Matthew 25:31-40
For certain generation of Christians, four letters immediately bring back a particular memory: WWJD. “What Would Jesus Do?” showed up on bracelets, T-shirts, bookmarks, and just about anything else someone could fit four letters onto. The idea behind it was wonderfully simple. When you found yourself facing a difficult decision or wondering how to respond to someone, you stopped long enough to ask what Jesus would do if he were standing where you were standing. For many of us, it became a practical way of remembering that following Jesus should make a difference in the choices we make.
So I recognize that calling a sermon “Only Goats Ask WWJD?” sounds like I have suddenly developed a problem with those bracelets. I haven’t. Asking what Jesus would do can be an extraordinarily helpful question because sometimes we need to interrupt our instincts long enough to remember whom we are following. There are moments when our first reaction isn’t particularly Christlike, and deliberately choosing the way of Jesus instead is an important part of learning to follow him.
Learning almost anything begins that way. At first, we have to think about every step. We concentrate on what we’re doing, remember what we’ve been taught, correct ourselves when old habits take over, and deliberately practice something that does not yet come naturally. Over time, however, something begins to change. What once required constant thought becomes familiar, what required effort becomes increasingly natural, and eventually what we have practiced long enough begins to become part of who we are.
Discipleship works like that too. The goal of following Jesus isn’t simply becoming better at stopping throughout the day to ask what Jesus would do, grace can do something much deeper than giving us better answers to that question. Christ intends to shape us so profoundly that his way of loving, seeing, and responding gradually becomes woven into our own character.
And if that is possible, then perhaps the most important question isn’t simply, “What would Jesus do?”; perhaps it is, “Who is Jesus making me into?”
The Shepherd Knows His Sheep
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the 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 people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.”
Matthew 25:31–33
Jesus begins this scene on a scale almost too large to imagine. The Son of Man comes in glory, surrounded by angels, and takes his place upon a throne while every nation is gathered before him. We might expect Jesus to continue with the language of kings and kingdoms, because everything about the scene suggests royal judgment, but instead he reaches for an image his disciples would have recognized from ordinary life. He says that the separation will happen the way a shepherd separates sheep from goats. These animals could spend their days together in the same mixed flock, grazing across the same countryside and living under the care of the same shepherd, until the moment came when they needed to be separated. To someone looking across the flock from a distance, they were simply animals moving together through the pasture, but the shepherd knew his flock well enough to make the distinction.
That image would already have been familiar to Jesus’ disciples, but for anyone who knew Israel’s Scriptures, there was something deeper happening beneath it. Earlier this morning we heard the words of Ezekiel, spoken centuries before Jesus gathered his disciples for this conversation, in which God looked upon a people who had been poorly shepherded and promised that he would come for them himself. “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep,” God declared. He would search for those who were lost, bring back those who had wandered, bind up those who were injured, strengthen those who were weak, and care for the flock that others had failed to care for. Then, almost unexpectedly, God said that he would judge within that flock, separating one from another, even “the rams and the male goats.”
Now Jesus takes that ancient picture and quietly places himself directly in the middle of it. The one sitting upon the throne is also the Shepherd. The one gathering the nations is the one separating the flock. What Ezekiel had described God himself doing, Jesus now describes himself doing when the Son of Man comes in glory. Before this passage tells us anything about sheep or goats, it tells us something extraordinary about Jesus: the Shepherd who promised to come searching for his people has come, and the King who will ultimately judge the nations is the same Shepherd who knows every member of his flock.
That should change the way we hear the separation, because Jesus never asks the sheep and goats to sort themselves. He does not turn to the disciples and teach them how to recognize which people belong on which side, nor does he hand the church a set of characteristics by which we can begin identifying the goats among us. The Shepherd performs the separation because the Shepherd knows what we cannot know. We see moments of another person’s life, sometimes very small ones, and from those moments we can become remarkably confident about what is happening within another person’s heart. Jesus sees the whole person. He knows the hidden places of the heart, the work grace has been doing there, the wounds no one else knows about, the motives beneath actions, and the direction in which a life is actually moving.
