Promises and Secrets
A website for those not afraid to examine their beliefs, compare them to the real world, and make sure they fit.
Learning Lordship
VIEWPOINT
How does a new Christian who knows little about Jesus, make the decision to allow Him to be Lord of their life? What does that entail? Where do you learn how to do that? How long does it take?
FACT
When a Christian decides to make Jesus the Lord of his or her life, they must learn what the Lord wants and expects of them.
VIEWPOINT
What do you think?
VIEWPOINT
OK. You believe in Christ and accept Him as your Savior. Now what?
Many are convinced that this is enough. They feel that they are saved and now waiting for the Jesus bus to whisk them away into eternal life without having to follow any rules. Many think that there is now no reason to follow all those rules, so they can do what they want, within reason of course, and they will enter the kingdom of heaven.
What do you believe? You have been told that you are already saved. You have been told that you are not saved yet, but must commit to Him and allow Him to become Lord of your life - in other words, submit to Him as owner of your life - do what He does, do what He says, and give glory to His Father in heaven. You want to learn more, but your pastor says that you can't earn your way to eternal life, so don't be caught following rules. After you balk, resist, and struggle against the term "submit", and then take the time to look at the statements of Jesus, and the authors of the books of the New Testament, you see that you are not there yet, and now see the need to follow through. Now what?
Speaking of authors...
John MacArthur, a popular author and pastor of Grace Community Church, has written a book called The Gospel According to Jesus. This book, like most of his other books, is well-written and explains perfectly the subject of the real gospel and lordship as addressed in the Bible. While the author does not live the gospel or the lordship that he describes, he has a beautiful understanding and presentation of the issue.
I feel I must to recommend this book to you, but I do not recommend attending his church or practicing the same "Christianity" as Mr. MacArthur. If you want to learn the true meaning of lordship, it is there in his book. If you follow the words he writes, you will understand lordship. However, you cannot practice the same lordship if you ignore the Sabbath, mix paganism with your worship, and eat meat from animals called "detestable" and "defiling" by the Lord, as MacArthur allows in his church. True lordship requires obedience to every command from God, not the ones we pick and choose.
Follow Him
Up to now, you have heard that Jesus loves you enough to die for you. You've been told that if you follow Him, you will gain eternal life. What does it mean to follow Him? How do you do that?
How do you learn what to do?
In a Bible study Tuesday afternoon, we tried to address the subject of lordship. There are actually two basic camps of thought on this issue. Those who do not believe lordship is necessary and those who do. We sat and discussed issues for two hours and didn't really even get started on the basis for that decision. Instead, we discussed some very real issues about how the Lord will bring each person to Him.
My point was that once you made the decision to accept Christ, you should have begun to seek God's will in order to understand what He expects of us (Matthew 7:7
7"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."
). Another's point was that God will deal with each person individually and they don't even have to make the decision as God will bring them along in His own way. I objected because that way could go on for years with little or no results. My wife said that not everyone has the same "thirst for knowledge" as mine, so they will not be able to approach the issue in the same manner as I did. And so on. That discussion is the reason for this page. The balance of this article will be my viewpoint, supported by Bible references. Please feel free to let us know your view on the matter.
Submit to the Lord
Lordship is the submission of our lives to the Lord and His instruction. What does this mean? When Jesus says to do something, we do it. A secondary issue of lordship is to give glory to the Father. According to Jesus (Matthew 6:9-13
9"This, then, is how you should pray:
" 'Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11Give us today our daily bread.
12And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.' "
), we give glory by our obedience and worship. To honor the Father, we obey His commands and ask for His will to be done on earth - where we live. Those commands are the same ones Jesus mentioned in John 14:15
15"If you love me, keep my commands."
, the ones He called "my commands".
We have to obey?
Now, there is some controversy here regarding which commands are God's and which are those of Jesus. Some say that the two commandments of Matthew 22:37-40
37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
replace all the other laws from God and Moses. However, verse 40 says that all the other laws depend on keeping these two ideas in your heart and soul and mind. He didn't say that He replaced the law with these. These are commands showing how to stay in the will of the Father and keep the right attitude about it.
Faith in what?
This is where your faith comes in. If you follow all the other laws with these two ideas in your heart, then you will be willingly acting in the will of the Father, not grudgingly complying with some harsh orders from a heartless tyrant. You will be following the will of God because you are in Him, not in order to get in Him. You will be doing the right thing for the right reason.
