The Lordship of Christ: Introduction B

Repentance is not a human work. It's a work that God does. Now, what we're saying is that when God saves someone, He grants them repentance. He grants them the affirmation by His Spirit that Jesus is Lord. The truth that you know can happen, but you probably never think they will happen to you. Things like being diagnosed with a terminal disease, or losing a loved one in an accident, or this scenario, standing before Jesus and hearing Him say to you, I never knew you. The fact is, some people who think they're Christians will stand before Christ one day, and He won't know them. He will reject them. The question is, how can you make sure that won't happen to you? John MacArthur answers that today as he continues his study, The Gospel According to Jesus.

And now, here's John. Certainly treating the subject of the lordship of Christ should be a primary study for any believer. I want to approach the subject from a sort of polemic viewpoint. That is, I'd like to defend the lordship of Christ against what I believe to be a current attack. I think this attack on the lordship of Christ has been coming for a long time. There are those people who claim that you can be saved and not make Christ Lord, not acknowledge that Christ is Lord, accepting Him only as Savior. There are people who claim they were saved at some point when they made a decision to believe. At that point, they took total forgiveness. At that point, they anticipated they received eternal life, and they gave back absolutely nothing to God.

Absolutely nothing. They were told they were Christians because they made a quote-unquote decision. They were eager, believe me, to adopt the popular notion that you could have Jesus as Savior and not necessarily acknowledge His lordship. Sometime later in their life, they would get serious about living, and at that time, they could go from just being Christians to being lordship Christians.

So where does it come from, and why are people doing this? I think there are two reasons for it. It really was born out of a major concern for grace. They wanted grace to be so gracious that, as one writer said, if you dare God to save you, He'll have to save you.

That's how gracious He is. They wanted grace to be so gracious that, in one moment of time, if any sinner said, I believe that God would instantly save him and save him forever no matter what. And the second thing is, I think the modern movement has been spawned because people are trying to develop a theology to save some people who died in unbelief who once made a decision. More people reject the doctrine of hell in order to get their relatives out of hell than any theological constraint.

You say, what do you mean by that? I mean, the people who tend to deny eternal hell are the people who don't want to admit that somebody they love went there. So they want to deny the doctrine so they can get the people out in their own mind. The same thing is true of this theology.

I think it's born out of a confusion about people who once made a decision and then lived a life of denial of everything that supposedly they once decided to acknowledge. And they want to make sure they're saved for eternity so they develop a theology that will embrace them into the kingdom. They're in it, they just don't inherit it, whatever distinction that is. That's why one of the books is titled The Hungry Inherit. And the Beatitudes then refer to the second level Christians. The rest of the Christians don't inherit. The second level ones, they inherit.

They possess some things the first level people don't. This has also been described as the carnal Christian. That the carnal Christian is the one who made the decision, is saved, took forgiveness, got the guarantee of heaven, and then lives a life of total disarray with himself still on the throne. There used to be a little booklet that had one circle with all kinds of chaos and self on the throne.

That was the natural man unregenerate. The second circle had all kinds of chaos with self on the throne of the life and then the Holy Spirit stuck in the circle. That's the saved person. The Holy Spirit's there.

He's just not in charge. The third circle had a perfect order in the life, a little throne, and the Holy Spirit was on the throne and self was in the corner. That's the spiritual Christian. That was reflecting a category of people who are saved but still rule their own life. And their life's in total chaos. Nothing's really transformed. It's the same chaos as in circle number one, the unregenerate, except the Holy Spirit's in there somewhere. But he doesn't have any control of anything.

It's the same idea. Those are the people who don't inherit the kingdom. Those are the people who haven't made Christ's Lord in this particular view. So the typical call to salvation comes like this. Accept Jesus. Ask Jesus into your heart.

Make a decision. Believe and that seems to be it. Now all of those are biblical thoughts and concepts. It's not that in and of themselves they're lies.

It's just that they're so incomplete. We hear people say, well, you need to pray to receive Christ. And then they say to someone who prays a little prayer, now you can be sure you're saved, and they give them a little assurance thing without talking about what kind of invitation Jesus would have used such as follow me, forsake all, lay down your life, turn from your sin, repent, obey.

We're going to discuss the three major areas. The Bible speaks on this issue. What is the essence of saving faith?

We're going to talk about that. What is the nature of true repentance? And what does it mean to be a disciple? These are really what we have called easy believism viewpoints. They want to make sure that salvation is simply and easily a matter of acknowledging Jesus as Savior. Another advocate writing in a theological journal says this, it is heresy to hold the view that for salvation a person must trust Jesus as Savior from sin and must also commit himself to Christ as Lord of his life submitting to his sovereign authority.

It is heresy to believe that, he says. They don't want the word commitment. They don't want the word surrender.

