To Encourage You

Matthew 25:40 “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’”

Jesus spoke often about the future to his disciples. In Matthew 25, He gives the account of “the sheep and the goats,” metaphors for the two types of people that will stand before Him at the final judgment. It is clear from this passage that there will only be two types: “sheep” and “goats.” The sheep are those who love Him and have followed Him in this life, while the goats are those who have not. The difference between them is made clear by how they have treated “the least of these my brothers.” While the Bible is clear that good works don’t determine if a person will be received by the Father into heaven, it is also clear that the nature of our faith in God, which does determine our eternity, will be demonstrated by our actions. And the particular test that Jesus is talking about here is how we’ve treated other Christians who are in need.

Elsewhere, Jesus talks about loving our neighbors and loving our enemies, but here His focus is on the love of other believers. Christians love other Christians. That’s one of the functions of the church. If we are not part of a local church or otherwise affiliated with Christians, we won’t be aware of their needs, and we will not be in a position to meet those needs. Unbelievers will typically have no interest in being with Christians because their interests will be much different. But what’s perhaps the most amazing part of the account in Matthew 25 is that the sheep won’t even be aware that they have done the things for which Jesus will commend them. Their response to Christ when He commends them for their loving acts is, “When did we do all these things?” Apparently, the point is that their loving acts are such a common part of their lives, with pure motives (i.e., they aren’t keeping score of all the good things they’d done), that Jesus will have to remind them of what they’d done.

This reminds me of a mother that is constantly meeting the needs of her own children, but it never enters her mind to keep track of all the ways she has been doing so. It doesn’t matter to her. She’s just focused on meeting their needs because she loves them more that she loves herself. That’s just who she is. And a person that loves other Christians in need and meets those needs as he or she is able, is what a real Christian is, as defined by the One Who really knows the real from the false: Jesus, the shepherd of the sheep