04/08/2026
In need of healing internally? Please consider this…
CHRISTED: I Never Knew You….
There are few sayings of Jesus that have been used more violently against the human heart than these words: “I never knew you.” Men have taken that phrase and built entire systems of terror, separation, rejection, and religious insecurity upon it, as if the God who formed man in his own image and after his own likeness could one day stand before his own workmanship and confess ignorance of what he himself designed. Ontologically, that cannot be the meaning. The Father is not a stranger to his own offspring. He is not unfamiliar with the one he fearfully and wonderfully made. He is not ignorant of the one he knew before he was formed in the womb. He is not detached from the one he chose in Christ before the foundation of the world. Therefore, when Christ says, “I never knew you,” he is not speaking of divine ignorance concerning personhood. He is speaking of divine non-recognition of a false identity, a counterfeit self, an Adamic construction, a law-shaped consciousness, a performance-born man, a life built upon the wrong tree.
The Scripture is too consistent for us to interpret Matthew 7 as though God suddenly becomes less knowing than he has revealed himself to be everywhere else. Jeremiah says, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee” (Jeremiah 1:5 KJV). David says, “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14 KJV). Jesus says, “But the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matthew 10:30 KJV). Paul says, “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4 KJV). Luke records Paul preaching, “For in him we live, and move, and have our being… For we are also his offspring” (Acts 17:28 KJV). John says, “As he is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17 KJV). How then could the same God who knew us before our forming, chose us before the foundation of the world, and numbered the hairs of our heads suddenly look upon any human being and literally mean, “I have never known you at all”? He cannot. Such a reading would make the Lord inconsistent with his own revelation. The issue is not whether God knows man. The issue is which man he knows.
This distinction is the very tension Paul opens for us in Romans 7. He says, “For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin” (Romans 7:14 KJV). The rendering you quoted from The Passion Translation brings out the inward fracture plainly: “And now I realize that it is no longer my true self doing it, but the unwelcome intruder of sin in my humanity” (Romans 7:17 TPT). Paul is not excusing behavior. He is identifying a contradiction. He is showing that there is a difference between the man as designed and the man as distorted; between the self as authored by God and the self as interpreted through Adam; between being and bo***ge; between identity and invasion. He is saying, in effect, that when I do the very thing I hate, that hatred itself testifies that what I am doing is out of rhythm with what I really am. Sin is not the revelation of the authentic self. Sin is the contradiction of it. Distortion is not identity. It is the occupation of identity by a lie.
This is why the gospel can never merely be about behavior modification. If the issue were only conduct, law would have solved the problem. But law never solved the problem because law could diagnose contradiction without unveiling identity. Law could tell man he was wrong, but it could not reveal him whole. Law could expose transgression, but it could not enthrone sonship. Law could magnify the tension, but it could not dissolve the delusion. Paul’s agony in Romans 7 is not merely that he does bad things; it is that he has discovered a war between the truest thing about him and the false thing working through him. He is a mystery to himself because he has begun to perceive that man has lived too long from a reference point beneath his design.
That is why the gospel must be ontological or it will always collapse into management. Religion says, “This is what you do.” Grace says, “This is who you are.” Religion says, “Become.” Christ says, “Behold.” Religion says, “Work from lack.” The gospel says, “Awaken from fullness.” Religion calls your bo***ge your identity. Christ calls your bo***ge the lie that violated your identity. Religion baptizes the false self and then spends a lifetime trying to train it. Christ crucifies the false self and reveals the son. Religion says you are a sinner trying to get near God. Christ says you were chosen in him before the foundation of the world and your alienation was never the truest thing about you.
Paul confirms that in Ephesians: “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love” (Ephesians 1:4 KJV). Before there was Adamic shame, there was divine choosing. Before there was law, there was love. Before there was transgression-consciousness, there was Christ-consciousness in the heart of the Father. Before the world had foundations, your identity had an address. It was in him. That means whatever does not agree with that eternal choosing cannot be your deepest truth. If you were chosen to be holy and without blame before him in love, then addiction is not your truth. Shame is not your truth. fear is not your truth. bo***ge is not your truth. self-hatred is not your truth. accusation is not your truth. These things may have invaded experience, but they did not author being.
