25 Jun 26 | Lord, Lord
Both builders heard the same words. Only one of them actually did anything about it.
The Gospel: Matthew 7:21-29
²¹ "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. ²² Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?' ²³ Then I will declare to them solemnly, 'I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.'
²⁴ "Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. ²⁵ The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. ²⁶ And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. ²⁷ The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined."
²⁸ When Jesus finished these words, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, ²⁹ for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.
Today’s Focus
Jesus warns that confident religious performance, even spiritual gifts as dramatic as prophecy and exorcism, is not equivalent to doing the Father’s will, and closes the Sermon on the Mount with the parable of the two builders, where identical exposure to His words produces radically different outcomes depending on whether the hearer actually acts on what was heard.
In the Margins
Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. This closes the Sermon on the Mount with the sharpest warning in the entire discourse, and it is aimed specifically at people who are confident in their religious standing. The double address, Lord, Lord, is not incidental repetition. In Hebrew and Aramaic speech patterns, doubling a word intensified its meaning, expressing urgency or earnestness. These are not casual or careless people. They are people who address Jesus with emphatic devotion. And Jesus says emphatic devotion is not the same as doing the Father’s will.
What follows is even more unsettling because of who is speaking. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name? These are not people claiming a vague religious sentiment. They are claiming the most dramatic spiritual gifts available, the kind of power that any first century audience would recognize as undeniable evidence of divine favor. Prophecy, exorcism, miracles. If these things do not guarantee entrance into the kingdom, then nothing about external religious performance, however impressive, can substitute for what Jesus actually requires. Even Judas, according to the Gospel accounts, was sent out with the other apostles and very likely participated in healings and exorcisms performed in Jesus’ name, which makes the warning more personal and less abstract than it first appears.
The verdict Jesus gives is devastating in its precision. I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers. Not I once knew you and you fell away. Never knew you. The relationship these people believed they had was never the relationship Jesus is describing throughout the entire Sermon on the Mount, the relationship of a child who does the Father’s will from the heart, not the relationship of a performer whose works were always oriented toward demonstration rather than obedience. This is the heart of what the Sermon has been building toward since the Beatitudes. The kingdom belongs to the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, people whose interior orientation has been genuinely reshaped, not to those who can produce impressive results while their hearts remain unconverted.
This raises the question the entire passage is built around. What does it actually mean to know Jesus in a way that leads to heaven, and what is the will of the Father that Jesus says must be done? This not as a contradiction of grace but its necessary fruit. Knowing Jesus is not primarily an intellectual acknowledgment that He exists or even a sincere emotional devotion expressed in prayer and worship. Surely those doing these works would have “known” Him. Saint Paul writes in Galatians 5:6 that what matters is faith working through love, and James 2:17 states plainly that faith without works is dead. Justification, the grace by which we are made righteous before God, is not merely a legal declaration but an actual transformation, a real participation in the divine life that necessarily produces a changed life of obedience and charity. To know Jesus, in the biblical sense, is to be in a living relationship of love that bears fruit in action, the same union Jesus describes in the vine and branches of John 15. No deed is ever good enough to stand on its own and open the gates of Heaven. A branch that claims connection to the vine but produces nothing is not actually abiding in it. The doing of the Father’s will is not a separate requirement added on top of knowing Jesus. It is the visible evidence that the knowing was real.
The parable that closes the Sermon makes the application concrete and physical. Everyone who hears these words and acts on them is like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain falls, the floods come, the winds blow, and the house stands because it was set on rock. Everyone who hears these words but does not act on them is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The same storm comes, and the house collapses completely.
Both builders hear the same words. The difference between them is not what they heard but what they did with it. This is the test the entire Sermon on the Mount has been building toward, from the Beatitudes through the antitheses through the teaching on prayer and treasure and worry and judgment. Hearing without doing produces a structure that looks identical to the real thing until the storm arrives, at which point the difference becomes unmistakable. The storm is not optional. It comes to both houses. What the storm reveals is what was always true about the foundation, whether or not anyone could see it before the rain started falling.
Matthew closes the Sermon by noting the crowd’s reaction. They were astonished, because Jesus taught with an authority their own scribes did not have. The scribes taught by citing precedent. Jesus taught as the one whose words are themselves the foundation, the rock on which a wise builder constructs an entire life.
Reflection Question
Where in your life has hearing Jesus' words substituted for actually doing them, and what storm would reveal the difference if it came today?