Matthew 7:21 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 who is in heaven.
There exists a danger in isolating this verse from the prior verses and from the entire Sermon on the Mount. Isolating the verse can lead some to place their emphasis in works or earning salvation ahead of having faith in God for their salvation.
This isolation causes the reader to begin to believe that he is able to provide for his own eternal security, salvation. He becomes self-deceived into believing his actions, in the name of God, are bringing him the righteousness of God. The fact that these verses come after the warning about the false prophets reminds us of the subtleness of any self-reliance for our eternal security.
In this passage, we see that the Lord is not proposing that works are to replace trusting faith in Him. The wolves, the false prophets are guilty of this very thing. Self-blindness causes people to miss the entire message of salvation. The false prophets look like the real thing. Those who do good works look like the real thing. The difference lies in the person in whom they have placed their faith, hope and trust. They have placed all their reliance on the very things Jesus was warning them against in this Sermon.
Listen to these words in the Gospel of John:
Then the [crowd] asked him, ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’ Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’ (6:28-29)
