Is Jesus The Lord?

In my last blog article, I presented five questions to ask your pastor.  These questions were designed to help expose those pastors and churches that have departed from some of the foundational truths found in the Bible.  In this article, I would propose an even more fundamental question to ask your pastor or other church leaders: Is Jesus Christ the Lord?  In other words, is he your master?  Is he the one in charge?  Is he King and Head of the church?

I must admit that I in one sense feel funny even asking this question.  How could any Christian leader deny this?  It is the repeated testimony of Scripture.  Here are just a few examples:

• Matthew 28:18-20  And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (ESV)
• James 2:1 My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. (ESV)
• Romans 10:9   Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (ESV)

And yet despite the clear teaching of Scripture, sometimes the lordship of Christ appears to be affirmed only in name, if even that.  Christians must be on guard against anyone who would deny Christ's lordship either overtly or covertly.  Here are some ways this might happen in practice:

Reduce Jesus to only a good teacher.  Some claim that Jesus was just a good teacher that we can learn from, but not the Lord and King of all.  Such people want to pick and choose some of Jesus teachings to embrace, while disregarding others.  It was C.S. Lewis that popularized the response to this when he basically said that Jesus Christ was either a liar, lunatic, or Lord.  You can't hold him to be only a wise, inspiring, teacher, because he taught so much more about himself than that.  Jesus' claims regarding his authority over humanity demand a verdict.  If you don't believe his claim to lordship, then you must hold him to be either a liar or a lunatic, but how then could he also be a good teacher?  But if his teachings are correct, then that includes his teachings on he being the Lord of all and the only way of salvation!

Reduce Jesus to a legendary figure.  There are some so-called Christian teachers that want to make the Bible essentially myth.  Such teachers usually affirm that Jesus may have historically existed, but say that what we have recorded in the Bible are legendary tales far removed from historical fact.  Proponents of this way of thinking tend to feel more free to pick and choose what they want to believe in and what they do not.  As a result, these people reduce or eliminate any real substantial view of Jesus being Lord.  But the Bible time and again claims its historicity.  The records of Christ and the gospel in the Bible are not presented as myth.  Jesus is not merely some figure of legend.  The Bible claims him to be a real person of history with astonishing claims about his lordship that demand our submission.

Explain away commands of Jesus.  Sometimes you'll find people claim to affirm Jesus' lordship, but in practice repeatedly place their subjective convictions over and against the clear commands of Scripture.  You might find something like this:  Jesus gives some command in Scripture.  Someone doesn't agree with that command and so they claim God has somehow put it on their heart so as to exempt them from that commandment.  Alternatively, they might claim that God helped them to understand what Jesus really meant.  For example, the Bible has rather strict restrictions on getting a divorce, but too often people are quick to find a way to justify disregarding those restrictions if they find themselves in a difficult marriage.  Now, I do acknowledge, that we need to rightly interpret and apply the commands of Scripture.  Indeed, there are some commands that are difficult for Christians to understand and apply.  Yet, often it is clear when someone just blatantly disregards a clear command of Scripture and tries to find some way to rationalize why they don't have to obey it.  When that is done, that person is denying the lordship of Christ.

Interpret the Bible metaphysically or allegorically.  Whenever you interpret the Bible, or frankly any book, you should seek to understand what the author was literally trying to convey.  Traditionally, the church has understood the Bible literally.  Yes, that does require some qualification.  The Bible contains many different books written in different languages across a wide span of time.  A literal approach to the Scriptures must understand how each passage makes use of features like illustrations, poetry, idioms, culturally-relevant references, etc, to convey its message.  For example, when Jesus taught in parables, the genre of a parable tells us that the parable itself is not a historical account, but Jesus made up the parable to teach a religious truth.  And so a literal approach is looking to understand what the author literally meant by what he said.  This is in contrast to metaphysical or allegorical approaches to interpreting the Bible that disregard the author's intended meaning.  Such strange interpretive methods essentially provide a framework for blatant disregard of what the Bible actually says.  In that case, the interpreter with such a methodology is essentially making himself or his methodology Lord, since Jesus' own teachings are no longer seriously considered at face value.