They just want the word appropriate, believe, receive. One local pastor in our area, well known and has really an effective ministry, says saving faith is not the commitment of one's life to the Lord. They teach that genuine believers can succumb to apostasy.

They can totally depart from the faith. Look at Mark chapter 8, verse 34, he summoned the multitude with his disciples, said to them, if anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel shall save it. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

Listen, this is an invitation to an unbeliever, not a Christian to the second level. This is talking to a guy who, if he doesn't act, is going to lose what? His soul. What's a man going to give in exchange for his soul? Whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him. If you have shame toward Christ, he'll have shame toward you. But they say this is talking to carnal Christians trying to pull them to the next level of commitment to the Lordship of Christ. Not so. He's talking about people who, if they don't do this, are going to lose their eternal soul.

Well, there are so many other illustrations. They go to John 4, the woman at the well, and say all Jesus said was, Drink. Drink. But what they forget is when the woman said, Give me the water that I may drink, he didn't give it to her. He started to tell her about her what? Her sin. There was something yet to be covered. In Matthew chapter 13, verse 44, the parable is very simple. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. A man found and hid from joy over he goes and sells all he has and buys the field. Another parable, a kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking to find pearls on finding that one pearl of great value went and sold all he had and bought it.

Very simple parable. A man found something of value, sold everything he had, took it. Talking about salvation. One man stumbled across in the field. Another man was searching for it all his life. Both found it. When they found it, they sold all they had to have the treasure.

It's a picture of the exchange. I give up all I am for all he is. What are you going to do with that parable? Well, if you're going to hold to a non-lordship salvation, and if you're going to believe that you don't have to give up anything, you can't have this parable. Be a pagan or an unsaved man giving up everything he is to receive everything Christ offers.

So you interpret it this way. The thing buried in the field is the church. The person buying it is Christ. So the parable typically by dispensationalists has been that Jesus finding the church gives everything on the cross to buy the church.

The problem with that is that the treasure was in the field and the pearl was of great price and I defy anyone to ascertain that the unregenerate people in this world for whom Christ died were worth anything. Besides, to me it seems a rather obscure treatment. One very familiar writer says Christians can leave God out of their lives and live according to the old nature.

It's the same kind of thing. All of this opposes the clear teaching of Scripture. They misunderstand grace.

They're trying to accommodate, I believe, loved ones who have defected. They want to get more people into heaven so they want to stretch the gospel. But it just doesn't square with Scripture.

It just doesn't square. It's just not what the Bible teaches. Underneath all the calls to salvation in Scripture is the underlying sovereign authoritative lordship of Christ.

And it has to be acknowledged. I mean, how would I feel as a pastor if I had to say to you, now I know some of you are only at level one. You haven't made Christ, Lord, so I'm not having anything to say to you because you're just out there doing whatever you want. But for those of you who have come to second level, you need to strengthen that commitment. You need to live out that commitment.

That doesn't make sense. When you gave your heart and soul to Christ and submitted and bowed the knee before Him in submissive salvation and yielded your life to Him all under the power of the Spirit of God, you began a life in which He is Lord and progressively your life should be evidencing that obedience to His lordship. In the book of Acts, you have the apostolic preaching of the cross.

In the book of Acts, you have the preaching pattern for the rest of the centuries of the church's life. Ninety-two times in the book of Acts, Jesus is called Lord, two times called Savior. Dominantly, He is Lord. He is Lord. Lordship was at the very heart of gospel preaching in the early church.

The very heart of it was affirming His lordship. Peter says in Acts 2, it shall be that salvation comes to everyone who calls on the name of the what? The Lord. The Lord.

There's no question about it. It's absolutely every place in the scripture. Believe in the Lord Jesus, Acts 16, 31 to the Philippian jailer and you shall be saved.

You shall be saved. In John, I want you to notice chapter 3 verse 36. Listen to this. He who, follow this thought, he who believes in the Son has eternal life.

Listen to this. But he who does not obey the Son shall not see life. Therefore, believing is tied to what? Obedience. They're inseparable.

Absolutely inseparable. In Romans chapter 10 verse 9, if you confess with your mouth Jesus as what? Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved. Verse 12, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek for the same Lord is Lord of all.

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, verse 13, shall be saved. He is Lord. And lordship implies that he is sovereign.

It implies that he is in charge. You go back through the gospels and the whole New Testament. And you have affirmation after affirmation of the lordship. I was just thinking of chapter 14 of Romans verse 9. For to this end, Christ died and lived again that he might be what? Lord. He is Lord. That first evangelism outside of Israel, chapter 10 of Acts, verse 36. The word which he sent to the sons of Israel, Peter, said, preaching peace through Jesus Christ, he is Lord of all.

