We Go: Lordship
Alive in Christ
6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. 8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. 9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.
— Colossians 2:6-10 (ESV)
Introduction: Savior-Lord Experience
Do you remember the prayer you prayed when you became a Christian? Do you remember what brought you to that moment?
For many of us, the journey began with a deep awareness of need. We needed forgiveness. We needed freedom from guilt and shame. We needed rescue from patterns we could not overcome and reconciliation with the God from whom our sin had separated us.
We came to Jesus because we needed a Savior. And Jesus truly is our Savior.
He receives sinners, forgives sins, restores the broken, and delivers us from the power and consequences of sin. But as we grow in our firsthand knowledge of his grace and mercy, we begin to understand more fully who this Savior actually is: the One who saves us is also the Lord who reigns over us.
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”
—Colossians 1:15-20 ESV
In our experience, we may become aware of Jesus as Savior before we fully comprehend what it means for him to be Lord.
In fact, if you grew up in the 80s, the general rhetoric of the Christian faith during the height of the revivals was primarily, “accept Jesus as the savior, and go to heaven. One and done.” (listen to this sermon by John F. MacArthur in 1988 sharing his sentiment about the general culmination of the messaging diluting the gospel).
The modern gospel is vague. The modern gospel holds out false hope to sinners who have a moment where they want to cash in on forgiveness, when they want to tie up Heaven in the future while continuing to live any way they like. Maybe later they’ll worry about Christ as Lord if they even know about that and they shouldn’t know about it because nobody’s supposed to tell them.
—John F. MacArthur
Presenting the gospel while obscuring the lordship of Christ is fundamentally inconsistent. Scripture affirms that salvation is for those who confess Jesus as Lord and yield their lives to his authority. To suggest that we should remain silent on this—as if faith were merely an intellectual assent to his sacrifice—fails to capture the full reality of what it means to follow him.
We may first come seeking rescue and only gradually discover the extent of his rightful authority over every part of our lives. Learning to surrender our relationships, ambitions, habits, possessions, desires, and decisions to Christ is often a lifelong process.
But although our understanding and obedience develop over time, the identity of Jesus does not. He does not begin as Savior and later become Lord. We do not receive one part of Christ at conversion and decide whether to accept the rest of him afterward. Paul presents him as one undivided person:
“Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
—Acts 2:36 (ESV)
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that we humans “make Him Lord”. Unlike of course how we elect government officials, and as we just went through the last series, how ancient Israel picked their kings and rulers.
The focus today is not whether Jesus is Lord, but whether our lives increasingly acknowledge the Lord He already is.
We are not saved because our surrender is already complete. It’s Jesus who “completes that work in us”. None of us comes to Christ with perfect obedience or a fully undivided heart. Jesus is the only human who had perfect obedience to God.
We are saved entirely by grace through faith. Yet the grace that forgives us also begins to transform us, and the faith that receives Christ as Savior necessarily turns toward him as Lord.
The Christian life, therefore, is not the gradual process of making Jesus Lord. Jesus is Lord already. The Christian life is the gradual awakening of every part of our lives to the reality of his lordship.
We’ll look at the principles and then the practice. This allows us to go wherever He says so - as Pastor Rollan said last week, to a specific place, people, and purpose.
Part 1: Principles:
1: Jesus is fully God
The authority of Christ resides in his nature as fully God. This sovereignty is not a status we bestow upon him, nor is it a product of our belief or restricted by our following. He holds total dominion over all existence and every facet of our being. We do not "make him Lord"; instead, we acknowledge, profess, and yield to the authority that is inherently his. Jesus is Lord already.
Jesus is the eternal Son of God—fully and truly God. Therefore, he is Lord by nature, identity, and divine right.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
—John 1:1, 14 (ESV)
Jesus did not become Lord when people began to believe in him. We do not make Jesus Lord by surrendering our lives to him. Our surrender does not establish his authority; it simply acknowledges the authority he has always possessed.
The New Testament declares his deity directly:
“In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9).
Thomas addresses the risen Christ as, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).
The Father says concerning the Son, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever” (Hebrews 1:8).
