As in the Sermon on the Mount, and again in the last discourse in the
Temple, so here, the language rises into a strain of great majesty and
sublimity as the prophecy draws to a close. No one can fail to
recognise it. This vision of judgment is the climax of the teaching of
the Lord Christ. Alike for magnificence and for pathos it is
unsurpassed in literature. There is no departure from His wonted
simplicity of style. As little here as everywhere else do we recognise
even a trace of effort or of elaboration; yet as we read there is not
a word that could be changed, not a clause that could be spared, not a
thought that could be added with advantage. It bears the marks of
perfection, whether we look at it from the point of view of the
Speaker's divinity or from the point of view of His humanity. Divine
in its sublimity, it is most human in its tenderness. "Truly this was
the Son of God." Truly this was the Son of man.
The grandeur of the passage is all the more impressive by contrast
with what immediately follows: "And it came to pass, when Jesus had
finished all these sayings, He said unto His disciples, Ye know that
after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is
betrayed to be crucified." Into such an abyss was the Son of man
looking when in language so calm, so confident, so majestic, so
sublime, He spoke of sitting on the throne of His glory as the Judge
of all mankind. Did ever man speak like this Man?
It is significant that even when speaking of the coming glory He still
retains His favourite designation, "the Son of man." In this we see
one of the many minute coincidences which show the inner harmony of
the discourses recorded in this Gospel with those of a different style
of thought preserved by St. John; for it is in one of these we read
that "He (the Father) hath given Him authority to execute judgment,
because He is the Son of man." Thus the judgment of humanity proceeds
out of humanity itself, and constitutes as it were the final offering
up of man to God. This on the God-ward side; and, on the other side,
there is for those who stand before the Judge, the certainty that as
Son of man He knows by experience all the weaknesses of those He
judges and the force of the temptations by which they have been beset.
Nothing could be more impressive than the picture set before us of the
throne of glory, on which is seated the Son of man with all the angels
around Him and all nations gathered before Him. It is undoubtedly the
great assize, the general judgment of mankind. No partial judgment can
it be, nothing less than the great event referred to in that passage
already quoted from St. John's Gospel, where after speaking of
judgment being committed to the Son of man, it is added: "Marvel not
at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the graves
shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good,
unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the
resurrection of damnation." This view of the passage is supported not
only by the universality implied throughout and expressed in the term
"all the nations[23]"; but by every reference to the same subject
throughout this Gospel, notably the parables of the Tares and the Net
(see Matt. xiii. 39-43, 47-50), the general declaration at Cæsarea
Philippi, "The Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father, with
His angels; and then shall He reward _every man_ according to his
works" (Matt. xvi. 27); and especially the earlier reference to the
same event in this discourse, in that portion of it which we have
spoken of as the prophecy proper, where the mourning of all the tribes
of earth, and the gathering together of the elect from the one end of
heaven to the other, are connected with one another and with the
coming of the Son of man (Matt. xxiv. 30, 31).
It seems quite certain, then, that whatever subsequent unfoldings
there may be in the later books of the New Testament as to the order
in which judgment shall proceed, there is no intention here of
anticipating them. It is true that the preceding parables have each
given a partial view of the judgment,--the first as affecting those in
office in the Church, the second and third as applied to the members
of the Church; but just as those specially contemplated in the first
parable are included in the wider scope of the second and third, so
these contemplated in the second and third are included in the
universal scope of the great judgment scene with which the whole
discourse is fitly and grandly concluded.
In this great picture of the final judgment the prominent thought is
_separation_: "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." How easily and with what
unerring certainty the separation is made--as easily and as surely as
the shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats! Nothing eludes the
glance of that all-searching Eye. No need of pleading or
counter-pleading, of prosecutor or prisoner's counsel, no hope from
legal quibble or insufficient proof. All, all is "naked and opened
unto the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do." He sees all at a
glance; and as He sees, He divides by a single dividing line. There is
no middle position: each one is either on the right or on the left.
