“Before Him shall be gathered all nations.”

(Matthew 25:32)

Some of us can remember the time when a frequent topic of serious Christian discussion was the question: “How will God judge the heathen? If salvation is through hearing the gospel message and accepting Christ as divine Lord and Savior, what about all the people who live out their lives without ever having even heard of Jesus as the Savior of all? How will God judge the heathen?”

But one seldom hears discussion of this question anymore. Is it because we no longer believe that God will exercise His right to reply to human outbursts of speech or behavior? Have we lost our faith in salvation through faith in Christ? Have we ceased to believe in divine judgment on all life?

The gospels present a picture of Jesus during His earthly ministry preoccupied with the question of judgment. Over and over again, He emphasized the inevitability of God’s judgment on every life. One of Jesus’ most dramatic parables is that of “the Last Judgment.” Joachim Jeremias believes that Jesus told this parable in response to His disciples direct question: “How will the heathen be judged?” Here Jesus specifically states: “When the son of man shall come on the clouds of judgment, all nations shall be gathered before Him.” All nations — believers and unbelievers, Jews and Gentiles, Christians and non-Christians — and how will they be judged?

The clear teaching of this parable is that the heathen will be judged by the unwritten law of human kindness. Six basic ministries to human needs are mentioned: to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, to nurse the sick, and to visit the prisoner.

Those who do this are called blessed and welcomed into the eternal home prepared for them from the foundation of the world. Those who refuse are called cursed and shut out of everlasting bliss.

There is no question of faith professed, or doctrine recited, or character achieved — just the question of how they have discharged the commonplace, everyday acts of charity and kindness.

If they have done something to keep life going for others, comforted and encouraged people, given men and women and children acceptance as fellow human beings, forgiven them when unworthy and needing it most, they are judged acceptable unto God.

Out of the suffering and chaos of Viet Nam there comes the appealing story of the strange cooperation now taking place between Catholics, Buddhists, and Protestants. These faiths, usually antagonistic to one another, are now pooling their resources to take care of the pitiful thousands of homeless refugees in that unhappy land. “Numbers of churches and pagodas have been turned into refugee centers open to Vietnamese of either or no faith. A school operated by Roman Catholic Silesian fathers in Saigon has taken in more than 16,000 homeless, most of them Buddhists … Father Robert Charlebois, a Roman Catholic priest from Gary, Indiana, has joined a Protestant A. I. D. official in setting up a clinic near Bien Hoa in a pagoda. A Buddhist monk is their translator, and many of their medical supplies have been provided by the Protestant backed World Vision International.” (Time magazine — 3/9/68)

In the appalling crisis they all have fallen back on the fundamentals of human kindness enumerated in the parable of the Last Judgment.

But the question rises — does not this interpretation of the parable of the Last Judgment encourage a vague universalism, destroy the doctrinal grandeur of the Christian faith, deny the unique centrality of Jesus Christ as Divine Lord and Savior?

St. Paul didn’t seem to think it did, for he is remarkably close, even in details, to Jesus’ teaching in the parable of the Last Judgment. To the Romans, Paul wrote that the heathen who had not known the written Jewish law must be judged by whatever they had received of the natural revelation of God’s nature; and to the Corinthians he said: “We must all have our lives laid open before the tribunal of Christ, where each must receive what is due to him for his conduct in the body: good or bad.” (II Corinthians 5:10)

A closer look at the parable reveals how solidly it is grounded in fundamental Christian theology.

First, there is the doctrine of the Incarnation. He who is seated on the throne of Judgment in this parable, before whom are gathered all the nations of the world, is the Son of man. He who has entered into human life to rescue all people is upon that throne. But the parable makes it clear that He is also, even yet, and unto the end of time, incarnate in every hungry, thirsty, naked, homeless, sick and imprisoned person. The heathen, who may have never encountered Christ incarnate in the days of His flesh or had Him presented in the word of the gospel, nevertheless have encountered Him countless times in human need.

Whenever we have the chance to minister to anyone in such need and refuse, we have refused Christ. When we have opportunity to do some kindness for any living soul and do it — we do it for Christ. This is the full and continuing doctrine of the Incarnation. Having come unto His own in His Father’s lost creation, He remains with them unto the end — the last and final judgment of all.

