Jesus is Lord. Those who claim to belong to Christ say it, we pray it, we sing it, but do we live it? When we say, “Jesus is Lord,” we ought to be doing more than merely acknowledging He created the universe. If He is Lord, then He has complete control of our lives (Colossians 1:15-18). We are to sanctify the Lord, setting Him upon the throne of our hearts even when it is difficult to follow Him (1 Peter 3:15).
I suppose that many of us in this contemporary age do not like being told what to do. We want Jesus to be our Savior, but we are not so big on Him being our Lord. We cannot have one without the other. When following Him is easy, we’ll let Him have the chair, but we still want to sit on the throne when temptations come (Luke 8:13). Some of us have believed the religious lie that we can practice selective obedience – where we choose when we will and will not obey. This is no kind of obedience. This is why the religious world lives in confusion because people adapt their own standards for their faith, morality, worship, and life rather than conforming to the words of the Master, the standard that will judge us all (John 12:48). Many will follow God’s word when it fits in with their wishes, but they also seem to think that God has opened His throne to man’s feelings when following the word of God becomes too morally or socially challenging. And yet, they rejoice in the promises of God all the while failing to heed His conditions for salvation. They claim they love the Lord, but they do not listen to Him; love listens and obeys (Luke 6:46; John 14:15). To merely listen to what the Lord says without obeying is to follow the foolish to destruction (Matthew 7:24-27). How can we claim to know God and have His grace working in our lives if when it comes to His word we have stopped up ears (Matthew 13:15)?
Jesus says we are to obey all things that He has commanded (Matthew 28:20). The church is not a democracy where everyone should think up ways that they feel would best express our religion and then decide what is to be done by majority vote. The church is a monarchy; it is a kingdom established by the King of Kings (Matthew 16:18-19; 1 Timothy 6:14-15). He has all authority (Matthew 28:18). Christ is the head of the church (Colossians 1:18). It is our duty as the body to precisely follow the lead of the head, not to act independently of Him (Colossians 2:19).
Many claim to know the Lord, but the only way to truly know if we know Him is to keep His commandments (1 John 2:3). This will determine whether He knows us in the judgment (Matthew 7:21-23; 25:12).
-Mark Day
Leave a Reply