This sermon contains some of the most important words in the New Testament and some of the most legitimate pastoral concerns in Christian preaching. The warning that many who think they are saved will hear "I never knew you" on the last day is real, sobering, and worth sitting with seriously. The call to genuine discipleship over mere religious profession, to death to self, to authentic transformation - these are not HRM inventions. They are the heartbeat of Jesus' own teaching. This article does not dispute any of that.

What it does dispute is the framework quietly embedded in the sermon - the assumption that the narrow path runs through Torah observance, that "walk as he walked" means keep the Sabbath and dietary laws, and that the anxiety the sermon creates about genuine salvation is best resolved by adopting the HRM's covenant practices. That move deserves careful examination, because it uses a legitimate spiritual concern to drive people toward a destination the New Testament does not point them toward.

What the Sermon Does Well

Before examining the problems, the genuine strengths deserve acknowledgment. The challenge to easy believism - the idea that a one-time prayer or correct doctrine is sufficient evidence of salvation regardless of how one lives - is entirely biblical. James asks whether faith without works can save. John says the person who claims to know Christ while walking in persistent darkness is lying. Paul says to examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. These are real warnings for real people, and a preacher who avoids them is not being kind - they are being negligent.

The sermon is also right that you can be maximally religious and still be lost. The people cast away in Matthew 7 were not casual or indifferent. They prophesied, cast out demons, and did mighty works in Jesus' name. They called him Lord. And he says to them: I never knew you. Religion without relationship, performance without transformation, activity without genuine faith - these are the broad road dressed in religious clothing. That warning is worth hearing.

What Anomia Actually Means in Matthew 7:23

The HRM's reading of Matthew 7:23 depends entirely on a particular interpretation of one word. Jesus says to those cast away: "I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of anomia." In HRM teaching, anomia means Torah-breaking - lawlessness defined as failure to keep the Mosaic law. Therefore the people cast away are those who did not keep Torah, and the lesson is that Torah observance is the mark of genuine faith.

But look at who these people actually are. They prophesied in Jesus' name. They cast out demons in his name. They did many mighty works in his name. These are not casual believers who neglected religious practice. They are maximally religious performers - people whose visible spiritual activity was extraordinary. If the charge against them were failure to keep Sabbath or eat clean, it would be an extraordinarily strange way to describe people who were manifestly active in supernatural religious performance.

The charge is not dietary non-compliance. It is "I never knew you." The lawlessness Jesus identifies is not Torah-breaking. It is the presumption of knowing Christ without actually knowing him - performing in his name without a real relationship with him. Their anomia was the ultimate lawlessness: treating the Lord of the universe as a religious resource while never genuinely submitting to him as Lord. That is a warning to the religiously active, not a call to Torah observance.

And consider the irony: if anomia in Matthew 7:23 means Torah-breaking, then the people cast away could in principle have kept Sabbath, worn tzitzit, observed the feasts, eaten clean - and still heard "depart from me." The sermon itself acknowledges this: "not everyone who wears tassels, eats clean, keeps the feasts will be saved." Which means Torah observance is not what distinguishes the saved from the lost in Matthew 7. Knowing Christ is.

What "The Will of My Father" Actually Means

Jesus says in Matthew 7:21 that only the one who does the will of his Father will enter the kingdom. The HRM quietly fills "the will of my Father" with Torah content. But Jesus defines it elsewhere with unmistakable clarity.

John 6:40: "My Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life." That is Jesus defining his Father's will in his own words. The narrow path, in Jesus' own definition, is faith in him. Not Torah observance. Not feast-keeping. Not dietary compliance. Looking to the Son and believing in him.

This does not make obedience irrelevant - genuine faith always produces genuine transformation. But it locates the root correctly. The root is faith in Christ. Everything else - the obedience, the love, the changed life - grows from that root. When you put Torah observance in the root's place, you have not found the narrow path. You have found a religious performance system that can produce all the external markers of the narrow path while bypassing the thing that makes it narrow: genuine, personal, transforming knowledge of Christ.

Faith, Love and the Misplaced Engine

Galatians 5:6 states the New Testament principle with precision:

"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." - Galatians 5:6

Faith is the root. Love is the fruit that grows from it. Faith expresses itself through love - not love proves your faith, but love flows naturally from faith when faith is real. The fruit does not produce the root. The root produces the fruit.