Faith in His will
For example, God commanded "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy...". So, if you love God, what will you do? Ignore the command? If you are like most people, you have heard an excuse from your pastor that the Sabbath is only for God's people, the Jews, but we Gentile believers don't have to keep it. Yet, we still consider ourselves in the group of God's people. In your human relationships, do you deliberately ignore the "requests" of the one you love? If so, your relationship probably does not go well. However, if you show faith in the plans and "requests" of the one you love, you will follow them and do as they "ask". Will you do less for God?
"Isn't that the job of the church?"
Moving on, how do you learn how to submit to the lordship of Jesus, and by association, His Father in Heaven? No new Christian starts out with the answers at the tip of their tongues or hearts. One response from the group in our Bible study was that we automatically know because when we accept Christ, we get the Holy Spirit and He will let us know. Let's take a look at that for a minute. Where do most of the people who claim to be Christians learn how to be a Christian? The answer from the group was "in church".
Why aren't we believing alike?
Church people have been baptized, repented, were forgiven, and received the Holy Spirit. Right? Some of them have been "Christians" for decades - right? This is true for many denominations, and they don't all believe the same things, but they all believe in the "same God". If they automatically know what God expects them to do because the Holy Spirit will prompt them if they do not stay in line, why do the vast majority of Christians still disobey the will of the Father? Jesus doesn't (John 5:19
19Jesus gave them this answer: "Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does."
), so why do they? Is the Holy Spirit telling them all different things, or worse yet, telling them to disobey the stated will of the Father? The answer is not that the Holy Spirit is telling them anything, but because He can only "prompt" you if you already know what is wrong and what is right.
Everyone is right?
Think about it. When you were baptized in the Catholic, Baptist, or Episcopal church, did you automatically know to keep the Sabbath holy? My guess is, NO. Did you think that Sunday was a holy day? Yep. You had no compunctions about ignoring the Sabbath, even though it is God's holy day from the creation of the world. Many people even despise the thought of keeping the Sabbath. So, if you despise keeping God's holy day, and are instead keeping an un-holy day that was being used for "worshiping" the sun by pagans, are you loving Him with all your heart, soul and mind? Where is the prompting from the Holy Spirit to keep this from happening? How could the Holy Spirit be telling you that you should hate keeping His holy day?
What? God said not to do that?
When you keep a pagan holiday that is not even in the Bible (Christmas, Easter) for Christians to celebrate, and claim to be doing it for God, why isn't the Holy Spirit getting involved here? Most will counter that God has changed His mind about that kind of "worship" and no longer cares if we worship Him the way the pagans worshiped their gods. Where did they get that idea? Church. This kind of thinking is because people have been fed a lie and have heard no reason to believe that it is not the truth. This is a lie you have learned in church from the pastor, but will not find in the Bible. Since you have no prompting about it from the Holy Spirit, is it OK to continue? Most "Christians" say YES!
But let's look at what is happening. If you do not know something is wrong, how are you fo find out? By all responsible accounts, Jesus was born in early Spring, not the dead of winter. Christmas is held on the 25th of December, the celebration of Saturnalia, a day with customs that came straight from pagan rituals (see one example of a surprised author at CBS News). Are you still "loving" God while doing something He told you not to do (Deuteronomy 12:31a
31You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates.
)? These facts are in the Bible, but this is not what you hear in the church sermons today.
"That's just for the Jews!"
You can counter this by saying that God only gave this instruction to the Israelites, but then you will have to believe that it is all right to worship your God with the symbols that He said to destroy (Deuteronomy 12:3
3Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places.
). If you don't think that worshiping as the pagans did is wrong, how can the Holy Spirit prompt you? Remember, the word is "prompt", not yell, "Stop, don't do that!" It's kind of like your wife or husband giving you a sideways look intended to mean, "Honey, you promised not to do that..." If you never promised, or even discussed the matter with the person prompting you, then that prompting will mean nothing to you - you have no point of reference.
Church won't tell us, and the Holy Spirit reminds us to...what?
