Click to Download They Called Him Lord - And He Sent Them Away

For some time now, I have been turning four passages of Scripture over in my mind the way you turn a stone in your hand … examining each face, each edge, watching how the light falls differently depending on the angle.

The passages are Revelation 2:1–7. Matthew 7:21–23. Matthew 25:14–30. Matthew 25:31–46.

Separately, each one is sobering. Together, they form something I cannot stop thinking about … a unified portrait of a kind of Christianity that looks real, functions like real, and may not be real at all. And if I am reading these passages correctly, the people living inside that Christianity may have no idea.

That is the part that won’t leave me alone.

Sleeping in the Light

Here is a question worth sitting with honestly: Is it possible to attend worship every time the doors are open, go through every motion of every act of worship, serve faithfully, give consistently, and still be a stranger to God?

The answer Scripture gives is yes.

And the more troubling question is this: Would you know?

Most Christians have been taught, from their earliest years in the faith, how to behave in a church. How to worship in a way that pleases the leaders, satisfies the expectations of the congregation, and fits the pattern of what a good church member looks like. That is not nothing. Pattern matters. Reverence matters. But there is a catastrophic gap between learning to please the people around you at church and learning to pursue the God you gathered to worship.

If no one ever taught you that distinction (and many, many Christians have never been taught it) you can spend a lifetime doing everything right on the outside while something essential is quietly absent on the inside. You are not backslidden. You are not rebellious. You are not obviously lost. You are simply going through the motions of a faith you were handed without ever making the turn that transforms it from religion into relationship.

You are, in the most dangerous possible way, sleeping in the light.

And here is what stays on my conscience as I pray about how I can best serve God in this generation: when Jesus described the people He will turn away on judgment day, He did not describe obvious pagans or open rebels. He described people who sound exactly like this.

The Church Jesus Could Not Compliment on Its Love

Decades after the resurrection, Jesus spoke to a church in Ephesus through the apostle John. He gave them a remarkable commendation. They worked hard. They persevered. They did not tolerate evil men. They had tested false apostles and found them wanting. They had endured without growing weary (Revelation 2:2–3).

By every visible measure, this was a functioning, doctrinally sound, morally upright congregation.

Then Jesus said: “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.” (Revelation 2:4)

That sentence doesn’t sound catastrophic until you let it settle. They hadn’t abandoned their doctrine. They hadn’t abandoned their service. They had abandoned their love. The thing underneath all the activity — the reason it was ever supposed to matter — had quietly died. And Jesus called it a fall. He said: “Remember therefore from where you have fallen.” (Revelation 2:5)

A fall doesn’t always look like a fall. Sometimes it looks like church attendance. Sometimes it looks like a ministry. Sometimes it looks like a congregation that has never missed a Sunday in thirty years.

What does a modern Ephesian Christian look like? He shows up. He gives. He serves. He can defend his doctrine. But somewhere along the way, his desire for God — the burning hunger to know Him, to dwell with Him, to pursue closeness with Him — faded and was quietly replaced by religious habit. He goes to church the way a man goes to work: it’s what you do, it’s what’s expected, it means something in a general sense, but the love that was supposed to be the whole point is gone.

He may not even notice. The habits are still there.

And no one around him is raising an alarm, because from where they sit, everything looks fine.

“I Never Knew You”

There is a sentence in the New Testament that should stop every professing Christian in their tracks.

“I never knew you.” (Matthew 7:23)

Not I once knew you and you fell away. Not I knew you, but you grieved me. He says never. These are people who prophesied in His name, cast out demons, and performed works they called mighty. They had a ministry. They had results. They had the vocabulary of the faith. And on the day that mattered most, Jesus looked at them and said: I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.

Who are these people?

I believe they are, at least in part, people exactly like the one described above. People who were taught to perform the faith rather than pursue the God behind it. People who oriented their entire religious life around activity — around doing things for Him, or around what He could do for them — while the love that was supposed to be the foundation was never truly there.

Could it be that there will be people standing at that judgment who attended faithfully for decades, who served in their congregation, who gave and taught and led … and who are genuinely stunned to hear those words? I think the text demands that we take that possibility with absolute seriousness. Jesus is not describing a fringe group. He says many will say to Him Lord, Lord on that day (Matthew 7:22). Not a few. Many.

That word should land with weight.

