Matthew 7:23
The context
The Sermon on the Mount is drawing to a close with warnings about false prophets and about the day of judgment. The scene imagined is public: people appeal to impressive deeds done in the speaker's name, and the reply is not a denial that the deeds happened. It is a denial of relationship, phrased in the past tense.
What it establishes
It establishes that public religious performance, even miraculous performance, is not the same as being known by Christ, and that the verdict on that day turns on something other than the ledger of accomplishments. The word never is the sharpest part of the sentence.
What it does not establish
It does not settle whether genuine believers can be lost. The reply is that they were never known, not that they ceased to be. Some read that as evidence for perseverance, others as a rhetorical framing of apostasy, and the verse is no diagnostic tool for anyone else's standing.
Short note, first pass, October 2026. Corrections welcome.
Cited in these answers
Part of Scripture, Opened — the exegetical layer behind every citation on this site. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.