A recent argument by Dinesh D’Souza about free will started me thinking about something much larger than Calvinism. His proposition was that if human beings possess the free will to choose sin, they must also possess the free will to choose God. But Scripture presents fallen humanity rather differently. Jesus says, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44), while Paul tells us that “it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).
That means something must already be happening when a person begins to turn towards God. The Father draws, the Holy Spirit convicts, the heart is opened and light is given. We really do respond to God, but our response does not originate independently of Him. Grace has already been at work.
Following that thought led me back to a question which has troubled me before: who exactly are the sheep in Matthew 25?
When Jesus returns in glory, He gathers the nations before Him and separates them as a shepherd separates sheep from goats. To the sheep He says, “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34). He tells them that when He was hungry they fed Him, when He was thirsty they gave Him drink, when He was a stranger they welcomed Him, and when He was sick or in prison they came to Him.
Their reaction is extraordinary. They do not remember doing any of these things to Jesus. “Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink?” Only then does He reveal the truth: “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.”
They had been responding to Christ without knowing that they were responding to Christ.
Their kindness did not earn their salvation. Jesus calls them “blessed of My Father” and invites them to inherit a kingdom “prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Their behaviour is evidence of something deeper. It reveals what God’s grace has already been producing within them.
And these sheep cannot be the Church. By this point Christ has returned in glory, the dead in Christ have been raised, living believers have been transformed, and the glorified Church has returned with Him. The Church is not standing among the nations waiting to discover whether Christ will classify its members as sheep or goats. That question has already been settled.
So who are these sheep?
I believe they are part of a wider company of the redeemed: people in whom God has been at work, although during their earthly lives they may never have understood what He was doing. They may never have become part of the Church through conscious faith in Christ, yet their lives reveal that they responded to the light God gave them. When they finally encounter the King, they discover that the One who had touched and shaped their lives was nearer than they ever knew.
And I see no reason to suppose that such sheep exist only among the generation alive when Christ returns. There may always have been sheep. Matthew 25 simply describes the moment when Christ separates those remaining among the nations after His return and openly reveals what they are.
That thought carries enormous comfort. Many of us can remember a much-loved grandfather, a favourite aunt, a dear friend or another relative who never made a profession of Christian faith, yet whose life was marked by consistent kindness, generosity, compassion and concern for others. Such qualities do not earn salvation, but neither do they come from nowhere. They bear a remarkable resemblance to the qualities by which Jesus recognises His sheep.
Perhaps some of those whom we have mourned, assuming that because they were never part of the Church they must therefore have been lost, were sheep all along. They were not members of the Church, with its particular calling as the Body and Bride of Christ, but they may nevertheless have belonged to the wider flock of the Shepherd. We may have drawn the boundaries of God’s mercy much more narrowly than He does.
The goats are different. Cain gives us an early and disturbing picture. God spoke to him, warned him and exposed what was happening within his heart: “Sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it” (Genesis 4:7). Cain received light and rejected it. John later describes him as “of the wicked one” (1 John 3:12).
Jesus gives us the underlying principle: “The light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light” (John 3:19). The goat is not simply somebody who never joined a church or never made a formal decision for Christ. Something much more serious is involved: the persistent rejection of the light God has given.
Only God can judge that perfectly. He knows every circumstance, every pressure, every wound, every movement of conscience and every touch of His Spirit upon a human heart. He knows where ignorance ends and deliberate resistance begins. His judgment will therefore be perfectly just.
Perhaps, then, the goats are far fewer than Christians have sometimes imagined, and the flock of God far greater. Perhaps countless people whom we have mentally placed outside salvation will discover that Christ had been at work within them in ways they never understood.
The Church will know her Bridegroom. The sheep will discover the Shepherd and King to whom they belonged, although they had never fully known His name. The goats will discover that the light they resisted was His light all along.
And over them all stands one great truth:
Salvation is of the Lord.
I have explored the biblical argument behind this in considerably greater detail in my latest article on The Way of Truth: Who Are the Sheep — and Who Are the Goats?