Christ the Judge – Matthew 25:31-46

How ought the reality of the judgement seat of Christ inform our understanding of the gospel? For many these days the “good news” they expect has nothing to do with the reality of an eternal reckoning. A great effort is waged in every age to purge our consciousness of the reality of death and accounting before a Holy God. Jesus and His apostles could not be more antithetical to these modern sensibilities. Christ closes His final structured discourse in Matthew proclaiming ultimate judicial ethical realities and equips His disciples with His word thereby. In like form, Paul storms Athens in Acts 17: 30-31 declaring “ in times of ignorance God overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent, because He has fixed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom He has appointed and of this He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead.” Related parables have preceded this exposition in Matthew where Christ expounds the separating event of history – a process of judgement and purification inevitably accompanying His kingdom. (Mat 13:24, 13:47-50)