“I never knew you…” O dreadful vision to consider that we, even though we profess faith in God, may become strangers to the truth, and that the essence of our life was discovered to be a lie, a vanity, everlasting loss…
That is the substance of Yeshua’s warning to each of us. “The inner is not the outer.” Not every one who says that he believes in him truly does so, and not every one who thinks he knows him does so truly (Matt. 7:21). Truth is revealed by what a person does with his or her life, since this manifests who they are and what they really believe, far more than mere words. We can say a lot of things about what we may believe, but the test is whether we are doing the will of God – or not. Those who “enter the kingdom” are those who seek to do the will of God as the utmost passion of their existence.
Clearly none of this is about religion or religious “scrupulosity.” It is far more serious than that. Yeshua warned that many people do various religious activities, “good deeds” such as feeding the poor, protesting social injustice, or ministering to the oppressed, and so on. Some may even teach or preach the very gospel message itself, but alas! all these may be outsiders who break the inmost law of truth by refusing to surrender to God.
Hear Yeshua’s words: “Many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons and do many powerful deeds?’ (Matt. 7:22). But note the plural pronoun used in this self-reference. Why does the crowd speak on its behalf regarding what “they” have done to justify themselves? Are these people trusting in their religious associations or virtues to make them right with God? Do they identify themselves with some church or righteous cause and assume that should suffice to obtain favorable judgment from heaven? Be careful. Yeshua always speaks to the individual heart, not to groups, tribes, or political parties… “I never knew you” is spoken in the plural: Οὐδέποτε ἔγνων ὑμᾶς.
But Yeshua is saying something more. In this admonitory vision of judgment there is a surprising twist. There is no indication that he denied that some people objectively did such things. Many did prophesy (or teach) about God; many did cast out demons and do “powerful” or miraculous works. The essence of the judgment, however, is that despite all this, despite their ostensible allegiance to God, they were really practitioners of lawlessness, workers of iniquity, and therefore they were cast out: “I never knew you” (Matt. 7:23).
Yeshua had warned us before. He made the matter clear: “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. But the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matt. 7:13-14). The “wide” gate is the way of the crowd, spacious enough to accommodate the masses. It’s the way of open-ended “tolerance” coupled with the unthinking repudiation of moral convictions. The “paradox of tolerance” is that absolute tolerance is self-contradictory and ultimately leads to self-destruction. As Karl Popper said: “If everyone is tolerant of every idea, then intolerant ideas will emerge. Tolerant people will tolerate this intolerance, and the intolerant people will not tolerate the tolerant people.”
The “narrow way,” on the other hand, leads to life. It is not the popular way. It is not the way of the masses or the “politically correct” crowd. It’s not amenable to the way of the jaded skeptic who has no faith in truth. It is not the path of the proud or arrogant. Nor is it the way of “religion” or social justice organizations. It does neither “jihad” nor affect compassion through worldly philanthropy. It is certainly not the way of the State nor political movements driven by mass appeals of the tyrants and demagogues. Nor is it the way of the “institutional” churches. It is not a mass “Christian” movement. It is not concerned with teachings of theologians, or professors, or even preachers who are simply “interested” in the things of God but who never engage in raw personal struggle and agony of heart to do the will of God. No, the way of true surrender involves confessing your brokenness and poverty – your need for deliverance from yourself – and in humility coming before the light to ask God for the miracle of salvation, “life-from-death” deliverance, resurrection, and newness of life…
Something more is therefore needed than merely thinking about God or doing various forms of good works, and that “something more” is having an honest and genuinely tested relationship Yeshua, knowing him in the secret communion of your heart as you live whatever remains of your days in surrender to his will. Doing so will nake you a wise person who “builds his life upon the Rock” – the solid foundation of God’s heart given in Christ – and you will thereby be able to weather the inevitable storms of life without failing (Matt. 7:24-27).
So do you truly know the Lord, friend? Or better – does He really know you? Again, this is not some abstract knowledge about God or the practices of religion, but constitutes the passion of the heart. It is the “knowledge” of knowing someone that you truly love. And that is the key: love. To know God is to know his love and to receive his passion. You simply cannot know Yeshua apart from knowing his love for you, for these are bound together as one.
God loves you despite yourself. It’s not your love for God that saves you but God’s love for you: ῾Ημεῖς ἀγαπῶμεν αὐτόν, ὅτι αὐτὸς πρῶτος ἠγάπησεν ἡμᾶς. “We love him because he first loves us” (1 John 4:19). We were born into this world alienated, lost, spiritually dead, and therefore unable to know the truth of God’s heart. Our love (and knowledge) of God comes from God’s love for us, and we receive that love by the miracle of his intervention in our lives. There is no other way. We do not ascend a “stairway to heaven” to find God, but he descends to the depths and rescues us from the shadowy world of exile and fear.
Yeshua was once asked: “What shall we do to do the works of God?” and he answered: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he sent” (John 6:28-29). This, then, is the will of God; this is what the Lord requires from us; this is the key that opens the door to enter in the Kingdom: to believe in God’s personal love for us given in Yeshua and to live the truth of that love humbly and in all our ways.
If you forget the essence of your soul you begin to lose sight of your reason for being, the “why” that underlies all other whys… This essence, however, is not discovered by means of reason, but by revelation — it is a divine disclosure that awakens you to newness of life. Teshuvah is a return to the arms of your Heavenly Father…
Psalm 139:23-24 Hebrew page (pdf)