THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST
by Bill Jackson
(part 1 of 4)
INTRODUCTION
After over 30 years of Christian service, and having been able
to scripturally assess victories and defeats (my own and those of
others), I believe I could plainly state a theory:
THE SUCCESS OF A CHRISTIAN LIFE IS IN DIRECT PROPORTION TO THE
LORDSHIP OF CHRIST IN THAT CHRISTIAN LIFE.
However, I know that no amount of time in the Lord's work, or
the astuteness of my observations, could ever form an objective basis
of truth for any Christian aim. Therefore, we will look to the truth
of God's Word:
"Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a
name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee
should bow, of things in Heaven, and things in Earth, and things under
the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Phil. 2:9-11)
It might seem that the basic aim of any Christian devotional
message should be to persuade the Lord's people to respond in a
particular way; a study on the Lordship of Christ should beseech you
to make Him Lord, for God has already stated that Jesus Christ IS
Lord. This, the Divine revelation concerning the Lordship of Christ,
is my subject at hand.
The conclusion, I pray, will be your full and unreserved
acknowledgment and understanding of that fact. However, always
remember that His Lordship does not hinge on your acknowledgment.
Christ is not running for office, nor is He in a popularity contest.
God has decreed His Lordship, and the more we allow this truth to
permeate our beings, the more successful we will be.
I don't mean that you will necessarily have the largest church
in town or the most money in the bank. The reality of your success in
Christ will only be fully realized when He says, "Well done, thou good
and faithful servant."
Chapter 1
THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST AND SALVATION
It would seem that the Lordship of Christ should be most
perfectly exhibited in the proclamation of the Gospel and the
understanding of salvation. Patrick wrote, "Salvation is of Christ
the Lord," and one would wonder if a presentation of salvation could
impugn His Lordship. However, we are living in a day in which there
are many misconceptions about salvation.
If you were to question a Jehovah's Witness, a Mormon and a
Roman Catholic about the Lordship of Christ, each would affirm his
belief in this fact. Yet each would have a different theory about
salvation, and none would be right.
Some time ago I had the opportunity to witness to a very sweet
Jehovah's Witness. She had come calling with her two well-groomed
sons. During the course of our conversation, she stated that she did
not have an assurance of salvation, an admission which is usual for a
J.W. Then she told me she would be glad to lay her life alongside
mine for comparison; she was certain her life was as good as or better
than mine. I would not argue with that, but I said I would be glad to
compare my Savior with hers. Both Saviors had the same name. Mine
as the Christ of the Bible and hers was an imperfect concept of "Jesus
Christ". Hers was not an infinite Savior, and therefore not the
Christ of the Bible. Our Lord Jesus Christ is being blasphemed in the
house of His enemies.
When witnessing one day, we came across a Mormon. He agreed
that Jesus Christ did a perfect work on the cross, but he insisted
that we all have to do our part. This is the basic concept of bi-
lateral salvation: Jesus does His part perfectly, and we must do our
part to obtain salvation. In addition to being grossly impractical,
it is completely unscriptural. The Bible speaks of His work on our
behalf, and any law of substitution must state that when a substitute
comes into play, the original player must leave the field and have no
more active involvement. But here is a group that calls Jesus Lord.
Christ is being blasphemed in the enemy's camp.
In Las Vegas, NV, some friends went with me to observe, first-
hand, a Roman Catholic Mass in St. Brigid's Church. During the homily
(sermon), Rev. Despars was speaking about the death of Christ. He
said, "Jesus did almost all the work for our salvation, I would say
about 90%." While understanding that Catholics believed in works,
devotions, prayers and other merits to supplement Christ's work on
order for salvation to be completed, I had never heard it put so
bluntly. The monstrous part is that Rev. Despars probably thought he
was paying Jesus a compliment by assigning such a large part of
salvation to His work on the Cross.
