Matthew 25
Jesus uses parables to illustrate the coming judgement and the need to be ready
Discussion Questions
- Is it possible that Jesus might come again within our lifetime?
- What do we mean by being saved?
- Do these parables give an insight into God’s eternal justice as well as his eternal love?
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Going Deeper – from 'Words of Life'
If you will permit me one more thought about the genealogy of Jesus, I invite you to think for a moment on the fact that Luke 3:38 says that Adam was also a son of God. In this way, our first ancestor, as father of the human race, makes all human beings ‘brothers’ and, through him, God is our original ‘Father’. Recall Genesis 1:27 – ‘God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them’; and verse 26 – in his ‘likeness’.
We know that human beings suffered the Fall – disobedience to God that cost us communion with him. But thanks to the coming of Christ as our Saviour, reconciling us to God, a new and deeper relationship began. This should not make us proud to belong to a new ‘lineage’, isolated from the rest, but rather enable us to recognise our neighbour as our brother or sister, because we are ‘children’ of the same spiritual Father.
I know that sometimes sin makes this image of God so disfigured that we find it hard to recognise, but from time to time there comes along a Christian who, by their example, helps us to perceive the image of God in others.
Someone who challenged me in a special way with her life was Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She encouraged Christians to see by faith the face of Christ in the faces of the poor: ‘We need the eyes of a profound faith to see Christ in the maimed bodies and dirty clothes in which is hidden the fairest among the sons of men. We need the hands of Christ to touch this body wounded with sorrow and suffering.’ She also said: ‘Everyone is Jesus in a distressing disguise.’
As we remember that God became human, let us recognise his face in every person we meet and let us ask especially for the grace to see (the face of) Christ in our neighbours in need. Pray that they will also see God in us.
Beverly Ivany