Matthew 25:31-33 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

When the Son of man shall come, &c.— Our Saviour begins here his third parable, which is agreeable to the language of the Old Testament, in which good men are compared to sheep, on account of their harmlessness and usefulness, (See Psalms 23.) and the wicked men to goats, for the exorbitancy of their lusts. The allusion however is dropped almost at the entrance of the parable, the greatest part of this representation being expressed in terms perfectly simple; so that though the sense be profound, it is obvious: here the judgment of all nations, Gentiles as well as Christians, is described, and thepoints on which their trials are to proceed are known: they shall be acquitted or condemned, according as it shall then appear that they have performed or neglected works of love;—the duties which in Christians necessarily spring from thegreat principles of faith and piety, and which the heathens themselves were invited, through the blood of the covenant, to perform by the smaller measures of the secret influences of the spirit of God offered to them in that inferior dispensation under which they lived. But then we are not to understand this, as if such works were meritorious in either; for all who are acquitted at that day, whether under the Christian or Heathen dispensation, shall be acquitted solely on account of that redemption which is in Christ, as the meritorious cause. If we observe the correspondence between these words and chap. Matthew 24:30-31 it will seem probable, that Christ intended to teach his disciples to conceive of his first coming to the destruction of Jerusalem, as a kind of emblem of his final appearance to judgment; and consequently we may be authorized in using some of the texts in the former chapter, when discoursing of that great and important day. Every reader must remark with what majesty and grandeur our Lord speaks of himself in this portion of Scripture, which is a noble instance of the true sublime, and paints the solemnities of the great, and final audit in the strongest manner. Instead of divideth, we may read separateth.