It also reveals his deity through the works, titles, and honors that belong to God alone. Jesus is the Creator of all things (Colossians 1:16), the Savior of the world (Luke 2:11), the Judge before whom everyone will appear (2 Corinthians 5:10), and the one who rightly receives worship (Matthew 14:33; Luke 24:52).
Because Jesus is divine, he has a rightful claim upon our entire lives: he is the Sovereign Lord before whom every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.
2: Jesus is Lord and Savior
Because Jesus is fully God, we do not just receive Jesus as Savior and then, at some later stage, receive him as Lord. Our Christian faith holds both of these together. When we receive Christ, we receive the whole Christ—Savior, Lord, King, Priest, Prophet, Shepherd, and Counselor. Jesus becomes everything.
“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.”
—Romans 10:9
“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.”
—Colossians 2:6
Saving faith is not merely agreeing with some facts about Jesus or believing that he can forgive us while rejecting his right to govern us.
This does not mean that a person understands every implication of Christ’s lordship at conversion. No Christian does. It means that the direction of the heart has changed. The believer no longer fundamentally claims the right to rule himself but confesses, however imperfectly, “Jesus is Lord.”
This is why the grace of God does more than pardon us. Grace also teaches us how to live under the loving rule of Jesus.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
—John 14:15
“So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
—James 2:17
Obedience does not purchase salvation; it reveals the “living and active” character of saving faith. Genuine faith produces repentance, love, holiness, endurance, and a growing desire to obey Jesus.
3. Jesus rules in love
Jesus does not rule us as a distant monarch or a demanding tyrant. He rules as the Lord who loved us, sought us, and gave himself to save us.
His authority is not opposed to his grace and mercy; his authority is the form his grace and mercy take in our lives.
Because he loves us, he refuses to leave us captive to sin, disordered desires, or the exhausting burden of ruling ourselves. We were not created to be our own lords. Left to ourselves, we cannot rightly order our loves, govern our desires, or lead ourselves into life. Jesus says:
“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
—John 15:5, ESV
Likewise, Jesus does not rescue us and then leave us to manage our lives alone. The Lord who saves us remains with us to lead, correct, restore, and transform us. We do not submit to him so that he will begin loving us. We submit because he has already loved us.
“We love because he first loved us.”
—1 John 4:19, ESV
This is the order of grace: Christ loves first. Christ saves first. Christ gives himself first. Our obedience is our answering response to the love we have received.
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”
—John 15:9–10, ESV
Jesus connects love and obedience, but he does not present obedience as the price of his love. His commands show us how to remain within the life his love has opened to us. He rules us because he knows what leads to freedom, holiness, joy, and communion with the Father. His commandments are not arbitrary restrictions; they are the ordering wisdom of the One who created us and gave himself for us.
His love is also a jealous love. It is not the insecure jealousy of human possessiveness. It is the holy jealousy of the Father—the covenant love that refuses to surrender his people to idols that enslave, diminish, and destroy them.
Christ’s jealous love means that he wants all of us—not because he is deficient and needs something from us, but because divided allegiance destroys us. He will not peacefully coexist with the idols competing for our bodies, souls, minds, time, desires, and loyalties. His lordship lovingly confronts whatever keeps us from the life of God.
The evidence of Christ’s lordship is not sinless perfection but a new direction. This is where the question of Christ’s lordship becomes so important.
Is submission to Jesus merely an advanced stage of Christianity—something for especially committed believers? Or is the call to follow, obey, and surrender to him present from the very beginning of genuine faith?
In this series, we feature one historical figure who demonstrates the topic. This week it’s Francis Asbury. Let’s take a quick look at how he viewed Lordship as he obeyed God’s call.
Francis Asbury was an English-born Methodist preacher who arrived in the American colonies in 1771, just a few years before the American Revolution, and became one of the first bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church at the historic Christmas Conference of 1784.
For nearly five decades, he traveled across the expanding American frontier, preaching, establishing churches, and training itinerant ministers. His demanding life of sacrifice, discipline, and obedience reflected his conviction that Jesus is Lord over the believer’s body, mind, time, possessions, and calling.
