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When someone gets toward the end of preaching the gospel, he explains belief.  God saves those who believe in Jesus Christ.  All over the internet and then on paper churches do not say, believe in Jesus Christ, something that simple.  No, they say, “Ask Jesus into your heart,” “Pray and ask Jesus to save you,” “Accept Jesus as Savior,” “Trust in Jesus Christ,” and other statements.  I’m fine with “believe in Jesus Christ” or “receive Jesus Christ,” and then explaining that.

As a part of the explanation of “believe in Jesus Christ” is Jesus Christ Himself.  Who is He?  For someone to believe in Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ must be Jesus Christ.  He must be the actual one.  First, Jesus Christ is God.  Second, and in no given order, although I could argue for one, He is Lord.  People have complicated this over the last fifty plus years as much or more than anything in explaining who Jesus is.

Ask yourself why people will leave the Lordship of Christ out.  Why has Lordship become such a controversy?  It’s easy to understand how someone would not want Lordship.  Lordship clashes with the will of the person to whom you’re preaching.

Jesus Is Lord

Not Synonymous with God

In the Lordship controversy, I’ve noticed that preachers or theologians will try to move Lordship into the category of Deity.  They make God and Lord mean the same thing, so that believing Jesus Christ is God covers for believing He is Lord.  The two have definite overlap like all of these necessary attributes of Who Jesus is.  In a story from a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to Thomas, John 20:27-29 say:

John 20:27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. 28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God. 29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

Verse 28 is key, when Thomas says, “My Lord and my God.”  Jesus doesn’t refute that or alter it.  He says, “Thou hast believed.”  Thomas wasn’t saying, “My God and my God.”  The two qualities of His nature are different and distinct and necessary.

A Requirement

Romans 10:9-10 shows this as a requirement:

9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

Non-Lordship advocates like to use Romans 10:9-10 for a gospel presentation and then leave out Lordship.  What does it say?  “Confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus.”  A few verses later, Paul writes in verse 13, a commonly used evangelism verse:  “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”  Again, an evangelist might say “Lord,” and then eliminate it from the explanation of salvation.

Usage of the Lord in the Gospels

In the English (King James Version), the two words, “the Lord,” are used 6,918 times.  You see an early New Testament reference in an introduction of John the Baptist in Matthew 3:3:  “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”  Concerning Himself in the temptation in the wilderness to Satan in Matthew 4:7, Jesus says, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”  And three verses later, He says to Satan, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”

The angels at Christ’s birth proclaimed in Luke 2:11, “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”  Just as an example of one of the ways the gospels refer to Jesus as the Lord in several instances, John 11:2 says, “It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.”  Mary anointed “the Lord.”  After His resurrection, John (20:18) writes of Mary Magdalene that “she had seen the Lord.”  When John and Peter saw Jesus from their boat, John said to Peter, “It is the Lord” (21:7).

Usages of the Lord in Acts

Lordship of Christ is all over the gospel preaching of Acts.  Five times in his sermon in Acts 2, Peter refers to Jesus as “the Lord.”  In Acts 3:19 in that preaching of Peter, he says,

Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.

When Saul went out persecuting Christians, they are called, “the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1).  Soon after, Paul’s conversion profession is the simple question, “Who art thou, Lord?”  “And the Lord said, I am Jesus” (Acts 9:5).  I’m not going to keep going because Lordship is so patently obvious.

Usages of the Lord in the Epistles

The New Testament includes Lordship in the requirement and it dovetails with repentance.  This is something to which Paul refers in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20:

19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

“Ye are not your own” and “ye are bought with a price.”  Jesus bought these saints.  They are not their own any more, so they do not do what they want, but what He wants.  People have such a hard time with Lordship, because of the nature of lust.  They want what they want and this clashes with the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  That’s also why so-called evangelists might leave it out.  Believing in Jesus Christ means being owned and an outcome of obedience.  You do not obey to be saved, but you believe you have a future of obedience to the Lord Jesus.

2 Peter centers on the Lordship of Jesus with its emphasis on the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.  The apostates turn away from Jesus to walk after their own lust.  In doing so, they deny the Second Coming of Jesus Christ because they don’t want the judgment of the Lord that comes with it.  Most don’t mind salvation, but since they don’t like Lordship, they reject it or turn away from it.  Leaving Lordship out is creating a future of rampant apostasy, really buying into the apostates’ demands.

Explaining Jesus Is Lord

When I explain that Jesus is Lord in believing in Jesus Christ, I will say, “When you believe in Jesus Christ, you believe that He is Lord.”  That means believing that He is on the throne and you are not.  You relinquish the throne of your life.  This is what Jesus said, Losing your life for His sake (Matthew 10:39, 16:25, Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24, 17:33, John 12:25).  This is attached to losing your own soul, which is speaking of damnation.  Believing Jesus is Lord is in effect giving up your life to Him.  Then He can and will cleanse your soul.

More to Come