United Church of God by Heather D
God apparently has very different opinions of two groups of people He calls “sheep” and “goats.” But what is it about sheep and goats that makes such a big difference? And how can we know which we are?
I am not, nor have I ever been, a shepherd. My familiarity with sheep and goats ends after cartoon characters and mattress commercials. So many times, I feel like scriptures involving the concept of God’s Church being a flock, or of us being His sheep, or even of Jesus being a lamb go right over my head. For instance, in Matthew 25, this analogy, which is obviously included to help me understand something more, just left me more confused:
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’ . . . Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’ . . . ‘And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life’ (Matthew 25:31-34, English Standard Version).
Why are the sheep and goats separated? Why are sheep better than goats? Why does one earn reward and the other earn punishment? How do I make sure I am not a goat? What if I already am a goat, and I don’t know it? The analogy continues to describe the works of the sheep versus those of the goats, but why? What inward difference produces such different outcomes?
