asked, ‘Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ (Mark 2:5–7; cf. Luke 7:48–49). If Jesus claimed authority to forgive the penitent, he also claimed authority to judge the impenitent. Several of his parables implied that he expected to return at the end of history. On that day, he said, he would sit on his glorious throne. All nations would stand before him, and he would separate them from one another as a shepherd separates his sheep from his goats.