What Does Matthew 7:22 Mean?

(22) **Many will say to me in that day.**—No part of the Sermon on the Mount is more marvellous in its claims than this; to those who see in Christ only a human Teacher with a higher morality than Hillel or Seneca, none more utterly incomprehensible. At the commencement of His ministry, in a discourse which, though it is spoken in the tone of authority, gives no prominence to His mission as the Messiah, He yet claims, with the calmness of assured conviction, to be the Judge before whom the faithful and the hypocrites will alike have to give an account. In “that day” (the words, though they would not suggest, as afterwards, the thought of His own advent, would yet carry the minds of men to the “great and dreadful day” of Malachi 4:5) the words “Lord, Lord,” would mean more than the expression of human courtesy. **Have we not prophesied in thy name?**—Here, also, there is the implied calm assertion of a supernatural power, not resting in Himself alone, but imparted to His followers, and exercised, or at least claimed, by some who did not themselves fulfil the conditions of His kingdom. Here, as everywhere in the New Testament, “prophesying” is more than mere prediction, and includes the whole work of delivering a message to men, as coming directly from God.