Matthew 25:45

These verses close the long teaching Jesus gave on the Mount of Olives in Matthew 24–25, shortly before his death. The two parables just before them, the ten virgins (Matthew 25:1–13) and the talents (Matthew 25:14–30), teach the disciples to be ready and faithful while their Lord is away. Now Jesus shows them the day itself, when the Lord has come and the reckoning is under way.

Jesus calls himself “the Son of man”, in Greek huios tou anthrōpou, the title he used for himself more than any other. It names him as truly a man, and it also reaches back to Daniel’s vision, where one like the Son of man comes with the clouds of heaven and is given an everlasting dominion, glory and a kingdom (Daniel 7:13–14). The Son of man of this passage is that one, and he comes “in his glory”. The word dóxa means splendour and majesty, the visible presence of God. The one who came the first time in humility, emptying himself and taking the form of a servant (Philippians 2:5–8), comes this time in his full majesty. The verb for his coming, érchomai, is the ordinary word for coming or going. The angels told the disciples at the ascension that “this same Jesus” would come again in like manner as they had seen him go (Acts 1:9–11), and John writes that “every eye shall see him” (Revelation 1:7).

“All the holy angels” come with him. They are the King’s royal train, and they also serve him in the judgment, for Jesus has already said that at the end of the age the Son of man will send forth his angels to gather the wicked out of his kingdom (Matthew 13:40–43).

Then “shall he sit upon the throne of his glory”. A thrónos is a seat of authority, a king’s seat and a judge’s bench, and when the Son of man takes his seat he is both enthroned and opening his court. He is already seated at the right hand of God, far above all rule and authority (Ephesians 1:20–22), and on that day his reign is shown to the whole world. The Father “hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John 5:22) and has given him authority to execute judgment “because he is the Son of man” (John 5:27). The Judge of all nations shares our flesh.

Before him “shall be gathered all nations”. The word éthnos means a nation or people, and it is often used of the Gentiles in particular. Here it takes in every people on earth, Israel and the Gentiles together, and every person stands before this one Judge. Scripture speaks of this judgment in many places. Christ died and rose to be Lord “both of the dead and living”, and “we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ” (Romans 14:9–10). “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10). The dead will hear his voice and come forth, “they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:28–29). Daniel saw thrones set and the books opened (Daniel 7:9–10), and John saw the dead, small and great, judged according to their works before a great white throne (Revelation 20:11–15). The Father promised his Son “the heathen for thine inheritance” (Psalm 2:8–9), and here the nations stand before him.

He then separates them “one from another”. The verb aphorízō means to mark off by a boundary, to set apart or sever, and the King does the dividing himself. Jesus draws the picture from daily life: “as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats”. The shepherd, poimḗn, is a figure of care and of authority, and Jesus is the good shepherd who gives his life for the sheep (John 10:11). Shepherds in Israel commonly let sheep and goats graze together by day and parted them at night, so everyone listening had seen it done, and the shepherd knows at a glance which animal is which. The King’s verdict is just as clear to him. The LORD had already spoken through Ezekiel as the shepherd who judges his own flock, “between cattle and cattle, between the rams and the he goats” (Ezekiel 34).

He “shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left”. To set, hístēmi, is to make stand or to place, and the King gives each group its place. The word for sheep, próbaton, Strong’s explains as something that walks forward, and sheep in Scripture often stand for God’s people: “we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” (Psalm 100:3). The goats of verse 33 are eríphion, young goats or kids, and in this scene they stand for the wicked. The right hand, dexiós, is the place of honour beside a king, where the LORD tells the Messiah, “Sit thou at my right hand” (Psalm 110:1), and where Stephen saw Jesus standing (Acts 7:55). The left was counted the side of lesser honour. The first psalm draws the same line between the righteous and the ungodly: “Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment” (Psalm 1:4–6). God “will render to every man according to his deeds” (Romans 2:6–8).