This is why it is not enough to say that man was born in Adam as though Adam were the final revelation of human identity. Adam is not the blueprint. Christ is. Adam is not the eternal word made visible. Christ is. Adam is not the definitive statement of what humanity is. Christ is. Paul does not say the last word over humanity is Adam. He says, “The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45 KJV). And again, “The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:47 KJV). If Jesus is the last Adam, then Adam is not the forever-head of man. Jesus did not come to polish Adam. He came to end Adam as the governing reference point for identity. He did not come to make the old man religious. He came to bury him. He did not come to help the flesh imitate sonship. He came to reveal that sonship has always been the truth hidden beneath the fleshly lie.
So when a man says, “I am my addiction,” “I am my trauma,” “I am my shame,” “I am my lust,” “I am my darkness,” he is bearing witness against himself according to the wrong record. He is speaking out of the books, not the Book of Life. He is reading himself through the tree of the knowledge of good and evil instead of through the tree of life. He is defining himself by what attached itself to him rather than by what God eternally knew of him. Everything you hate about yourself that is contrary to Christ is not the authentic you. Everything that came into your life through fear, accusation, distortion, and separation-consciousness is not the face the Father knows. The Father knows the son. The Father knows the image. The Father knows the one chosen in love. The Father knows the one hidden in Christ. The Father knows the man beneath the rubble of Adamic interpretation.
This is why union is the center of all true interpretation. “But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:17 KJV). That is not legal metaphor alone. That is ontological unveiling. Man joined to the Lord is not a distant servant trying to curry favor. He is a participant in divine life. Humanity in Christ is the visible expression of divinity in creation. Not independent deity, not autonomous godhood, but union. Participation. inclusion. image. likeness. sonship. manifestation. This is why Paul can speak as he does in Romans 8: “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19 KJV). Creation is not groaning for a better religious institution. Creation is not standing on tiptoe waiting for more shame-based preaching. Creation is waiting for the unveiling of sons. The cosmos is longing to see humans who know who they are.
Listen to Paul’s language: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18 KJV). Not merely revealed to us, but in us. The unveiling is internal before it becomes visible. Glory is not imported from elsewhere; it is uncovered. This is why the whole universe is groaning. It has suffered under the false government of a humanity alienated from itself. The problem in creation is tied to man’s misreading of man. When the sons awaken, the creation begins to breathe again. When men discover their origin in Christ, the earth begins to feel the government of heaven. When humanity ceases living from Adamic distortion and begins living from sonship, the world tastes liberty.
That is why salvation is not merely future escape. It is present unveiling. “Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ… and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:5–6 KJV). Notice the language: together with Christ, together, together, together. Salvation is not the offer of eventual closeness. It is the revelation of present inclusion. The Father did not merely send Christ to tell us heaven was available later. He raised us together with him. He made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. That is not the language of distance. That is the language of participation. That is not future possibility. That is accomplished inclusion. Religion says, “Try to get there.” The gospel says, “You were raised there in him.”
This is why the cross cannot be preached as though it were the moment the Father ceased being one with the Son. When Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46 KJV), many have imagined a rupture in the Godhead, as though the eternal communion of Father and Son was broken, holiness temporarily collapsed, and God became divided against himself. But Scripture will not permit such a reading if we maintain the consistency of God’s nature. James says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17 KJV). If there is no variableness in him, then the cross cannot be the moment in which the Father ceased to be Father or the Son ceased to be the Beloved. Holiness is wholeness. Holiness is integrity. Holiness is seamlessness. The cry from the cross is Christ entering the full depth of Adamic estrangement, voicing humanity’s desolation from within, not becoming ontologically separated from the Father in essence. They were one before Calvary, one in Calvary, and one beyond Calvary.