The dividing line is one entirely new. All nations are there; but not
as nations are they divided now. This is strikingly suggested in the
original by the change from the neuter (nations, ἔθνη) to the
masculine (them, αὐτοὺς), indicating as by a sudden flash of
unexpected light that not as nations, but as individuals, must all be
judged. The line is one which crosses all other lines that have
divided men from one another, so that of all ranks and conditions of
men there will be some on the right and some on the left. Even the
family line will be crossed, so that husband and wife, parents and
children, brothers and sisters, may be found on opposite sides of it.
What, then, is this new and final line of separation? The sentence of
the King will mark it out for us.
It is the first and only time that Jesus calls Himself the King. He
has displayed His royalty in His acts; He has suggested it in His
discourses and His parables; He has claimed it by the manner of His
entry into His capital and His temple; He will afterwards assent when
Pilate shall ask Him the plain question; but this is the only place
where He uses the title in speaking of Himself. How significant and
impressive is this! It is as if He would once for all before He
suffered disclose the fulness of His majesty. His royalty, indeed,
was suggested at the very beginning by the reference to the throne of
His glory; but inasmuch as judgment was the work which lay immediately
before Him, He still spoke of Himself as the Son of man; but now that
the separation is made, now that the books have been opened and
closed, He rises above the Judge and styles Himself THE KING.
We must think of Him now as all radiant with His royal glory--that
visage which was "so marred more than any man" now shining with
celestial light--that Form which was distorted "more than the sons of
men," now seen to be the very "form of God," "the chiefest among ten
thousand" of the highest angels round Him, "altogether lovely," the
personal embodiment of that glorious kingdom He has been preparing
through all the centuries from the foundation of the world--disclosed
at last as the answer to every longing soul, the satisfaction of every
pure desire,--THE KING.
All this we must realise before we can imagine the awful gulf which
lies between these simple words, "Depart" and "Come." That sweet word
"Come"--how He has repeated and repeated it through all these ages, in
every possible way, with endless variations! Spoken so tenderly with
His own human lips, it has been taken up and given forth by those whom
He has sent in His name: the Spirit has said "Come"; the Bride has
said "Come"; the hearers have said "Come"; whosoever would, has been
invited to come. The music of the word has never died away. But now
its course is nearly run. Once more it will ring out; but with a
difference. No longer now to all. The line of separation has been
drawn, and across "the great gulf fixed" the old sweet word of grace
can reach no longer. It is to those on the right, and these alone,
that now the King says "Come." To those on the left there remains the
word, a stranger to His lips before, the awful word, "Depart from Me."
In the contrast between these two words, there already is involved all
that follows: all the joy of the welcome--"Come, ye blessed of My
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of
the world"; all the horror of the doom--"Depart from Me, ye cursed,
into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."
Still the great question remains unanswered, _What is the dividing
line?_ Inasmuch as this belongs to the hidden man of the heart, to
the secrecy of consciousness and conscience, the only way in which it
could be made to appear in a picture parable of judgment such as this,
is by the introduction of such a conversation as that which follows
the sentence in each case. The general distinction between the two
classes had been suggested by the simile of the sheep and the
goats--the one white, the other black, the one obedient, the other
unruly; but it is made much more definite by this dramatic
conversation. We call it dramatic, because we regard it as extreme
bondage to the letter to suppose this to be a prediction of the words
that will actually be used, and therefore look upon it simply as
intended to represent, as nothing else could, the new light which both
the righteous and the wicked will then see suddenly flashed upon their
life on earth, a light so full and clear and self-interpreting that
there cannot but be unquestioning acquiescence in the justice of the
final award.
There are those who, looking at this conversation in the most
superficial way, find in it the doctrine of salvation by works, and
imagine that they are warranted on the strength of this passage to set
aside all that is written in other parts of Scripture as to the
necessity of change of heart, to dismiss from their minds all concern
about creed or worship, about doctrine or sacraments or church
membership. Be kind to the poor--that will do instead of everything
else.
