I Never Knew You

Who Gets Turned Away

The men refused at the close of the Sermon on the Mount are not atheists, pagans, or scoffers. They call Him Lord. They prophesy. They cast out devils. They do many wonderful works, and they do all of it in His name (Matthew 7:22). By every measure the modern assembly uses, confession, power, sincerity, visible results, these men pass. They are turned away anyway, and the reason is given in a single word.

The Reason Given

“And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:23). The word behind iniquity is anomia (G458), the alpha of negation joined to nomos, law. Lawlessness. Not sin in general, not weakness, not failure to measure up. The charge is built out of the word for law, and it is the last thing Yahushua says before the closing parable.

Two verses earlier He had already stated what He was looking for: “but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). Scripture defines that will without help from any commentary. “I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:8). The will of the Father and the law of the Father are laid side by side in one sentence, by David, a thousand years earlier.

He Was Quoting a Psalm

The dismissal itself is not original to the mountain. “Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity” is Psalm 6:8. In the Greek of the Septuagint that line carries the same word, anomia. Yahushua ended His sermon by quoting the Psalter, and the psalm He reached for is one where the wicked are identified by their standing toward the Law.

Never Knew You

“I never knew you” is not a statement about information. The Hebrew idea behind knowing is covenant recognition, not acquaintance. “You only have I known of all the families of the earth” (Amos 3:2), spoken to Israel, of whom Yahuah plainly knew a great deal in the ordinary sense. To be known is to be in covenant. To hear I never knew you is to be told the covenant was never there, whatever was done in the name attached to it.

The same word follows Him through Matthew. The tares gathered out of the kingdom are them which do iniquity, anomia (Matthew 13:41). The love of many waxes cold because iniquity, anomia, abounds (Matthew 24:12). It is a settled category in this gospel, not a passing insult.

The House on the Rock

What comes next is the same test told as a picture. The wise builder hears the sayings and does them; the foolish builder hears the sayings and does not (Matthew 7:24-27). Hearing is common to both men. Doing is the only difference between the house that stands and the house that falls, which is exactly the difference between the man who is known and the man who is not.

The Two Walls

Set this against the way the sermon opened. At the front: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets” (Matthew 5:17), followed by the promise that not one jot or one tittle shall pass from it (Matthew 5:18). Near the close, the same pair is named again, and named as the whole point: “for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12). The law and the prophets stand at both ends of the sermon, by name.

The verdict falls just after that second marker. Eleven verses past “this is the law and the prophets” comes “depart from me, ye that work lawlessness” (Matthew 7:23). Everything in between the two walls is exposition, and the sentence handed down at the end is handed down on the absence of the thing named at the beginning.

Where the Pulpit Buried It

This passage is preached almost everywhere as a warning against works. These men trusted in what they had done, the teaching runs, instead of trusting in Messiah. But the verdict is on the page, and it does not say that. They are not condemned for keeping commandments. They are condemned for lawlessness. If works of the Law were the disqualifier here, the sentence would have to run the other way, and it does not. The passage used to warn men away from obedience is the one passage that convicts men for the lack of it.

None of this makes obedience the door. Entry is through the blood; that is settled elsewhere and it is settled first. But these men were never asked whether they had entered. They were asked whether they were doing the will of the Father, and they had spent their lives doing wonderful works in a name while walking without the law that name was given to uphold.

One of ten witnesses to a single sermon. This one is the known — who stands in covenant, and who only worked in the name. The Law and the Prophets are named at both ends of the mountain, and the case they close is set out in the nucleus study, The Mountain Message Christianity Never Preached.