NOTES for Mat 25:31-46
In what the Lord Jesus Christ tells the disciples about the Last Judgment, three things are important to single out. First, the separation of the justified and the unjustified does happen. The choice of a life position and, as a consequence, the choice of justification or non-justification, is real for us. This is important, because we like to paint everything in rosy colors and think that in the last moment everything will somehow work out anyway. However, the Lord says more than once that there is a real possibility for us to choose hell and death. Strictly speaking, this is the reverse side of the possibility of choosing Christ and life.
Second, the criterion for selection and justification turns out to be the realization of the ability given to us to love and have compassion selflessly. In Christ's parable, after all, the Lord comes to us in those people from whom nothing can be received in return for mercy: the poor, the sick, and prisoners. This can be very displeasing to us, because the "religious psychology of the fallen human being," which the apostle Paul calls "sin living in me," prefers to put forward other things as justification, from outstanding qualities of soul to active and energetic service to what is passing away.
Third, all nations will be gathered for judgment. All of them, regardless of anything. Those who only just "climbed down from the tree" in the savanna fifty thousand years ago, and those who twenty thousand years ago went to America over the ice of the Bering Strait. Those who lived in the Middle East in the first half of the first century, and those who live in the countries of Christian Europe. All, regardless of how much or how little had been revealed to them about God, will be judged by whether we were capable of compassion, of helping people, and of pitying them. This is comforting, because such a judgment gives anyone the possibility of justification. It is frightening, because deep down we know that such people are rare.
It is important, however, to keep in mind that the Gospel speaks of the unique possibility of not coming to judgment, but passing directly from death into life. This path is faith working through love.