THE KNOWN IDENTITY by Andre Chin
Luke 13:22-30
The Narrow Way
22 And He went through the cities and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem. 23 Then one said to Him, “Lord, are there few who are saved?”
And He said to them, 24 “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able. 25 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,’ 26 then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.’ 27 But He will say, ‘I tell you I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.’ 28 There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and yourselves thrust out. 29 They will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and sit down in the kingdom of God. 30 And indeed there are last who will be first, and there are first who will be last.” (Emphasis added)
SERMON
THE KNOWN IDENTITY by Andre Chin
After high school I obtained a business degree and went on to become a Chartered Accountant. This is a licence that is conferred upon those who have passed all the academic and work requirements and who have passed a grueling sixteen hour exam over four days. I worked in the accounting and audit field for a number of years and then I made a switch to work at the Toronto Stock Exchange as an independent derivatives floor trader. There were about four of us there who had Chartered Accountant designations who had made the switch to become traders.
After a number of years I, along with the other Chartered Accountants, decided to give up our designations because we thought, “Who needed that when accounting couldn’t pay the kind of money we were earning as traders.” We were earning multiple times what we earned as accountants. So, we all gave up our “CAs” despite all the years it took us to acquire it.
Some years later, the market environment changed from being floor-based to on-line based. What we thought would have been a favorable change turned out to be real nasty. The computerization of the markets led to unimaginable manipulations where it was like you are playing poker against people who can see your hidden cards. Somehow, illegal front-running in substance was made legal in form. You can read about this quantum shift in the markets in the book Flash Boys. The trading environment changed so much we all packed it in.
I came to live in Cambridge nine years ago and then went looking for a job as an accountant. I would apply for jobs but got refused because I no longer had my CA designation. This was now a huge regret. I had given up something that took me years and much sacrifice to acquire. And when I applied for lower paying jobs that did not require a designation I was told that I was either overqualified or lacking recent experience. After a year of being unable to find a job in accounting I took a job in a restaurant as a line cook. I remember calling my mother soon after I got that job, telling her that I was mopping the floor in a restaurant, then the phone went silent on the other end. I called back and my Dad said she had to go to the bathroom. She was so shocked she left me hanging on the phone without saying anything.
My point here is, I was not allowed as an accountant into companies because I was not recognized as a valid accountant.The door was shut to me.
Reading the passage again from verse 25:
"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,’ 26 then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.’ 27 But He will say, ‘I tell you I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.’ "
This has to do with the eschatological, end of days judgment. When I read this it makes me think of a church scenario where people are attending church, having communion, and listening to the word being preached. And it is shocking to think that this passage could pertain to church people who one day will have the door shut to them and being told, “I do not know you.” What is the meaning of this, “KNOW?”
Well, you are not allowed to drive a car on the road without a licence. There are certain authoritative bodies governing drivers licences, electricians, engineers, accountants – and there is one authoritative body over eternal life. God sets the rules for eternal life and if we want to enter we must adhere to (not violate) those rules and that rule is: He must KNOW us.
What is this KNOW? Is it the type of lights we have on stage? The type of instruments we worship with? The length of our prayers? The amount of our offering? The ministry we are part of at church?
The word “know” used here is not to be understood as “knowing of” but rather a more intimate, internal knowing. The Greek word used here for ‘know’ is oida. According to Vine’s Expository Dictionary, “Oida suggests fullness of ‘knowledge.’”
This scenario of people being shut out from eternal life can be seen in other parts of the canon:
The parable of the Ten Virgins conveys a similar message of exclusion where five of the ten virgins were shut out. That parable reads,
“Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us.’ But he answered, Truly I say to you, I do not know you” (Matt 25:11-12).
The Greek word used here is also oida.
There is also another similar passage in the Book of Matthew:
21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22 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?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ (Matt 7:23)
The Greek meaning of the word “knew” here is ginosko which, according to Vine’s, “In the NT ginosko frequently indicates a relation between the person "knowing" and the object known; in this respect, what is "known" is of value or importance to the one who knows, and hence the establishment of the relationship… ‘if any man love God, the same is known of Him,” (Gal 4:9).” In other words, if any man loves God, God knows him. This represents a mutual knowing. This is slightly different from oida but the pertinent point is that it means a more intimate knowing than that of “knowing about.”
Love is the characteristic we must be known by. The Apostle John writes, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). The Greek word here for “know” is also ginosko, meaning an intimate connection. It is by love that one is known. We can also see that connection in the following passages:
- “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
- “Therefore by their fruits you will know them” (Matt 7:20). The first and greatest of the fruits is love.
- In the parable of the Wedding Feast where there is an eschatological or end times banquet, there is one discovered who is not wearing the appropriate wedding garment and is then cast out (Matt 22:1-4). According to Spurgeon, the wedding garment is the distinguishing character trait of the Christian.[1] There is no more important distinguishing character trait than love. According to Paul, “Put on love which is the bond of perfection” (Col 3:14).
