Kurios Christos

The Battle Against Lordship

We don’t like the idea of God’s Lordship. We crave a Christ who makes no demand of his creature. We love saviors. Saviors are great. They Save us.

But when it comes to the Lordship of Christ, we find many pushing against this doctrine.

There are some who will say that all that is necessary for salvation is faith, and while we affirm this we understand that true saving faith is a faith that affirms all that the word say as about Christ.

John Flavel, the 17th century English Puritan, wrote: “The gospel offer of Christ includes all his offices. A gospel faith just so receives him to submit to Him as well as to be received by him, to imitate Him in the holiness of His life as well as to reap the purchases and fruit of His death, it must be an entire receiving of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

A.W. Tozer, to whom so many of us are indebted for wonderful writings wrote, and I quote him, “To urge men and women to believe in a divided Christ” – that is Savior but not Lord – “is bad teaching for no one can receive half of Christ or a third of Christ or a quarter of Christ. We are not saved by believing in an office or a work.”

Romans 10:9–10 ESV

because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

Notice it’s the Lordship and confession.

Our Possession (v. 7)

Romans 14:7 ESV

For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.

The first key to our understanding of the Lordship of Christ is an understanding of our possession.

WE BELONG TO THE LORD.

Psalm 100:3 ESV

Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Our Purpose (v. 8)

Romans 14:8 ESV

For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

Our Position (v. 9)

Romans 14:9 ESV

For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.