The Parable of the Talents and What We Miss

In Matthew 25:14–30, a master entrusts his servants with talents according to their ability. Two invest and multiply. One buries his. When the master returns, two are commended and one is condemned — not for gross immorality, not for open apostasy — but for doing nothing.

We often treat this parable as a call to productivity. Use your gifts. Don’t waste what God gave you. That reading is not wrong. But it misses the root of why the third servant did nothing.

He said: “I was afraid.” (Matthew 25:25)

He was afraid because his understanding of the master was distorted. He called him a hard man — demanding, exploitative, someone to be managed and appeased rather than loved. He had no genuine relationship with the master. He had only a transaction he was trying not to lose.

A servant who genuinely loved the master would have thought differently. He would have thought: What can I do with what he gave me that would bring him joy when he returns?

That is the difference. Not quantity of works. Not level of religious effort. It is whether love for the Master is the engine driving everything else. The first two servants did not invest out of duty. They invested because they wanted something to lay at his feet.

When love is absent, the result is a buried talent and a hollow excuse. When love is present, the result is a life poured out.

The Sheep and the Goats — And What They Both Missed

Matthew 25:31–46 is perhaps the most misread passage in all of Scripture on the relationship between works and the condition of the heart.

The King separates sheep from goats. The sheep had fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick and imprisoned. The goats had done none of these things. Both groups ask the same question: When did we see you?

Neither group remembers a conscious transaction with Jesus.

The sheep did not serve the hungry because they were calculating their eternal standing. They served because it was the natural overflow of a heart shaped by love for God. They were not building a religious résumé. The love in them moved outward and found people in need, and they responded without keeping score.

The goats failed for the same reason the man buried his talent. Not hatred of God. Not open rebellion. But the absence of the kind of love that moves you … that shapes you from the inside out … that makes you incapable of walking past suffering without responding.

Jesus is not separating two categories of effort. He is separating two categories of heart.

And a heart shaped by genuine love for God cannot be faked, performed, or substituted by a lifetime of religious routine.

What Grace Means Here — And Why It Is Not a Shelter for Indifference

This is the moment where some readers will quietly exhale and say: But we are saved by grace, not works. Surely this doesn’t apply to me.

Grace is real. It is the most stunning truth in all of Scripture. It is the only ground on which any of us stands before God.

But grace is not a covering for a heart that has never truly turned toward God. Paul, the great apostle of grace, wrote: “Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4)

Grace was not given so that we could continue to live as comfortable Christians who happen to attend worship services. Grace is what God extends toward people who are genuinely turning (stumbling, failing, repenting, turning again) but turning. Always turning toward Him.

The terrifying implication of these four passages taken together is this: it is possible to move through an entire Christian life — attending, serving, giving, even ministering — without ever truly desiring God Himself. Without ever being driven by love for Him rather than love for what religion provides — community, comfort, identity, assurance, the approval of people around you.

We do not fully understand grace. Its depths are beyond us. But we had better take Jesus seriously. Because if these passages mean what they appear to mean, then a Christian life built on anything other than genuine love for God is building on sand and the day is coming when that will be made plain.

That person is not sheltered by grace. Grace flows toward the one who wants it because they want Him.

The Question You Cannot Avoid

Jesus said in Revelation 2:5 — “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.”

He did not say perform better. He said repent … turn, return, come back to something you left. Which means the love that God requires is something that can be lost. Which also means it can be found again. Which means it can be pursued.

So the question is not whether you are attending. It is not whether you are serving or giving or going through every motion of a faithful Christian life.

The question is: Do you desire Him?

Not what He provides. Not the assurance of heaven. Not the comfort of belonging to a congregation. Him. The living God. The One Moses begged to show him His glory. The One David said was the one thing he sought above all else. The One Job declared he would see for himself, and not another.

If that desire is present (even faintly, even buried under years of routine) then you have something to work with. Fan it. Feed it. Pursue God with everything you have.

If that desire is missing (if you read this and feel nothing, or feel the distance of a stranger) then you have found the most important thing you could possibly find right now: the truth about where you are.

And that is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of returning.

The God who said remember and repent is the same God who said I stand at the door and knock. (Revelation 3:20)

He is not waiting for your performance to improve. He is not waiting for you to get your religious record in order.

He is waiting for you.

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Click to Download They Called Him Lord - And He Sent Them Away