The first clear lesson from the three parables in Matthew 25 is that there will be a future day of reckoning for all people. That is obvious. Yet it must be stressed, if only because people usually think the opposite. Jesus spoke of judgment being obvious. It was not even open to debate. But the people I am describing consider God’s judgment as the most irrational and least anticipated thing in the world.
What do people think of when one speaks of dying? Most probably do not want to think of it at all. They are not certain what, if anything, lies beyond death’s door. But if they do speak about it, assuming that something does lie beyond this present life, they think of the afterlife in pleasant terms. At the very least they think of a continuation of life as we know it. If not that, it must be something considerably better. Very few consider that it may be worse. They cannot imagine the Almighty as a God of rigid judgment.
This attitude caused R. C. Sproul to speak of what he has called the doctrine of “justification by death.” “Protestants and Catholics used to argue over justification. Protestants said that justification is by faith alone. Catholics said that it is by faith plus works. But today many people seem to think that to get to heaven all one has to do is die. One is “justified” by death alone.”
On this matter our contemporaries are irrational, as they are on most other spiritual matters. This is an evil world. All sins are not judged in this world, nor are all good deeds rewarded. If this is a moral universe, if it is created and ruled by a moral God, then there must be a reckoning hereafter in which those scales are balanced. Evil must be punished.
In most theological volumes on eschatology (the last things), there are three great points of emphasis: the return of Christ, the resurrection of the body, and the final judgment. But of the three, the only one that is truly reasonable is the last. There is no reason why Jesus should return again. He came once and was rejected. If he should write us off and never give so much as a second thought to this planet, it would be understandable. It is the same with the resurrection: “Dust you are and to dust you will return” (Ge.3.19). If that is all there is, who can complain? We have had our lives. Why should we expect anything more? There is nothing logical in either of those two matters in and of themselves. But judgment? That is the most logical thing in the universe, and every story in this chapter cries out that there will most certainly be a final day of reckoning.
In the first case, it was when the bridegroom came. In the second case, it was when the “master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them” (Mt.25.19). In the third case, it is when “the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him” and the nations are gathered together before Him for His judgment.
Maranatha!
(mar-uh-nath-uh – “Our Lord Comes”) Pastor Steve can be reached at PastorSteve@MaranathaBibleChurch.org