Luke 13:25-27 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

When once the master of the house is risen up Christ is the master of the house, that will take cognizance of the character and conduct of all that belong to it, or occasionally have a place in it. It now seems as if he left things at large, and made no distinction between his faithful servants and those who falsely pretend to be such. But the time is coming when he will rise up and shut to the door Namely, a door of distinction and separation between hypocrites and true believers; between formalists, who have only a name to live, and such as are truly alive to God. Now in the temple of the church there are carnal professors, who worship in the outer court, and spiritual worshippers, who worship within the veil; between these the door is now open, and they meet promiscuously in the same external performances; but when the master of the house is risen up, the door will be shut between them, and those who are in the outer court shall be kept out, and remain excluded for ever. Alas! how many that were very confident they should be saved, will be rejected in the day of trial! And ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door Then, neither asking, nor seeking, nor knocking, nay, nor agonizing, will avail any thing. Let us now, therefore, strive and agonize, by faith, prayer, holiness, patience. Observe, reader, many are ruined by an ill-grounded hope of heaven, which they never once distrusted or called in question; and they conclude their state as good, because they never doubted the goodness of it. They call Christ, Lord, as if they were his servants; nay, in token of their confidence and importunity, they double the expression, Lord, Lord; and are now desirous to enter in by that door which they formerly slighted, and would now gladly have a place among those serious Christians whom they formerly despised! And he shall answer and say, I know you not, &c. I know my sheep, and am known of mine; but I know not you; you do not belong to my family; you are neither my servants nor my subjects; I have neither employed nor governed you. Alas! how new, how late, how lasting will be the sense which they will now have of their misery! Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, &c. Over and above the privileges which you have enjoyed by the Mosaic dispensation, you shall plead, on that occasion, the peculiar favour which I showed you in the days of my flesh, by exercising my ministry among you, and by conversing familiarly with you. But he shall say, &c. He will persist in disowning you, whatever acquaintance with him you may pretend to; declaring again, I know you not whence ye are All the former relations to which you refer, are, as it were, blotted from my remembrance, since your hearts were still insincere, or unchanged, and your lives unsuitable to your fair professions; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity For none like you can ever be admitted here. In the character which he here gives them, we have the reason of their doom: they were, and continued to be, workers of iniquity, and under a pretence of piety, persisted, though perhaps secretly, in the practice of sin.