Second Sunday in Advent, 1999
Series on the Four Last Things
Texts: Matt. 25:31-46; Rev. 20:11-15
The Rev. Jerry D. Kistler
“The Last Judgment”
“It is appointed unto man once to die, and then the judgment.” Hebrews 9:27
I’ve spoken to you about the unpleasant and fearful subject of our own eventual deaths. Now I’m going to say
something about what is probably for most of us an even more fearful and sobering subject to ponder, the
inevitable reality that awaits us all after death: The Great Day of the Lord, the Last Judgment when we must
give a strict account of every thought that’s ever come into our minds, every idle word we’ve ever spoken,
and every deed we’ve ever done in this life. That’s a fearful prospect for most of us, isn’t it?
St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one
may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Knowing,
therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.” (II Cor. 5:10,11)
I can remember growing up in terror of “The Rapture” - not so much the Rapture itself, but the possibility that
I might be left behind. In the churches that I grew up in, that was the very worst thing imaginable - to be left
behind and to have to go through the Great Tribulation and face the Anti-Christ and be forced to take the mark
of the beast on your fore-head or right-hand, and from that point on to never have the possibility of being
saved, to be sealed in the doom of the Lake of Fire. I imagine that many of us were raised in that fear. The Last
Judgment hardly ever came into the picture. The fear was of the coming of Anti-Christ, not the coming of
Christ to judge the quick and the dead. But if we read the Scriptures carefully, the fear is never of the coming
of Anti-Christ; the fear and terror is always of the coming of the great day of God’s wrath, the day of
reckoning, the day on which all souls will be reunited with their bodies and the determination will be made by
Christ before all men in which of two places they will spend the rest of their eternal lives. It’s not Anti-Christ
who is to be feared. It is Christ, the Judge of all men, before whom we ought to tremble. “For,” as it is written
in the book of Hebrews, “We know Him who said, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord. And
again, ‘The Lord will judge His people.’ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Heb. 10:30-
31).
It was approaching midnight on December 31st of the year 999 - Y1K – and St. Peter’s in Rome was packed
to standing room only with a mass of weeping penitents and people trembling for fear that this was the night
the world would come to an end. As one historian writes about the situation, “This was the dreaded eve of the
millennium, the Day of Wrath when the earth would dissolve into ashes. Many of those present had given away
all their possessions to the poor - lands, homes, and household goods - in order to assure for themselves
forgiveness for their trespasses at the Last Judgment and a good place in heaven near the footstool of the
Almighty. Many poor sinners… had entered the church in sackcloth and ashes, having already spent weeks and
month doing penance and mortifying the flesh.”
Pope Sylvester II was celebrating the midnight mass, and as he elevated the host for all to see, the bells began
to toll out the passing of the year. And then … nothing happened. A huge sigh of relief was heard throughout
the cathedral, and slowly people began to leave and go home, and life went on. The end of the world did not
come on Jan. 1st 1000. Judgment would come another day.
Now we laugh at what seems to us as wild hysteria based on the obvious misreading of Scripture. But here we
are in the closing days of the second millennium and I would suggest to you that for years we’ve been hearing
much wilder eschatological speculation than what those people were guilty of: the Rapture, the rebuilding of the
temple, Russian invasions, the European Common Market, etc. etc. At least those people in the year 999
looked to the coming of Christ in Judgment as the great event, the next great event in the history of
redemption, that would bring the end of this world in a cosmic upheaval in which the heavens and the earth will
be transformed by fire. St. Peter writes, “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the
heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the
works that are in it will be burned up. Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of
persons ought you to be in holy conduct, and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of
God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent
heat? Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for a new heavens and a new earth in which
righteousness dwells.”
Now again, those people huddled there in St. Peter’s had given away all their possession to the poor in order to
assure for themselves the forgiveness of their sins and a place in the kingdom, and they did this because of a
misreading of Scripture. And yet they knew the truth, better than perhaps we do today: that Christ will return
to judge us according to our deeds.
