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26 July 2026 · Eighth Sunday after Trinity · Matthew 7:15–23; Romans 8:12–17
“Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you.’”
This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.
Listen to how they talk, these people at the judgment. “Lord, Lord” — twice, urgent, correct. Nothing false in the title. He is the Lord. And then, right on the heels of the address, the paperwork: have we not prophesied in Your name? Cast out demons in Your name? Done many wonders in Your name? Three items, all impressive, and Jesus doesn’t dispute a single one of them. He doesn’t say the prophecies were fake or the demons stayed put. The resume is accurate. The resume is real. And the resume is worthless, because of one sentence: “I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23).
Now compare that to how the Epistle speaks. “You did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father’” (Romans 8:15).
Two different cries. “Lord, Lord” and “Abba, Father.” Put side by side, and now you can hear the difference. “Lord, Lord” in our Gospel is the vocabulary of an employee — someone standing outside the office door with his accomplishments in a folder, hoping the record is good enough to get him in. “Abba, Father” is the vocabulary of a child — someone who has never once wondered whether he’s allowed in the house, because it’s his father’s house, and he was carried through the door before he could walk.
The first people are applicants. They come to the Last Day the way you’d come to a job interview, and they lead with their strongest material. And their strongest material is religious. Not money, not reputation — prophecy, exorcism, mighty works, all of it done in Jesus’s name. You can spend an entire life doing impressive things in the name of a Lord that you never knew as Father. You can be busy for God and a stranger to Him, fluent in His name and still unknown in His house.
And we all know this posture, don’t we? When your conscience is frightened — at two in the morning, or in the hospital corridor, or when the guilt of an old sin comes back around — where does your heart reach first? It reaches for the file folder. I taught Sunday school. I raised my kids in the church. I served on the board; I gave; I was there every week. The heart under pressure starts assembling a resume, because the old Adam in every one of us is a born applicant. He cannot imagine a God who isn’t an employer, so he keeps updating the file, the CV, and Rolodex of references.
And then, this is exactly where the wolves find their opening. This is why Jesus puts the warning about false prophets and the “Lord, Lord” scene in the same breath. “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing” (Matthew 7:15). What does a false prophet actually do to you? Strip away every disguise — the collar, the branding, the Jesus-talk — and underneath, every false prophet in every age is running the same operation: he wants to turn sons back into applicants. He takes people whom God has adopted and puts them back outside the office door with a folder in their hands. Do these steps. Prove this sincerity. Climb this ladder, unlock this blessing, show this fruit, and then you’ll know you’re right with God. It sounds like seriousness. It sounds like sheep. But it is a wolf, and what it devours is your sonship — because a Christian who has been talked back into applying for what He already has as son has been talked out of the Gospel.
The prophet Jeremiah heard the same voice in his day: prophets who “speak a vision of their own heart, not from the mouth of the LORD” (Jeremiah 23:16). A vision of the heart’s own devising will always be some version of the church corporate ladder, because the ladder is the only religion the human heart can invent.
But listen to what God actually does, because it’s entirely the other direction. “You received the Spirit of adoption.” Received. Adoption. Every word in that sentence is gift-language. No child ever adopted himself. No orphan ever filed the paperwork on his own behalf, argued his own case, earned his way onto the family register. The father decides, the father signs, the father pays whatever it costs — and the cost here was “the sufferings of this present time” borne by God’s own Son (Romans 8:18, 17). Christ, the Son by nature, was treated as the stranger — I never knew you fell on Him, in the darkness of the cross, forsaken — so that the verdict spoken over you would be the opposite one forever: I have known you. You are Mine. You are My child.
And He sealed it in water. Baptism is the water of regeneration, where God seals you with the Spirit of adoption. Luther, in the Large Catechism, says the thing our reason refuses to believe: we must not judge the person by the works, but the works by the person. God does not read your file to decide who you are. He decides who you are — in the font, by His Word, for Christ’s sake — and then even your smallest works are precious to Him, not because they shine, but because they’re the works of His child. The crayon drawing goes on the refrigerator, not because it belongs in a museum, but because of who drew it.
That’s what the “Lord, Lord” criers never understood. They brought works to establish the relationship. God gives the relationship, and then delights in the works. Get the order backward and even miracles are “lawlessness” (Matthew 7:23). Get the order right and a cup of cold water is treasure in heaven.
So how do you cry, “Abba, Father”? Notice — Paul says the Spirit does it in you, “the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:16). This is not a feeling you work up. It’s a witness you receive. He bears it here: in the Absolution, where you hear your Father’s verdict out loud, spoken into your ears by a called servant because God knows you need to hear it from outside yourself. In the preaching of Christ crucified for you. And at this altar, where the difference between an applicant and an heir becomes something you can taste. An applicant waits outside. “Heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17) sit at the family table — and the Father sets out no interview, no evaluation, but a supper: the body and blood of the Son, given and shed for you, for the forgiveness of sins.
And if the words “I never knew you” frighten you — if some part of you hears this text and thinks, what if that’s me — then hear this well. The applicants aren’t afraid. They’re confident all the way to the end; they argue with the Judge on judgment day. The fear you feel is not the mark of a stranger. It’s the homesickness of a child — the Spirit’s own witness contending in you against the old applicant, refusing to let you rest on a folder full of works. Let the folder go. You have something no resume ever secured: a Father who knew you by name before you did a single thing, who washed you, who feeds you, and who will raise you.
Not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven. But everyone who is carried in — every child, every heir, everyone the Father knows — will. And He knows you.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie · St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School — Sherman Center, Random Lake, Wisconsin
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