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 bilateral 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, firsthand, 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 selfrespect… 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 wholeheartedly 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)