Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’
will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is
in heaven will enter. 22 Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we
not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name
perform many miracles?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you;
Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness."
Did you catch that? I
have read this hundreds of times and it has always just blown right by me
before. Jesus says that only those who
do the will of his Father will enter into the kingdom of heaven. Then he says that some who prophesy, cast out
demons and perform miracles will not enter that kingdom. So what does this say about how serious Jesus is about the true
will of God, and our call to carry it out that some who actually exhibit the gifts of the Spirit are left outside kingdom of heaven?! Wow!
We humans are infatuated with the sensational. This explains in part, the popularity of the
celebrity preachers I referred to yesterday.
It is interesting that Jesus, who was in danger of becoming a celebrity
preacher of sorts himself, spoke these words while concluding his Sermon on the
Mount. No doubt some followers were
looking for a kind of religious rock star to follow.
And Jesus was saying here, "That's not what my
kingdom is about. And these are not the kinds of followers I am looking for. My kingdom is made for those who would be light-bearing,
mercy-showing, poor in spirit kinds of people that are willing to be transformed into ones who give their lives away for the sake of others."
We want to display
the gifts of the Spirit far more than we want to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). And Jesus calls this lawlessness. The exercise of the gifts without the exhibition of the fruit is of no value in the kingdom of heaven.
0 comments:
Post a Comment