Now the Son of man is called “the King”. Basileús is the ordinary word for a king, one with authority to rule, and the Shepherd of verse 32 is the King on the throne of verse 31. His first word to those on his right is “Come”, in Greek deûte, a call into his presence. He names them “blessed of my Father”. The verb eulogéō means to speak well of and to bless, and their blessing comes from the Father, so the Father blesses and the Son welcomes.

Then he says, “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” To inherit, klēronoméō, is to receive as an heir, to come into a possession because you belong to the family. In Israel inheritance called to mind the land God promised to Abram’s seed (Genesis 12:7) and the portion handed down in a household. The heirs here share the inheritance of Christ, whom God “hath appointed heir of all things” (Hebrews 1:2), for believers are “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17). Peter calls it “an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:3–5).

The kingdom was “prepared”. The verb hetoimázō means to make ready, and God made this kingdom ready “from the foundation of the world” (apo katabolēs kósmou), before any of its heirs had been born or done a single deed. This is the same God who “hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4), and whose Lamb was foreordained before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1:18–20) and is called “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). The welcome of the last day was planned before the first day. It is the joy the faithful servant of the parable before this one was told to enter: “enter thou into the joy of thy lord” (Matthew 25:21).

The King gives his reason: “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat.” He names six needs, hunger, thirst, being a stranger, nakedness, sickness and prison, and the list comes four times in these verses: from the King to the righteous, back from the righteous, from the King to those on his left, and back from them. What the King cares about is set before us again and again.

Peináō, to hunger, comes from the same root as pénēs, a poor man, and means to be famished. “An hungred” is the older English for hungry. “Meat” in the KJV means food of any kind, and the Greek behind it is phágō, the verb “to eat”, so the King is saying they gave him something to eat. In that dry land thirst could threaten life, and “ye gave me drink” meant water for someone who needed it to live.

The stranger, xénos, is a foreigner or outsider, someone far from home and family. “Ye took me in” translates synágō, which means to gather or bring together, and here it is used of gathering a guest into one’s home. Hospitality was a sacred duty in Israel. Travel was dangerous and inns were few or unsafe, so travellers depended on the kindness of the people they met. Abraham ran to meet three visitors and set a meal before them (Genesis 18:1–8). The law told Israel to love the stranger “as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:33–34), because the LORD himself “loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment” (Deuteronomy 10:18–19). Hebrews adds that by entertaining strangers “some have entertained angels unawares” (Hebrews 13:2).

Verse 36 finishes the list. The naked, gymnós, may be wholly unclothed, but in Scripture the word more often means poorly and thinly clad, exposed to the weather and to shame. “Ye clothed me” is peribállō, to throw around, to put a garment about someone. “I was sick” uses asthenéō, to be weak or feeble, from asthenḗs, feeble. To visit, episképtomai, is to go and see someone in order to care for him, to look in on the sick so as to help. Prison, phylakḗ, means a guarding and so a guarded place. A prison then was often a place where people waited for trial or were held for debt, conditions were harsh, and prisoners depended on family and friends for food and comfort. They were easily forgotten, and “ye came unto me” uses érchomai, the plain verb of coming: these people went to the prisoner.

Every one of these is a deed within reach of ordinary people: a meal, a cup of water, a bed for the night, a coat, a visit, a walk to the prison. The prophets had called for the same things, to “deal thy bread to the hungry” and “bring the poor that are cast out to thy house” and to cover the naked (Isaiah 58:6–7), to “seek judgment, relieve the oppressed” (Isaiah 1:17), and to open the hand wide to a poor brother (Deuteronomy 15:7–11).

The righteous answer the King with a question. Díkaios, righteous, describes someone just and upright in character and in deed. They address him as “Lord”, kýrios, the title of one with authority, and they ask, “Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?” The verb eídō means to see and, by implication, to know. They had seen hungry people and fed them (tréphō), seen thirsty people and given them drink (potízō), and all that time the King was hidden from them in those people.

