Matthew 25:1 indicates that in His coming back Christ will also be the Bridegroom: “Then shall the kingdom of the heavens be likened to ten virgins, who took their lamps and went forth to meet the bridegroom.” We are the virgins going and Christ is the Bridegroom coming.
In the Bible we have a universal couple—the Bridegroom and the bride. The bride is the aggregate of regenerated persons, and the Bridegroom is Christ with whom all regenerated persons should be one.
The four Gospels reveal that Christ has come as the Bridegroom (Matt. 9:15; Mark 2:19; Luke 5:34; John 3:29). He has come for His bride, and the bride is His increase (John 3:30). In His coming He will come as the Bridegroom for His bride.
As the Bridegroom the Lord Jesus is the most pleasant and attractive person in the whole universe. He is not only God, the Lord, the Master, and the Savior, but He is also the Bridegroom, the most pleasant person. In His coming back He will be such a Bridegroom.
In Revelation 19:7 Christ is unveiled as having a wedding: “Let us rejoice and exult, and let us give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife has made herself ready.” The reign of God, the kingdom, is related to the marriage of Christ, and the marriage of Christ is the issue of the completion of God’s New Testament economy. God’s economy in the New Testament is to obtain for Christ a bride, the church, through His redemption and divine life. By the continual working of the Holy Spirit through all the centuries, this goal will be attained at the end of this age. Then the bride with the overcoming believers will be ready. Hence, in His coming back Christ will be the Bridegroom coming for His bride. According to Revelation 19, He will enjoy a wedding feast.
Christ in His coming back will also be the Savior to Israel. Romans 11:26 says, “So all Israel will be saved, as it is written, The Deliverer will come out of Zion; He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” Because of Israel’s unbelief and rejection Christ left them at His going away (Matt. 23:37-39). At the end of the age of grace He will come back to visit them as their Savior, and God will pour upon them the Spirit of grace and supplication; and they will look upon Him whom they have pierced and mourn for Him (Zech. 12:10). Then they all will be saved, as revealed in Romans 11:26.
In Acts 17:31 Paul indicates that Christ in His coming back will be a Judge to the Gentiles: “He has set a day in which He is about to judge the inhabited earth in righteousness by a Man whom He has designated.” The day set by God for the judgment of the inhabited earth will be the day when Christ will judge the living from the throne of His glory at His coming back before the millennium (Matt. 25:31-46), not including the day when He will judge the dead at the great white throne after the millennium (Rev. 20:11-15). According to Acts 10:42, Christ has been designated by God “to be the Judge of the living and the dead.” He will be the Judge of the dead after the millennium at the great white throne. Second Timothy 4:1 and 1 Peter 4:5 also say that Christ will judge both the living and the dead. The day in Acts 17:31 refers particularly to the day Christ will judge the living, because on this day He will judge “the inhabited earth,” which should refer only to living men. This day of Christ’s judgment on earth will be brought in by His coming back. He has been designated by God to execute this judgment, and God’s raising Him from among the dead is strong proof of this. The resurrection of Christ is proof and assurance of His coming back to judge all the inhabitants of the earth.
Matthew 25:32 and 33 speak of Christ’s judging the Gentiles, the nations: “All the nations shall be gathered before Him, and He shall separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He shall set the sheep on His right hand and the goats on the left.” The nations here are all the Gentiles who will be left at Christ’s coming back to earth after He destroys at Armageddon those Gentiles who follow Antichrist (Rev. 16:14, 16; 19:11-15, 19-21). They will be gathered and judged (Joel 3:2) at Christ’s throne of glory. This will be Christ’s judgment on the living before the millennium, differing from His judgment on the dead at the great white throne after the millennium. This judgment on the living will occur after His judgment on the believers at His judgment seat in the air (Matt. 25:19-30). In His judging of the nations, Christ will set the sheep on His right hand and the goats on the left. The sheep will be gathered to His right hand, the place of honor (1 Kings 2:19; Psalm 45:9).
The parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 corresponds to the parable of the net in Matthew 13:47-50. In Matthew 13 there are three kinds of people: the Jews with the kingdom as the treasure hidden in the field; the Gentiles regenerated and transformed into a pearl, the church; and finally, the remaining Gentiles. The Lord will send an angel to collect those who are left in the “sea,” the Gentile world. The net cast into the sea will bring in every kind of creature without regeneration or transformation. This refers to the Gentiles, the natural people from the corrupted world. The Lord will gather all these before Him and judge them. The good will be gathered into vessels, that is, into the millennial kingdom to be the nations, but the evil will be cast into the furnace of fire. Therefore, at the time of His coming back Christ will judge the living unbelievers at the throne of His glory (Matt. 25:31).