Sheep, Goats, and how to read the Bible
A couple of years ago, I came out to my wife — as a universalist. Now, before you all line up with your pitchforks, don’t cry “heretic” just yet. What I’m not saying is that all roads lead to Rome (or Heaven). What I’m not saying is that you can be saved apart from Jesus.
What I am saying is that I think, ultimately, Jesus and His gospel will save everyone. “But what about…”
I hear you.
There are passages that keep me up at night. Passages I have to really wrestle with to work out how I can possibly reconcile them with the God revealed in Jesus. And there are passages that would seem to throw the very idea of universalism into the lake of fire, which is the second death…(whatever that means)…
One such passage is, of course, the end of Matthew 25 which, in most Bible’s gets the heading “The sheep and the goats”. I want to talk about that passage today — except when I talk about that passage, I’m not really talking about that passage. I mean, I will talk about that passage directly, but in talking about that passage we’ll also unearth a whole lot of other stuff that speaks more generally to broader questions like “how do we read the Bible”?
So what would I say about this passage directly? It is oft-raised as a nail in universalism’s coffin because it clearly says (doesn’t it?)…