In answer to such a perversion of our Lord's language it should surely
be enough to call attention to the fact that all is made to turn upon
the treatment of Christ by the one class and by the other. Kindness to
the poor comes in, not as in itself the ground of the division, but as
furnishing the evidence or manifestation of that devotion to God as
revealed in Christ, which forms the real ground of acceptance, and the
want of which is the sole ground of condemnation. True it is that
Christ identifies Himself with His people, and accepts the kindness
done to the poorest of them as done to Himself; but there is obviously
implied, what is elsewhere in a similar connection clearly expressed,
that the kindness must be done "in the name of a disciple." In other
words, love to Christ must be the motive of the deed of charity, else
it is worthless as a test of true discipleship. The more carefully the
whole passage is read, the more manifest will it be that the great
question which determines the separation is this: "How have you
treated Christ?" It is only to bring out more clearly the real answer
to this question that the other is added: How have you treated
Christ's poor? For according to each man's treatment of these will
have been his treatment of Christ Himself. It is the same principle
applied to the unseen Christ as the apostle applies to the invisible
God: "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he
love God Whom he hath not seen?"
While there is no encouragement here for those who hope to make up for
the rejection of Christ by deeds of kindness to poor people, there is
abundant room left for the acceptance at the last of those who had no
means of knowing Christ, but who showed by their treatment of their
fellow-men in distress that the spirit of Christ was in them. To such
the King will be no stranger when they shall see Him on the throne;
nor will they be strangers to Him. He will recognise them as His own;
and they will recognise Him as the very King of Love for Whom their
souls were longing, but Who not till now has been revealed to their
delighted gaze. To all such will the gracious words be spoken "Come,
ye blessed of My Father"; but they too, as well as all the rest, will
be received not on the ground of works as distinguished from faith,
but on the ground of a real though implicit faith which worked by love
and which was only waiting for the revelation of their King and Lord
to make it explicit, to bring it out to light.
Philanthropy can never take the place of faith; and yet no words ever
spoken or written on this earth have done so much for philanthropy as
these. It were vain to attempt, in so brief a sketch, to bring out
even in the way of suggestion the mingled majesty and pathos of the
words of the King to the righteous, culminating in that great
utterance which touches the very deepest springs of feeling and
thrills every fibre of the pure and loving heart: "Inasmuch as ye have
done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it
unto Me." Besides the pathos of the words, what depth of suggestion is
there in the thought, as shedding light upon His claim to be the Son
of man! As Son of God He is the King, seated on the throne of His
glory; as Son of man He is identified with all His brethren, even with
the least of them, and with each one of them all over all the world
and through all the ages: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the
least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me." How the divinity
shines, how the humanity thrills, through these great words of the
King!
The scroll of this grand prophecy is finished with the awful words:
"These shall go away into eternal punishment; but the righteous into
eternal life" (R.V.). Eternal punishment, eternal life--such are the
issues which hang upon the coming of the Son of man to judgment; such
are the issues which hang upon the treatment of the Son of man in
these years of our mortal life that are passing over us now. There are
those who flatter themselves with the idea that, because the question
has been raised by honest and candid interpreters of Scripture whether
absolute endlessness is necessarily involved in the word eternal,
therefore these words of doom are shorn of much of their terror; but
surely this is a pitiful delusion. There is no possible way of
reducing the force of the word "eternal" which will bring the
awfulness of the doom within the bounds of any finite imagination; and
whatever may be said as to what the word necessarily implies, whatever
vague surmise there may be that absolute endlessness is not in it,
this much is perfectly certain: that there is not the slightest
suggestion of hope in the words; no straining of the eyes can discern
even the straitest gate out of that eternal punishment into eternal
life. Between the one and the other there is "a great gulf fixed." It
is the final judgment; it is the final separation; and scarcely with
more distinctness could the awful letters have been traced, "Leave
every hope behind, all ye who enter here." "These shall go away into
eternal punishment; but the righteous"--none but the righteous--"into
eternal life."
[22] In the parable of the pounds the number of servants is ten, and
there, too, only three are selected as examples.
[23] It is not forgotten that the word translated "nations" is
commonly applied to the Gentiles as distinguished from the Jews; but
clearly there is no such limitation here. No commentator, at least of
any note, suggests that the Jews as a nation are not among the nations
gathered around the throne.