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Jesus is Lord
By daniel | April 25, 2004
Hello there!
Yep, Jesus really is Lord. Undeniable fact, that. You can?t avoid it. You can?t threaten its verity and you can?t make it any truer than it already is. You can?t dethrone Jesus, nor can you make Him your lord. You can just agree. You can say, “Yes.” Yes to what, you say? Don?t bother yourself with the details. Just say “yes” to Him, to whatever it is He may want, and apply that decision to the details as they come. It really is that simple.
And that simplicity can rout a lot of the confusion you may feel. Take, for example, the quintessential question, “Am I saved?” Let me suggest to you that if you are unsure if you are saved it is probably because you have a life, a pattern of behavior, that gives you reason to doubt. Please note, however, that at the name of Jesus every tongue will not confess that they are, in fact, saved. No, rather, everyone everywhere will have to finally agree that Jesus is, in fact, Lord. So perhaps you should stop wrestling with whether or not you are “saved” and simply surrender to the Lord who saves. If you are already His, such surrender is bound to bear the “fruits appropriate to repentance.” And if you are not, that is how one gets saved. One sees the sacrifice, believes Jesus for the Gift, and comes to Him on His terms, as Lord. See the simplicity here? Bend your knee. The same kind of simplicity holds true across the whole Christian experience. Bend your knee. Submit, not an area of your life but rather yourself, to Jesus and live free.
Take a moment and read Mark 14:32-42. Here we have something very interesting with regard to the interplay of the human will and the will of God. Apparently, Jesus did not want to die on the cross, to become sin for us, to be rejected by His Father. Apparently, His will was that the whole matter could somehow pass Him by, and obviously He felt very strongly about it. So strongly, in fact, that He had to pray to resolution three times in a row.
But the resolution is the point. It appears that a perfect human will, while it will usually perfectly mirror God?s intentions, may (in certain circumstances), in fact, not. The Father intended one thing and Jesus clearly wanted another. And Jesus? will was perfect, unmarred by the negative momentum of sin and self-worship. But underneath Jesus? desire was the realization and resolution that it is not what I want that is truly, ultimately important. Nor is what I want ultimately important to me. In the final analysis, the perfect human will (or the will on its way to perfection) weighs its desires against God?s and decides to go with God?s. And that is what the Bible means when it says Jesus “learned obedience,” and perhaps that is how we learn obedience as well.
If you find yourself discouraged by how self-protecting and self-advancing and self-infatuated you feel, I have some good news. You are not being asked to feel submissive. You are being asked to submit. And that is a choice. And that choice will eventually, if you open to the Spirit, result in your feelings coming along too. No passage in the Scripture says, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not feel like obeying me?” No, Jesus asks, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not do the things that I say?” Now, while doing the will of God with a bitter, resentful, train wreck of an emotional life is not what God is after, waiting until you feel like doing what God wants is not going to work either. The fact is, your feelings change, and your feelings are a result of many factors and stimuli at any one time. If they help you obey, thank God for them. If they are an obstacle, thank God for the opportunity to deny your soul-self and do as you are told. Either way, do not despise your feelings and at the same time, do not give them more importance than God does. If they help, use them. If they do not, ignore them. Even thinking directly about your feelings too much will give them too much authority over you. Just hear the Voice and do the Will. Jesus is Lord, your feelings will never agree with that until your will has settled the matter with consistency. Do not pay attention to willful feelings. Pay attention to Jesus. He, after all, is Lord.
Finally, I?d like to say that I love Jesus. Further, I love Jesus because I am aware, at many levels, of what He has done for me. More, I am aware, at some levels, of who He is, and I love who He is. He owns me. He owns me and I love that. I love that because being owned by Jesus gives me a way to express the way I love Him, like His cross expresses the way He loves me. Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). In his first letter, John develops this, claiming that “His commandments are not burdensome” (I John 5:3). The reason His commandments are not burdensome is simple ? I am looking for a way to express my love for Him, and in keeping His commandments I have found that way. Jesus loves me. I know it. I see the evidences of it. In my heart, that love has been spilled all over by the Holy Spirit. I find myself looking for a way to respond, so when Jesus says, “Hey, I have a way you can love me well. Do what I say” I rejoice. Doing the will of God is not burdensome for those who love Him. Rather, the fact that I can do anything to express my love is very good news.
And so I remember David?s vehement statement, “I will not offer to God something that costs me nothing.” Neither will I. I will offer to God something that costs me everything. I will lose myself for His sake. I, like Jesus, want to cling to nothing. I will offer Him my total obedience. Now, I know I will yet fail, but I do not intend to. And that is the point. I intend to do the will of God, and I am glad it costs me my rights and my reputation and my comfort and my pride and my life. Because He has loved me, I have no interest in offering to Him something that costs me nothing. Rather, I intend to offer Him unwavering, costly obedience. He is Lord of all, and He is mine.
His,
Virgil
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