Sheep and Goats

32. Aug 10, 2015

2015 Devotional. Our goal for these weekly devotionals is to grow in humility and to grow spiritually by memorizing selected passages, putting them into context, and by applying them to our daily living. These passages are taken from: “100 Verses Every Christian Needs to Know” by Freeman-Smith. All passages are from the NIV.

 Matthew 25:40

 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.’

 Matthew 25 is about Jesus teaching in parables. Jesus teaches in parables so that only those having the Spirit of God will be able to understand and access the Kingdom of God (Mt. 13:10-17). The passage we are memorizing is in the context of the parable of the sheep and the goats (Mt. 25: 31-46). Jesus puts himself in the parable and he is teaching about the judgment; it is about the separation of believers and unbelievers at the end of the time.

The parable is unnerving giving the impression that a person is saved or lost by a person’s works. However believers are only saved by Jesus’ love and the work He does for us, and we are not condemned by our works but our work is judged. Unbelievers however are condemned by their work, apart from Jesus no work is acceptable to God no matter how good that work may be for mankind.

 Believers do their work in the name of Jesus Christ out of gratitude to Him, that work follows them to heaven, lasts forever, and become building blocks in the New Heaven and the New Earth.

Take note that believers and unbelievers give Jesus the same answer when told by Jesus what they did and what they did not do for Him. Lord, when did we see you hungry, homeless, jailed, and needing clothes? The difference is the power of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life: Believers see Jesus in the needs of people because “they are the body of Christ” and Jesus came to save people physically and spiritually (Lk. 4: 18 and Isa. 61:1). Without the Spirit of God we cannot see! The Spirit of God is his gift to all who respond to His love (Jn. 3:16-21), the promise we must accept and believe.

 

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