Tackling Tradition 58: Depart From Me…I never knew you.

Ecclesiastical Tradition teaches us that this statement is eschatologically & soteriologically particularistic in the eternal sense of the term, insofar as the event happens on the Last Day when the final gavel falls.   However, that’s not necessarily true, insofar as apocalyptic language like this prophesies over multiple events across all of Redemptive History.  

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

The doesn’t state that they were cast away forever.  That’s because it’s describing multiple eschatological events. 

Every covenant is punctuated with an event like this:

• Creation 

• The Fall

• The Flood

• The Fall of Sodom & Gomorrah 

• 10 gods & 10 plagues

• The Conquest of Canaan 

• The Assyrian Exile

• The Babylonian Exile

• The Story of Esther 

• The Return Home 

• The rebuilding of the Temple & Jerusalem 

• The Incarnation 

• The Nativity

• The life of Christ

• The Crucifixion 

• The Descent Into Hell

• The Resurrection & Ascension • The Circumnavigation of the Law & Gospel 

• The General Resurrection & Christ’s Return

• The New Creation 

Remember, this isn’t just about non-angelic people, the Judgment encompasses Satan & his horde too.  In addition, when you stop to think about it, there’s a broad sense in which every day is Judgment Day, & when you understand that, that is why the text of Matthew is careful not to state that those judged harshly are sent away forever, after all, if that was the intent of the text, then, in light of the outcomes of the events, look how many people were sent away, survived, & returned to tell the tale.   

The Judgment Day language in the Sermon On the Mount highlights the Exile of those alive in the days of Jeremiah & Daniel, & the story of the rebuilding of the Temple & the reconstruction of the Holy City who remembered the 1st Temple & lamented that the 2nd was going to have to be smaller, which indicates that “FOREVER” isn’t what Matthew 7 is trying to convey; rather it is conveying (via the subtext) something like, “semi-permanent or permanent if you people continue to love yourselves & the evils the Sermon On the Mount addresses.”