The Lord of Your Life

One of the most divisive controversies of the last twenty-five years has been called the “lordship salvation” controversy. You’ve heard it popularized by the idea of the “carnal Christian.” I talked to a young man a couple of years ago, and he had professed Christ—said he was a Christian. He was not only using drugs illicitly, but he was selling them, was living with a girl that was not his wife and was involved in a completely hedonistic lifestyle with no manifestation whatsoever of anything of godliness.

I asked him about this, and he said, “Don’t worry, it’s OK. I’m a carnal Christian.” That is, “I’ve received Jesus as my Savior, but I’m going to wait a while before I submit to Him as my Lord.” You see, that disjunction is of recent origin between Christ as Savior and Christ as Lord, is as foreign and antithetical to the New Testament as anything can be. I get terrified when I listen to the jargon of Christians who say, “I asked Jesus into my heart, and I invited Him to be the Lord of my life.” Have you ever heard that? What was He before that invitation?

As a matter of objective reality, God who created heaven and earth has made Christ the Lord of the universe. He rules; He doesn’t wait for you to invite Him. He rules you whether you want Him to rule you or don’t want Him to rule you. You can be hostile to His reign. You can be a renegade in His dominion. You may fight against His just empowerment as the King of the kings and Lord of the lords. But all of that does not reduce Him to impotency. What is impotent are our attempts to supplant Him as Lord because God has decreed His lordship.