Verse 38 asks the same about the stranger and the naked, and verse 39 about the sick and the prisoner. Póte, “when”, is a real question asked in wonder. The small word ḗ, “or”, joins the sick and the prisoner, two people who depend on others for help, and en, “in”, places the King inside the prison walls.

Their wonder is the heart of the scene. They claim to have earned nothing, and they cannot recall a single time they served the King. They helped people because those people were in need, and the King counted it done to him. Their surprise shows love that served for the sake of the one in need, with an eye on neither praise nor reward.

Those on the left will ask almost the same question in verse 44. The righteous ask humbly and are astonished to be praised. The others ask to clear themselves, as though they would gladly have served the King had they known it was he.

The King answers, “Verily I say unto you.” Amḗn is a word carried over from Hebrew, meaning firm or sure, and Jesus sets it before a saying to mark it as solemn and certain. Then comes the centre of the whole passage: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” “Inasmuch as”, epí hósos, means “to the extent that” or “in so far as”. Eláchistos, least, is the superlative of a word for small, the smallest and lowest in rank, the people the world overlooks. Adelphós is a brother, near or remote, by birth or by some other bond, and the King claims these lowly ones as his own family. “It” is each deed of verses 35 and 36, and “one” means a single person in need is enough.

So whatever was done for one of them reached him. Proverbs had said, “He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD” (Proverbs 19:17), and “He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker” (Proverbs 14:31). Jesus told the seventy, “He that heareth you heareth me” (Luke 10:16). John writes, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar” (1 John 4:20). Jesus himself joined the two great commandments, love for God and love for neighbour (Matthew 22:37–40), and in this verse the two meet in one person.

Then the King turns to those on his left: “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” “Depart from me” sends them away from his presence, the source of life and every blessing, and Paul speaks of those “punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). They are “cursed”, from kataráomai, the opposite of the “blessed of my Father” in verse 34. The fire is “everlasting”, aiṓnios, lasting without limit of time, the same word that describes the life of the righteous in verse 46. Fire, pŷr, is Scripture’s familiar picture of God’s judgment. Jesus leaves its form undescribed and makes its severity and its lasting plain.

The fire was “prepared for the devil and his angels”. Diábolos means a slanderer or false accuser, and as a title it names the devil, Satan, the adversary of God and of people. The same verb hetoimázō stood in verse 34. The kingdom was prepared for the blessed, and the fire was prepared for the devil and the angels who sinned with him (2 Peter 2:4), whose end John sees in the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10). God made that fire for the rebel angels, and people come into it by siding with the devil’s rebellion, refusing God’s grace and turning away from the King in the least of his brethren. God’s will toward people is love: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16). “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13), and he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). The curse of this verse has a remedy, and the King himself has borne it.

The King names the same six needs to those on his left, and this time the deed is missing every time: “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink.” Verse 43 goes on with the stranger, the naked, the sick and the prisoner, and folds the last two into one clause: “sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.” The negative is the plain Greek ou, “not”. The other words are those of verses 35 and 36, peináō for hungry, dipsáō for thirsty, xénos for the stranger, gymnós for naked, synágō for taking in and episképtomai for visiting.

Every charge here is a mercy withheld. The King names no theft or violence. He names good left undone, and that is enough for this sentence. Hunger and thirst are plain needs, and they ask for plain answers, food for the hungry and drink for the thirsty. Jesus had warned, “Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire” (Matthew 7:19). James pictures a brother or sister “naked, and destitute of daily food”, sent off with “Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled” while the body’s needs are kept back (James 2:14–17). John asks of anyone who has this world’s goods and shuts up his compassion from a brother in need, “how dwelleth the love of God in him?” (1 John 3:17–18). Amos condemned Israel because “they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes” (Amos 2:6–7).

