Lord, When Did We See You

She has taught it four times and she has always taught it the same way, and she is good at teaching, and the way she taught it was wrong.

The sheep and the goats. Matthew 25. She has done it with a whiteboard, and she has done it with two columns, and she has done it once with a genuinely excellent illustration involving two identical parcels, and every single time the point she was driving at was: be the sheep. Look at what the sheep did. Go and do those things.

She is forty five. She was rereading it on Sunday evening for a thing she is doing next month, and she got to verse thirty seven and stopped, and has not really got going again since.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? (Matthew 25:37).

They ask. That is what stopped her. The sheep, the commended ones, the ones being welcomed into the kingdom, respond to the King's list of everything they did for Him by asking when any of it happened.

They are not being modest. Read it again. It is a real question. They do not know. The King has to explain it to them: inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me (Matthew 25:40).

She has taught that passage four times as an instruction to go and be somebody who does things, to a room of people who are already exhausted, and the passage itself says the people who did it could not tell you when.

She is in the community kitchen on a Wednesday, which she does every week, with pans out and steam on the window and five other people working, and she has been quietly not right since Sunday.

You have read it that way. Almost everybody has. And underneath the way you read it is something you have been doing for years, which is checking. Running the list. Looking for evidence that you are on the right side of a passage that the passage itself says the right side could not have produced.

The detail everybody skips

I have to be careful here, because there is a version of this that sends her auditing. Go back over your life. Find your sheep moments. Check yourself against the list. I am not going to say it, because that is precisely the activity the passage rules out, and doing it more carefully would not help.

Look at the structure of the scene. The King separates. Then He gives a list to the ones on His right: I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you took me in, naked and you clothed me, sick and in prison and you visited me.

And then, immediately, verse thirty seven: Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee.

The righteous do not recognize their own righteousness. They cannot locate a single one of the events on the King's list. Whatever they did, they did it without filing it, and the not filing is not incidental, it is the thing the passage records about them.

You have done things you would not be able to point to, and the not pointing is the mark on the passage's own account. That is not me reading against the grain; Matthew 25:37 has the commended ones asking a genuine question, and the Holy Spirit who preserved that detail put it there rather than having them say yes, Lord, we remember.

And now look at the other side, because it makes the same point in reverse. The ones on the left also ask a question, in verse forty four, and theirs is the same shape: Lord, when did we see you hungry and not minister to you. Neither group has a record. Neither group knew.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?Matthew 25:37

What the checking has cost

Now the thing that has been running under four teachings and about thirty years.

She has been keeping a list. Not written. Nobody writes it. But there is a running assessment in her of whether she is doing enough of the things on that page, and it goes up and down with the week, and on bad weeks she is very hard on herself, and on good weeks she is uneasy about being pleased.

You have never been able to grade a thing the passage says the righteous could not remember. Matthew 25:40 gives the King the whole account and gives the sheep none of it; the same Spirit who bears witness that you are His (Romans 8:16) has kept a record that was never issued to you.

This is yours right now, with a spoon in your hand: the released state of somebody who does not have to know. Romans 8:1 says there is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, and the no is unqualified; the Spirit who carried that into the letter did not leave a space for a private audit to run underneath it.

Doing it unto Him

Let me stay on verse forty, because it is where the whole thing lands and it is stranger than the version usually preached.

Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. The transfer runs from the person to Christ, and it runs without the doer's knowledge or consent or intention. She fed somebody in a community kitchen on a Wednesday because there were pans and people. The passage says where that went.

That is fruit and not output, and it is exact. Output would be a tally: meals, Wednesdays, years. Fruit is what happened when a bowl went across a counter, and Galatians 5:22 names what the Spirit grows and every item on it is a quality rather than a count.

You were doing it unto Him on Wednesdays you cannot separate from each other. Matthew 25:40 makes the destination Christ rather than the recipient; the Holy Spirit did the carrying, and He did not send a copy to the kitchen.

So what does staying attached look like this week, since nobody is getting a program from me. One thing. While the pans soak, tell Him about one Wednesday with nothing asked for and nothing assessed. Not a review. One Wednesday, one pot, one face across a counter. Then be quiet long enough for Him to have the last word. Nobody scores that.