Blessed is Everyone Who Eats Bread in the Kingdom of God

The first time I heard the scripture in Matthew 7:21-23, I quickly applied it to others. In subsequent readings, it unsettled me. I’ve come to a place where it keeps me company with a content sort of fear and trembling. I don’t get it, but I accept it. It goes:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is 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 mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'”

I mean, if someone is performing dead works and doesn’t know God—they realize they’re a fake, right? Apparently not, if they say “Lord” and are surprised when they don’t get to enter heaven.

One method I used during the “it must apply to a different flavor of Christianity than mine” season, was to lump whole denominations into the story. There were surely more chosen in my denomination…otherwise I’d switch (non)denominations. So, it must be the ecumenical Baptists because they let everyone in. Or maybe it’s the Southern Baptists because they don’t let anyone in—even light.

It doesn’t apply to me

Have you ever sat in a sermon thinking about someone who needed it more than you? When I consider this, it’s funny to assume that something which separates my bone and marrow will cut someone else the same. If there were catchphrases which always reaped the lost, we wouldn’t need the word to be living.

Blessed Assurance

Don’t get me wrong, we shouldn’t be insecure about our salvation. We can have an anchor for the soul if we continue in the faith and submit to sanctification. So maybe that passage in Matthew applies to the “one and done prayer” people who think repeating Roman’s Road after someone else negates all other inner spiritual transformation…

Maybe it applies to me

I’m only kidding to point out that it’s difficult to sit and let every bit of the message be personal. It’s easier to separate ourselves and think in terms of “us” and “them” when we read things like that section in Matthew or the parable of 10 virgins. No one expecting to go to the feast wants to be locked out. It feels a little like self preservation to define who is/will be on the outside. But dismissing this story too quickly offers temporal feelings of safety at best. And at worst, it might put you on the wrong side of a locked door.

I’m writing this post especially to believers who feel outside—unwelcome in church. The people who have separated you as “them” might just be afraid to internalize warnings in scripture. It is to a Bible reader’s detriment to accept the many promises in the New Testament without acknowledging how much of it is believer-correction and believer-warning.

I’m intrigued how often I hear the sentiment from a scholar, “There are many interpretations of this passage,” and then from a layperson, “Two things can’t be true and I know what this incomplete sentence in the King James Bible means, so you’re wrong.”

It is also to our detriment to merely collect information. “What does the Bible say about that?!” Then fortify the walls around our understanding of doctrine so we never feel the painful disruption of Christ changing us.

Everyone is invited

When a man exclaimed in Luke 14, “Blessed it is everyone who eats bread in the kingdom,” Jesus replied with another parable. The scene is a landowner who has prepared a feast and wants his tables filled. The invitees give excuses why they cannot come:

Buying a field
Managing the necessities to work it
Getting married

Buy dirt and find your soul mate (or at least someone who turns you on) is American, not biblical. Even though we were told to be fruitful and multiply, and land and kids are a good way to secure your earthly future, they are not what we were made for. The house and kids package is not inherently righteous or unrighteousness.

But rather, it seems to be a distraction from the actual landowner’s kingdom-invitation: to feast in heaven with outcasts.

Citizenship and progeny

Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say, “The LORD will surely separate me from his people”; and let not the eunuch say, “Behold, I am a dry tree.” Isaiah 56:3.

Some impact is lost if your Bible translation says stranger, foreigner, or sojourner. All languages change, but English, especially, is a moving target. If you use relevant terms like migrant farm worker, or “illegal” (undocumented immigrant) you’ll sit up a little straighter when you read the Old Testament. Because I don’t know any strangers, but I do know immigrants.

Eunuch is another term that doesn’t live in our modern vernacular. You don’t hear many people talking about a life of celibacy. Of course, that might be because if anyone said they planned to live a life of celibacy, most (Protestant) churchgoers would correct them, “You mean, you’re still waiting for God to bring you a mate.” Or, if someone says they are celibate-gay, the latter part typically overshadows the calling.

Jesus mentions intersex, people who have had their sexuality ruined by others and people who simply choose celibacy in Matthew 19:12, “For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”

I was told there would be bread here?

We should give even more contemplation to the promises given to the foreigner and the eunuch in Isaiah 56 because it seems to highlight two big controversies in American churches. Immigrants and celibate-gay/people who can’t or won’t have sex. I like the NIV title added for chapter 56. “Salvation for Others.”

The Other

Specifically, the one without a land or a people who joins themself to the Lord will be brought to the holy mountain (you know the place—everyone is fighting over it) and permitted into the house of prayer.

Specifically, the one who has given their sexuality to God, who holds tight His covenant, will have a monument within God’s house that surpasses sons and daughters.

Buying land
Managing your stuff
Getting married

It is the “them” or “other” who enters God’s sabbath rest that will be gathered with the chosen Isreal.

But regardless of whether you identify in the “us” or “them” group, let anyone who thinks that they stand take heed, lest they fall.