Now some have said, well, yes, yes. But Lord means deity. It just means deity. It just means God. It does not mean sovereign master. It does not imply obedience. It does not imply surrender.

It does not imply submission. It only means deity. You just have to believe that Jesus is God.

You don't have to submit to Him. In fact, one writer says that if you make kurios, Lord, mean sovereign master, you divest the call to faith from his deity. You can say Lord and mean both deity and sovereign master. That's a straw man.

Not so. It's not necessary to eliminate the concept of deity from the word Lord just because it implies the idea of sovereign master. Lord does refer to deity. Lord does mean Jesus is God. But God means he's in charge. Having lunch one day with one who holds his view, he said, I believe kurios simply means Jesus is God. I said, OK, let's just let's accept that.

I'll buy that. Kurios means he's God. Let me ask you a question. What does being God mean? Does it mean you're in charge? If it doesn't mean you're in charge, then it doesn't mean God.

You don't gain anything saying that. If he's God, he's in charge. If he's deity, he's sovereign.

Can't mean anything less. Thomas acknowledged it. What did Thomas say when he saw Jesus Christ after the resurrection? My Lord and my what do you think he meant? How do you think he used the word Lord to refer to deity? Did he say my God and my God?

No. God acknowledged deity. Lord acknowledged what sovereignty inherent in the term is authority, dominion, the right to rule, the right to command, the obligation to be believed and obeyed. In 1 Timothy 1 16 it says, And yet for this reason I found mercy in order that in me, as the foremost Jesus Christ, might demonstrate his perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in him for eternal life. Now to the king, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God. I mean, who is the only God? He is the the king.

He is the king and a person living in rebellion against that. Not acknowledging him as Lord, not affirming him as Lord, not submitting his life to him can't be said. And then they say this. Yeah, they say, but MacArthur, what you're teaching is human works, salvation. They're saying, you see, you're saying that before a person can receive the grace of salvation, they have to on their own acknowledge Jesus as Lord and no dead human being dead in sin could ever do that. And so you're postulating a work salvation. You have to repent. You have to acknowledge Jesus as Lord.

Then you can be saved. No, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that at all.

I'll tell you what I'm saying. I'm saying what the Bible says. And what the Bible says in First Corinthians 12 three is pretty clear. Therefore, I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus is a curse.

Now watch this one. And no one can say Jesus is Lord except by what? The Holy Spirit. Repentance is not a human work. It's a work that God does. Now, what we're saying is that when God saves someone, He grants them repentance. He grants them the affirmation by His Spirit that Jesus is Lord. Now we're going to read a century English Puritan wrote, The Gospel offer of Christ includes all His offices. A Gospel faith just so receives Him. To submit to Him as well as to be received by Him, to imitate Him in the holiness of His life, as well as to reap the purchases of fruit of His death, it must be an entire receiving of the Lord Jesus Christ. A. W. Tozer to whom so many of us are indebted for wonderful writings wrote, and I quote him, To urge men and women to believe in a divided Christ, that is, Savior but not Lord, is bad teaching for no one can receive half of Christ, or a third of Christ, or a quarter of Christ. We are not saved by believing in an office or a work.

What did he mean? We're saved by believing in a person, the fullness of all that He is as well as what He did. To see the issue in bold relief, very bold relief, we need to just look at one illustration in Matthew 19, and I'll close with this.

And you know it well, we've gone over it. In Matthew 19, 16, here's the single best illustration of the evangelism of Jesus. Verse 16, One came to Him and said, Teacher, what good things shall I do that I may have eternal life? How do I get eternal life?

That's the question. How do I get eternal life? Jesus said, why are you asking me about what's good?

It's only one who's good. If you want to enter life, do what? Keep the commandments. Is that the right answer?

Is that the right answer? Somebody came to you and said, What do I do to get eternal life? Would you say, keep the commandments?

You say, that's works, that's works, that's works. Why did Jesus say that? Why didn't He say, oh, believe? Accept, make a decision.

In a moment in time, believe. No, He said, keep the commandments. He said, which ones? Verse 18, Jesus said, you shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, you shall love your neighbors yourself. He picked out the second half of the Decalogue, Ten Commandments, and He meant not only outwardly but inwardly because of Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount that whatever the law said, it said not only to the action of a man, but to the thought life of a man. So He said, keep those commandments. The young man said to Him, all these things I have kept.

What am I lacking? See what He says, I look at my life, oh, I'm perfect. I not only don't murder, I don't hate anybody. I've never committed adultery, I've never had an evil thought about doing it. I've never stolen, I've never even coveted. I've never lied and never even thought about lying.