The Son entered the darkest experience of human lostness, not because he himself became other than what he eternally was, but because he was exhausting from within the lie that man had believed about himself. He was going to the bottom of alienation in order to destroy alienation. He was descending into the furthest reach of Adamic consciousness in order to bring the whole thing to an end. He was not becoming abandoned by the Father; he was entering the abandoned consciousness of humanity and swallowing it up in divine union. He was not ceasing to be beloved; he was letting the loveless cry of fallen man die in his own body. He was not becoming foreign to God; he was putting an end to the foreignness man had felt before God.
This brings us to judgment. The modern mind often hears judgment and imagines only punishment. But in Scripture, especially through an ontological first-century lens, judgment is also unveiling, separation of truth from falsehood, decisive crisis, the exposure of what can remain and what cannot. Jesus says, “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John 5:22 KJV). Yet the same Jesus says, “Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man” (John 8:15 KJV). This tells us immediately that the judgment of the Son is not fleshly judgment. It is not superficial judgment. It is not the carnal sorting of people by appearances and performances. The Son’s judgment is the perfect disclosure of what is true in the light of the Father.
This is why Revelation must be handled carefully. Revelation is not a horror manual given to terrify the bride. It is the Revelation of Jesus Christ. It unveils heavenly realities during the great covenantal transition between law and grace, old creation consciousness and new creation life, accusation and sonship, beastly dominion and the kingdom of the Son. Daniel saw the same scene in advance: “I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit… the judgment was set, and the books were opened” (Daniel 7:9–10 KJV). He saw the beast slain and its dominion removed. He saw one like the Son of man come with the clouds of heaven and receive dominion and a kingdom. He saw judgment given to the saints of the most High. He saw the time come that the saints possessed the kingdom (Daniel 7:13–14, 22 KJV). John is not inventing a new terror in Revelation 20. He is seeing the same triumph through apocalyptic language.
“And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it… and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life” (Revelation 20:11–12 KJV). Here is the contrast. Not merely one book, but books, and then another book. The plural books speak of the record of dead works, the record of self-definition by performance, the entire tree-of-knowledge economy in which man is measured by what he has done. But the Book of Life testifies to what God knew before works ever entered the conversation. One record is man’s anxious self-accounting. The other is heaven’s original testimony. One record is the house built on sand. The other is the rock beneath all worlds. One record is Adamic memory. The other is Christic design. Simply put…being CHRISTED.
This is why I believe the great white throne must be seen in the victory of Calvary, resurrection, ascension, and enthronement. The Son judges not by rejecting what the Father made, but by destroying everything that contradicted what the Father made. He judges the accuser. He judges death. He judges hell. He judges the beastly systems. He judges the law-based economy of self-justification. He judges every false book by opening it in the light of the Lamb. This is why Revelation says, “And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:14 KJV). The point is not that death survives forever as a threat. The point is that death itself is judged. Hell is not enthroned. Hell is overthrown. The grave is not given eternal dignity. It is swallowed up in victory.
Hebrews says, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27 KJV). But immediately the writer brings the whole matter into Christ. Christ dies once. Christ bears the judgment. Christ appears the second time apart from sin unto salvation. The once-for-all death of Jesus is not a private event disconnected from humanity; it is the global death of humankind in the representative Son. Paul says it this way: “If one died for all, then were all dead” (2 Corinthians 5:14 KJV). Humanity’s death in Adam is brought into the death of Christ, and the false man goes to judgment there. What is judged is not the beloved thought of God concerning man. What is judged is the contradiction, the lie, the old record, the counterfeit identity, the sin-consciousness, the dominion of accusation.
Romans 6 is therefore not moralism; it is ontology. “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed” (Romans 6:6 KJV). The old man is not rehabilitated. He is crucified. The body of sin is not pampered. It is destroyed. “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:11 KJV). Paul is not telling you to pretend. He is telling you to account yourself according to the true event. The old identity has been put away in Christ. The distorted form has no right to remain the narrator of your life. The lie has been judged. The counterfeit has been crucified. You are no longer to live from that house.