The sad truth is that Rev. Despars insulted and maligned both
the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Any work that can be
given a measurable value can not be an infinite work. By reducing
Jesus' work to being finite, both the perfection of His work and His
essential Deity are impugned. Yet, Rev. Despars would state that he
believes in Christ's Lordship. Our Savior is being blasphemed in the
house of His enemies.
It is also true that the Lord Jesus Christ is also being sorely
wounded in the house of His friends. Evangelicals, fundamentalists
and Bible-believers have fallen prey to up-to-date thoughts and
methods of evangelism that have fundamentally erred from the biblical
presentation of the Lord Jesus Christ. This insidious error has been
earmarked by A.W. Tozer in "The Old Cross and the New".
"From this new Cross has sprung a new philosophy of the Christian
life; and from that new philosophy has come a new evangelical
technique - a new type of meeting and a new type of preaching. This
new evangelism employs the same language as of the old, but its
content is not the same, and the emphasis not as before.
"The new Cross encourages a new and and entirely different
evangelistic approach. The evangelist does not demand abnegation of
the old life before a new life can be received. He preaches not
contrasts but similarities. He seeks to key into the public view the
same thing the world does, only a higher level. Whatever the sin-mad
world happens to be clamoring after at the moment is cleverly shown to
be the very thing the Gospel offers, only the religious product is
better.
"The new cross does not slay the sinner; it re-directs him. It
gears him to a cleaner and jollier way of living, and saves his self-
respect... The Christian message is slanted in the direction of of
vogue in order to make it acceptable to the public.
"The philosophy back of this kind of thing may be sincere, but
its sincerity does not save it from being false. It is false because
it is blind. It misses completely the whole meaning of the Cross.
"The old Cross is a symbol of DEATH. It stands for the abrupt,
violent end of a human being. The man in Roman times who took the
Cross and started down the road had already said good-bye to his
friends. He was not coming back. He was not going out to have his
life re-directed; he was going out to have it ended. The cross made
no compromise; modified nothing; spared nothing. It slew all of the
man completely, and for good. It did not try to keep on good terms
with the victim. It struck cruel and hard, and when it had finished
its work, the man was no more.
"The race of Adam is under the death sentence. There is no
commutation and no escape. God cannot approve any fruits of sin,
however innocent they may appear, or beautiful to the eyes of men.
God salvages the individual by liquidating him, and then raising him
again to newness of life.
"The evangelism which draws friendly parallels between the ways
of God and the ways of men is false to the Bible and cruel to the
souls of its hearers. The faith of Christ does not parallel the
world; it intersects it. In coming to Christ we do not bring our old
life to a higher plane; we leave it at the Cross...
"We, who preach the Gospel, must not think of ourselves as
public relations agents sent to establish good will between Christ and
the world. We must not imagine ourselves commissioned to make Christ
acceptable to big business, the press, or the world of sports, or
modern entertainment. We are not diplomats, but prophets; and our
message is not a compromise, but an ultimatum."
A scriptural parallel to this is in Romans 7:1-4. A woman was
married to a very harsh husband named Law. She couldn't do anything
to please him, and life was unbearable (Acts 15:10). Then, one day,
she met a wonderful man named Grace. Grace told her that if she
married him, he would treat her more kindly. But she was married to
Law, and couldn't divorce him. She couldn't murder her husband just
to marry a better one, so Grace solved the problem. He killed her,
then raised her from the dead, and then married her. This is the
message of the Cross-death and resurrection.
This is the message that we sometimes feel we have to soft pedal
in order to attract people, because people don't want to die. Jesus
spoke to the people (Mark 8:34). "Whosoever will come after me, let
him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me." The Lordship
of Christ is not a post-salvation elective; the only Savior is the
Lord Jesus Christ. When you accept Him as your Savior, He becomes
your Lord. His being Lord does not depend on your acceptance of the
fact, but upon that acceptance hinges the success of your Christian
life.
