Daily Word
A word of encouragement for your day.
WHOM DOES THE LORD NOT “KNOW”? (2)
"Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open for us,’ and He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know you, where you are from,’ then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.’ But He will say, ‘I tell you I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity."
Here is another group of people whom the Lord says that He “does not know” them, that He does not know where they are from.
What characterizes them?
They have not gone through the struggle-filled agony of getting through “the narrow gate”, but have
tried to enter the kingdom of God by an easier way.
Therefore, they have not succeeded.
They may have been part of a church fellowship, “eating and drinking” and listening to teaching and preaching, but never truly been born again, never been transformed into the image of Christ, never put on the new man.
They are like the man that Jesus tells about in the parable of the wedding of the king’s son in Matthew 22:11-13. He had slipped into the wedding hall without wearing the wedding clothes that the host offered. He perhaps thought that his own clothes would do.
This tells us something very important.
We must clothe ourselves with Christ, so that He can recognize Himself in us, see Himself in us, otherwise He does not “know” us.
The wedding clothes are a picture of the righteousness of Christ, the “fine linen, clean and bright” that we must allow ourselves to be clothed in.
We cannot stand before Him in our self-made righteousness, it is like a dirty and “filthy rags”, unworthy of the King of kings.
Everything we do is “iniquity” even the very best.
The only thing that is right in God’s eyes are “deeds done in God” (Jn.3:19-21).
To be justified means to be stripped of all of one’s own, to stand completely exposed and naked before the Holy One: to experience the agony of being a dirty and lost sinner in desperate need of being cleansed in the blood of Jesus and clothed in Him.
When Isaiah had gone through such an experience, he was worthy to become a witness for the Lord.
The Lord “knows” only those who have allowed themselves to be transformed into His image and likeness, no others.
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