THE DANGER OF FALSE ASSURANCE
KNOWN OR UNKNOWN - Series (Week 3)
Matthew 7:21-23
INTRODUCTION: THE WRONG NAME ON THE LIST
I want you to imagine something with me for a moment. Picture yourself getting word, months in advance, that you are on the VIP list for the most exclusive event of the year. Someone you trust told you your name was there. You believed it. You planned around it. You bought the outfit. You told your friends. And on the night of the event, you walk up to that velvet rope with total confidence, full expectation, and a smile on your face, ready to walk straight through.
But the person at the door looks at the list. Then looks at you. Then looks at the list again. And says, calmly but firmly, "I'm sorry. Your name is not here."
You argue. You explain. You insist. You say, "I was told I was on the list. I know I was invited." But the rope does not lift. The door does not open. And you are left standing outside while everyone else walks in.
Now hear me this morning. What if that door was not the entrance to a party? What if that door was the entrance to eternity?
Matthew 7:21-23. Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'"
This is one of the most sobering passages in all of Scripture, and it comes from the mouth of Jesus Himself, not from a stern prophet, not from a theologian writing a treatise on judgment, but from the Son of God who went to a cross because He loves humanity. He is telling us this not to terrify us, but to rescue us. He is warning us the way a father warns a child who is about to step into traffic. There is love in this warning. But the warning is real.
Today we are in Week 3 of our series, KNOWN OR UNKNOWN, and the question we are sitting with this morning is one of the most important you will ever answer in your lifetime. Not at an altar call. Not in a theology class. Right now, in your chest, in the quiet place where only you and God have access. Is your relationship with Jesus real? Are you known by Him? Or are you living under a dangerous assumption that feels like faith but has never been rooted in genuine covenant?
This message is for the church. Not for the streets. Not for the unbeliever who has never heard the Gospel. Jesus directed these words at people who were already religious, already active, already operating in spiritual gifts. And that is exactly why we need to hear it.
Let us pray, and then we will go deeper.
I. CLAIMS WITHOUT COVENANT
Outward religious activity, including spiritual gifts and ministry deeds, cannot substitute for a genuine, blood-bought covenant relationship with Jesus Christ.
The first thing you need to notice in this passage is the level of shock these people carry to the judgment seat. They do not come with embarrassment. They do not come with excuses. They come with a case. A full, confident, articulate case. "Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name? Cast out demons in Your name? Done many wonders in Your name?" These are not trivial claims. Prophecy, deliverance, miracles. These are the very categories of spiritual activity that we celebrate in charismatic and Spirit-filled churches every single week.
And Jesus says, "Depart from Me."
Now the question that every honest believer must wrestle with is this: How is that possible? How does a person prophesy, cast out demons, and perform miracles in the name of Jesus and still end up outside the kingdom?
The answer is found in Matthew 7:21, where Jesus draws the line in the clearest possible terms. He says the one who enters the kingdom of heaven is "he who does the will of My Father in heaven." Not the one who does great things in My name. Not the one who accumulates spiritual achievements. The one who does the will of the Father. And John 6:40 tells us exactly what that will is: "that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life." The will of the Father is covenant. The will of the Father is relationship. The will of the Father is that you know His Son, not just use His name.
In Luke 13:25-27, Jesus paints the same scene with different brushstrokes. The master of the house rises up and shuts the door. People are standing outside, knocking, pressing, crying, "Lord, open to us." And the master says, "I do not know you, where you are from." They push back. They say, "We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets." And he replies, "I tell you I do not know you."
Catch what they are saying. They ate and drank in His presence. They sat in the same room as Jesus. They heard His teaching firsthand. They were in the building, in the right services, at the right meetings. And still the door was shut. Because proximity to Jesus is not the same as a personal relationship with Jesus. Sitting near the fire is not the same as being on fire. Being in the church building is not the same as being in the body of Christ.
Now I want to say something specifically to everyone in this room who moves in the gifts of the Spirit, because this is a charismatic house and we need to hear this from the inside. The anointing is real. Prophecy is real. Signs and wonders are real. I am not standing here to cast a shadow over any of that. But the gifts of the Holy Spirit were never designed to be a replacement for intimacy with the Holy Spirit. You can carry an anointing and still not know the One who anoints. Saul prophesied among the prophets in 1 Samuel 10:10. The Spirit of God came upon him powerfully. And yet 1 Samuel 15:26 tells us God rejected Saul as king because he substituted obedience for religious performance. By 1 Samuel 16:14, the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him. The anointing was present. Then it was absent. The condition of his covenant relationship with God was the difference.
Romans 11:29 tells us that the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable. God does not take back His gifts because you fell into disobedience. That is grace, but it is also a warning. Because a gift still operating does not mean a relationship is still intact. A lamp can burn for a while on the oil already in it. The question is whether you are being refilled.
The question is never just, "Is God using me?" The question is, "Do I know Him? Does He know me? Not my ministry. Not my gift. Me."
II. WORKERS OF INIQUITY EXPOSED
Lawlessness is the condition of claiming Christ's name while refusing His Lordship, and it disqualifies a person from entering the kingdom regardless of their religious resume.
