- Dec 13, 2015
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In Matthew 7:21-23 Jesus paints a very scary very real picture for Christians. “Only those who do the will of my Father will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Well what is the will of the Father? Luckily, Jesus didn’t leave us guessing what the will of the Father is. He explains what the will of the Father is in John 6:39-40. In John 6:39-40 Jesus says:
“And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
So we learn straight from the mouth of Jesus that the unsaved in Matthew 7:21-23 are “believers” who were not given to the Father and were not regenerated and therefore were not saved. They are “believers” who did not have true saving faith, trusted in their own works to save them, were lazy hypocrites who did not have the Holy Spirit living inside of them.
They were “believers” who were unrepentant, lived in sin, either only cared about themselves or believed in themselves to save them. Godless people. Such people will NEVER enter the kingdom of heaven and will be denied by Jesus on the last day.
And that is what Jesus meant in Matthew 7:21-23 and passages like it. It was not a passage that says you can lose your salvation or that salvation can be lost. No. When Christ died, He died for the elect once for all.
It means that if you do not have the Holy Spirit living inside of you, then you have no hope at salvation. None. Because it takes the Holy Spirit’s transformative power to save. But the hope that Christians have is that God died for them and they are eternally secure from before the foundation of the world.
Well what is the will of the Father? Luckily, Jesus didn’t leave us guessing what the will of the Father is. He explains what the will of the Father is in John 6:39-40. In John 6:39-40 Jesus says:
“And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
So we learn straight from the mouth of Jesus that the unsaved in Matthew 7:21-23 are “believers” who were not given to the Father and were not regenerated and therefore were not saved. They are “believers” who did not have true saving faith, trusted in their own works to save them, were lazy hypocrites who did not have the Holy Spirit living inside of them.
They were “believers” who were unrepentant, lived in sin, either only cared about themselves or believed in themselves to save them. Godless people. Such people will NEVER enter the kingdom of heaven and will be denied by Jesus on the last day.
And that is what Jesus meant in Matthew 7:21-23 and passages like it. It was not a passage that says you can lose your salvation or that salvation can be lost. No. When Christ died, He died for the elect once for all.
It means that if you do not have the Holy Spirit living inside of you, then you have no hope at salvation. None. Because it takes the Holy Spirit’s transformative power to save. But the hope that Christians have is that God died for them and they are eternally secure from before the foundation of the world.