Now, back to determining where new Christians learn the will of God. It's obvious that the Holy Spirit prompting is not working in most churches, so that can't be it. You can go to your pastor and ask him the best place to find it. He will likely tell you to read the book of John or one of Paul's epistles, but these books are written on a foundation that the authors of those books expected their readers to know. That foundation is the knowledge of the Old Testament.
The Apostle to the Gentiles tells Corinth, "Knock it off!"
Even the Gentiles were expected to know these things (1 Corinthians 5:1-5
1It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father's wife. 2And you are proud! Shouldn't you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this? 3For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. As one who is present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in the name of our Lord Jesus on the one who has been doing this. 4So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, 5hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.
). He didn't gently tell them something, he chastised them for doing it and being proud! Now, where would Paul get the idea that this kind of activity is wrong and how could he expect the Gentiles of the church in Corinth to know that?
Even searching is sometimes misleading
Interestingly enough, while trying to find a command about sexual immorality, I did a search on Google for "sleeping with his father's wife" and all I found was the reference to the verses in 1 Corithians 5. There were no other references until later in the page of results that mention Reuben, son of Jacob, sleeping with his father's concubines. However, where is the commandment that identifies the sin of sleeping with your father's wife? Paul told the Gentile church at Corinth about it, and condemned them for allowing a professing Christian to break that rule, so it must be somewhere. Why didn't my search bring it up?
How exact do we have to be?
As it happens, the wording in the NIV, and evidently other versions of the Bible call the infraction "sexual immorality" and the description in the Greek Interlinear of the act was "for one to have the wife of the father":
So, we have to look for a rule about "sexual immorality"?
Nope. A Google search for that term resulted in a site with 35 Bible references, only two of which were from the Old Testament, and only one of those two was a commandment. It was not about the incident about which Paul was complaining. The search focused on the section of the Bible that people know - the New Testament. God's commandments appear in the Old Testament. Since His commandments indicate the nature of His will, that's where you have to look for it.
"But, that's not for us!"
The pastors of today ignore the Old Testament as no longer applicable to Christians, even though Paul made it known that is does apply to us. Even when you find a reference to the OT in this search, often it is to Genesis, before the commandments were officially given. Rarely will you find anything about Leviticus or Deuteronomy. Even when you do, how many do you think will even read it?
"I don't want to hear it!"
So, it's no wonder people do not know the will of God. The only way pastors today can keep the truth away from people is to not read or preach the part of the Book where it resides. Go ahead, try your own search. See how many references you get in a search for sexual immorality you can find. It will most likely be buried under a ton of unrelated New Testament passages, or those that are New Testament quotes that refer to the OT. The truth of the Bible is being hidden from you because, literally, no one wants to hear it (2 Timothy 4:3
3For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
).
People hate referring to the Old Testament for anything except something that proves their point. However, the basis for the New Testament is the Old Testament. Look at Leviticus 18:7-8
7" 'Do not dishonor your father by having sexual relations with your mother. She is your mother; do not have relations with her.' "
8" 'Do not have sexual relations with your father's wife; that would dishonor your father.' "
. That sounds like commands to me. And, Paul applies it to the Gentiles as well as the Israelites - you remember them, the only ones told about the rule when it was given originally. The question is, how is one who accepts Jesus as the Lord of his or her life supposed to know these things?
They don't tell us what counts
Remember that the response in our study group to the question, "Where do we learn what the Lord expects from us (lordship)?", was "in church". But, based on what we see around us, that is not true. When was the last time you went to church and heard the pastor read Leviticus 18 to the congregation? For that matter, how about Leviticus 11 or anything else in Leviticus? These chapters are both in the same book, and most Gentiles (not only Christians) obey the commands in Chapter 18, but not the ones in Chapter 11. Most "Christians" don't have any idea what these two chapters say, much less the rest of the Old Testament where the will of God is clearly spelled out. The pastors do not cover this material. Why not? To keep people in the pews? If the truth drives them away, then they do not seek, or preach, our God.
These pastors do not believe that the Old Testament is for the Gentiles. Well, except for some of it, selective pieces, chosen from a smorgasbord of passages, pieces chosen because they are easy to swallow and people don't mind following the easy rules. So, most people will assume that, if the pastor does not cover it, they don't need to know. But Paul applied it to Gentiles. Same author, same book, same God, but one part is followed and another is not. Who is choosing this for the masses? The pastors.
