I NEVER KNEW YOU

I NEVER KNEW YOU

I have had a thought floating in and out for the past few weeks. Then it took root and landed, and I couldn't remove it.

We can serve God, know about God, and do great things in His name, yet still remain on the peripheral of going deeper into Him.

There comes a time when everything surrounding God is no longer enough.

The teachings.

The service.

The things we do in His name.

Even the things we have believed about Him.

Something within begins to draw us beyond the peripheral, beyond everything surrounding Him, into knowing Him.

Jesus prayed:

“And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.”

— John 17:5

Before there was religion.

Before there were churches, ministries, doctrines or works.

Before there was even a world.

There was the Father and the Son.

There was relationship.

And Jesus came not simply to teach us how to live for God, but to bring us into the knowing of the Father that He Himself revealed.

“This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

— John 17:3

Perhaps this is why some of the most confronting words Jesus ever spoke were not spoken to people who had done nothing in His name.

They were spoken to people who had done much.

They prophesied.

They cast out demons.

They performed wonders.

And they did it in His name.

Yet Jesus said:

“I never knew you.”

They had the activity.

They had His name.

But somehow, amid everything they were doing for Him, they had missed knowing Him.

Perhaps this is the dividing line.

We can spend our lives doing things for God, while still relating to Him from the outside.

Praying to Him.

Working for Him.

Speaking about Him.

Even exercising gifts in His name.

Yet Jesus revealed something far deeper than a life lived around God.

“I in them, and You in Me.”— John 17:23

This is no longer peripheral.

This is within.

Jesus did not simply reveal a Father for us to serve from a distance.

He opened the way for us to know the Father through the same relationship He Himself revealed.

“As You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us.”— John 17:21

Perhaps knowing Him is not about continually trying to reach God from the outside.

Perhaps it is awakening to the life we have been brought into through Christ.

His life becoming our source.

His love becoming our source.

The Father no longer simply Someone we are doing things for, but Someone we are learning to live from.

And suddenly the words,

“I never knew you,”

carry a much deeper meaning.

They had done extraordinary things around Him.

But He was calling them into something greater than activity.

Relationship.

Not simply doing things in His name.

But knowing Him from within the life of Christ.

I cannot imagine coming before my Lord and hearing Him say,

“Depart from Me, I never knew you.”

There is something almost unbearable in those words.

Not because He said,

You didn't do enough.

But because He said,

I never knew you.

After everything we may have done in His name, what could matter more than this:

That I know Him, and He knows me.

That’s where Jesus is.