Matthew 25:31-46 "Sheep & Goats"

        “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation 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,  I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’....‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
       “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire 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, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’....‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ 
       “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”


 Jesus here talks about what will happen when He returns.  There will be a time of judgement.  Just as in the previous story, when the master returned and the servants had to give an account, Jesus says that when He returns there will be a time of accounting.   A surprising time; it seems that the main question Jesus will be wanting answered is not about theological correctness.  He will not ask which denomination I was a part of or where I stood on eternal security or even His sovereignty.  He will not care whether I was Reformed or Armenian or Charismatic.  The question of tongues will never come up and neither will the doctrine of election.  The burning question -the one that must be answered -the one thing Jesus says that He will use to judge me and determine whether I belong to Him or not concerns how I treated "the least of these."

I believe that when Jesus is judging me, He will likely never ask, "How much do you know?"  On the other hand, He very well might ask, "Where is your heart?"  

I know that this makes many people mad.  Christians tend to think that Jesus must not actually mean what He is suggesting.  We want it all to be about whether we said "the prayer," whether we were baptized, how we take communion, and where we go to church.  It is not that those things are unimportant to how we live and relate to God here and now.  There is no excuse, since we have Scripture readily available in dozens of translations, to not read His Word and know what it teaches and hold the best theology were are capable of understanding.  But Jesus, whom I believe to be God incarnate, said very clearly that I will be judged not by my theological understanding and knowledge; rather, by whether I visited those in prison, fed the poor, and cared for the hurting.

Lord Jesus, help me to love those that You love in the way that You love them.