Jesus Is Lord

I started the habit of going to church when I was about 6 or 7. That’s because of Mr. Simons, a neighbor, whom I mentioned when I told you something of my spiritual biography. It was a Southern Baptist church in Brooklyn, and it’s where my Sunday School teacher, Aunt May, taught me about the importance of memorizing Scripture.

We moved to New Jersey when I was eleven, and I attended an American Baptist church from that age until I went off to college.

However, I first heard about Jesus’ lordship when I was a freshman in college attending a campus ministry retreat. That was the first time that someone stressed the fact of Jesus lordship and His call on my life. It may be that I was taught about Jesus’ lordship before this point in my life, but I have no recollection of that happening. My understanding of what it means that Jesus is Lord continues to deepen to this day.

I think that it is probably fair to say that in the days of my youth, among Christians like myself, the lordship of Jesus wasn’t stressed very much. Attention was focused elsewhere.

There are five key events in the earthly ministry of Jesus: His birth (Christmas), His death (Good Friday), His resurrection (Easter), His becoming Lord of all things (Ascension Day) and His sending the Spirit (Pentecost). Most evangelicals are aware of and take note of only the first three.

Today is Ascension Sunday. So, today we are going to take a look at one of the other neglected key events: Jesus’ ascension to the right hand of the Father, that is, Jesus becoming Lord.

There are many places in the Scriptures that refer to this event. I’ll just mention one. Listen to what Peter said on the day of Pentecost.

Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Acts 2.36

In His ascension to the right hand of the Father, Jesus is made Lord.

What exactly does that mean? David explains.

Yahweh says to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.” Yahweh will stretch forth Your strong scepter from Zion, saying, “Rule in the midst of Your enemies.” Psalm 110.1–2

It is from this position of authority, at the Father’s right hand, that Jesus will wield His scepter, the symbol of His authority, of His lordship, until all of creation submits to Him, including and especially His enemies. Jesus has become Lord.

With all of that as background, let’s take look at the lordship of Jesus.

First, let’s define what we’re talking about when we use this language of lordship. What does it mean that Jesus is Lord? You can think of it in terms of royalty. Jesus rules as a monarch. But what kind of monarch is He? Consider Queen Elizabeth II, the current monarch of the United Kingdom. What might happen if she were to say about someone, ‘Off with his head’? Well, what might happen is for that someone to say, ‘You can’t order that’. And that would be true. That’s because Queen Elizabeth rules in a constitutional monarchy, one that is limited by the laws of the land. But what if one of the Queen’s distant predecessors long ago had said the same thing from his or her throne. The next thing you who hear would be the sound of an axe and off would be that head. That’s an absolute monarchy. In that kind of monarchy what the king or queen says, goes. Jesus is an absolute monarch. He is not limited by laws or the like. He rules from the throne with absolute authority. That’s what His lordship is about.

Now, for another clarification. You are called to ‘believe in’ this Jesus. You are called to believe in Him as Savior and as Lord. But sadly, for so many, ‘believing in Jesus’ is some religious thing that you’re supposed to do. And once you do that, you’ve satisfied some important religious requirement, and it’s all good. You’re heaven-bound. You’ve believed. And that’s the end of that. But that isn’t anything like what the Bible means when it talks about believing in Jesus. It isn’t some religious thing you’re supposed to do. It’s not some magic words that get you into heaven. Rather, it’s acknowledging reality. Jesus actually is the Savior of the world and He actually is the Lord over all creation. That is just an aspect, a critical aspect, of the reality within which we live. And living accordingly is simply a matter of being wise. It’s like believing in the law of gravity and, as a result, being careful around high cliffs. Believing in Jesus is about living wisely. It’s about living according to reality. So, you can tell if someone really does believe in Jesus as Lord by watching how he lives.

What I’m pushing back against is the popular notion that a person’s religion is about some limited area of his life, an area that is reserved for that sort of thing. It really has little or even nothing to say about the rest of life. It’s just your religion. That may be true in other religions but not when it comes to Jesus. Jesus’ lordship is about the nature of reality. It’s about all of life.

Now, what might believing in Jesus as Lord look like? Jesus is quite clear about that. How many times and in how many different ways does Jesus call us to follow Him? That’s what believing in Jesus as Lord is to look like. It’s following Him so that we will learn from Him and do what He tells us.

Now, there is a problem these days that affects people’s understanding of this way of relating to Jesus. Our culture is committed to certain assumptions about how to understand life, and we all, church folk and others, are affected by those assumptions. And one of those assumptions is that this is a culture of me. It’s my life, so it’s my choices. Jesus might be Lord of my heart, but the rest of my body belongs to me to do with as I see fit. This is a limitation on Jesus’ lordship. And we’re back to the myth of Jesus as a constitutional monarch.

There was a time when this wasn’t a commitment of our culture. Life was more about ‘us’ than it was about ‘me’. People understood that maintaining connections with family and the wider community was a priority. So, no, you didn’t just pack up and move across the country because of the promise of a better job. There was a time when it was just normal to live and die in the same community. There were bonds that needed to be maintained. But that is no longer the case for the great majority of those who live in this culture. It’s my life, so it’s my choices. This is the twisted understanding of freedom that runs rampant these days.

And that, of course, affects the Church in this culture. Too many Christians understand following Jesus as having certain limits. It’s unconscious, but it still has its effects. There are certain things that, obviously, Jesus’ lordship wouldn’t mean, couldn’t mean. Jesus would never call for such things. After all, it’s my life. That cultural assumption is well hidden, but it affects us all, to a greater or lesser extent. Again, most American Christians are not conscious of this. It’s a hidden assumption that we’ve picked up from the world. But it makes a difference in how we understand life, how we understand things like the lordship of Jesus.