There is something wonderfully freeing about remembering that the Shepherd has never asked us to do his sorting for him. Christianity becomes terribly distorted when we spend our energy examining the pasture and deciding who looks sufficiently sheep-like to belong. Jesus has already told us who occupies the throne, and it isn’t us. Our calling is not to determine who deserves to stand at his right hand; our calling is to follow the Shepherd who does. Yet once Jesus establishes that the Shepherd knows his sheep, he begins describing something about their lives that we cannot ignore, because although their behavior does not make them sheep, what grows from their lives reveals something about who they have become. And that is where this picture begins getting much closer to home.
Fruit Doesn’t Make the Tree
“Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you who are blessed by 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 something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’”
Matthew 25:34–40
The moment Jesus begins explaining the separation, we encounter something that can make those of us who have spent our lives hearing that salvation comes by grace understandably uncomfortable. The King welcomes those at his right hand into the kingdom, and then immediately begins talking about what they have done. They fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, cared for the sick, and visited the prisoner. Read too quickly, the passage can begin sounding like a heavenly accounting system in which enough acts of compassion eventually accumulate into admission to the kingdom. Yet notice the language Jesus uses before he mentions a single act of mercy. The King does not tell them to purchase the kingdom, earn the kingdom, or prove that they deserve the kingdom. He tells them to inherit the kingdom that has been prepared for them from the foundation of the world. An inheritance is received because of a relationship; it is not wages paid because someone completed enough work.
That does not make their actions unimportant, however, because Jesus refuses to separate the condition of the heart from the life that grows out of it. Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus told his disciples that a good tree bears good fruit and that a bad tree bears bad fruit, finally telling them, “You will know them by their fruits.” Fruit does not make an apple tree an apple tree. Hanging apples from the branches of another tree would not transform what is growing beneath the bark. The fruit simply makes visible what kind of life is already flowing through the tree. In the same way, the acts Jesus describes here are not a price paid for salvation; they are evidence that grace has begun producing something within these people that has become visible in the way they encounter the world around them.
That distinction matters because Christianity can easily become preoccupied with visible behavior while neglecting the formation taking place beneath it. We can learn when generosity is expected, discover the appropriate Christian response to suffering, volunteer because good Christians volunteer, and even become remarkably skilled at appearing compassionate while our hearts remain untouched by the people standing before us. Jesus is describing something deeper than occasional acts of charity. The hungry person mattered enough to be fed. The thirsty person mattered enough to interrupt someone’s day. The stranger was not simply noticed but welcomed. The sick person and the prisoner were not forgotten when their circumstances removed them from ordinary life. Something within these people consistently moved them toward another person’s need.
This is also where Jesus’ phrase “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine” deserves more care than we sometimes give it. The Greek does not simply say “the least” as though Jesus were establishing a category of people for Christians to locate. He speaks of these my brothers, language Matthew repeatedly uses for those who belong to Jesus, and there are good reasons within Matthew’s Gospel to hear an especially close connection with Christ’s vulnerable disciples and messengers. Earlier, when Jesus sent his disciples into the world dependent upon the hospitality of others, he told them that whoever welcomed them welcomed him and that even a cup of cold water given to one of his little ones mattered. Jesus identifies himself so completely with those who belong to him that their reception becomes, mysteriously, a reception of Christ himself.
Yet there is a danger if our response to that discovery becomes an attempt to draw the boundary more precisely. We can spend so much energy asking who technically qualifies as “the least of these” that we miss what is happening in the people Jesus places at his right hand. They apparently were not walking through life categorizing people according to who qualified for their compassion. They were not trying to locate the right people so that their acts of mercy would receive heavenly credit. They aren’t walking around congratulating themselves on their sheepishness. When the King recounts what they have done, they seem genuinely bewildered that he noticed any of it.
