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The Severe Mercy of a Pre-emptive Judgment

October 20, 2016

Matthew 24:42-51

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 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. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34 “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. 35 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, 36 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.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

CONSIDER THIS

These parables describing the end of all things broken and the beginning of all things made new reveal truths so staggering as to be breathtaking. Unfortunately, we are inoculated from their impact by our casual familiarity with them. According to my fifth grade understanding of the subject, when I get a flu shot, they are actually injecting me with the flu in a small enough dosage that my body can fight it off and build an immunity to it.

At least this is how I related to these texts for so long. I read them through the W.W.J.D. discipleship motif. Because Jesus fed the hungry, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, healed the sick and so on, I should do likewise. It was just another set of noble aspirations I should be more about in my life. I got just enough of a sense of the text that inoculated me from actually being impacted by the truth of it.

WARNING! DANGER WILL ROBINSON! This is not a W.W.J.D. kind of text. It is an eschatological (read “end times”) heaven and hell, up or down vote judgment text. Jesus is pulling us into the theatre and showing us the movie trailer of the great and ultimate feature presentation of the return of Jesus Christ and the final accounting.

The text is nothing short of severe. It’s just too easy to retreat into our easy-peasy sentimental understanding of what it means to be saved by grace alone through faith alone and not by works so that none can boast. (See Ephesians 2:8-10). So is Jesus saying we are not, in fact, saved by grace alone through faith alone but by feeding the hungry, caring for the poor, clothing the naked, ministering to the sick and visiting those in prison? Now, before you start that nasty email, reason with me. How do you reconcile this? Don’t we tend to believe if a person prays the sinners prayer and accepts Jesus into their heart that they are golden—whether they ever lift a finger to help anyone or not for the rest of their days? So how do we reconcile these un-minced words of Jesus that seem to say just the opposite?

Here’s how I resolve it. Yes, we are in fact saved by grace alone through faith alone by the unmerited favor and forgiveness of God through the shed blood of his Son on the Cross and his glorious resurrection from the dead. Nothing we can do, no matter how extraordinarily meritorious can ever cancel our own unpayable debt and earn for us the grace of the forgiveness of Jesus Christ—N O T H I N G. I think Jesus is mercifully giving us the answers to the final exam. He’s revealing to us what a person who is saved by grace alone through faith alone actually looks like in the midst of a fallen and mercilessly cruel world. The hallmark quality of a person who has received mercy is that they have become a person who shows mercy.

In this famous final judgment parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus is offering us a severe mercy. He is giving us the gracious opportunity, right now, to examine ourselves preemptively according to the terms of the judgment before it actually happens. The question? Are we becoming the kind of people whose lives exude the evidence of having been saved by grace through faith. Or are we fooling ourselves?

Translation: Am I becoming the kind of person for whom it is becoming “second nature” to give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, and welcome to the stranger and clothes to the naked and compassion for the sick and love to the imprisoned? These aren’t just things we do because we think we should. These acts of mercy are part and parcel of who we are becoming.

THE PRAYER

Merciful God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for the gracious mercy of this pre-judgment confrontation. We need to know what a true disciple of Jesus Christ looks like—not so we can judge others but so we can be brutally honest with ourselves. And remind us that we cannot come to resemble the character of Jesus apart from him. We cannot make ourselves reflect your grace anymore than we can make ourselves worthy of it. Come Holy Spirit and firmly set our feet on this path. In Jesus name, Amen.

Daily Text MATTHEW 10-20-16THE QUESTIONS

1. Are you becoming a person whose life gives evidence of the kind of mercy and grace you have freely received? What might repentance look like for you in this matter?

2. Does it make sense that rather than amping up our do-gooding we might ask ourselves the question, “Have I truly received the mercy and grace of God in Jesus Christ?” Or have I merely assented to the propositional truth of the grace of God.

3. Where would you push back on today’s reflection?

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J.D. Walt, is a Bond Slave of the Lord Jesus Christ. jd.walt@seedbed.com.

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WHAT IS THIS? Wake-Up Call is a daily encouragement to shake off the slumber of our busy lives and turn our eyes toward Jesus. Each morning our community gathers around a Scripture, a reflection, a prayer, and a few short questions, inviting us to reorient our lives around the love of Jesus that transforms our hearts, homes, churches, and cities.

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