The Lordship of Jesus is the battle cry of the day. Not the ethereal lordship that advocates for the church’s spirituality or the escapist ecclesiology, but the kind of Lordship that makes men’s beards come alive like Aaron’s. And it’s crucial for good Christian people to swallow this truth in one sitting.
Lordship was exclusively reserved for that soteriology category of systematic books in the evangelical eco-system. I call it “Sola Soteriologia” (let the reader understand). But to be quite provocative in a minuscule sense, individual salvation is not enough. We cannot be content with a God who takes men from Eden to the New World only to deliver men from hell. And if this sentiment is too shocking, therein lies the problem. We have become too content with soteriological discussions that never go beyond the individual status, and we never move on from it; we never ask, “what doth that salvation do to our environments”?
There is a prominent conference that takes place every year where the topic of discussion ranges from the sovereignty of God over salvation to the sovereignty of God over sanctification. The range is too predictable. And the fact that such conferences still manage to bring together thousands of people is a good thing, but it should not be the ultimate thing. Eventually, someone will have to ask, “Where do we go once we get to the land?” What is it, after all, that we do with all these laws that seem to pervert the sovereignty of God?
The path of least resistance is to remain quiet and not challenge the powers that be. The path of least resistance is to treat individual salvation as the end-all of human pursuits. But we must crave more. We cannot content ourselves with merely “chips.” We must declare loudly that they are the “Lord’s chips” like every other institution on planet earth. The earth belongs to the Lord and the fullness of it (Ps. 24:1), which means that the fullness of it goes far beyond our individual redemption. It must reach the ends of the earth. The cosmos needs the imprint of Christian men testifying to God’s comprehensive authority over all things.
Where we find ourselves at this stage of Church history is between cowardly and ordinary Christian men. Ordinary men are eager to see Jesus imprecating against false religious leaders and charging the gates of hell because that’s just who they are. It’s just ordinary stuff; it’s not radical. But cowardly Christian men have no boldness to fight the blessed state but willingly acquiesce to its program for us. We cannot, fellow conquerors, allow such ideology to pervade our churches and our little tribes.
We need the Lordship of Jesus over our cereal and chicken wings as much as our salvation. We must act as if everything that is not Jesus-tattooed is an act of aggression against the kingdom of heaven. If we think this is just business as usual, you will take the bait and drink contentedly of the world’s whiskey, which is always watered-down.
“Jesus is Lord” is not a baptized gnosticism, it is a dogmatism. It means what it says it means, and it means nothing less. Ultimately, it means we are in a “taking back” mode. The spoils belong to the children of men, and the “sola soteriologistas” get to watch us feast at the Lord’s table on earth as it is in heaven.
