But when the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit down upon his throne of glory,
Jesus closes His last long prophecy by describing the moment He takes His seat as King. Three questions follow: which throne is this, why does He come as "Son of Man," and who is gathered before Him?
Kelly points out that Jesus is not yet seated on the throne this verse describes:
Here are proofs enough of the time and circumstances our Lord is speaking about. He is taking His seat upon His own throne as the Son of Man... The Lord Jesus is not even yet seated upon His own throne. When on earth He had no throne. When He went to heaven, He sat down on His Father's throne. Revelation 3:21 says: "The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne." When that promise is fulfilled, He must have left His Father's throne and sat down on His own throne. It is a future thing.
Darby draws out the force of the word "sit."
This will not be a passing act. He will then sit on the throne of His glory, the glory of the Son of Man, for He is now spoken of as coming to earth as Son of Man. Not until then will He sit on the throne of the Son of Man's glory, though divine glory is always His.
Why does the judge take a human title? Kelly finds the answer in what men did to Christ as a man.
It is as Son of Man that the Lord Jesus will sit on the throne. No doubt He will show His divine knowledge in judging. But, as He plainly says, the Father gives Him authority to execute judgment, because He is Son of Man. As Son of God He gives life; as Son of Man He will judge. How solemn! Had He been only Son of God, who would have dared to despise Him?... It was His grace, then, in becoming man to save men, which exposed Him to contempt in His path of lowly obedience and suffering in love.
The angels are not there as decoration. Smith names the work they come to do:
Carrying out judgment is one of the functions of the angels. Matthew 25 opens its account of the judgment of the living nations with the Son of Man coming to His throne of glory, and "all the angels with him."
The prophecy moves in stages, and this verse picks up a thread dropped earlier.
The course of events now picks up again at the point where it broke off in Matthew 24:31. Up to that point the teaching had concerned the Jew in particular. Then came general instructions for those left waiting for the events announced beforehand... From verse 31 the Gentiles come in view. For when the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the angels with Him — that is, back to this world — it is an earthly scene.
Kelly sets this scene against the judgment scene of Revelation 20.
There can be no question about this throne. It can have nothing to do with the earth, because the text itself tells us that the earth and heaven fled away. I learn at once the positive contrast between Matthew and Revelation. Only in Revelation do we hear a word about heaven and earth fleeing away. Only in Matthew do we find very plain signs that the Lord is taking His throne to govern the earth and the men living on it. Those gathered before Him here are "all the nations." That term is never used of the dead or the risen. It is used only of men here below, and in fact only of the Gentiles as distinct from the Jews.
after_note: DELETE
Those who belong to Christ are not among the gathered; they arrive with Him.
When Christ appears, all the saints, conformed to His risen image, will appear with Him in glory. He will "be glorified in his saints, and marveled at among all who have believed." He will also come with all His holy angels around Him. It is evident that He can come with only those who are with Him.
- Throne. He rules now from His Father's throne; this verse describes the day He takes His own.
- Title. He judges as Son of Man — the very manhood in which He was despised is the nature in which He is honoured.
- Train. He does not come alone: the holy angels attend Him, and His saints appear with Him in glory.
- Terrain. It is an earthly scene of living nations, not the great white throne, from which heaven and earth flee away.
- Timing. It is still future. When it comes He does not flash past; He sits, and the sitting is the start of His reign.
and all the nations shall be gathered before him; and he shall separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats;
The Son of Man has just taken His seat on the throne of His glory. His first act as King is to gather the nations and sort them one by one, the way a shepherd parts his flock. Two questions shape the whole passage: when does this happen, and who are the sheep?
Commentators place this scene at the start of Christ's reign on earth, not at the end of history. The word "nations" is the clue. It describes people who are alive, still living in their national groups.
On the contrary, Matthew shows the Son of Man come to the earth and all the nations gathered before Him. Here they are all living, and only living people can be called "nations." At the great white throne only the wicked dead are present, for the righteous dead had been raised long before, at the first resurrection.
Many merge this scene with the final judgment of the dead. The details of the verse resist that. A mixed crowd that needs sorting can only exist in one place.
This is a careful, divine sorting — not a mere act of vengeance that deals with whole masses and sweeps them all into one common ruin. He separates them one from another. At the great white throne the dead stand for judgment, and there is no need to separate them there. But here we have a mixed company. You never find such a mixture in heaven or hell, only on the earth. So every clause proves that our Lord is speaking of a judgment of the living on the earth.
Anyone who had watched a flock in that part of the world knew the sight at once.
It is interesting that sheep and goats are always found mixed together in the flocks of Palestinian shepherds, and the separation of the sheep from the goats would be a vivid way of presenting what will take place in the last days.
The picture does not run long.
The Lord simply compares the separation He makes that day between the righteous and the wicked to a shepherd dividing his sheep from the goats. Then the righteous are called "sheep" and the wicked "goats." After that the figure is not kept up. It is dropped at once, and this language never comes back.
Read on a few verses and a third group appears: those the King calls "My brethren." That group rules out a common idea — that the sheep stand for all the saved of every age.
The King addresses both the sheep and the goats in respect to this third class. Indeed the very ground of judgment is the treatment of the King's brethren. It would be plainly absurd to say that the sheep are the very people He means. If that were so, the language would be completely different. Instead of saying, "Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these My brethren," we would hear the King say, "Inasmuch as you have done it to one another," or "among yourselves."
If the treatment of these brethren is the test, then the verdict turns on how people received a message — and on who carried it.
He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him at His throne of judgment, and He will judge them by the way they treated the messengers of the kingdom, who had gone out to preach it to them. These messengers are the brethren (v. 40); those who received them are the sheep; those who neglected their message are the goats… I do not doubt that these brethren are Jews, as the disciples were — people who will be in a similar position as to their testimony. The Gentiles who received this message will be accepted, as though they had treated Christ in the same way. His Father had prepared the enjoyment of the kingdom for them, and they will enter it while still on earth.
Being counted a sheep here is not the same as belonging to the church.
But those Gentile sheep at the consummation of the age are not the church… The church will be glorified on high. Remnants from both Israel and the nations are about to be blessed on the earth in that day. The sheep of Matt. 25:32 are by no means all the sheep of God.
Commentators differ on how far the word "all" reaches.
"All" may refer only to those nations directly connected with Israel, for the Lord speaks of "My brethren"… However, it may mean every nation.
- Throne — Christ sits in glory on earth at the start of His reign. This is not the final judgment of the dead.
- Gathering — the living nations stand before Him. Only living people can be called "nations."
- Separation — He divides people "one from another." That is careful sorting, not a mass sentence, and it fits only a place where good and bad are still mixed.
- Standard — the test is how each one treated the King's brethren, the Jewish messengers who carried His kingdom message to the nations.
- Scope — the sheep are truly blessed, but they are Gentiles blessed on earth. They are not the church, and by no means all the sheep God owns.