Let me remind you here of last week’s Reading of the Law of God.

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, [Jesus] said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. Mark 8.34–35

Do you want to save your life? Do you want to really live? If that’s the case, Jesus says that you need to lose your life. You need to acknowledge that it’s not your life anymore. It’s His. You don’t get to choose. Jesus, as Lord, gets to call the shots. And that covers everything. He is Lord.

It covers whom you will marry - or even if you will marry. And if you do get married, it covers how long you will be married, whether it’s a nice long 50 or 60 years or just a brief 29. He is Lord.

It covers what kind of life you will have. Jesus just might call you to a very difficult life. It just might be that you will never get to enjoy the kind of happiness that you see others all around you enjoying. He is Lord.

And the question to consider isn’t, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ Rather it’s, ‘What does Jesus want you to be when you grow up?’ He is Lord.

This is what Jesus is calling all people to when He calls them to follow Him. He is Lord. It’s reality.

All of this helps us understand what people are doing when they refuse to follow Him. The word that fits here is rebellion, rebellion against the monarch, against the Lord who rules all of this. And it should be clear what rebels deserve.

Remember Jesus’ parable about the rebellious farmers.

Therefore, what will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the farmers and give the vineyard to others. Mark 12.9 HCSB

Jesus will destroy such people.

There are some Christians who respond to this by saying, ‘Well, I don’t have to worry about that. I’m a Christian.’ I get a little nervous when I hear that sort of sentiment being expressed. It sounds too much like, ‘That won’t happen to me because I have a get out of jail free card.’

Consider what Jesus will be saying on the last day.

Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord! ‘will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in heaven. On that day many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in Your name, drive out demons in Your name, and do many miracles in Your name? ‘Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you! Depart from Me, you lawbreakers!’ Matthew 7.21-23

Note their words: ‘Lord, Lord’. Jesus is talking about Christians. And note the works that they did: prophesying, casting out demons and other mighty works. But also note Jesus’ description of their lives: lawbreakers. They rejected Jesus’ laws for life, His rule as Lord. Words are cheap. It’s how you live that counts. There will be those who have all the right words to say, but that will not cover up their rebellion.

Now, my goal here is not to get you all to become anxious about whether you are, in some subtle way, being rebellious against Jesus. To be sure, we all sin against Jesus’ lordship. None of us obeys nearly as well as we ought to. And that is something that we all need to work on. But consider some of the saints who have been put before us as examples. One word that Scripture applies to them is the word ‘blameless’. That does not mean ‘perfect’. It doesn’t even mean that these people sin less. One thing that it means is that they are quick to repent when the Spirit points out some sin of rebellion. Submitting to Jesus’ lordship is not about being perfect. But it is about being blameless, being quick to repent.

I’ve mentioned before a prayer that I include in my morning prayers. It’s worth mentioning again. It’s a prayer requesting that the Spirit point out my sin so that I can repent of it. It’s the last two verses of Psalm 139, and it goes like this.

Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139.23–24

In this, I pray first to be shown any sin in my life, any ‘wicked way’, any rebellion against Jesus’ lordship, and then, by repentance, to be led into the way of life, ‘the way everlasting’. I commend it to you. The Spirit has granted my request by showing me, from time to time, some sin, some rebellion, that just has to go. And He gives me the grace to repent of that so that I can return to pursue the way everlasting, following Jesus as Lord.

So, how are you doing at being a blameless person? How are you doing at being diligent to repent? Is it something that you pray about regularly?

Now, let’s to look at a different aspect of following Jesus as Lord. Again, from last week’s Reading of the Law of God.

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Jesus wants us to follow Him, to follow Him as Lord. Understanding precisely what He is calling for is important because this is where submitting to His lordship affects the nitty-gritty of life. But I fear that too many are not clear about what it means to follow Him.

Too many think that what Jesus is calling for is for them to read their Bibles, do their best to figure out what it is teaching and then try hard to apply to their lives what they’ve learned. The assumption is that there is a difference between Peter, James and John and us. They could literally follow Jesus from town to town because He was here on the earth. But He is no longer here. So, we need to go for the second-best option: Bible reading and the rest. Is that what Jesus expects now? Is that what following Jesus looks like today? I really don’t think so.

Following Jesus today is just like what Peter, James and John did. It’s listening to Him as He teaches and commands. Today, He will use the completed Bible to do that. It’s a tool He employs. But knowing the Bible is not the goal. The goal is to listen to Him so that you can submit to Him as Lord. This is where gaps in understanding the ministry of the Spirit causes so many problems. He is, after all, the Spirit of Jesus. And one of the things He was sent to do is to speak Jesus’ teachings and commands to us.

We are rightly concerned about falling for crazy ideas about the leading of the Spirit. But that doesn’t mean that the Spirit doesn’t lead. It doesn’t mean that Jesus doesn’t still teach and command, now by His Spirit. Hearing from Jesus is still the goal. It is a skill to be learned. But how?

It’s not complicated. He will teach you how to hear from Him if you simply ask Him to do that. And we’re back to the grace that comes our way because we pray for it. As Jesus teaches this skill to you, you will be able to follow Him just like Peter, James and John did. Let me encourage you to pray for that. Remember, God still does stuff.

Last thought. What does it mean to be a Christian who is without a firm grasp of and a wholehearted submission to the lordship of Jesus? I have absolutely no idea. It contradicts the very heart of the Gospel. On the other hand, I do have an idea about what it means to be a Christian who does understand Jesus’ lordship and is working at submitting to it. It means a life of growing intimacy with Him, a life that makes a difference in all the right ways, a life that weathers the storms, a life that makes sense. It is a life that is like what Peter, James and John experienced. What else could it be since Jesus really is Lord?