Depart From Me; I Never Knew You - Ep. 927 - June 17, 2026

Matthew 7: "Depart From Me, I Never Knew You"

Few lines in Scripture hit harder than Jesus saying, "Depart from me... I never knew you." If that warning unsettles you, it should.

On The Smith and Rowland Show, a light joke about the King James Bible as the day's sponsor quickly turned into a serious walk through Matthew 7:15-23. Their point was plain: a person can look spiritual, sound spiritual, and still miss the one thing that matters most, a real relationship with Christ.

The warning makes more sense when you read the verses around it.

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The warning starts before verse 21

Matthew 7:21-23 is often quoted by itself, but Jesus did not speak those words in isolation. Right before that passage, He warned, "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." Then He gave the test: "By their fruits ye shall know them."

That context matters because it keeps the passage from turning into a vague spiritual fear. Jesus is talking about people who look right on the outside. They come dressed like sheep. They sound religious. They may even appear helpful. Yet the inward reality does not match the outward presentation.

Jesus keeps pressing the same image. A good tree brings forth good fruit. A corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit. A bad tree cannot produce genuinely good fruit, and a good tree cannot live on rotten fruit as its pattern. Then the famous warning arrives:

"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven."

The people in verse 22 point to visible ministry activity:

• They prophesied in His name.

• They cast out devils in His name.

• They did many wonderful works in His name.

That is what makes the passage so sobering. These are not people bragging about open rebellion. They are people talking about ministry. They are people appealing to spiritual activity. They are people who expect approval.

This is why the passage hits honest readers so hard. Anyone with a tender conscience has to stop and ask, "Could I be trusting the wrong thing?" That is not morbid introspection. It is a healthy response to a text that was meant to wake people up.

Why religious activity can fool people

The sharp edge of Matthew 7 is this: outward works are not proof of inward truth. A person may do things that look impressive to a crowd and still stand empty before God.

That was a major burden in the discussion. Prophecy, deliverance, and "many wonderful works" are not automatic proof that a person is walking with Christ. Those things may be used for God's glory, but they can also be copied, exaggerated, manipulated, or done from a corrupt heart. A public gift is not the same thing as private obedience.

In many church settings, people still measure spirituality by what they can count. How many people came to the altar? How dramatic was the service? How strong was the reaction in the room? Those questions are common, but Matthew 7 pushes in a different direction.

This contrast helps put the passage in plain view:

That is a needed correction. A crowded altar does not prove lasting conversion, and a dramatic testimony does not prove a changed heart. Fruit takes time. It shows up in character, motives, truthfulness, humility, and obedience.

The show also pushed on a hard reality inside religious culture. Some acts that look spiritual are really about control and attention. A person may "minister" to someone else, not because they love Christ, but because they want to direct that person, impress a room, or build their own name while using Jesus' name. That is bad fruit, even when the packaging looks clean.

They were trusting their works to validate them before the Lord.

That line gets to the center of the passage. When people stand before Christ in Matthew 7, they do not appeal to His mercy. They appeal to their record.

The difference between a claim and a new birth

Part of the conversation turned to a word many people use loosely: "Christian." That matters because Matthew 7 exposes the gap between a claim and a new birth.

In common American speech, someone may call himself a Christian because he was raised in church, baptized as a child, confirmed, sprinkled, patriotic, moral, or "always believed in God." That is cultural Christianity. It is real as a social category, but it is not the same thing as being born again.

That distinction helps explain why Jesus can say, "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord..." A profession by itself is not salvation. A verbal confession can be empty. Church language can be memorized. Religious habits can be inherited. A person can follow Christian customs without belonging to Christ.

The discussion even touched the point in a memorable way: Jesus was not a "Christian" in the later cultural sense of the word. He is the Christ. Christians are followers of Christ. That may sound obvious, but it clears away a lot of confusion. The real issue is not whether someone knows the vocabulary. The issue is whether that person has come to Christ in truth.

So, can someone identify as a follower of Jesus and still be lost? In the broad social sense, yes. People do it every day. In the biblical sense, no, because a true Christian is a person who has been born again.