Some people think of salvation as a subjective experience. You
do experience salvation, but salvation is not an experience. (You
experience rain, but rain is not wet feet.) By subjective we mean
"existing in the mind, arising from the senses; relating to, or
expressing the thoughts and feelings of a person."
There is truth in the statement "Salvation is better felt than
'telt'" because many glorious realities are difficult to express. But
salvation is not how we feel about what Jesus did; it is what Jesus
accomplished at Calvary, appropriated by a response to the
supernatural revelation of the Person and Work of Christ.
It is not how well we understand that truth, or how much we are
moved by it. Salvation becomes effective when, in response to the
Holy Spirit, we place our dependence on the Divinely-revealed
substitutionary work. Christ's work for us on Calvary is a completely
objective reality.
It is a reality that is accomplished without reference to our
experience. Once accomplished, the experience is real, and
experiences may often be felt as we respond to Him. However, the
experience is not salvation. Salvation is in Christ (objective), not
in us (subjective).
An emphasis on the subjective can lead to many erroneous
conclusions. We must always center on the completed work of Christ as
our salvation, and never testify of any assurance because of our mind
or emotion. A charismatic priest once told me, "I feel sure I am
going to Heaven because of all the wonderful things God is doing in my
life." He had a lot of feeling, but no biblical assurance. We are
sure of our salvation because we are in Christ; He is our salvation (1
John 5:11-13).
Many like to think of today as the "space-age." I rather like
to think of it as the "instant age." It seems the No. 1 selling point
of many articles is that you can make them quickly. Simmering soup
for hours is passe; we are now boiling water and pouring it into a
plastic cup to make soup "like Mother's"(?). People are busy; they
don't have time for anything that takes longer than 15 minutes - even
a presentation of the Gospel.
Because of this, well meaning promoters have come up with the
ultimate - the instant Gospel. Some have excelled to the point of
being able, in less than a minute, to present the Gospel, record a
decision and pray a salvation prayer. The record is probably held by
a lady in Indiana who, at a meeting attended by a friend, testified
that she led 100 souls to the Lord in 45 minutes of personal
evangelism.
In his excellent tract, Evangelical Dilemma, William McDonald
says, "There is a curious problem today in the evangelical world - one
that poses sobering questions for the church and for the individual
believer. The problem in brief is this: a great army of personal soul
winners has been mobilized to reach the populace for Christ. They are
earnest, zealous, enthusiastic, and persuasive. To their credit it
must be said that they are on the job. And it is one of the phenomena
of our times that they rack up an astounding number of conversions.
Everything seems on the plus side so far.
"But the problem is this. The conversions do not stick. The
fruit does not remain. Six months later there is nothing to be seen
for all the aggressive evangelism. The capsule technique of soul
winning has produced stillbirths.
"What lies at the back of all this malpractice in bringing souls
to the birth? Strangely enough it begins with a valid determination
to preach the pure Gospel of the grace of God. We want to keep the
message simple - uncluttered by any suggestion that man can earn or
deserve eternal life. Justification is by faith alone, apart from the
deeds of the law. Therefore, the message is 'only believe.'
"From there we reduce the message to a concise formula. For
instance, the evangelistic process is cut down to a few basic
questions and answers, as follows:
"Do you believe you are a sinner?"
"Yes."
"Do you believe Christ died for sinners?"
"Yes."
"Will you receive Him as your Saviour?"
"Yes."
"Then you are saved."
"I am?"
"Yes, the Bible says you are saved."
"At first blush the method and the message seem above criticism.
But on closer study we are forced to have second thoughts and conclude
that we have oversimplified the Gospel.
"The first fatal flaw is the missing element on repentance.
There can be no true conversion without conviction of sin. It is one
thing to agree that I am a sinner; it is quite another thing to
experience the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit in my life.
