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22 [Jesus] went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. 23 And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, 24 “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. 25 When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come 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 where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ 28 In that place 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 but you yourselves cast out. 29 And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God. 30 And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”
In Genesis 4:1 we are told that Adam knew his wife Eve. While many teachers of the Bible explain with a wink that this is a sexual reference, the context of this verse and the word that is used in it go beyond knowing as something physical to knowing as experiencing another person emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually in an open and intimate relationship. This is not usually what we mean when we say that we know a person. Instead, we're more likely to mean that we know something about that person rather than that we actually are close enough to him to know his habits, thoughts, likes, dislikes, fears, joys, secrets, etc. — the knowledge of another person that comes with knowing him intimately.
The Hebrew word meaning "to know" is
yadah, which has several shades of meaning including "to know by experience" and "to perceive and see." This is the sense of the word that Jesus used in Luke 13:25 when He said that on the last day He will send people away by telling them, "I don't know you." On the surface, Jesus' comment seems to contradict what we understand about Him and His abilities. We understand that, as True God, Jesus is omniscient -- that He is all knowing. He knows everything and everybody and everything about everybody. He knows the present, the past, and the future for each one of us. He knows our hopes and dreams, fears and failures, joys and sorrows. So how could Jesus possibly say "I don't know you" to anyone? Ever?
What Jesus means by saying "I don't know you" goes beyond having information about someone to experiencing an intimate relationship with a person. He will know all about the people whom He will send away on that great and terrible day. And while a number of them will have known something about Jesus, maybe even a lot about Jesus, they will not have had enjoyed an intimacy with Jesus. And some of them -- perhaps many of them -- will be quite surprised about this. They will be the people who gained all sorts of knowledge about Jesus by studying the Bible and learning its words without ever taking those words to heart. They will include people who will have served in the Church, maybe even as leaders in the Church, but weren't actually servants of Christ. They will protest that they were familiar with Jesus through their own versions of eating and drinking in His presence and having Him teach in their communities. But it won't be enough. It will be too late. To their destruction they will know about Jesus without ever having known Jesus.
We learn from God's Word that on the Judgment Day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. The judgment will take place with all knowing Jesus as our rightful judge. But not all will know Him as merciful. only those who, by faith, know Jesus' heart and will, His desires, His joys, His compassion, His love, grace, and mercy — those who know Jesus, not just know about Him — will be saved. They will know Jesus intimately because they will have walked with Him, served Him, suffered for Him, and given themselves sacrificially for His Name's sake. They are those who will have spent their lives in loving response, imperfect as it may be, because they will have known the love, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness of Jesus — and, by His grace, be intimately known by Jesus.
Those who know Jesus know that His greatest desire is that all people would have an intimate relationship with Him through which they would truly know Him and be known by Him. We know that He genuinely and fervently calls all people to "strive to enter through the narrow door" wanting them to enter their Master's house before it is too late. And we know that His purpose for coming into our world, bearing our sins, and dying our death was to rescue those who were heading to that place where "there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." What we don't know and can't know is who will respond to His call to take off their masks, despise their pride, and humble themselves before their Lord and King in order to have that kind of relationship with Him. What we do know is that He has called us to share His life-giving and life-changing Word with the people in our lives in the hope and with the desire that they would be included with those counted among all knowing Jesus on the last day.
A popular model for risk management in business is referred to as “SWOT,” in which the “T” stands for Threats. The challenge of assessing threats is that some are known and others are not. Dealing with known threats is rather straightforward. But how does one deal with something that is unknown? One approach is to divide the unknown threats into two categories: known unknowns and unknown unknowns. While there’s little one can do about the unknown unknowns, processing the possibilities of threats from past experiences, current trends, the failures of others, etc. can go a long way toward mitigating the risks of known unknowns.