In Matthew 7:23, Jesus uses a phrase that demands our full attention. He calls these rejected people "workers of lawlessness." In the original Greek text, that word is anomia. A-N-O-M-I-A. Write it down if you need to, because this word is the diagnosis beneath the surface of the entire passage.
Anomia does not mean a person has never attended church or never read their Bible. It does not simply mean they committed sins. Anomia describes the condition of a person who lives as though the law and Lordship of God carry no binding authority over their life. It describes someone who uses the name of Jesus as a spiritual credential on Sunday while living with no genuine submission to His authority from Monday through Saturday.
1 John 3:4 says, "Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness." And then 1 John 3:6 continues, "Whoever abides in Him does not sin." That second statement is not saying that a born-again believer never makes mistakes or never wrestles with temptation. Romans 7 makes clear that even the apostle Paul experienced that internal warfare. What John is describing is the lifestyle trajectory of a person who is genuinely connected to Jesus. A person who truly abides in Christ is not living in a settled, unrepentant pattern of rebellion against God. The direction of their life, even with its stumbles and failures, is toward Him, not away from Him.
Anomia is the opposite of that. It is the person who occupies a pew, sings the worship songs, carries a gift, and yet has made a private, sustained peace with sin. They have no genuine intention of letting Jesus be Lord over the areas of their life that matter most. That is lawlessness dressed in religious clothes.
Jesus gives us a vivid picture of this in Matthew 22:11-13, the Parable of the Wedding Garment. The king throws a banquet for his son's wedding and fills the hall with guests, people brought in from every road and corner. But when the king comes in to greet his guests, he sees a man not wearing a wedding garment. He asks the man how he got in without one. The man has nothing to say. And the king commands him to be bound hand and foot and cast into outer darkness.
Now here is the piece of this parable that changes everything. In ancient Near Eastern culture, it was common for a king to provide wedding garments for his guests. The garment was offered. It was available. This man refused to put it on. He showed up to the king's celebration on his own terms, in his own clothes, by his own standard of what was acceptable. He decided his own outfit was good enough.
That garment is the righteousness of Christ. Isaiah 61:10 calls it "the robe of righteousness." And the entry requirement for the kingdom of God is not your ministry record, your years of church attendance, your gifting, your reputation in the congregation, or the number of times you laid hands on someone and they were healed. The only garment that gains you access to the Father is the righteousness of His Son, received by faith and expressed in genuine surrender to His Lordship.
2 Corinthians 13:5 says, "Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves." Paul wrote that to a church. To people already in ministry. To people who already considered themselves believers. And he looked at them and said, "Test yourselves." Not because he wanted to produce anxiety, but because he knew it was possible to be in the building and not be in the faith. It is possible to be incredibly active in ministry and never have genuinely bowed the knee to Jesus as Lord.
2 Timothy 3:5 warns about people who hold "a form of godliness but deny its power." The form is there. The vocabulary is there. The schedule is there. Sunday mornings, midweek service, prayer team, the whole structure of religious participation is fully assembled. But the transforming power of a genuine, surrendered relationship with the living God is absent. That is anomia. Not the absence of church. The absence of Christ as Lord.
But hear me clearly. The answer to lawlessness is not more religious effort. The answer is intimacy. When you genuinely know Jesus, when you spend time in His presence, when His Word lives in you and not just on your shelf, your life begins to align with His nature. Not out of fear of judgment. Out of love. Out of the natural overflow of a heart that has been genuinely changed by an encounter with a living Savior.
III. SELF-DECEPTION'S TRAGEDY
The most dangerous spiritual condition is not knowing you are lost. It is being lost while fully believing you are found.
[Lower your voice here. This is the most sobering section. Speak like a doctor delivering serious news to someone they love deeply.]
There is one word in Matthew 7:22 that breaks my heart every time I read this passage. Jesus does not say "some" will come to Him with false confidence. He does not say "a few." He says "many." Many will come. Many will present their credentials. Many will arrive at eternity fully expecting a welcome and instead hear, "Depart from Me. I never knew you."
The tragedy is not just that they were rejected. The tragedy is that they never saw it coming. They were deceived, and they were deceived by themselves, by their own assumptions, their own religious comforts, their own conclusions about where they stood with God.
In Matthew 7:13-14, Jesus says, "Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it." Few. Narrow. Difficult. Those are not popular words in a culture that wants maximum access with minimum cost. But they are the words of Jesus. And they tell us something essential. The road that leads to life does not look like the road most people are traveling.
But here is what makes it tragic. The people in Matthew 7:22 were not walking in obvious, blatant godlessness. They were on a road that looked spiritual. It had activity. It had gifts. It had the vocabulary of faith. But they were walking in a broad way that they had convinced themselves was narrow. They had all the markers of Christianity without the genuine transformation that only comes from a living relationship with Jesus Christ.
Jesus drives this home in Matthew 25. You know the story. Ten virgins are waiting for the bridegroom. All ten are present. All ten have lamps. All ten are dressed and positioned for the wedding. Five brought extra oil. Five did not. When the cry goes out at midnight that the bridegroom is coming, all ten wake up, but five lamps are going out. The five without oil try to borrow from the others, and when there is not enough to share, they go to find more. And while they are gone, the bridegroom arrives. The five prepared virgins go in. The door is shut.