Matthew 7 keeps both truths in view. On the one hand, the passage belongs to the warning about false prophets. On the other hand, it also forces self-examination in anyone who rests on what might be called spiritual paperwork. "I prayed a prayer." "I joined the church." "I had an experience." Those things may have meaning, but none of them can replace a living relationship with Christ.

Fruit is not the same as a perfect season

One of the strongest parts of the conversation came from a farmer's lens. Fruit matters, but fruit is not the same as living through an easy season.

In real life, orchards go through rough years. Fields take a beating. Storms come. Drought comes. Disease shows up. A hard season can affect what the crop looks like. That picture helps because Christians also go through seasons of loss, grief, pressure, illness, confusion, and failure. During those seasons, some people start condemning themselves and saying, "My fruit looks bad right now, so maybe I've never known the Lord."

That is too simple.

A hard season does not always mean hidden sin. Sometimes a person is under strain. Sometimes God is pruning. Sometimes life is painful for reasons the person cannot see. Job did not suffer because he had secretly turned against God. He suffered because there was a larger story at work that he could not read.

The military example from the episode made the same point from another angle. Hard training does not mean a soldier is being punished. It may mean he is being prepared. Crisis can expose weakness, but it can also build strength. What looks like breaking down may be part of learning endurance.

Paul's warning about becoming a castaway also belongs in this conversation. He took perseverance seriously. So should every believer. Yet there is still a difference between honest weakness in a hard season and long-term rotten fruit flowing from a false heart.

That is why the passage should drive a person toward self-examination, not panic and not shallow judgment of others.

"Could somebody eat of my life today and be healed, or would they be sick?"

That question is sharp because it asks about the actual effect of your life on other people. Do your words strengthen faith or spread poison? Do your habits point people toward Christ or away from Him? At the same time, final judgment still belongs to Christ. People can misread a season. They can also mistake polished religion for real fruit.

Faith is a gift, and presumption is not faith

The episode also drew a strong line between faith and presumption. That distinction matters because many religious mistakes happen when people confuse the two.

Presumption acts like we have power that hasn't been given. Faith yields to the measure God has given.

That gets to the issue cleanly. Faith is not something a person manufactures by force of personality. It is not spiritual bravado. It is not pretending to operate at a level God has not granted. Faith comes from God, and the believer responds to what God gives.

That is why the discussion about a "measure of faith" was so practical. People often think bigger faith always means bigger public acts. Yet faith may show up in much humbler ways. It may look like taking a meal to someone in need. It may look like helping a widow mow her yard. It may look like speaking a simple word of truth to someone who is hurting. Those acts are not small when they are done in obedience.

By contrast, presumption tries to grab what has not been entrusted. It wants the platform, the title, the dramatic moment. It wants to say, "I can do this," before God has said, "I have given this." That is why swaggering spiritual language can be dangerous. Scripture itself shows restraint, even in conflict with the devil. A believer should be careful about boasting in authority he does not understand.

The discussion also raised a broader point about where people place their faith. Human beings trust in something. Some place that trust in education, some in self, some in false religion, some in personality, some in public ministry. Saving faith rests in Jesus Christ. When that happens, there is a real spiritual transaction. Then gifts and works may follow, but they follow as fruit, not as the foundation.

That is the heart of Matthew 7. The rejected people did not move past themselves. They used Jesus' name, but they never came into true relationship with the Lord whose name they were using.

Knowing Christ matters more than looking spiritual

Matthew 7 does not call you to build a more impressive religious resume. It calls you to face a harder question: Do you know Christ, and does your life show the fruit of that relationship?

That is why this warning is so serious and so helpful. It cuts through noise, performance, and self-deception. It reminds you that public ministry can be false, a hard season is not always proof of failure, and true faith is received from God, not staged for effect.

Read Matthew 7:15-23 slowly and honestly. If you want to keep listening, you can find more Scripture-centered teaching at Kingdom Prophetic Society and on the Smith and Rowland YouTube channel.