JESUS IS LORD! REALLY?

JESUS IS LORD? REALLY?
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matt 7:21 NIV)

A recent article in a national Christian magazine asked the question: Were Jesus and Paul in conflict? Did Jesus teach one thing and the Apostle Paul another? A shallow reading of the New Testament might leave that impression, especially concerning salvation. One might think, from the quotation in Matthew above, that according to Jesus it takes more than calling him Lord to be saved. But then we read Paul’s statement in Rom 10:9 and wonder, “What’s up with that?”

Here’s Paul’s statement: “That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (NIV)

I love to quote Romans 10:9 to people who are in doubt or wondering how to be saved. But most 21st century Americans don’t understand what it means. It needs a little explaining.

When some folks say, “Jesus is Lord,” they are repeating a culturally acceptable religious slogan. Its like, “Of course I believe Jesus is Lord, just like I believe in Santa Clause at Christmas and Baseball in June and Hotdogs and Apple Pie and Chevrolet.”

Jesus is Lord is part of Southern culture in the same way that “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet” is in other cultures. He is Lord in the sense that he is the chosen deity of our civil religion, in the same way that Jupiter was Lord if you were an early Roman or Zeus if you were Greek. He’s the guy symbolized in the stained glass windows, and the crosses in the graveyards. But it isn’t personal. There is no personal significance to the statement. You don’t necessarily have to sacrifice any personal autonomy to say it.

To people who use the phrase like that Jesus will say, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” The person never entered into a faith relationship of loyal obedience to Jesus. Jesus is a name we tag on to the end of a prayer but he is not a person we know or a Lord to whom we swear unwavering allegiance.

But to say, “Jesus is Lord,” in the Romans 9 sense is at one and the same time a highly personal as well as totally public swearing of allegiance. Calling someone, anyone, Lord, in that culture was to recognize and accept their authority over you as master. And, at the time Paul wrote that sentence Roman citizens were being required to say “Caesar is Lord” to maintain citizenship. They had to swear allegiance to Caesar just like a Nazi swearing allegiance to Hitler. Death waited anyone who refused.

So the true believer, back then and today, is someone who swears allegiance to Jesus Christ and never turns back from a lifetime of obedient faith. He is “one who does the will of my father who is in heaven.” In Elisabeth Elliott’s words, it is a long obedience in the same direction. It doesn’t mean that we do it perfectly all the time. But the overall pattern of life is one of faithfulness to Christ, no matter what the cost.

Just saying “Jesus is Lord” doesn’t give us entry into eternity, nor does the obedience itself save us. But it is the evidence of a person that truly belongs to Jesus. To that person Jesus promises, “If you confess me before men, I will confess you before my father who is in heaven.”