The Parable of the Sheep & Goats

  • The Parable of the Sheep & Goats
  • Recognition in Ordinary Life
  • Recognition Within the Flock
  • Recognition and Inheritance
  • Recognition Through Deeds
  • Recognition and Surprise
  • Recognition of Christ Among the Least
  • Reflection
  • Corporate Confession (Unison)

The Parable of the Sheep & Goats

Too long, please open your Bible Matthew 25: 31-46

Most people imagine judgment as something dramatic and unmistakable—light, thunder, a throne, a moment when power is obvious and everyone finally realizes who they are standing before.

But real life rarely works that way.

In real life, the moments that matter most usually arrive quietly. They come as interruptions. As ordinary encounters. As people who do not announce their importance. Nothing in the moment tells you, This will echo into eternity. It just feels like another decision, another interaction, another day.

Matthew 25 brings those two worlds together. Jesus speaks of glory, angels, and a throne. And then he tells us that the decisive encounters were meals, clothing, welcome, and presence. No spectacle. No warning.

The shock of this passage is not that Christ judges.

The shock is where he says he was standing the whole time.

Recognition in Ordinary Life

Jesus says:

“But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. And all the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”

Matthew 25:31–32

This image would have been immediately familiar. Sheep and goats were often pastured together during the day and separated at night. The shepherd did not create a difference at that moment—he simply recognized one.

Judgment does not make people something new; it discloses what has been forming all along.

Scripture repeatedly speaks this way:

For God will bring every work to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether good or evil.

Ecclesiastes 12:14

Judgment brings truth into the light.

Recognition Within the Flock

In Ezekiel 34, God condemns Israel’s leaders for abusing their role as shepherds:

“Woe, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flock?”

Ezekiel 34:2

But God’s judgment does not stop with leadership. He goes on to say:

“As for you, My flock, thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘Behold, I will judge between one sheep and another, between the rams and the male goats.’”

Ezekiel 34:17

The issue is not whether they belong to the flock, but how life within the flock was lived—how strength was used, how weakness was treated, how proximity to God shaped conduct.

When Jesus speaks of separation in Matthew 25, he is standing firmly in this tradition. This is not merely a judgment between outsiders and insiders. It is a discerning judgment within those who lived near the shepherd.

We see therefore that proximity does not guarantee likeness.

Recognition and Inheritance

Then the King speaks:

“Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’”

Matthew 25:34

Inheritance is gift language rooted in God’s covenant with Israel. Something to remember is Israel did not earn the land; it received it:

“So Yahweh gave Israel all the land which He had sworn to give to their fathers, and they possessed it and lived in it.”

Joshua 21:43

Yet Scripture is equally clear that inheritance can be forfeited or exposed as never truly possessed (Numbers 14:22–23; Deuteronomy 4:26–27).

The Psalms already link inheritance with moral reality:

“For evildoers will be cut off,

But those who hope in Yahweh will inherit the land.”

Psalm 37:9

And Daniel brings inheritance and judgment together:

“Judgment was given for the saints of the Most High, and the time arrived when the saints took possession of the kingdom.”

Daniel 7:22

So, judgment does not contradict grace. It reveals who truly lived as heirs.

Recognition Through Deeds

“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.”

Matthew 25:35

This is not a novel idea. Scripture consistently teaches that God judges according to deeds:

“And lovingkindness is Yours, O Lord,

For You repay a man according to his work.”

Psalm 62:12

“I, Yahweh, search the heart,

I test the mind,

Even to give to each man according to his ways.”

Jeremiah 17:10

Recognition and Surprise

Something profound in this parable is that both groups respond with shock:

“Lord, when did we see You hungry…?”

Matthew 25:37, 44

No one thought they were earning salvation. No one thought they were rejecting Christ.

This tells us that judgment is not about strategic obedience, but about what kind of people they had become over time.

As Jesus says elsewhere:

“A tree is known by its fruit.”

Matthew 12:33

Fruit reveals the tree. It does not create it.

Recognition of Christ Among the Least

Then Jesus gives the interpretive key:

“Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.”

Matthew 25:40

Jesus wasn’t inventing a hermeneutic in this verse. God has long identified Himself with the lowly:

“He who oppresses the poor taunts his Maker,

But he who is gracious to the needy honors Him.”

Proverbs 14:31

Most strikingly:

“One who is gracious to a poor man lends to Yahweh,

And He will repay him for his good deed.”

Proverbs 19:17

God receives what is done to the poor as done to Himself. He is:

“A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows.”

Psalm 68:5

And true devotion is measured by care for the afflicted:

“Is this not the fast which I choose…

To divide your bread with the hungry

And bring the homeless poor into the house?”

Isaiah 58:6–7

What is new in Matthew 25 is that Jesus locates this divine identification in himself. The God who receives what is done to the lowly now has a face.

Christ was not hidden to deceive. He was present exactly where Scripture said God would be.

Reflection

Matthew 25 is not given to crush us. It is given to awaken us.

The question is not, “Have I done enough?”

The question is, “What am I learning to see?”

Whose kingdom is shaping my instincts?

What do I notice—and what have I learned to overlook?

The judge who will sit on the throne is the same Shepherd who walks among the lowly now. He is not distant. He is forming His people even now.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart.”

Psalm 139:23

Judgment will reveal the truth.

Grace gives us time to be formed by it.

Amen.

Corporate Confession (Unison)

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of Man and Shepherd-King,

We confess that we have not always recognized You where You have promised to be. We acknowledge that You will come in glory and sit on Your throne, yet we admit that we often overlook You in ordinary and inconvenient places.

We have passed by hunger and thirst, ignored loneliness and weakness and we have guarded our comfort more carefully than we have practiced compassion.

Forgive us not only for what we have done, but for what we have left undone.

Where we should have welcomed, we withheld. Where we should have visited, we avoided. Where we should have given, we excused ourselves.

Search us, O God, and know our hearts. Expose what we have grown used to overlooking and reshape our instincts by the values of Your kingdom.

Teach us to recognize You in the least, to honor You by honoring the lowly and to love You by loving our neighbors.

We do not stand before You trusting in our deserving, but in Your mercy and grace.

Form us now, that our lives may bear the fruit of Your kingdom before the day when You reveal all things.

We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ,

our Shepherd and our King.

Amen.