The Foolishness of People Who Want Jesus as Their Savior but Not as Their Lord

It's a huge issue in the mission field today that people just want Jesus as their Savior but not as the Lord of their lives. I find that heresy because the Bible declares the Lordship of Christ as part of the Gospel for sinners. If your Jesus is not Lord, you are not saved to begin with. Romans 10:9-10 says that you confess the LordJesus Christ with your mouth and believe in your heart that God the Father rose Him from the dead then you will be saved.

When I ask a certain group of people who claim to have Jesus Christ as their Savior this question, "Do you believe Jesus is Lord?" then I would get the answer of yes from such people. But when I talk about the Lordship of Christ in their lives, I tend to get an answer like, "Are you without sin you Pharisee?" then they kick me out of their assembly. When you think of it, you do not receive Jesus in portions but in whole - He is Savior, Lord and Master and He is not divided. If Jesus is not your Lord and Master then He did not become your Savior to start with and you are not a Christian, you are just a false convert like Judas Iscariot. Only false converts would think that submitting to Christ is completely optional. If you got saved then you are not only obliged to submit to Christ but you will submit to Christ as a result of getting saved.

Let's just imagine the pulpit that goes like this. The pastor says, "Who wants to receive Jesus Christ as Savior." then you get many raise their hands up. When he says, "Well who wants to serve Jesus Christ as Lord?" then many put their hands down. I have observed how I often get a remark like, "You pitiful Protestants! You aren't even allowed to listen to rock and roll, go to disco or play cards while our parish priests knows how to have fun." To follow Christ can really mean a lot and while salvation is free in the sense that Jesus paid it all, it is also costly because it can mean losing one's friends and family in the process. Though one does not need to lose friends and family to be saved but being saved may result to losing one's friends and family. To follow Christ means one soon starts to gain a hatred for their worldly pleasures not because they are not allowed to but because they want to please God.

We have today's Laodicean generation of people who claim to be Christians who think they can be saved from sin's consequences but not saved from sin itself, andto be accept by the Lord Jesus Christ and be accepted by the world at the same time. I am afraid that this new generation of "Christians" have emerged teaching a wrong view of eternal security to people. While I do believe in eternal security but the glorious truth is not just merely once saved, always saved as it warns people can claim to be saved but they are not saved to start with. I find it impossible to swallow a doctrine that teaches a license to sin because those who are truly saved would start hating sin and they want to continue to please God because they were given mercy and grace so undeserved.

At the feeding of the multitude, a lot of the crowds just saw the loaves and wanted to be filled (John 6:26). I noticed that people want a Jesus that's a genie, a personal Savior but He is not their Lord and these people are not willing to be His personal servant. People wanted Jesus only for the loaves but not for the sings that He was truly the Son of God, the one sent from the Most High. Becoming a personal servant for Christ is certainly not a prerequisite for salvation but it certainly marks the true believer in Christ. To even think of Jesus as my personal genie is an abhorrent thought and while we are to make our petitions known but as the old saying goes, "Prayer does not change God, it changes me." This prayer is a relationship where the servant asks something from the Master to assist Him in doing His will and you do not have the servant turning the Master into a genie.

John 15:18-19 and John 4:4 warns that friendship with the world is enmity with God and friendship with God is enmity with the world. I am afraid that such people are not saved at all. I dare not to believe that I can be accepted both by the world and Christ at the same time. Sure the world can accept me for doing good deeds so they will praise God but when it comes to the Gospel, many are called but a few are chosen. Many will like the Christians who does all the good they can in any way they can, in every way they can and everywhere they can but let them say, "Jesus Christ is the only Way to the Father." then it's time for turmoil. Many people liked the miracles of Jesus but only a few really liked his hard sayings. When Jesus spoke the hard truth, people just wanted Him out of their lives. If the same was true for yesterday then the same is true for today.

How often do people want John 10:28 stating that none shall pluck them out of the hand of Jesus but they do not want to hear and obey. While obedience is certainly not a requirement of salvation but it is a mark of salvation. Hebrews 5:9 is clear saying that Jesus became (past tense) the Author of eternal salvation to those that obey Him (present tense). The mark of a true believer involves obedience and submission to the Lordship of Christ accompanied by a continuous repentance that grows. Repentance during the time one receives Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is not yet perfect but there is true conversion that results to continued repentance and faith. A Christian may fall into states of carnality and that I can assure you, the flesh is not 100% nailed to the cross but the mark of true conversion is slow and steady growth. When a Christian is

John 15:14 has Jesus saying that you are His friends if you do as He says. Though obedience is not the root of salvation but it is the fruit of salvation. A true friend of Jesus Christ is not like Judas Iscariot the false friend but someone who may not be perfected but is in the process of perfection and they seek to obey God. How you can know that Jesus is your personal Savior is if you are His personal servant. The whole personal relationship with Jesus Christ is not dangerous as Pope Francis foolishly says but a loving relationship. To have a personal relationship with Christ grows in true fellowship. A Christian may not be sinless but this relationship grows day by day and even if it suffers regression, Jesus always finds a way to bring them back.

Salvation is by grace through faith but this faith is not alone. Many people who claim to be Christians but are not say that it's contradictory to say that this faith alone is not a faith that is alone. I beg their pardon to say that I am emphasizing a true faith will sooner or later blossom by grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus warned in Matthew 7:15-20 that by their fruits you will know them. A good tree does not bear bad fruit and a good tree does not bear good fruit. The sinful person is a bad tree and it takes a real spiritual rebirth to turn a bad tree into a good one. The old nature is the bad tree and the new nature is the good tree. Ephesians 2:10 and Titus 2:11-14 shows that if you truly have God's grace then one becomes zealous of good works. Solomon's heart may have not been perfect but one can see that he was still truly a believer when he wrote Ecclesiastes and when God chastised him for his foolishness. Lot was foolish to enter Sodom but the sinfulness of the city vexed his very being.

The bigger foolishness is when people assume that even if somebody left the flock, they are still saved. 1 John 2:19 warns of apostasy as proof that one never entered into a saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. They were not of us and if they were of us, they would have not left but because they left, they were proven not to be Christians. This departing is not merely a transfer of church membership but departing from the faith. They seemed to be Christians but they were not. Many of them supposedly said the sinner's prayer but they later depart where they live like devils and I dare not believe that they are saved. There is a thin line between an immature Christian and a false convert. An immature Christian may fall into sin but they do not love sin. The false convert who is an Antinomian thinks that God's grace is a license to sin. The true Christians will endure to the end while counterfeit Christians do not.