“The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, 42 and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 “Then THE RIGHTEOUS WILL SHINE FORTH AS THE SUN in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.
Matthew 13:41-43, NAS
[[[ Continuing the series on Judgment in the New Testament ]]]
The stumbling blocks are the people who “usurped their place and name and outward privileges.” The King James calls it “even all things that offend.” This is not limited to big crimes like rape and murder; this includes the butt-in and blab crowd. It is pushy people who push past their place and steal the rights, freedom, and innocence of others. These are people who probably don’t even think that they are sinning. (They became deceived when they failed to love and value truth.) Yet they will be thrown into the furnace of fire and be royally angry because they don’t think what they did was “all that bad.” It was.
THEN the ones who are right with God will shine as the sun. The reason that they are not shining now is because the self-serving narcissists have thrown so much crap on them that their light is blocked. It is “as if they had been under a cloud during the present association with ungodly pretenders to their character, and claimants of their privileges, and obstructors of their course.”
This is another one of those things they never emphasized in Sunday school. They always talked about how bad it was to steal and get drunk, but here Jesus is saying that causing others to steal, to get drunk, and to sin is also evil and rates the same judgment.
There is an expression, “You do the crime, you do the time.” Here Jesus says that you will do the time for what you cause as well.
Words in quotations are from The Jameison-Faussett-Brown Commentary; it is in the public domain.
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