You must decide for yourself, but take a stand
With this in mind, what do you do if you have heard two people speaking of a particular action, one calls it sin and quotes a verse, and the other says that his heart tells him that doesn't apply to Gentiles, so it is not a sin for them. Who is right? Now that you have heard two sides, do you continue in the action or check it out? If you don't want it to be a sin and don't check it out so that you will not be responsible, are you safe? Not according to the word of God (Leviticus 5:17
17"If anyone sins and does what is forbidden in any of the LORD's commands, even though they do not know it, they are guilty and will be held responsible."
).
So, is it our responsibility to seek the truth, or just cruise along not knowing? Can you honestly read that verse and pretend that you are safe? If we do not hear the Holy Spirit prompting us, are we in the clear? As long as we don't know that we are sinning, we have been told that we aren't held responsible, right? Careful. God says that is not true. There's that pesky book of Leviticus again. So, is this one of those things the pastors assure us that we can ignore? Why would Paul make the church feel guilty if all he had to do was make sure they didn't know that it was sin?
"If I want to, it's OK, if not that's OK too!"
At this point, everyone runs to Romans 14 and says it is up to each individual. However, that whole chapter is about disputable matters - matters where God has not specified a particular path to follow (Romans 14:1
1Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters.
). Sins are a result of breaking the laws of God (1 John 3:4
4Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.
). Any statement that is not a clear command may be a disputable matter, but laws are not disputable. The fourth commandment is a commandment, celebrating Christmas is not a commandment, but a violation of worshiping God in the way of the pagans.
"But, I didn't know..."
Let's take an extreme example. You meet an attractive person on the street. After some pleasant conversation, you decide to meet again. After some time, you start dating and things get serious, physically. Now, it turns out that this person you met is married, still lives with their spouse and has a loving family. But, you didn't know that until one day when it slipped out. Are you guilty of sin? How many sins?
Well, there are two sins involved here - fornication and adultery. One is a willful sin, fornication, and the other is an accidental sin, adultery. How do we know that adultery and fornication are sins? Oh, "everyone knows that...", is not an answer. "It says right here..." is a real answer. According to Leviticus 5:17
17"If anyone sins and does what is forbidden in any of the LORD's commands, even though they do not know it, they are guilty and will be held responsible."
, even if you don't know it, you are guilty and will be held respnsible. So, as extreme as this example is, we need to learn what is and what is not sin.
"He didn't tell me about that..."
The pastors tell us the big, easy ones like fornication and adultery, but they leave the harder ones a secret. The ones like the Sabbath, worshiping in the way of the pagans, eating things that will defile you, and ignoring clear sins of people who claim to be Christians. Paul did not let it go for the Corinthians, and neither should we. Because if we do not do as we know we should, it is sin (James 4:17
17If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it, it is sin for them.
).
We are finally at the end of the journey. We know how to find the will of God. It is in the word of God - the Bible. We must get to know it. Not just one passage that makes a good sound bite - the whole gospel in context. There are many who claim to know the will of God, but they obviously do not follow it. Mostly they believe that God no longer expects from us what He expects from "His people" the Jews. The problem here is that God was not actually talking to anyone but the Jews, but His message was for all who are supposed to be "His people". He was talking to the Jews, but He was speaking to the world through them. The Jews were supposed to be His emmisaries to the rest of the world.
"What? Salvation is from the Jews? What do they know? They're just Jews!"
Remember Jesus' statement to the Apostles (Mark 16:15-16
15He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. 16Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned."
)? Notice that He did not say that they were to preach the gospel to "all the Israelites" - but to "all creation". Their gospel included the entire known word of God at the time, the same as the word preached at older times (Hebrew 4:2
2For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed.
). Also notice that there are two parts required - belief and action - faith and obedience. Believing a lie is not what He said - but believe only the truth. To believe, you must first hear (Romans 10:17
17Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.
). Once you hear, make sure it is the truth (Acts 17:11
11Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
). If it is true, then believe. And, since when does God's message stop with the Jews? All we have to do is make sure that the "gospel" we hear is in line with the Bible (Galatians 1:8
8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God's curse!
).
In order to do that, you have to know what the Bible says. How will you know?
Disagree? Find an error? Contact us at glenjjr@gmail.com and give us your view.
VIEWPOINT
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