Unless I have a Spirit-wrought consciousness of my utterly lost
condition, I can never exercise saving faith. It is useless to tell
unconvicted sinners to believe on Jesus - that message is only for
those who know they are lost. We sugar-coat the Gospel when we
de-emphasize man's fallen condition. They do not have deep roots, and
though they might endure for a while, they soon give up all profession
when persecution or trouble comes (Matthew 13:21). We have forgotten
that the message is repentance toward God as well as faith in our Lord
Jesus Christ.
"A second serious omission is the missing emphasis on the
Lordship of Christ. A light, jovial mental assent that Jesus is
Savior misses the point. Jesus is first Lord, then Savior. The New
Testament always places His Lordship before His Saviorhood. Do we
present the full implications of His Lordship to people? He always
did.
"A third defect in our message is our tendency to keep the terms
of discipleship hidden until a decision has been made for Jesus. Our
Lord never did this. The message He preached included the cross as
well as the crown. He never hid His scars to win disciples. He
revealed the worst along with the best, then He told His listeners to
count the cost. We popularize the message and promise fun.
"The result of all this is that we have many people believing
without knowing that they believe. In many cases they have no
doctrinal basis for their decision. They do not know the implications
of commitment to Christ. They have never experienced the mysterious,
miraculous work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration."
If we are operating in a manner that precludes the miraculous
regenerative power of the Holy Spirit, the results we get are because
of our sales ability and bright smiles, or because "making a decision"
is the only way some people can get rid of us.
SALVATION IS NOT A MERE INTELLECTUAL ASSENT, SUCCUMBING TO A
SALES PRESSURE, OR A FEELING. SALVATION IS A SUPERNATURAL ACT OF GOD.
Unfortunately, spurred on by others' success, and whole-
heartedly falling into the numbers game, we have deified quantity and
undercut quality. The tragedy is that the quality that has been
degraded concerns the Lordship of Christ, the very One we are supposed
to be leading men to. No wonder the Christ we advertise is often as
impotent to save as Buddha, Mohammed, or the "Christ" of the cults.
True salvation is administered only by the Holy Spirit. It is
He who convicts of sin (John 16:8), reveals Christ (John 15:26), and
baptizes into the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:13).
The conviction of sin is because a person is not trusting Christ
for salvation, or trusting other than Him, and therefore he is not
saved. If a person is trusting a false representation of Christ, he
is not saved, for salvation can only be administered by the Holy
Spirit, and He always reveals and responds to the Christ of the Bible,
not a "Christ" to whose partial work sacraments, prayers, works and
merits must be added to make salvation effective.
If a man preaches that Christ plus Baptism will save, and
someone puts his trust in that Christ, he is not saved, for the
necessary work was not done by the Holy Spirit, Who testifies only of
the Christ of the Bible.
If a man preaches that Christ plus Sacraments, or Christ plus
works, or Christ plus keeping from serious sin saves, response to that
message doesn't save, for no supernatural work has been done by the
Holy Spirit.
The work of Christ is full and substitutionary. As the old hymn
says:
"If Thou hast my discharge procured;
and freely in my room endured;
the whole of wrath Divine.
Payment God cannot twice demand,
first at my bleeding Surety's Hand;
and then again at mine."
On the other hand, if a person truly trusts the Christ of the
Bible, and after falls into deficient theology of Sabbatarian
legalism, ethical necessities or any other false idea, he is saved
because the initial work was done by the Holy Spirit Who wrought Bible
salvation. After salvation, deficient theology won't un-save you; it
will only keep you from being a fully efficient Christian.
All who respond, and only those who respond, to the Holy
Spirit's revelation of the Christ of the Bible are born of God. They
are baptized by the Spirit into one body. We know that every true
Christian has trusted Christ, and that the Holy Spirit only reveals
the Christ of the Bible, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Entered by Sherie Bennett for S.O.N. (Salvation Online Network)
Edited by D. Moore (Computers for Christ #11)
Index of Preacher's Help and Notes
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