True or Empty Claims
Matthew 7:1–23
Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 7:21

Jesus contrasts those who profess to follow Jesus—they call him “Lord, Lord”—yet do not do what God requires, and those (the contrast is implied) who do the will of God and thereby prove that their discipleship is genuine (vv. 21–23). This contrast describes hypocrisy. It is professing faith in Jesus Christ while actually rejecting or disobeying him. Two important matters are worth noting.

1. This person has the right doctrines. He calls Jesus “Lord, Lord,” confessing Jesus’s deity and professing that he is his master. But he is not following Jesus as his master. There were times in Jesus’s ministry when people called him Lord, meaning perhaps no more than “Sir.” Lord was a title of respect. But here a great deal more is involved, for it is Jesus who is speaking, and he is using the word with the richest possible meaning. In the Old Testament, Lord is usually translated “Jehovah,” a name for God. In New Testament settings the equivalent word is kyrios, the title by which citizens of the Roman Empire addressed the emperor as a god. What Jesus is saying is that there will be people in the church who will confess his divinity but who will not be saved. They will be on the expansive road to hell.

Can that really be? Certainly, it can! A person can sit in the pews of a church for years, firmly believing that Jesus is God, that he died on the cross for sin, and even that he is returning one day to judge the world, yet never have come to the point of actually trusting that same Jesus Christ as his Savior.

2. This person has prophesied and done miracles. Jesus declares: “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?’” (v. 22). Jesus does not deny they did miracles. He accepts their profession as a fact. But he also does not deny their self-deception. Their hypocrisy has escalated to a point at which they have actually fooled themselves. They believe their deceptions. But neither eloquent teaching nor miracles prove one to be a true disciple, and these persons are exposed as “workers of lawlessness.”

These apparent Christians are not condemned because their teaching was wrong or their miracles spurious but because they did not practice what they preached. They were bearing bad fruit, even when they were professing to be good.

So beware, especially if you sense you are a nominal Christian only. There are many paths to hell, many of them religious, but there is only one way to heaven, and that is through trusting in Jesus Christ.

Taken from Come to the Waters by James Boice ISBN 9798887790954 used with permission from P&R Publishing, Phillipsburg NJ 08865

Scripture quotations are from the ESV (the Holy Bible English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.