Then they too answer: “Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?” They run all six needs together in one breath. To minister, diakonéō, is to wait on someone, to serve him and care for his needs, as a servant waits at table or a host serves a guest. The verb is formed from diákonos, the noun behind our word “deacon”. They speak as though they would have served the Lord at once had they known him, and their question shows how blind they were to him in the people they passed by. Jesus used this same verb of himself: “For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

The King’s answer matches his answer to the righteous: “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.” Poiéō is the common verb to make or to do, and with the negatives ou and oudé it names the deed left undone. Verses 40 and 45 stand side by side. What was done for the least was done for him, and what was withheld from the least was withheld from him. Those on the left call him “Lord” just as the righteous do, which brings to mind his warning in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7): “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21).

The scene ends with the sentence carried out: “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.” “Go away”, apérchomai, is their departure from the King. Kólasis, punishment, means a penalty inflicted. The righteous, díkaios, are the people of verse 37, those on the right hand.

The KJV says “everlasting” in the first half and “eternal” in the second, and the Greek has aiṓnios in both, so the punishment and the life are described by one word that means lasting without limit of time. Daniel foresaw the same two ends, “some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2), and Jesus spoke of the resurrection of life and the resurrection of damnation (John 5:28–29).

The King judges by what each person did, and what they did shows whose they are. “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God,” and we are “created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8–10). The passage itself puts grace first. The righteous are “blessed of my Father” before a single deed is named. They inherit the kingdom, and an inheritance comes to an heir as a gift. That kingdom was made ready for them before the world began. Their deeds are the fruit of lives God has changed, the fruit of the Spirit at work in them (Galatians 5:22–23), and they themselves are astonished to hear of those deeds at all.

James gives the other side of the same truth: “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone” (James 2:17), and “faith without works is dead also” (James 2:26). A faith that leaves the hungry hungry is the dead faith James describes. Love for others comes from God, because “God is love” (1 John 4:7–8), and the love the sheep showed is his love at work in them. The works are the evidence the King points to, and the grace of God is their root.

The King who says “I was an hungred” knows hunger from the inside. After fasting forty days and forty nights “he was afterward an hungred” (Matthew 4:2), and on the cross he said, “I thirst” (John 19:28). “The Son of man hath not where to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20), and “he came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11), a stranger in the world he made. The soldiers stripped him (Matthew 27:28). In Gethsemane his soul was “exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” (Matthew 26:38), and then they bound him and led him away to Pilate (Matthew 27:1–2). Isaiah called him “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”, who “hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3–4), and Matthew saw that word fulfilled when Jesus healed the sick: “Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses” (Matthew 8:17). The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). Though he was rich, for our sakes he became poor (2 Corinthians 8:9), and he is a high priest “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews 4:15).

His whole ministry did the deeds of this parable. He fed the five thousand (Matthew 14:13–21), went about “healing every sickness and every disease among the people” (Matthew 9:35), and read out his calling “to preach the gospel to the poor” and “deliverance to the captives” (Luke 4:18–19). He came “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). He gives himself as the bread of life (John 6:35) and as living water (John 4:10–14), and in him people who were strangers and foreigners become “fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19). God made him to be sin for us, “that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and God raised him up, “having loosed the pains of death” (Acts 2:24). “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

So the King of this passage is the Lamb who was slain and the Shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep. His people are his body in the world (1 Corinthians 12:27). They love one another as he loved them (John 13:34–35), because “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost” (Romans 5:5).

This passage shows us a King of perfect justice who sees every cup of water and every visit to a cell and remembers them all. He is glorious enough to judge all nations and lowly enough to call the least of them his brethren. The kingdom he gives was prepared for his people before the world began, and the fire was prepared for the devil, so the heart of God is set on welcoming. The Lord who will say “Depart” has borne the curse himself, so that all who trust him may hear “Come”.

The scene also gives us eyes for the people around us. The hungry neighbour, the newcomer, the sick friend and the prisoner are the least of his brethren, and the King counts what is done for them as done for him. The righteous in this story did small, ordinary things with no thought of glory, and the King remembered every one. We can serve him in those same places, and he sees it even when we are unaware that it is he.