<p>19:16 <i>And the first came before him- </i>He comes to us and the faithful come to Him. This will have a literal element to it. When we know for sure that the Lord has come, we will have the choice as to whether to go to Him immediately or delay. Those who go immediately will be confirmed in that by being snatched away to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thess. 4:16,17). One of the great themes of Matthew's gospel is that various men and women 'came to Jesus' at different times and in a variety of situations. The Lord uses the same term to describe how at the last day, people will once again 'come unto' Him (Mt. 25:20-24). The same Jesus whom they 'came before' in His ministry is the one to whom they and we shall again come at the last day- to receive a like gracious acceptance. He will judge and reason the same way He did during His mortality.</p><p><i>Saying: Lord, your minas have made ten minas more</i>- The purpose of the judgment is for our benefit, to develop our appreciation and self-knowledge. This is perhaps reflected by the ten pound man saying that the Lord' minas had gained, had worked to create (Gk.) the ten he could now offer. The man who achieved five pounds uses a different word in describing how the mina given him had made five minas, while the men in&nbsp;Mt. 25:20,22 use yet another word to say the same thing. This is surely a realistic picture, each of the faithful comes to the same conclusion, that what spirituality they have developed and the work of the Spirit which they did is an outcome of the basic Gospel given to each of us at our conversion; yet&nbsp;they have used them in different ways and they express this same basic idea in different words.&nbsp;</p><p>All those who will be in the Kingdom will feel that really we should not be there, we don't deserve it, we will be hesitant to enter it and therefore Christ will have to almost make us go into the Kingdom. It's the same in the parables of Matthew 25, at the judgment Jesus will praise the righteous for doing so many good things, and then they will disagree with him, they will say 'No, we didn't do that, really we didn't', and He will say 'Yes, in my eyes, you did'. Their good works had not been consciously done. This is surely what the Lord was driving at in saying that our left hand must not know what the right hand does. We aren't to be self-consciously brooding on our own generosity. It would seem that with a spirit of amazement and surprise the man says 'Your minas gained more minas'.&nbsp;It's the self-righteous, those who think they have done so much and therefore they must be in the Kingdom, who will be rejected.</p><p>&ldquo;Made&rdquo; translates&nbsp;<i>poieo</i>, a very common word; but it is used by the Lord, again in talking about His servants, in saying that the faithful servant will be found &lsquo;doing&rsquo; care to his brethren (Mt. 24:46). And the word is twice used about &lsquo;doing&rsquo; good unto the least of Christ&rsquo;s brethren, and this being the basis for our judgment (Mt. 25:40,45). Again we see that our work / trading involves fruitfully sharing the spiritual riches we have received with others. It&rsquo;s worth noting that this teaching is alluded to in the record of the woman anointing the Lord&rsquo;s feet; and all the records of it use the same Greek words to describe it. She &ldquo;did it&rdquo; (<i>poieo</i>, Mt. 26:12,13), she &ldquo;worked&rdquo; (s.w. &ldquo;traded&rdquo;) a good work &lsquo;trading&rsquo; on the Lord (Mt. 26:10). It&rsquo;s as if her humanly senseless pouring out of her wealth for the Lord was in fact smart trading in the spiritual sense. The story line implies that we can add to the total wealth of the Lord Jesus. Yet the extension of His glory, the progress of His work, depends upon us, and we are left to our own initiative in this. This is the meaning of the element of &lsquo;absence&rsquo; of the Lord, and the immediacy of His leaving the servants with such huge amounts of silver without instructing them specifically how to use them.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>This idea of using one&rsquo;s own initiative was more startling then than it is now. Today, students are 'trained' to think for themselves, be creative, develop their own opinions, push forward their own independent research, using question / problem-based learning as a paradigm for their education. 'Education' in the first century wasn't like that at all. The idea was that &quot;every one when he is fully taught will be like his teacher&quot; (Lk. 6:40). The idea was that a person born into a certain social situation was trained to take their place in society, given that 'station and place' into which they had been born. Initiative in that sense was not encouraged; it was all about training up a person to correctly fulfil societies' expectation of them. The idea of being personally taught by the invisible Master / teacher Jesus, becoming like Him rather than like the person whom society expected, being given talents by Him which we are to trade and multiply at our initiative (Mt. 25:15-28)... this was all totally counter-cultural stuff. What was so vital in the Mediterranean world was that a person achieved conformity to accepted values. Cicero advised that in any good presentation of a legal case or encomium, emotions and passions shouldn't be referred to. Individualism was seen as a threat to tradition and the collective society. The huge New Testament emphasis on becoming disciples, learners, of an invisible Lord, Master and teacher located in Heaven, serving Him alone, worried about<i> His</i>&nbsp;standards, perceptions and judgment of us- that was and is so totally opposite to the expectations of society. People were educated to be embedded in society, rather than to come out of their world and live in the new world in which Christ was the light, and all things were made new in a new creation, a new set of values.</p>