[[When one loves, they love unconditionally, even if the other refuses to love in return.]]
God’s love is open to all- we all have the free will to accept His love or not- His love is Salvation- we however have the choice to accept Him or not. There is God’s perfect will and God’s allowed will- His perfect will is that everyone should accept His love freely, however, His allowed will, because He infact DOES love us is that we should have the free will to accept or reject His love.
Also- the Pharisses were NOT ever saved- they relied on the law to save them and Christ goes to great lengths to show them that they were never saved and that works will never save and lead to the very thing He preached about- being boastful of their good works.
[[Even if we go with your interpretation that “I never knew you” to be literal, what does that say about your “salvation”?]]
Christ did know us- when we accepted Him at Salvation- Those who don’t accept Him in Salvation obviously Christ would say He ‘never knew’ them. Our salvation is secure inthat Christ Knows us, knows His own and we share in His inheritence as laid out in God’s word- now and forever.
The Pharisees as a group were not "unsaved", as Scriptures tells us that "some" believed, even before Christ's crucifixion. What Christ was teaching was that most of the Pharisees were forgetting mercy and love and forgiveness in their attempts to follow the letter of the Law. Christ did NOT come to REMOVE the Law, but to fulfill it. As the Bible tells us, good fruits is a sign of proper faith in God, a faith that men and women displayed even before Christ became incarnate.
Christ did know us- when we accepted Him at Salvation- Those who don’t accept Him in Salvation obviously Christ would say He ‘never knew’ them. Our salvation is secure inthat Christ Knows us, knows His own and we share in His inheritence as laid out in God’s word- now and forever.
I'm sure that those people Christ speaks about in Matthew 7 thought the same thing you are saying... "I accepted Jesus as my savior, I did great miracles in His name, cast out demons, ate with Him, etc..." And what happened?
You should consider reading Matthew 5-7. Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, you shall not obtain the Kingdom of Heaven. Christ then goes on to tell us HOW our righteousness will exceed the Pharisees in this section. Our faith working in love, simple as that. Those who are presumptive, like the charecters Jesus describes in Mat 7 will NOT enter the Kingdom. That is why the "OSAS" gospel is false. It leads to presumption, that God now owes you because of one moment in time... The Bible speaks often against this idea.
Regards