There is a sentence in Matthew 7:23 that should stop every serious follower of Jesus cold. It is not directed at atheists or skeptics or people who have openly rejected the faith. It is directed at people who called Jesus Lord. People who prophesied in His name, drove out demons in His name, and performed miracles in His name. People who, by every external measure, appeared to be deeply embedded in the work of the kingdom. And to all of them, Jesus says: I never knew you. Away from me. We do not get to soften that. We do not get to reinterpret it until it feels less urgent. It is Jesus speaking about His own kingdom, and He is telling us that it is entirely possible to be active in the kingdom without actually belonging to the King. The passage begins in verse 21 with a statement that deserves to sit in the silence for a moment. Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. The Greek word translated Lord — kurios — means master, ruler, the one who possesses authority over me. It is a weighty word. And Jesus says you can say it all day long and it can mean nothing. Language is cheap. Fluency in the vocabulary of Christian faith is no indicator of genuine belonging. A person can be completely at home in the vernacular of the church — can use the right phrases, reference the right texts, carry the right posture in a worship service — and still not have submitted their heart and life to the one they are calling master. Then in verse 22, the stakes climb higher. It is not just verbal profession that Jesus puts under scrutiny. It is ministry activity. Prophesying, driving out demons, performing miracles — these are not casual religious gestures. These are significant kingdom works. And yet Jesus places them on the same side of the ledger as empty words if they are not rooted in genuine relationship. The acts of service we perform in the name of the kingdom will never purchase the salvation that only the King can give. That is not a minor clarification. It is the entire point. This is where the passage begins to press against some of the most deeply held assumptions in Christian culture. We have largely built a version of faith that equates kingdom activity with kingdom citizenship. If someone is doing the work — preaching, leading, serving, giving, going on mission trips, running programs, filling roles — we tend to assume the relationship is real. Jesus says that assumption is dangerous. Activity can outrun relationship. And when it does, the activity is not covering the gap. It is widening it. The two-fold test of genuine kingdom citizenship is character and activity together — not activity alone. The question is not just what we are doing for the kingdom. The question is what is driving it. Is the activity an overflow of genuine relationship with the King, of a life truly surrendered to His lordship? Or is it the substitute for that relationship? Are we doing kingdom things so that we feel like kingdom people without actually doing the hard interior work of being formed by Him? This is a question we have to ask ourselves honestly, because it is remarkably easy to stay so busy in the work of the kingdom that we crowd out the King Himself. The sermon gets prepared. The volunteer shift gets covered. The check gets written. The social media post about the mission trip goes up. And somewhere in the relentless momentum of kingdom activity, the quiet, unglamorous, unhurried work of actually knowing Jesus — of prayer, of honest self-examination, of sitting in the word without an agenda — gets pushed to the margins. Jesus's response in verse 23 to all of this activity is devastating in its simplicity. I never knew you. Two things are worth holding in that sentence. First, Jesus does not say I used to know you and we drifted apart. He says I never knew you. The relationship was never real, despite everything that was done in His name. Second — and this is the one that cuts deepest — Jesus is not asking how well we know Him. He is asking whether He knows us. That is a fundamentally different question. We can know a great deal about someone we have never actually met. We can study their words, quote their teachings, admire their work, and build an entire life around their reputation — without ever being in genuine relationship with them. Jesus is not impressed by our knowledge of Him. He is asking whether we have actually given ourselves to Him in the kind of surrender that results in a real, living, transforming relationship. Then He calls all that kingdom activity — the prophesying, the exorcisms, the miracles — evil. That is an astonishing word choice. Not impressive but insufficient. Not well-intentioned but misguided. Evil. Because kingdom activity performed without the King at the root is ultimately self-serving, no matter how spiritual the packaging looks. It is fruit borrowed from other trees and taped to our branches. It looks like fruit. It does not grow like fruit. The sobering mercy in this passage is that it comes before the judgment, not after. Jesus is telling us now so that we can examine ourselves now. The question He puts before us is not rhetorical. Is our kingdom vocabulary and our kingdom activity outpacing our kingdom relationship? Are we doing more for Him than we are being with Him? And is the busyness of service functioning as a substitute for the intimacy of surrender? There is only one answer to the sentence Jesus never wants to speak over our lives. Not more activity. Not better performance. But a genuine, ongoing, surrendered relationship with the King — one in which He knows us, not just one in which we know about Him. That is the root everything else has to grow from.
Dr. William C.K. Yomes is the founding apologist of Faith Makes Sense and the Senior Pastor of Catalyst Community Church in Wilmington, Delaware. This article is part of his ongoing teaching ministry at Catalyst Community Church.