And then the five unprepared virgins return and stand at that closed door and cry, "Lord, Lord, open to us!" In Matthew 25:12, the bridegroom answers, "Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you."
That phrase follows us through the entire Sermon on the Mount like a relentless echo. I do not know you. I never knew you. Not you, the stranger. Not you, the outright rebel. You, the one who showed up. You, the one who waited. You, the one who thought you were ready.
The oil in this parable represents the presence and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. You can have a lamp, which represents the outward form of a Christian life, and still run dry on the inside. You can attend every service, be faithful in every role, and still be living without the genuine internal reality of a Spirit-filled, transformed heart. Cultural Christianity gives you the lamp. Only genuine relationship with Jesus gives you the oil.
Proverbs 14:12 says, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." It seems right. That is the word that demands your full attention. This person is not knowingly walking toward destruction. They genuinely think their path is fine. That is the nature of self-deception. You do not know you are deceived. The moment you know, the deception is broken.
The most dangerous spiritual condition is not the condition of the person who knows they are far from God. The most dangerous condition belongs to the person who is far from God and thinks they are close. Because the person who knows they are lost is still searching for rescue. The person who thinks they are fine has stopped searching for anything at all.
1 John 5:13 says, "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life." God wants you to have assurance. Not false assurance built on religious activity, but genuine assurance rooted in a living, daily, honest relationship with Jesus Christ. Real assurance does not rest on what you have done. It rests on what He has done, and on your genuine surrender to Him as Lord.
CONCLUSION:
I am not going to summarize what we have covered. The Holy Spirit has already done that work in your heart, and I trust Him to complete it. What I want to do right now is create space for honesty.
Not public honesty. Not performance. Just you and God, in the next sixty seconds, answering one question with complete integrity.
Is your relationship with Jesus real?
Not "Am I a good person?" Not "Do I attend church?" Not "Has God used me?" Is your relationship with Jesus Christ a living, genuine, daily covenant? Does He know you? Not your name. Not your church. Not your gift. You. Your heart. Your surrender. Your private life when no one is watching.
2 Corinthians 13:5 says, "Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves." That verse is not an accusation. It is an invitation to clarity. God does not want you walking toward eternity on an assumption. He wants you to know, with settled confidence, that you are His and He is yours.
Maybe you are in this room today, and you have never actually crossed the line of genuine surrender. You have been religious. You have been present. But somewhere deep in your chest, if you are honest, you know you have never truly given Jesus the full ownership of your life. Today is the day that changes.
Maybe you drifted. Maybe there was a season when your relationship with God was alive and real, and somewhere along the way, the oil ran low. The lamp is still in your hand, but the flame is barely there. Today is the day you come back.
Maybe you are someone who moves in the gifts, who preaches, who prays for the sick, and you are sensing right now that what we carried in this message was aimed directly at you. Not to condemn you. To call you into something deeper. The gifts are not enough. The anointing is not the relationship. Come back to the place of intimacy. Come back to the place where it is just you and Jesus, no stage, no microphone, no audience, and your heart is fully surrendered to Him.
Let me lead us in a prayer, and as I do, I want you to make it yours. Not repeated words. A genuine response. If you need to move to the altar, this is the moment. If you need to stand where you are, stand. But let this prayer come from the real place inside you, not the religious place.
Father, I come to You not on the merit of what I have done but on the merit of what Your Son has done. I confess that I need more than religion. I need relationship. I need more than the form. I need the power. Today I choose to surrender fully, not partially, not selectively, but completely, to Jesus Christ as both Savior and Lord. I ask You to search my heart and remove every false comfort, every false assumption, every layer of self-deception. Fill me with Your Spirit. Clothe me in Your righteousness. I do not want to arrive at eternity with a case to make. I want to arrive known by You.
For those who are coming to You for the very first time, receive them now. Write their names in the Lamb's Book of Life, not because of anything they have earned, but because of the blood of Jesus Christ shed on their behalf. Romans 10:9 says that if they confess with their mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in their heart that God raised Him from the dead, they will be saved. And we receive that promise right now, by faith.
For those who are returning, those who allowed the oil to run low, restore them. Renew that first love. Fan the flame that has been dimmed by distance and disobedience. You are the God who restores.
And for everyone in this room who is genuinely in Christ, who walks with You daily, who knows You and is known by You, let this message not produce fear but produce gratitude. Because the same Jesus who says "Depart from Me" to the unrepentant is the Jesus who says, "Well done, good and faithful servant," to those who truly belong to Him.
If you prayed that prayer and meant it, I want you to know something. Not from me, but from the Word of God. 1 John 5:13 says you can know, with certainty, that you have eternal life. Not hope so. Not maybe. Know. Because your confidence is not in your record. It is in His resurrection. And the One who conquered death does not lose the people He has called His own.
You are known. Walk in that.
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Blessings,
Pastor JM Raja Lawrence
Andaman & Nicobar Islands
email: lawrencejmr@gmail.com
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