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᛭ INI ᛭

(5. Oops!: The Lord is an omniscient judge.)

The Lord sees everything; He knows everything. He sees everything clearly. He knows everything completely. There’s nothing that can be done that He doesn’t see. There’s nothing that can be said or even thought that He doesn’t know. He’s 100% aware of thoughts, words, and behavior. He’s also 100% aware of the desires and motivations that lie beneath every thought, word, or action. This is what it means to be omniscient, to know everything. He knows it before it happens, and, because He’s also omnipresent, present everywhere, He’s there when it happens. The LORD is always watching, always seeing. He sees everything; He knows everything.

(4. Ugh!: The Lord is omniscient about you.)

Yes, the LORD sees and knows. His sight and knowledge are clear, complete, and deep. This isn’t just a nice doctrine that includes all things in general. He knows and sees every last detail about everything and everyone, and that includes you. He looks deep within you. He knows you better than you know yourself. He knows everything you think or feel or say or do.

He knows your life, forward and backward, beginning to end. He knows every day you’ve had up today, and every day you’ll have after today. He knows it because He’s already determined it: “in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” (Ps 139)

He also knows and sees what you do every day. He knows how your flesh “daily and much” (SC) despises Him and His Word, sinning against Him by sinning against your neighbor. He keeps careful track. That’s Daniel 7 and Christ’s Parable. Daniel saw the Final Judgment: “The court was seated, And the books were opened.” (Dan 7) Christ also shows in His parable of the sheep and the goats that every aspect of our lives is known to Him. Like He said to the sheep: “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.” (Goats receive the opposite judgment.)

He sees even deeper than what you do or say. He sees what motivates your actions. He knows how much sin drives your decision making. How you sometimes want to do the right thing, but there’s also the not so good reasons you do the right thing. Or how you do the right thing for the wrong reasons, and only have the good reason prepped if anyone asks. Or how no matter how hard you try you seem to do the wrong thing either because the good did’t occur to you or worse yet you don’t care about the good or ignored it.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?” (Jer 17) Christ does. He knows that your flesh and its way of thinking “is enmity toward [Him], for it’s not subject to God’s Law, indeed it can’t be!” (Rom 8) He knows that “nothing good dwells within [you], that is, within your flesh.” (Rom 7) He knows that you can’t perceive or understand your errors (Ps 19), but know this: He certainly knows each of them! He knows that your flesh resists and wages war against His Holy Spirit.

(3. Aha! The Lord omnisciently knows faith and unbelief.)

You might try to deny these truths. You might try your hardest to ignore it. You might try to say you’re not really all that bad or a pretty good person. That’s the gravest and most dangerous sin of all! To echo Christ from John 8, because you say you’re good, your sin remains…

But no matter how long you put off the repentance demanded by such truth, one day the time for repentance will end. That will be judgement day, and the Judge on that Day will be Christ who is all knowing, all seeing. He renders to the goats their just desserts, their due punishment. He graciously delivers to the sheep their just rewards. He does this because Christ sees deep into the heart and soul of each sheep and each goat and He all-knowingly knows the most important thing of all: those who are His and have faith in Him. He also all-knowingly knows those who don’t.

(2. Whee!: THE LORD GIVES ETERNAL LIFE TO HIS SHEEP.)

When the Lord Christ passes sentence on the sheep and goats, the sheep are righteous and the goats unrighteous. The sheep good by God’s standard and the goats bad. The sheep have no sins at all, only good works; the goats have no good works at all, only sins. THE LORD GIVES ETERNAL LIFE TO HIS SHEEP. The Lord gives everlasting punishment to the goats.

But the LORD giving ETERNAL LIFE TO HIS SHEEP is the point of Judgment Day. In fact, it’s the point of everything we believe in the Christian faith. How is it that the sheep have no sins? How is that they get eternal life? It’s because Christ the Judge was judged and was condemned as guilty for their sins, and not for theirs only but for the sins of the whole world. (1Jn 2) He is Shepherd and Judge, but He is also Lamb of God and Convict, “stricken for the sins of the people.” (Is 53) In the Judge’s blood alone there’s redemption, the forgiveness of sins. That’s the judgment He renders, the judgment of His blood. The judgment of His blood is forgiveness, innocence, holiness. “He was delivered for our transgressions, but raised for our justification,” (Rom 4) and so THE LORD GIVES ETERNAL LIFE TO HIS SHEEP.

The sheep believe such a thing. They believe what Christ says about their flesh, their sins, and that salvation is His free gift, purchased by His blood. This is evident in the parable. When the Lord lists out their works from “the books,” they have no idea what He’s talking about.

The unbelieving goats on the other hand believe the opposite. They disagree with Christ’s judgment. When Christ reads from “the books,” the goats have no good to speak of. The goats say, “What do you mean? ‘When did we not minister to you?’” Or as Christ says elsewhere, “Many will say in that day…Lord, have we not done many great things in your name, and I will say to them, ‘Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness, I never knew you.’” (Mt 7) So it will be that many thought to be sheep in our judgment will be shown to be goats according to Christ’s judgment because they lacked true faith. And as the Scripture says, “Whatever does not come forth from faith,” no matter how good it looks, “is sin.” (Rom 14)

(1. Yeah!: He gives eternal life and strengthens their faith through the Word and Sacraments.)

But no matter what, take heart! No matter what is in your heart, dear sheep, whatever sin you might see, there’s no reason to fear Judgment Day. If you don’t see any sins, pray to the Lord to give you insight! Or better yet, as Luther gives good advice about such things in His Large Catechism, “The less you feel your sins and infirmities, the more reason you have to go to the Sacrament to seek help and a remedy.” (V.78)

THE LORD GIVES ETERNAL LIFE TO HIS SHEEP. Not because you earned anything, but because He did! And He promises to strengthen your faith, He promises to work within you by His Spirit, He promises to bear good fruit, good works, through you. Yes, all your righteous deeds are like filthy rags, but His blood cleanses you from all sins, even the sins you are not aware of. His forgiveness even purifies your works so that they’re actually good.

“Therefore, since all things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness.” (2Pet 3) But in His Word, the Bible, faithful preaching, and in and through Baptism, Absolution, and His Supper, all that you need for godliness is given by Him and is received by faith. [Christ’s] “divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue.” (2Pet 1)

And when He’s done doing everything He does in you and through you by His Spirit working Word and Sacraments, He will call you to Himself, and on the Last Day give you eternal life. Because THE LORD GIVES ETERNAL LIFE TO HIS SHEEP, that’s you who trust in Him alone.

᛭ INI ᛭