Thoughts for the Day

I never knew you …                             Matthew 7:23

I wonder what spoke to you more in the last couple of days’ blogs, the extravagance of God’s forgiveness or the comeuppance of the unmerciful servant, the example of the diligent servants or the fate of the wicked one?  As always, there is good news if our hearts are in the right place, but, as so often, there is bad news for the hard-hearted.  Today and next week we will look at more examples and what Jesus said about the fate of the hard-hearted.  Partly this is to address more of those “Did God really say?” statements that perhaps we are inclined to discount or ignore.  Partly too, this prepares us to appreciate more Jesus’ amazing offer to us through his death on the Cross which will be the focus of our last week.

Today’s example is really quite shocking.  There will be some, Jesus tells us, who will call him ‘Lord’, who will prophesy, who will cast out demons and perform miracles in his name and will be aghast to hear Jesus’ pronouncement, “I never knew you, away from me you evildoers!”  Did Jesus really say that?  Matthew tells us he did.  Look at that description and imagine how such a person would be viewed in your church (or mine).  Yet Jesus’ “I never knew you” tells us it is possible to do all this without having that necessary underpinning relationship with God.

And let’s be clear, this is not about recognising failings in others, this is about us.  The implied error was to focus on saying and doing the right things, and to forget that what matters most, what must remain at the heart of this, is our relationship with God.  It suggests that when serving and doing become divorced from relating to the One we serve, we become divorced from Him too.