That may be why Jesus’ words challenge something deeper than our behavior. Jesus is not trying to create Christians who become better at identifying “the least.” He is creating Christians who become incapable of encountering another human being without seeing someone worthy of love. There is nothing wrong with beginning by asking whom God commands us to serve, but eventually another question begins pressing upon us: Why do I need to know whether someone qualifies before I decide whether to love them? The fruit Jesus describes grows from people for whom mercy has begun becoming more than an obligation, and when we hear the surprise in their voices as they ask, “Lord, when did we do any of this for you?” we begin to realize that something much deeper has been happening within them than they themselves understood.
Becoming Like the Shepherd
“Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You who are accursed, depart from me into the eternal 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 nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just 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 eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.”
Matthew 25:41–46
When the King turns toward those at his left, we might expect the accusations to become more dramatic. If these are the people standing on the wrong side of final judgment, surely Jesus is about to reveal some terrible hidden wickedness. Yet he never accuses them of violence, theft, theological error, or openly persecuting him. He does not say that they caused the hunger, created the poverty, made the stranger unwelcome, caused the sickness, or unjustly placed someone in prison. Their indictment is chilling precisely because it is so ordinary. Someone was hungry, and they gave them nothing. Someone was thirsty, and they offered nothing. Someone needed welcome, clothing, care, or companionship, and they simply did not respond. The issue Jesus exposes is not only the evil they committed; it is the love they withheld. They encountered need and were able to continue on their way without allowing that need to make a claim upon them.
What makes this even more unsettling is that the goats are every bit as surprised as the sheep had been. The sheep asked, “Lord, when did we see you?” and now the goats ask almost exactly the same question: “Lord, when was it that we saw you?” Yet beneath those nearly identical questions are two very different lives. The sheep cannot remember doing anything extraordinary enough to deserve the King’s attention, while the goats cannot remember ignoring anyone important enough to deserve his judgment. There is almost an implied defense in their question: Had we known it was you, Lord, of course we would have responded differently. If you had been standing there hungry, we would have fed you. If we had recognized you as the stranger, we would have welcomed you. If we had known that visiting this particular prisoner meant visiting you, surely we would have gone. Their question assumes that knowing who stood before them would have changed how they behaved.
And perhaps that is precisely what Jesus is exposing. They should not have needed to know. The person standing before them was already enough. The goats’ problem is not simply that they answered “What would Jesus do?” incorrectly; they had become people who did not recognize that the situation required the question. Indifference had become ordinary enough that another person’s need could remain someone else’s problem. In the same way that repeated acts of compassion can shape a heart toward mercy, repeated acts of looking away can shape a heart toward indifference, until eventually neither response feels like a decision anymore. Both the sheep and the goats have been formed, and neither group seems entirely aware of what has become instinctive within them.
This is where the strange title of this sermon finally begins to make sense, because there is nothing inherently wrong with asking, “What would Jesus do?” There are times when that may be exactly the question we need. When our instinct is anger, selfishness, resentment, fear, or indifference, stopping long enough to remember the way of Jesus can interrupt an old pattern and allow grace to begin creating a new one. Much of discipleship begins with that kind of intentional imitation. We forgive because Jesus teaches us to forgive, even when forgiveness does not yet come naturally. We give because Jesus teaches generosity, notice the overlooked because Jesus consistently notices them, and practice hospitality because Christ first welcomed us. We learn the Shepherd’s way by deliberately following where the Shepherd leads.
But the Christian life cannot end with imitation, because sanctifying grace intends to do more than teach us how to behave like Jesus while leaving the deepest instincts of our hearts untouched. Grace keeps working upon those instincts. What begins as imitation slowly becomes formation; formation becomes character; and character, over time, becomes instinct. Wesley described the destination of that work as holiness of heart and life, a heart increasingly governed by love of God and neighbor. He was not imagining Christians who had become incapable of making mistakes, but people in whom the love of Christ had become so deeply rooted that holy love increasingly shaped the ordinary movement of their lives. We begin by choosing mercy because Jesus commanded it, but grace is working toward the day when we choose mercy because Christ has made us merciful.