The Scripture in question is a passage from Matthew: 25:31-46, where Jesus says,
“When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of
His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a
shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the
left. Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and
you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you
visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord when did
we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You
in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did w see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ And the King will
answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My
brethren, you did it to Me.’Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into
everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty
and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick
and in prison and you did not visit Me. Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You
hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You? Then He will answer
them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not
do it to Me.’ And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Certainly sounds like justification or damnation on the basis of works, doesn’t it? And this passage has been
made to say by many, not only in the medieval church but in the modern as well, that the judgment of whether
we are worthy to enter the kingdom will be on the basis of our philanthropy, on the basis our love and good
deeds towards our neighbors, especially the poor. But the whole passage hangs on the identity of those Jesus
calls “the least of My brethren.” “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethern,” Jesus says,
“you did it to Me.”
Who are they? Who are the brethren Jesus is talking about? They’re his disciples. If you look back over the
book of Matthew you’ll see that Jesus’ brethren are those he sends out with the gospel, those he sends to
preach the good news of the kingdom though faith in Him. So the judgment of whether we are worthy of
entering the kingdom of heaven will be determined by how we respond to them, to those who minister the
gospel to us. If we receive them, if we receive their message of salvation through faith in Christ, we will be
saved, because if we have received them, Jesus says, we have received him.
But our faith in Christ will always be proved by our good deeds. And so Jesus says, the evidence that we will
bring to the judgment seat of whether we truly have received Jesus Christ by faith will be our love and service
to our brothers, to our fellow ministers of the gospel. You can’t get away from the fact that the judgment of
our faith will be on the evidence of our works. Jesus said, “The hour is coming in which all who are in the
grave will hear His voice and come forth - those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who
have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.” But who can do anything good? Only those who are in
Jesus Christ and bear his righteousness and receive his Spirit.
“Show me your faith without works,” says St. James, “and I will show you my faith by my works.”
It is true: we must appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive the things we have done in this life,
whether good or bad. But, says Calvin, “It is no mean assurance that we shall be brought before no other
judgment seat than that of our Redeemer.” Who is it that we will stand before other than the one who loved us
and gave himself for us to redeem us from sin and death? Christ our Saviour is our Judge. And not only that,
he is our Advocate as well. It is Christ who pleads our case on the basis of his sacrifice and his perfect
righteousness. If it is Christ as Advocate who pleads our case, how could Christ as Judge condemn us? There
is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. We have already passed from death into life. And so
to stand before the judgment seat of Christ will be, to us who believe, our public justification, our vindication
before all our enemies - the world, the flesh, and the devil - that we have been found righteous in the Lord, and
that nothing can be held to our account that he has not covered. The books of our lives might be read: “So and
so thought this evil thought - covered! So and So committed this grievous sin - covered!” We’re covered! We’
ve made our robes white in the blood of the Lamb!
But there is one other aspect to our judgment that we have to consider, and that is this: that although the
ground for our entrance into the kingdom of heaven will not be our works but our faith in Christ as evidenced
by our works, yet the worth of our good works will be tried as by fire, and judgment will be made as to our
eternal, heavenly rewards by what remains. Paul says, “Each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will
declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’
s work.. endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will
be saved, yet so as through fire.” What does he mean? He means that there will be levels of reward in heaven.
And although our works do not gain for us our greatest reward - heaven itself - the works we do here and now
in the body – the stewardship of our gifts and talents, how we treat our brothers and sisters in Christ, our
service in the Church, our faithfulness in ministering the gospel to unbelievers – will determine the level of
blessing and responsibility we receive for eternity. And all through the Scripture this is given to us as
motivation for well-doing: “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth
corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal” (Mt. 6:20). “When you give a feast, invite the poor,
the maimed, the lame, the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you shall be
repaid at the resurrection of the just” (Lk. 14:13). “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but
one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it” (I Cor. 9:24).
It is written, “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” But it doesn’t end there. It goes
on: “So Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those of us who eagerly wait for Him He will
appear a second time, not to deal with us for our sin, but to perfect our salvation.” (Heb. 9:27-28 paraphrase)
Thanks be to God. +