21. "I never knew you"

In this episode we take a close look at Jesus' words in Matthew 7:21-23: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'"

The main points were:

• Just because someone verbally says that Jesus is Lord does not automatically mean that they are truly saved.
• Just because someone does some spiritual/religious things does not automatically mean that they are truly saved.
• True salvation is evidenced by a changed life. If someone can continue in sin and have no desire to stop or if someone doesn't actually have the desire to know Jesus, then that individual may very well not know the Lord at all.
• True salvation is found in truly knowing Jesus, not just doing and saying the right things.
• There is no way to have a relationship with God apart from through Jesus Christ.
• For those who are truly born again, there has been a change. They are no longer who they were but have become a new creation.

We covered a lot of Scripture in this episode and I wanted to include some of the references for those of you who want to go back and reread them. These are (roughly) in order of appearance in the episode:

• Matthew 7:21-23.
• Ephesians 2:8-9.
• Psalm 119:160.
• John 17:17.
• 2 Timothy 3:16.
• 2 Peter 1:20-21.
• John 1:12-13.
• John 20:30-31.
• John 3:16.
• John 14:6.
• Acts 4:12.
• 1 John 3:4-10.
• 1 John 1:8-2:6.
• Ephesians 2:10.
• John 17:3.

**CLARIFICATIONS**

• Early on I say that the Sermon on the Mount describes what a Christian should be like. This is most definitely true, but the Sermon on the Mount is even more than just a description of how a Christian should behave. In it we see much about the character of God, salvation, trusting the Lord, and many other things. I simply used that abbreviated description in passing. Nevertheless, I wanted to elaborate on it a bit.
• At one point I say something like, “It’s faith in these things that leads to salvation.” I want to clarify: it’s faith in Jesus Christ that leads to salvation—nothing else. The “these things” to which I was referring were truths about the Gospel that described what it means to have faith in Jesus. I still wanted to clarify though.
• When discussing 1 John 2:2 and I said the whole world had access to the Lord, that was not to say that the entire world has heard the Gospel. There are indeed still unreached people groups. My s

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