Matthew 25:46

Matthew 25:46

Judgment by Works.

These words spake the Saviour and Judge of all mankind, intimating the unending bliss or woe of the world to come. And surely these words should be enough to stop the mouths of all reverent people. Is it not enough that Christ hath spoken? Shall poor blind mortals undertake to gainsay His statement?

I. You remember the exact ground on which the Great Judge, rehearsing that future scene, bases this tremendous separation for eternity. It is on our treatment of Himself in the daily needs of His suffering humanity that all is made to depend. "Inasmuch as ye did it unto... the least of these My brethren, ye did it unto Me." What romance there is in these familiar words! More than in all "Arabian Nights" and fairy tales put together. Suppose that as we went home today, we passed by one sitting on the roadside, one that was starved in body, tattered in clothes, shivering with cold, left all alone in the wide world; suppose that as he sat there crouched together, his face buried in his hands, there was yet a nameless dignity about his form, a glory which came and went about his head, which made us know that it was Christ. How would it cut us to the heart that we should sit by warm fires and fare of the best, while He was out there in cold and misery! Ah, we say to ourselves, but that never happens in real life! Yes it does, very often; and if it never happens to us, it is only because we choose to forget that whatever kindness we show, for His sake, to the least of His brethren, we are showing, in reality to Him.

II. It is evident from the Epistles, and from the Gospels too, that we may not ever deserve or earn anything by our works, that after all done, we must be unprofitable servants, and hope for mercy only; and it is evident from the Gospels, and from the Epistles too, that we shall never enter the kingdom of Heaven unless our righteousness exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees, even in that department which was peculiarly their own the careful fulfilment, namely, of the law. Going on these two principles, then, we shall be safe on both sides, having good works, but not trusting in them; serving Christ with might and main, yet looking to be rewarded, not of our merit but of His mercy; thus, and thus only, shall we be safe in the last day.

R. Wintereotham, Sermons and Expositions,p. 164.

Everlasting Punishment.

I. Man's conscience, until he deadens it and most when the uncompromising reality of thoughts of death silences all voices of self-deceit speaks out clearly, that punishment is the due reward of our deeds. But of what duration? All knowledge as to eternity must come from the Eternal, whose it is. It is a common formula of those who venture to object anything to God's revelation it is inconceivable that God should visit passing acts of sin with an eternity of misery. But who so revealed to us that sin ceases in the evil, when life ceases? Never do men abandon sin, except by receiving God's converting grace. To sin on is nature. It grows, deepens, hardens, becomes more malignant, more ingrained, more a part of man's self until the hour of death. Why, unless changed even then by the grace of God, should it change in eternity?

II. Unchangeableness may be, for what we know, one of the laws of eternity. We know that it shall be of the blessed. Heaven could not be heaven unless they were fixed in good. And it may be an equal law of our moral nature, that those who reject God in time, even to the end, will, by a continuance of that same fixed will, reject Him everlastingly.

III. Place alone does not make heaven or hell. Hell, with the love of God, were as heaven: without the love of God, it may be, it seems even probable, that heaven would be the worse hell. As we see in Satan, the sinner, even apart from God's judgments on sin, carries about within him his own hell.

IV. Never will you know anything of the depth of sin; or of the deeper depth of the love of Christ or of God until you not only believe in the abstract, but accustom yourselves to think of that awful doom, to which each wilful rejection of God's voice in your conscience, and of God in that voice, was dragging you. Fear not to look at it. For narrow though the bridge be which spans its lurid flames, that bridge is sure to those whom it upholds; for it is the Cross of Christ, and Christ Himself will stretch forth His hand to lead thee safely over it.

E. B. Pusey, Selected Occasional Sermons,p. 245.

References: Matthew 25:46. H. W. Beecher, Plymouth Pulpit Sermons,5th series, p. 99; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 166; T. Birkett Dover, A Lent Manual,p. 91.Matthew 25 Clergyman's Magazine,vol. i., p. 289. Matthew 26:1. Parker, Inner Life of Christ,vol. iii., p. 186. Matthew 26:3. A. P. Stanley, Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 344.