We are to be known by love because it is the paramount command and purpose for our lives:
- Love, first for God and then for others, is the most important commandment (Matt 22:34-40).
- “Love is the fulfillment of the law” (Rom 13:10).
- “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death” (1 John 3:14).
- Of faith, hope and love, the greatest of these is love (1 Cor 13:13).
- Our faith works through love (Gal 5:6).
- We are only able to love him because he first loved us (1 John 4:16).
- The true test of knowing him: “Now by this we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:3-11).
- “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).
We have seen that we are to be known by love and that love is the paramount command. But have you ever wondered, why is love so important? I think if we understand the why behind it we will not just go through the motions, mechanically, like those in the passage who are eating and drinking with the master and listening to his teaching; or, like those who are lukewarm (Rev 3:16) who are vomited out by the Lord.
From the beginning, God had in mind that he wanted us to be a family, “For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29). Love from God, for God, and for others is the foundation of that family, which is why love is the pre-eminent command and why all the scriptures point to the love at the cross.
We better understand “why” love is so important in God’s overall plan by looking in the context of the New Covenant prophecy in Jeremiah. It gives perspective as to why the Old Covenant failed, and how the New Covenant would make the critical difference to finally bring about accomplishing God’s objectives of establishing the law in hearts and minds, and bringing the people to finally know him in their hearts.
The Old Covenant was broken because the people were disobedient and did what they thought was good in their own eyes. The people would never cease in their idol worship and unfaithfulness and so would be given up to exile in Babylon. Under the Old Covenant God had delivered the people’s forefathers from Egypt, he sustained them in the desert, the people were grateful but not that grateful where they would stay away from idol worship and general disobedience. They knew about God’s love and that they should love God, but it was not “internal” to them; it was an “intellectual” knowing rather than a knowing in the heart. The Cross would internalize it.
The New Covenant would accomplish what the Old Covenant could not, that is, to “Put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people…for they shall all know me , from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord.” (Jer 31:33 emphasis added). These New Covenant laws are not a legal code, but the law of Christ, which is in its essence, love. According to Barrett, “The Spirit writes God’s moral law upon the heart… Granted, in the new covenant it is not the Mosaic Law in view; however, the righteousness of God found in the Law has not ceased, but has been enshrined and incorporated into the Law of Christ, which the Spirit-filled believer is now capable of following.”[2]
Many scholars believe that the law of Christ consists of the principles that are embodied in the example and teachings of Jesus. Many of these opinions also include principles derived from the Apostles and the New Testament writings. According to Moo, “‘This law does not consist of legal prescriptions and ordinances, but of the teaching and example of Jesus and the apostles, the central demand of love.”[3] The New Covenant is to be a mutual knowing: “if any man love God, the same is known of Him,” (Gal 4:9).” This knowing is integral to eternal life and is also integral to faith.
God has wanted his people to truly love him and the only way for that to happen was for the Son of God to give the greatest love possible. The command to love could only be effective because he first loved us. Entrance to eternal life would be on God’s terms, which is knowing our love. Some people say they don’t like when Christians say, “You can only get to heaven by believing in Jesus, that Jesus is the only way.” Well you can’t make your own driver’s licence or your own accounting licence, only those in authority can do so–and God is the only authority over eternal life, he is the creator, he makes the rules, he gave us all the free will to choose whether to play by those rules.
Exactly how Jesus, the New Covenant, the law in people’s hearts and minds, knowing God, and love, all connect is described extremely well by Spurgeon:
"If anybody should inquire how the Lord keeps the writing upon the heart legible, I should like to spend a minute or two in showing the process… But a sense of love is a yet more powerful factor. Let a man know that God loves him, let him feel sure that God always did love him from before the foundations of the world, and he must try to please God. Let him be assured that the Father loved him so much as to give His only-begotten Son to die that he might live through Him, and he must love God and hate evil. A sense of pardon, of adoption, and of God’s sweet favor both in providence and in grace, must sanctify a man. He cannot willfully offend against such love. On the contrary, he feels himself bound to obey God in return for such unsearchable grace, and thus by a sense of love does God write His law upon the hearts of His people.
Another very powerful pen with which the Lord writes is to be found in the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ. When we see Jesus spit upon, and scourged, and crucified, we feel that we must hate sin with all the intensity of our nature. Can you count the purple drops of His redeeming blood and then go back to live in the iniquity which cost the Lord so dear? Impossible! The death of Christ writes the law of God very deeply upon the central heart of man. The cross is the crucifier of sin."[4]
The critical difference in the New Covenant is the great love poured out at the cross that, combined with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, establishes the love in our hearts that we can then return to God and others, and would be the foundation of the predestined eternal family of Romans 8:10. And therefore, those who are “known” by Jesus are those who evidence the fruit of this love being returned to God and others.
