a goat, but if we want to, we can learn how to be a sheep?

Dewan: Last week we studied God. God is predictable but sometimes conditional. In John 14:13, Jesus said, “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do,” and Proverbs 8:17 says: “I love those who love me; And those who diligently seek me will find me.” God’s thinking is far above man’s thinking. Our life is also unpredictable. We should stand firm on God’s promises. We should choose faith instead of fear.

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