A Warning

Toward the end of the sermon on the mount, Jesus issued two important maxims for everyday life. The most common one being, “do to others as you would have them do to you,” the second, “you will know them by their fruits.”

The sermon also contained a warning for that age:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven.’ 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 deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.

I feel like the disciples when hearing Jesus say “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” asked “then who can be saved?”

The people Jesus said would not enter the kingdom recognized him as Lord, they prophesied in his name, they cast out demons in his name, and they did many deeds of power in his name. Those are people who in that day would have been seen as very religious. And yet Jesus said they were evil doers. It is not up to us to judge the motives of those Jesus said would not enter the kingdom. We must instead look at what he said would allow a person entry into the kingdom – “one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” John reports Jesus saying, “my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life.” When asked what should be done as the works of God, Jesus replied, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

The apostle John in his gospel used the Greek word translated believe 98 times the most commonly quoted verse is likely John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Summing up his writing John said “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written 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.”

Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and scribes, “for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God. You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said: ‘This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’” Another time speaking to the same group Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practised without neglecting the others.” The weightier matters of the law are emphasised in scripture: “With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?' He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” 

A scribe asked Jesus, “Which commandment is the first of all?” He answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ there is no other commandment greater than these.” According to James speaking to Jewish believers the royal law of scripture is “you shall love neighbour as yourself.” Paul wrote: “the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’” 

God has not prescribed religion he has offered a relationship to those who believe.