For the heathen in the parable it was a surprise to discover that it was really Christ, the Judge, whom they served or refused in the person of every needy one. For the Christian who knows the doctrine of the incarnation it should be no surprise, but sometimes it is a surprise, because we find it difficult to believe in the significance of the simple. We tend to equate the spectacular with the important. I once heard a man say: “I have been so busy of late attending to the urgent that I have had no time for the important.” Alas, when shall we learn that, in God’s sight, the great moment is always when we say “yes” to another’s need, and the tragic moment for us is when we pass by unheeding.

And the second great doctrine here in this parable is that of regeneration. We Christians are always saying that we believe men and women can be born again to a new life by the activity of God’s Holy Spirit working within. But how and when does the Holy Spirit accomplish this miracle of grace? A recent survey of contemporary life was presenting the alarming number of discontented Americans in their mid-forties. When dissatisfaction with life sets in, when successes don’t satisfy and achievements are not fulfilling, what’s one to do?

One “forty-ish” example was a successful pediatrician in a prosperous Boston suburb. He was making $50,000 a year. His children were in fashionable schools. His home was filled with costly objects of art. But this doctor was discontented. He felt he should be treating poor patients instead of rich ones. He quit his lucrative practice, moved his family to the tiny hamlet of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, where they lived on the edge of town in a trailer, and he opened a clinic for impoverished Blacks, many of whom had never seen a doctor before. After a year of this life, he reported that he feels for the first time in all his adult years that he’s really needed. He says he has achieved his goal — “service as a way of life.”

Judgment at last — by the unwritten law of human kindness — is inevitable, but, thank God, many a time judgment is the first step in the Holy Spirit’s regeneration of a life. When many a man or woman grows tired and fed up with the life he’s living, it’s due to something from deep within that rises up to judge, as unworthy and lost, the life that is lived for self. We have no deeper fundamental human need than the need to feel we are needed. And our response to serve the needs of our fellow human beings is one way the Holy Spirit opens the gates of new life to us.

And the third Christian doctrine implicit in the parable of the Last Judgment is that of reconciliation. The tragedy of our human condition is our estrangement from God, our alienation from one another: the child from his parents, the poor from the rich, the sinner from the saint, the black people from the white people.

How can reconciliation be accomplished? Reciting one another’s faults, recalling old grievances, condemning and accusing one another, always drives people apart. It polarizes the alienated. In their separate camps they think up new reasons for their hostilities. They pay back one insult with another. Injustices and cruelties are multiplied.

The late Gerald Kennedy used to tell of a certain college known to him where the philosophy department was particularly strong and controversial. Made up of strong minded men and women with differing ideas, its members were at war with one another. One faculty wag described the philosophers as “lovers of wisdom and haters of each other.”

Reconciliation in the human sphere comes, not through argument, controversy and war, but always — whenever it comes — by way of kindness, often unexpected, even unmerited kindness.

There was a young man from a hard-working, respectable, church-going family who got into trouble — serious trouble. He was convicted of burglary and given a prison sentence. His minister and some of his friends in the youth group went to see the boy in prison. But he was rude and aloof. He showed no repentance over his wrong-doing. His only sorrow was for getting caught. The minister came away feeling if ever there was a hopeless case, it was this young man.

The weeks and the months passed. One day the minister heard a knock at his door. He found this same boy standing there. But what a change had come over him! The old hard crustiness and aloofness were gone. He spoke of his sorrow over the shame he had brought to his family and the disgrace to his church, of his determination now to go straight, of his need for their help, and of his eagerness to be received back into the fellowship of his church and his Christian friends. The minister wondered what could have happened to affect such a change. Then the boy’s story tumbled out.

“The morning I got out of prison,” he said, “I went home. And there was mother waiting for me. She had cooked a meal of everything I liked best. And she had bought me a new suit she couldn’t afford to give me a fresh start. And there she was — all smiles, with never a word about the past. And I just said, ‘Well, if Mother is like that.’” And here the boy broke down.

And if God is like that! St. Paul said: “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” While we were locked in the prison house of our sins, alienated from God and man by the enormity of our crimes and hostilities, the Son of God came to us. He redeemed us and reconciled us to those from whom we had been estranged. He still uses our acts of forgiving love as the means of reconciliation in our fragmented, fractious lives.

And many a man or woman, even a heathen who has never heard the saving gospel preached, nor encountered the Savior’s forgiving love, has, in another’s forgiving kindness, found the all sufficient Savior Himself, and reconciliation with God and man.

And for us, in all our fallings out — with family and friends and enemies — what does this mean? Who can’t put it better than W. H. Auden: “If equal affection may not be — O God, let the more loving one be me.”