This helps us see forgiveness correctly. In Luke 5, when the paralytic is lowered through the roof, Jesus says, “Man, thy sins are forgiven thee” (Luke 5:20 KJV). Then he heals his body. The religious scholars are scandalized, because to them forgiveness is only legal pronouncement. But Jesus shows that forgiveness is the removal of what does not belong. Sin is not merely bad acts listed against a ledger; it is a distorted form of existence, a dislocation from the truth of being, a shame-laden consciousness, a crookedness that shows up in soul and even body. When Jesus forgives, he does not merely excuse. He releases. He separates the man from the distortion attached to him. He says, in effect, this is not your truth, this is not your source, this is not your identity, rise and walk.
That is why forgiveness is so much deeper than religion has allowed. Forgiveness is not God pretending sin did not happen. Forgiveness is God removing from your identity everything that never belonged to it. It is the putting away of the false. It is the sending away of distortion. It is the declaration that shame is not your name, sickness is not your design, bo***ge is not your inheritance, and separation is not your origin. Christ came as the Lamb of God “which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29 KJV). He did not come merely to supervise the world’s sin more gently. He came to take it away. He came to end the reign of the false form.
This is why the fire imagery in Scripture must not be reduced to cruel torment. Fire reveals. Fire tests. Fire purifies. Fire removes dross. John the Baptist says Christ will baptize “with the Holy Ghost, and with fire” (Matthew 3:11 KJV). The axe is laid unto the root of the trees, and every tree that does not bear good fruit is cast into the fire (Luke 3:9 KJV). The issue is not the destruction of man as God’s image-bearer. The issue is the destruction of the root system that produced false fruit. The issue is the tree. One tree is life. The other is the knowledge of good and evil. One tree produces rest, sonship, union, and life. The other produces self-consciousness, performance, comparison, shame, accusation, and dead works. Fire is laid to the latter.
Now we can come to Matthew 7 with clarity. “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven… Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?” (Matthew 7:21–22 KJV). Notice their defense. They do not appeal to Christ. They appeal to works. They do not stand in sonship. They stand in résumé. They do not speak from union. They speak from accomplishment. The whole basis of their confidence is, “Have we not?” This is tree-of-knowledge language. This is self-referencing religion. This is man trying to secure place through performance. And Jesus answers, “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:23 KJV).
The phrase must be interpreted in the light of everything else God says about man. It cannot mean literal ignorance of personhood. It cannot mean the Father never knew his own offspring. It cannot mean the God who formed, chose, called, and included humanity in Christ has no acquaintance with human persons. Rather, it means that the identity standing there in self-justifying performance has never been the identity the Father authored. “I never knew you” means, the you formed by iniquity, the you built on dead works, the you defined by performance, the you trusting in religious achievement, the you eating from the tree of knowledge, the you established in separation-consciousness, that you is not the one I have known from the beginning. It is not your truth. It is not your genesis. It is not your name in the Book of Life.
The context confirms this. Immediately Jesus speaks of two builders, two foundations, two houses, one storm. “Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock” (Matthew 7:24 KJV). And the foolish man builds on sand. The storm comes, and the house on sand falls, and great is its fall. Jesus is not merely giving generic life advice. He is speaking covenantally. He is speaking into a world soon to see the collapse of temple confidence, law-confidence, and old-covenant selfhood. That house was going to fall. Everything built on performance, law, and external religious structure was about to be shaken. But the house built on the rock would remain. What is the rock? The revelation of true sonship. The unveiling of Christ as the measure of man. The discovery that humanity’s house is in him.
This is why Jesus could say to Peter, “thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18 KJV). The rock is not merely a man. It is the revelation of the Son. It is the unveiling of identity. It is the discovery that in seeing who Christ is, man begins to discover who man is. The gates of Hades cannot prevail against a humanity awakened to its sonship. The blindfold mode cannot survive the unveiling of image and likeness. The church Christ is building is not a performance institution; it is the assembly of the awakened, the called-out ones, the people discovering their true surname in him.