That is why the sheep’s earlier question sounds so different after hearing the goats. “Lord, when did we see you?” They were not calculating rewards, keeping records of good works, or checking whether the person before them met the proper definition of “the least.” They saw hunger and something within them moved toward it. They encountered a stranger and made room. They discovered sickness or loneliness and showed up. Their lives had begun to resemble the Shepherd they had followed. The Shepherd Ezekiel described seeks the lost, restores the wandering, binds the injured, and strengthens the weak, and now the sheep standing beside him have somehow begun doing the same kinds of things. They have spent so much time following their Shepherd that his way is becoming their way.
Perhaps that is the deeper invitation of Matthew 25. Jesus is not simply asking us to become more disciplined about performing Christian acts of service, nor is he handing us a list against which we can measure our spiritual performance. He is inviting us to remain close enough to the Shepherd that his heart increasingly becomes recognizable in ours. There will still be moments when we need to stop and ask what Jesus would do, and thank God for the grace that allows us to stop, reconsider, and choose another way. Yet the hope of sanctification is that there will also be more and more moments when we never have to ask, because we have learned to see what Jesus sees, love whom Jesus loves, and move toward people with the compassion of the Shepherd whose grace has been quietly making us like him all along.
Conclusion
Perhaps the most unsettling thing about Jesus’ picture of the sheep and the goats is that neither group seems particularly aware of what their lives have been revealing. The sheep do not arrive before the King carrying a record of their compassion, confident that they have done enough to deserve his approval, and the goats do not arrive believing that they have spent their lives deliberately rejecting him. Both have simply been living, making thousands of ordinary choices along the way, responding to the people placed before them in ways that probably seemed insignificant at the time. Yet somewhere within all those ordinary moments, patterns were forming, hearts were being shaped, and ways of seeing other people were becoming increasingly natural.
That means the question Jesus leaves with us is probably not whether we can remember enough moments when we behaved like sheep. If we leave here trying to accumulate acts of kindness so that someday we can present them to Jesus as evidence that we belong on the right side, we will have missed something beautiful about the people he describes. They were surprised precisely because they had stopped thinking of mercy as something extraordinary. They had followed their Shepherd long enough that his compassion had begun finding its way into their ordinary lives, and when someone needed food, welcome, clothing, care, or companionship, love moved toward them before anyone stopped to calculate what might be gained by doing it.
The invitation, then, is not to leave worship frightened that somewhere deep inside we might secretly be goats. The invitation is to stay close to the Shepherd. We keep listening to his voice, receiving his grace, practicing his way, and allowing the Holy Spirit to work upon those places within us where indifference still comes more naturally than compassion. There will be days when we still need to stop ourselves and ask, “What would Jesus do here?” There will be moments when love requires a deliberate choice because another instinct rises first, and those moments are not evidence that grace has failed. They are often the very places where grace is still forming us.
Over time, however, something happens as we keep walking with Christ. The forgiveness that once required enormous effort begins to come a little more freely. The person we once might have overlooked becomes someone we notice. The stranger becomes someone for whom we instinctively make room. Another person’s pain becomes harder to dismiss as someone else’s problem. Not because we have mastered Christian behavior, but because the Shepherd is patiently making his sheep more like himself. Grace is teaching our eyes what to notice, our hearts what to love, and our hands where to reach.
Maybe someday we will stand before Christ and discover that some of the moments he treasured most were moments we barely remember at all. A meal shared, a person welcomed, a hospital room entered, a lonely person remembered, a need noticed before anyone asked. Perhaps we will look at him with the same bewilderment Jesus describes and ask, “Lord, when did we do that for you?” And perhaps that surprise will be its own testimony to what his grace accomplished within us, because somewhere along the journey we stopped merely asking what Jesus would do and, without even realizing it, began becoming people who simply followed where our Shepherd led.
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