APPLICATION:
So we are to be known by his love. What does this love look like? God wants us to be known by love, but not the world’s way of love but Jesus’ way. And his way is counter-cultural.
It is far easier to talk about love than to love well, the Bible says, “Let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:17).
Most of us have read, or at least heard the great love passage of 1 Corinthians 13 because it has been read at some wedding we have attended. And the words are beautiful and poetic and flowing. But when we really consider those attributes we realize how challenging they are. And when we consider another love passage at Luke 6:27-36, which we never hear read at weddings, we automatically excuse ourselves from those because it was for a different time and culture.
We, the church, tend to gloss over these prescriptions and see them as guidelines rather than commands. We do this because we feel we are in a time of grace, not under law, where we rest in our salvation which is based only upon our faith and belief. However, true faith works by love (Gal 5:6), and love is the fruit and evidence of our faith and belief. It is incredible that after only 60 years after Jesus’s resurrection, Jesus wanted John to write to the Loveless Church at Revelations Chapter 2. How about 2000 years later? Are there any loveless churches today? Loveless churches are made up of people.
Let us consider this:
When someone makes a mistake and doesn’t do something to your liking or to your standards are you quick to get irritated, scold, get upset, or get angry? When someone is too slow or doesn’t say something as smart or witty as you would are you quick to criticize? 1 Corinthians 13 says be patient, and Luke 6:36 says, “Therefore be merciful, just as your father also is merciful.” And here is the kicker: what are you like when that person does the same thing again? Jesus said to forgive seven times seventy times. It is not that easy is it? But we are to be known by his way of love.
When we see others, or hear of others in need or are hurting, and we are capable of helping…but, we say that we will pray for them instead. Praying is necessary and good. But Jesus didn’t say he was going to separate the sheep from the goats at the time of judgment because of who prayed for the hungry and the thirsty (Matt 25:31-46), he said, because of who gave food and drink. I Corinthians 13 says be kind, and the parable of the Good Samaritan suggests being kind and merciful to your neighbor. Love places a demand upon us; love placed a demand upon Jesus–we are to be known by his way of love.
And when we love our parents, our children, our spouses, and we say that we are obeying Jesus’ command to love, that is great. Jesus says, “But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them” (Luke 6:32). Loving your family is necessary but the point is do not limit your love. Jesus gave the greatest love possible when we were undeserving sinners. In this way also, we are to be known by his way of love.
And when people are rude to us, make fun of us, ridicule us, insult us, are unkind to us, or are unthankful to us, the culturally, most natural thing to do is either retaliate or avoid. Jesus says, “Do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27). When God’s people were worshiping idols he gave the greatest possible love. When we love in this way we grow in the image of his Son and we will be known by his way of love.
Loving like Jesus is simple to understand but difficult to do. This is why it is a narrow Gate. Jesus himself said that the way of the narrow gate is difficult (Matt 7:14). This is the cross we must bear.
People cannot love like Jesus, or bear fruit, without spending time with Jesus or communing with the Holy Spirit, “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned” (John 15:5-6). Abiding in the vine, through prayer, communing with the Holy Spirit, and studying his word, is how we overcome the difficulty of loving like Jesus.
CONCLUSION
The Son of God, the creator of the universe, left behind his glory and his power, to come and live among us; he was fully human and fully God, he was tortured and suffered at the hands of his creation, he wanted us to know that he really loves us; knowing that there is no greater love than to lay your life down for a friend, he had to go through with it, even when he was pushed beyond his human limits, to where he cried out, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me.” He gave us the ultimate gift of love, and he is asking us in return, “Do you see how much I love you…and will you love me and love others as I have loved you? Will you be my family and follow in my image? Will you be known by my love and enter through this narrow door?
END
[1] C. H. Spurgeon, “The Wedding Garment,” Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Volume 17. (1871).
[2] Matthew Barrett, “What Is So New About The New Covenant? Exploring The Contours of Paul’s New Covenant Theology in 2 Corinthians 3,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 19.3 (2015) SBJT 19.3 (2015): 77, https://sbts-wordpress-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/equip/uploads/2015/11/Barrett-from-ST-516-2015-SBJT-19.3-final-5.pdf.
[3] Douglas J. Moo, "The Law of Moses or the Law of Christ," in Continuity and Discontinuity: Perspectives on the Relationship between the Old and the New Testaments: Essays in Honor ofS. Lewis Johnson, Jr., ed. John S. Feinberg (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1988), 215-216. And "The Law of Christ as the Fulfillment of the Law of Moses," 343.
[4] C. H. Spurgeon, “The Law Written on The Heart,” Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit no. 1687 Volume 28. (1882): 6.