The problem with using external law-keeping as your assurance of salvation is that it puts the fruit in the root's place. You start asking "am I keeping Sabbath?" instead of "am I trusting Christ?" You measure your standing before God by what you can observe and tick off rather than by resting in what he has done. And because external observance is measurable and achievable - you either kept Sabbath or you didn't, you either ate clean or you didn't - it becomes psychologically attractive as a way of feeling secure before God.

Love works differently. You can never fully arrive at love. It always shows you where you fall short and sends you back to grace. Which is exactly where the gospel wants you - not managing a checklist but returning constantly to Christ.

The HRM community's emphasis on visible Torah observance is not evil in itself. People in any community develop shared markers of belonging and commitment. But when those markers become the primary measure of genuine faith - when keeping the feast calendar is what a serious believer looks like - the community has quietly shifted from faith expressing itself in love to performance expressing itself in compliance. Same external behaviour, completely different engine. And a different engine produces a different person over time. One produces a person running toward Christ for ongoing grace. The other produces a person managing a performance checklist for ongoing assurance. As our article on pure devotion to Christ argues, this shift from Christ as the centre to observable practice as the centre is precisely what Paul feared most for the churches he loved.

Walk as He Walked - What John Actually Means

1 John 2:6 says "whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did" - or in other translations, "walk as he walked." The HRM reads this as: Jesus kept Torah, therefore walking as he walked means keeping Torah.

But John defines his own terms. He does not leave "walking as Jesus walked" undefined. His entire letter is a sustained definition of what it means to know Christ, abide in him, and walk in his ways. And his definition is specific: "And this is his commandment: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us" (1 John 3:23). Walking as Jesus walked, in John's own definition, is believing in Christ and loving one another. Not Sabbath observance. Not dietary compliance. Not the feast calendar.

John wrote his letters to Gentile believers. He never once instructs them to keep the Mosaic law. He never mentions Sabbath, dietary laws, or feasts as marks of genuine faith. His commandments are consistently and exclusively Christ's commandments - love God, love one another, believe in his name. Reading "walk as he walked" as a call to Torah observance requires importing a meaning John himself does not use anywhere in his letters.

The Internal Contradiction in the Sermon

The sermon contains an admission that undermines its own conclusion. It says explicitly: "not everyone who wears tassels, who eats clean, who keeps the feasts will be saved." This is correct. The sermon is right to say it. But having said it, the sermon then drives toward Torah observance as the content of the narrow path - the evidence of genuine faith, the mark of real discipleship.

These two positions cannot be held simultaneously. If Torah observance does not distinguish the saved from the lost - and the sermon admits it does not - then Torah observance cannot be the content of the narrow path. The narrow path must be defined by something else. And Jesus defined it himself: "I never knew you." The distinguishing factor is knowing Christ - real, personal, transforming relationship with him. That is what separates the genuine disciple from the religious performer. Not the feast calendar.

A Word to Anyone This Sermon Has Frightened

This section is for the person who has heard this sermon and is genuinely uncertain whether they are saved. That uncertainty deserves a direct and honest answer.

The New Testament does not leave assurance of salvation as an anxiety to be managed through increased performance. It grounds assurance in specific, identifiable realities. Romans 8:16 says "the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children." 1 John 5:13 says "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life." Know - not hope nervously, not manage the uncertainty through Torah compliance, but know.

The marks of genuine faith that John identifies in his letter are not feast-keeping and dietary compliance. They are: a pattern of decreasing sin rather than indifference to it, love for fellow believers, belief in Christ as he is revealed in Scripture, and the witness of the Spirit. If these are present in your life - not perfectly, but genuinely - you have grounds for assurance that no performance checklist can provide or remove.

The narrow path is narrow because it requires genuine faith in Christ rather than mere religious activity. It is not narrow because it requires Torah observance that most Christians have missed. The gate is Christ himself - "I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved" (John 10:9). Entering through that gate is not a complex achievement requiring the right covenant practices. It is the simplest and most demanding thing in the world: trusting him completely, with empty hands, for everything.

That is the narrow path. And it is as available to the believer who does not keep Sabbath as it is to the one who does.

The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. - Galatians 5:6