Matthew 25

The current gospel age is very significant, because it is the last age for this world of mortality. At the close of this age, there will be a great renewal of the earth. In the end of most of the prior ages in the Lord's saving work, the change from one period to the next was not easily seen as dramatic or important. Abraham began an era known as the promise, Moses began the age of the Law, and Christ brought to us the age of the gospel. Yet all of these major moments of very serious change were easily missed by the great majority of people living in their day. Those who study the Bible and engage in discussions of these matters may even disagree about the reality or meaning of each of these epochs. But no one will miss the end of the age of the gospel, and the concurrent coming of the fullness of the resurrection age. The analogous fact in any of our individual lives is our physical death. It cannot be missed. There is a distinct end coming, and the life that we have beyond that moment, while having some continuity with our way of life now, will be very different from our experiences across all the prior ages of mortality.

Our Lord here forces us to consider these matters personally, and not just as questions of theological debate concerning events that may seem unreal to us, or at least far away. No, there were ten virgins that were claiming to be waiting for a great wedding day, but five of them were foolish, and they had not considered adequately the reality of the coming return of the bridegroom. They were not prepared for the sound of His arrival. Consequently they were lacking the oil that was necessary to go out into the darkness to meet Him, and there was nothing that they could do at that point, the point of His return, to make up for a life of thinking about His coming like a far-off dream. Those who act this way must be the ones that Jesus spoke of in the last chapter, who do not keep their charge in the church, as if the day of their death did not mean a point of reckoning with their God, or as if the day of the Lord's return was just a myth with little practical significance for their actions among those for whom our Lord shed His blood.

Such people who call themselves servants of the Lord, and who claim to be working for Him, if they are not using the talents that He has given to them with an expectation that the King will come, that their lives will end, and that the Christ is coming again to judge, will surely fall into wrong thinking about a God who they imagine to be so far away as to have little resemblance to the Lord who has revealed Himself in Scripture to be the God of sacrificial faithfulness. They cannot expect that they will be commended for their faith and life, or that they will be entrusted with great responsibilities in the present heavens and in the resurrection age to come, for they imagine a Christ who is cruel and distant, a hard man who would use His power to take from us the fruitfulness that has come from the sweat of our brows. Is this the same Christ who died on the cross for our sins? Is the real Christ so lacking in merit that He needs to steal some from us, or is it not instead the case that everything that we could ever do for Him is an expression of the gifts that we have received from Him? To bury our talents is just an excuse for our wickedness and laziness. It is stealing from the One who expects us to use these gifts that are entirely His to begin with, in such a way that we show our appreciation for the great Lover of our souls.

The Lord of heaven and earth will return. Beyond the fact of the coming unknown day of the end of the gospel age, and the end of ages of mortality, each person must deal with the truth of the end of his life. We will die, and we will stand before the Judge of all the earth. He is so kind to us, that He has not only provided for us all the merit necessary for our safety in communion with Him and with His Father forever, but He has also determined to count our smallest acts of grace-born obedience as a reason for heavenly celebration. For those who are His sheep, there is no talk of the overwhelming evidence that could have been brought forward of our wickedness, laziness, poor attitude, poverty of fortitude, nastiness, and all our small-minded and foolish decisions that have hurt others who needed us. Instead, He has determined to treat us like heros of grace, like those who have consistently given our lives away for others, based on the smallest pieces of evidence that He has planted within our lives, evidence of true gospel charity, evidence of love for Him, evidence so small that we hardly seem to know what He is talking about.

But for those who have not loved Him and His people, who have hated the story of a Redeemer, who have not embraced the wretched Christian that Jesus counts as His own brother, what will be the fate of such a one? What will be the fate of the one who has thought of this Christ as only a distant figure who would never return? What will be the destiny of the one who thought that he was safe abusing the ones for whom Christ gave His blood. We shudder to think of what these words "eternal punishment" mean. There will be an eternal society of devils, demons, and depraved men. As I have reflected on the horrors of such an existence, chief among them is the knowledge, without any doubt, of the existence of another place, a place of perfect communion with God, the holy angels, the redeemed of the Lord, those many who were killed as unwanted or despised on this earth, or who suffered relentless attacks of pain, disease, famine, and abuse, and were yet counted as children of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. To know of the existence of such a society of perfect blessing, and to be cut off from it, this may be the worst horror of hell, and it is enough to yield great weeping and gnashing of teeth in that place. It is best for us to lack all experiential knowledge of hell. It is enough for us that Christ has faced the pains of divine punishment for us. Let us love Him who is coming. Let us follow Him in faith and suffering now, with the confident expectation that we shall be with Him forever in eternal life, by the grace of this same Lord, knowing that He is even now near to those who call upon His Name.