I've perfectly honored my father and mother all my life and I've loved everybody as much as I love myself. Liar. Listen, if salvation was a matter of believing some facts and grabbing on and getting forgiveness in heaven, Jesus would have said to the guy, here are the facts, believe. But what He said to him is the first thing you have to do is acknowledge your what? Your sin and repent, and he wouldn't do it.

He wouldn't do it. Jesus then said to him, all right, verse 21, if you want to be complete, perfect, want to get into God's heaven, go sell your possessions, give to the poor, you'll have treasure in heaven and come and do what? Follow me. First test, will you admit your sin? Second test, will you submit to my lordship? And the first command I'm giving you is sell everything you have, give to the poor. You say, do you get saved by doing that?

No. But you demonstrate whether you're willing to follow the commands of Christ. He said, I don't want eternal life that bad.

Went away grieved. He owned much property. Took property, possessed his property, and gained hell tragically. Jesus wanted two things to come clear to that, young man. When you want into the kingdom, when you want eternal life, it is not as simple as just a decision, believing some facts. There must be an acknowledgement and turning from sin, and there must be a willingness to submit to my authority even if I ask you to do the most difficult thing in your life, to give up that which you love the most. Let's establish, number one, the depth of your sinfulness, and number two, the height of my sovereignty. That's the issue.

The man left. That's a very, very lucid illustration. When you come to Christ and are truly saved, the Spirit of God will move on your spirit, and you will call Jesus what? Lord, next time we're going to look at the essence of saving faith. What is it?

How does it operate? Let's pray together. Thank you, Father, for our time in your Word. Confirm these truths to our heart, and help us, Lord, to be able to properly preach your saving truth that folks might not be deceived, but that they might be saved. For Jesus' sake, amen.

That's Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. Today he continued his study, The Gospel According to Jesus. You know, the truths we're looking at this week have been debated for generations now, and a question at the heart of the debate is this. Can a person receive Jesus as Savior and yet not repent of his sin and not submit to Jesus as Lord? Or, to put it another way, does salvation always result in a changed life in the here and now? John, that's an important question.

Well, it is an important question, and it's not complicated. Jesus said to Nicodemus, You must be born from above. That's regeneration. Nicodemus' question was, How do I get into the kingdom?

Jesus didn't say, Pray this prayer. Jesus said, You have to be regenerated. And that which then poses the question, How do you become regenerated?

The answer to which is, You can't on your own. That's why in that same John 3 passage, our Lord himself says, The Spirit, regeneration is like this. The Spirit comes and goes, and you can tell that he's moving, but you can't identify him. It's the mystery of divine, sovereign work. So when you say to someone, If you'd like to be born again, pray this prayer, and you can be born again.

That's going too far. You can say to the sinner, You need to be reborn again. You will never enter God's kingdom until you have been reborn, until you have been regenerated. And you can ask God to give you new life.

It isn't magically going to happen because you recited words. This is a familiar evangelical approach to this. And Jesus even went farther than that to say, You need to count the cost, because this is going to cost you everything. He said, If you want to come after me, deny yourself. And that's a wholesale blanket denial of everything that is priority and precious to you. Giving it all up if necessary to even lay down your life and then follow Christ in obedience. I mean, that's very explicit.

But you don't hear that. You don't hear evangelists even say, Are you willing to deny yourself? I mean, that's John 12.

You have to hate your own self. You have to reject your own desires, your own will, your own ambitions, your own impulses, your own treasures, and exchange it all for the glory of salvation because the salvation that God gives us so infinitely beyond that. So I'm just very, very thankful that early on in my ministry I got into this because it's been a staple through the years that has found itself, I think, into the fabric of Reformed doctrine in our time as well. The publication of the Gospel According to Jesus in 1988 really was a turning point. And we would love to put one in your hand. If you're interested, you can order it from grace to you.

That's right, friend. It's important to know the difference between the false gospel of easy believism and the true gospel the Lord himself taught. John's book, The Gospel According to Jesus, will help with that, so get your copy when you contact us today.

You can call us at 855-GRACE or shop online at gty.org. The Gospel According to Jesus costs $15 in hardcover and shipping is free. This book is really a classic by John.

It's great for a new believer or for someone you've been witnessing to. To order, call 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. That's our website, gty.org, and when you visit there, remember that you have access to all of John's sermons, more than 3,500 messages, free to download in both MP3 and transcript format. You can also tap into a wide range of other Bible study tools, including daily devotionals, study guides for John's radio series, and blog articles. You can also watch Grace to You television. You'll find all of that and more at our website, gty.org.

Again, that's gty.org. Now on behalf of John MacArthur and our entire staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Tune in tomorrow as John continues his study, The Gospel According to Jesus. He's going to help you compare the gospel you believe with the gospel Jesus preached, because it's vital that they match. So be here for another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You. .