So when Jesus says, “I never knew you,” he is not casting away image-bearers as though they were foreign creatures. He is exposing the unreality of the false self. He is refusing to recognize the religious identity built upon iniquity. He is saying, that worker of performance-based law-consciousness is not the son the Father beholds. That person you brought to me from the books of your own works is not the one I wrote in the Book of Life. The house you built from striving is not the house I founded on the rock. The record you are appealing to is not heaven’s testimony. The tree you have lived from is not the tree of life.
This is why the statement is right: it is ludicrous to believe that the omniscient God literally does not know a human being. Of course he knows you. He knew you before he formed you. He made you in his image. He chose you in Christ. He numbered your hairs. He brought you forth by his will. He is not the God of amnesia. He is the God and Father of spirits. He is the one “of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named” (Ephesians 3:15 KJV). The issue has never been whether God knows man. The issue is whether man knows himself in God.
That is why the true work of the gospel is awakening. “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32 KJV). Freedom comes by knowing, not striving. Freedom comes by unveiling, not earning. Freedom comes when the lie loses its authority to narrate your being. Jesus says that whoever commits sin is the servant of sin, but “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:34, 36 KJV). Free indeed means free at the level of identity, not merely free at the level of temporary behavior management. The Son does not just help the slave improve. He reveals the son and dissolves the slave-consciousness.
This is also why John can say, “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin” (1 John 3:9 KJV). He is not denying that believers can act inconsistently. He is speaking from the deepest ontological reference point. The seed of God remains. Likeness begets likeness. The authentic self born of God does not originate in distortion. The real you is not a sinner by design. The real you is not lawless by essence. The real you is not alien to God at your core. The real you is born of him. The contradiction is real, but it is contradiction precisely because it violates design.
Then John says, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God” (1 John 3:2 KJV). Not later only, but now. And again, “Herein is our love made perfect… because as he is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17 KJV). This gives boldness in the day of judgment. Why? Because judgment is not against your true self in Christ. Judgment is against everything that contradicted that self. Judgment is not the terror of sons; it is the vindication of sons. Judgment is not the destruction of image; it is the destruction of distortion. Judgment is not the annihilation of the beloved; it is the annihilation of the lie.
The saints therefore judge the world, as Paul says: “Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?… Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” (1 Corinthians 6:2–3 KJV). How can saints judge? Because saints stand in the unveiled mind of Christ. They discern the difference between the authentic and the counterfeit. They know the difference between life and dead works, between sonship and slavery, between Christ and Adam as governing reference points. Mature sons participate in heaven’s verdict against everything that diminished man beneath his design.
So the chapter closes where it began: “I never knew you” is not the language of divine ignorance. It is the language of divine refusal to identify you according to the lie. God has never known you according to your shame. He has never known you according to your bo***ge. He has never known you according to your addiction. He has never known you according to your religious résumé either. He has never known you according to the books of performance, good or bad. He has known you in Christ. He has known you in love. He has known you in sonship. He has known you in the Book of Life. He has known you as his offspring. He has known you as the one chosen before the foundation of the world. He has known you as the one included in the Son.
The worker of iniquity is the false man. The striving man. The résumé man. The law man. The house-on-sand man. The book-defined man. The Adamic man. The accuser’s version of man. And Christ says of that man, I never knew you. But of the son, of the one written in life, of the one hidden in God before time, of the one raised and seated in Christ, the Father has always known him.
And that is the victory of the gospel: Jesus did not come to improve the stranger. He came to reveal the son. He did not come to negotiate with the false self. He came to crucify it. He did not come to polish the books of dead works. He came to open the Book of Life. He did not come to preserve death, hell, accusation, and separation. He came to cast them into the fire. He did not come to tell humanity that God had finally found a way to tolerate them. He came to reveal that in himself God had always known them.
He knows you.
He has always known you.
And everything he never knew about you has already met its judgment in Christ.
You have been CHRISTED….