Asbury would not say that surrender earns salvation. Rather, salvation is the work of grace that lays claim to the entire person. Total surrender is not the price we pay to purchase salvation; it is the shape salvation takes when Jesus becomes Lord.
12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
—Philippians 2:12-13 (ESV)
Francis Asbury understood surrender in this deeply personal and daily way. He did not speak as though one dramatic decision had completed the work of submission. He wrote,
“I feel it necessary daily to give up my own will.”
Elsewhere, he expressed his desire “to be given up to God, body, soul, time, and talents, far more than heretofore.”
For Asbury, surrender was not a heroic act of self-salvation. It was a continuing response to grace. His journals reveal a man repeatedly confessing weakness, depending on divine mercy, and returning every part of himself to God. He did not believe that he had mastered himself. He believed that he continually needed to be ruled, sustained, and reordered by Christ.
—————
Part 2: Practice:
“For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.”
—Romans 14:7–9
“You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
—1 Corinthians 6:19–20
Daily reorder our lives.
Lordship is not instant. Reading through Francis Asbury’s journals, as much as you can witness extraordinary devotion, it also records incompleteness, temptation, weariness, distraction, and repeated recommitment. He does not present surrender as a single heroic moment. It must be renewed.
Submit to discipleship
The lordship of Jesus begins to shape us at conversion, but our surrender to him deepens throughout the Christian life. Following Christ involves daily self-denial and a continuing willingness to place our lives beneath his authority.
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”
—Luke 9:23
The word daily is important. Submission to Jesus is not merely a past experience. It must be renewed through thousands of decisions, temptations, acts of repentance, and moments of trust.
Every temptation presents the question of lordship again: Will I obey my desires, my fears, the approval of others, the values of the world—or the word of Jesus?
A Christian may stumble, resist, misunderstand, and need repeated moments of surrender. But the Christian cannot permanently and knowingly reject Christ’s right to rule while claiming to belong to him.
Commit everything to His keeping
To live under Christ’s lordship is also to entrust our whole lives to him—our plans, possessions, relationships, anxieties, health, future, ministry, suffering, and unanswered questions.
“Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.”
—Psalm 37:5
“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”
—1 Peter 5:6–7
The one who insists on controlling everything must also carry the anxiety of keeping everything. But when we commit our lives to Christ, we place them in the hands of the One who is faithful and able to keep what has been entrusted to him.
Lordship therefore includes both surrender and rest. We surrender because Christ has the right to rule us. We rest because the Lord who rules us also loves us, cares for us, and keeps us.
Submit plans to His will
We do not merely ask Jesus to protect our plans; we yield our plans to his will. We place the clay in the Potter’s hands and remain beneath those hands as he shapes us.
Submission means trusting Christ not only when his direction agrees with our desires but also when his way is painful, confusing, or different from what we would have chosen.
This trust rests on his character. The Lord who commands us is the same Lord who loved us and gave himself for us. His authority is not separated from his sacrificial love. The hands that govern our lives are the hands that were pierced for our salvation.
Because his love is limitless, he is worthy of limitless trust.
Conclusion:
His Grace Enables and Preserves Our Obedience
Christ’s lordship brings both a demand and a promise. The demand is that we renounce the illusion that we belong to ourselves. The promise is that the King who commands us is also the Shepherd who keeps us.
His grace is not only pardon for our disobedience; it is also power for obedience.
“For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
—Philippians 2:13
“He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.”
—1 Thessalonians 5:24
Jesus does not merely forgive his people and then leave them to transform themselves. He works within them, strengthens their faith, disciplines their desires, produces holiness, and preserves them to the end.
Our confidence is therefore not in the perfection of our surrender but in the faithfulness of our Lord.
The lordship of Jesus Christ is the saving reign of all that Christ is over the whole person. It means receiving Jesus by faith as the Lord he already is, belonging to him completely, submitting every part of life to his loving authority, and learning throughout life to trust, obey, and follow him.
We are saved by grace alone through faith alone, but the faith that saves never leaves us alone. It brings us beneath the rule of Jesus and begins a lifelong transformation in which we increasingly confess through both our words and our lives:
Jesus Christ is Lord.