This entirety humanity will stand before Christ knowing that their future hangs on his word. He will decide their eternal destiny and even the most defiant of men and women will tremble at the pronouncement of his verdict. This great mass will be separated into two groups and only two. There is only one distinction between men and women that matters. Neither race, nor class, nor wealth, nor knowledge will count for anything. None of these will be taken into consideration when God separates them. The great ones of the world and those who are great in their own estimation will be staggered to see despised Christians being gathered to Christ while they are excluded, for God has chosen the foolish and the weak, the base ones, while the wise and the mighty and the noble are passed over. They will ask, ‘Why are these chosen, and we are rejected; are these better than us? Don’t we know that some of these have committed greater sins than any we have committed? How do they prevail over us?’ For the grace and the calling of God are a mystery to the lost.
Millions and millions are before him as sheep or as goats. Animals are used repeatedly to stand for human attitudes. In general terms believers are compared to sheep; they are simple. That does not mean they are necessarily intellectually simple – some are simple and some are very sharp intellectually. But they are simple in this sense: however arrogant and self-confident they once were, they now come as dependent children before God. They realise they need his blessing. They are receptive, listening. God has torn away their resistance and pride, and humbled them. He says this is the only way I will do it. We are lost without him, condemned unless he blesses us. Some of the most brilliant have come to say, ‘I am foolish, because I have abandoned my God. I have not sought my good in him. I have gone my own way. I did not realise I was lost. Viewed spiritually I am an uncomprehending sheep. Now I see what a fool I have been. I must go to Christ.’ They follow their Saviour, and he lays down his life for them. Certainly there are good things that can be said about goats, but here they stand for the petulant, the aggressive, the truculent, the greedy. They tear everything down. So the unbeliever is obstinate, unwilling to come to God and serves only himself.
One is separated from the other. They are not separated into nations, or tribes, or families, but as single individuals. Faith is an individual matter. No one can repent and believe on behalf of another. No one is admitted into heaven because he is connected with another. Furhtermore, this is an infallible separation, based on the omnipotence of God. There is no possibility of being put in the wrong camp; there is no such thing as half sheep or half goat. Either the new birth has taken place, or it has not, and the Lord knows those who are his.