Matthew 25:31-46
Trinity 26
✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠
Why should you do good works? There are two very simple reasons: God has commanded them, and your neighbor is served by them. Sometimes we become complacent as Lutherans because we know that we’re saved by God’s grace alone, and so we draw the false conclusion that the 10 Commandments are now just the 10 Suggestions. Remember the Sabbath Day–if you can fit it in and if you feel like it. Don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t give false testimony–unless you’ve got a really good reason. No, God’s commands are still in full force. The grace of Christ doesn’t do away with the Law, it fulfills the Law. Believing in Christ, we learn to love His commands, and we are awakened to the need for works of faithfulness and love.
What’s important is that you shouldn’t do good works to gain some sort of reward for yourself. That turns a good work into selfishness. And besides, any good that you have the ability to do came from God in the first place, right? So why would He owe you if you do what He created you to do? The Lord doesn’t owe anyone anything.
It’s worth repeating: God doesn’t need your good works, but your neighbor does. All you have to do is look around for two seconds to see that this world is full of need that is to be met with works of love–and not only charity, but the ordinary, day to day fulfilling of your callings, at work and with your family and friends. Today’s Gospel reading shows us where our good works are to be directed–not up to God as if to earn a merit badge, but down and out toward your neighbor, even toward “the least of these My brethren.”
All that is needed for heaven is faith–the empty hands of faith that receive the works of Jesus for you and that cling to Him and His cross alone. But then, with hands filled with the mercy and goodness of Christ, all that is needed for the neighbor is love which passes along Christ’s mercy and serves the neighbor in need. And those two things are connected and go together. Faith in Christ gives birth to deeds of love.
Though faith is unseen, and love often goes unnoticed, all will be revealed for what it is on the Last Day. When Jesus comes in glory with all His angels, He will judge both the living and the dead. And His judgment will reveal who are the sheep and who are the goats, who are the believers and who are the unbelievers. What is now hidden will be uncovered. That’s actually what the word “apocalypse” means, the uncovering, the revelation. The private will be made public. Everyone will be revealed for who they are, and all our works will be revealed for what they are.
In some ways that’s a scary thought, can’t it? The Bible says very clearly, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. . . so each of us shall give an account of himself to God” (2 Corinthians 5:10; Romans 14:12). Your works matter; your bodily deeds are important. But, thanks be to God, there is something else that comes first, before your works.
The first thing that will be revealed and uncovered on the Last Day is not what you’ve done or left undone, but who you are and what God has done for you. The first thing that happens on the Last Day is that Jesus will separate the sheep from the goats. Sheep on His right. Goats on His left. To the sheep: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father.” To the goats: “Depart from me, you who are cursed.” To the sheep: “Take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” To the goats: “Depart … into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”
Right now your life as a baptized believer is hidden before the world. Colossians 3 says, “Your life is hidden with Christ in God.” And Romans 8 says that “the entire creation groans and eagerly waits for the sons of God to be revealed.” So that’s a good way to think about what’s going to happen on the Last Day–it will be a revelation, the curtains pulled back. Everyone will be seen for who they are in God’s sight, the faithful or the faithless, a sheep of Jesus’ flock or a goat.
Notice, though, that the separation of the sheep from the goats comes before any talk of their works. The sheep are not at the Lord’s right hand because of the works they have done, but because of who and what they are in Christ by His grace. All this had been prepared long before their works, from the very foundation of the world, it says. So it can’t be based on works. Salvation is by God’s election and doing, not ours, as Ephesians 1 says, “(The Father) chose us in (Christ) before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace.”
On the Last Day, once the sheep and goats are divided up, then their works will be judged and evaluated by the Lord. And the works of the sheep will give evidence of the fact that they are indeed the blessed children of God through faith in Jesus. For works are good before the Lord when they flow from faith in Him. No work is good in God’s sight without faith in Jesus, for it is written, “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6). And it is also written, “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23). See, not only does Jesus’ blood cleanse us and take away our sins, but His blood cleanses even our imperfect good works, too, and makes them holy. In Jesus all that is bad and unclean is taken away, and only what is good remains. Those good works provide evidence of our faith in Jesus, that we are among His baptized believers.
And yet even that will not be fully revealed until the Last Day. This is a very important point. Even this evidence of our faith, the evidence of good works, is something that finally only Jesus the Judge can see right now as we live before Judgment Day. So right now we should not look to ourselves and our good works as proof that we are sheep. It is a dangerous thing to look to yourself for the assurance that you are saved. After all, unbelievers do humanly good works and acts of charity, too. It’s faith in Jesus that makes all the difference. Always remember, the life of the believer is hidden until the judgment, and creation eagerly awaits the revelation of who God’s people are!
So, in the meantime, Christians live in this world side by side with unbelievers. And most of the time you can’t tell a huge difference, especially if you only look at what they do in the world. There is no “Christian” way to deliver the mail, fix a flat tire, or plow a field. You would hope Christians would be more ethical and hard-working and loving; but pagans can be ethical and hard-working and loving, too–though the ultimate motivation for that will be different. The difference is internal, and it is the difference between faith in Jesus or unbelief in Jesus. On the Last Day, Jesus, who judges the heart, will reveal the faith or the unbelief. And the only works that will be judged good before Jesus are the ones that flow from faith in Him.
Faith in Jesus is a divine work in you that transforms your hearts and minds. Good works come so naturally to faith that the Christian most often does them without even recognizing them. Notice that the sheep are surprised to find out that the food and drink they served to the hungry and thirsty was actually a meal served to the King of kings and Lord of lords, or that the sick neighbor they helped was actually Jesus Himself hidden in that neighbor. “Whatever you did for one of the least of these my brothers you did it to me.”
And remember this, too. Even the good works you do were prepared for you by the Lord. Ephesians 2 says, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” It’s all God’s grace; it’s all what He has done for you and given to you in His Son Jesus.
Good works are done best when we become forgetful of having done them. Our works become a problem when we’re all self-aware about them, wanting to drag them with us into heaven as if they are a bargaining chip to use in a salvation negotiation. No, the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus is all that is needed for heaven. All our good works are to be left down here, for our neighbor in need. In our neighbor who is sick or hungry or in prison, we learn to see Jesus, who fasted for us, who was arrested and afflicted and stripped of his clothing for us to fully redeem us. The eyes of our faith are always and fully on Christ the crucified. His works alone save us. Living in that faith, we see Jesus also in our neighbor and show our love for Him by loving them.
On the Last Day our faith will finally give way to sight. We will see Jesus as He is, the crucified and risen Savior of the world. To Him every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord, to the everlasting joy of the sheep, to the everlasting shame of the goats. On the Last Day, it will be revealed who you are. But, of course, you don’t have to wait until the Last Day to know. After all, the Judge comes here every Sunday in the divine service as His Word is proclaimed. And He speaks His Word to you, saying, “All your sin is forgiven! I put my Name on you in your Baptism! You are my sheep. Have no fear little flock. I am your Good Shepherd. I laid down my life for you. I was raised from the dead for you. And I live and reign to give you life and peace and joy forever. I see you and know you and love you. You are mine.”
Jesus and His cross is always the dividing line between the sheep and the goats. The same Jesus who was crucified between a believing sheep and an unbelieving goat on Good Friday feeds you with His own body and blood at the foot of the cross, setting you apart from the unbelieving world.
Every divine service is a little judgment day where Jesus judges you to be forgiven. Every week He is here with all His holy angels as we gather around His altar to receive His gifts of grace. On the Last Day you surely will hear Him declare: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠
(With thanks to Brent Kuhlman)