BOWING TO CHRIST'S LORDSHIP

Salvation comes not by "accepting the finished work" or "deciding for Christ." It comes by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, the whole, living, victorious Lord who, as God and man, fought our fight and won it, accepted our debt as His own and paid it, took our sins and died under them and rose again to set us free.

This is the true Christ, and nothing less will do. But something less is among us, nevertheless, and we do well to identify it so that we may repudiate it. That something is a poetic fiction, a product of the romantic imagination and maudlin religious fancy. It is a Jesus, gentle, dreamy, shy, sweet and feminine, almost effeminate, and marvelously adaptable to whatever society He may find Himself in.

He is cooed over by women disappointed in love, patronized by pro tem celebrities and recommended by psychiatrists as a model of a well-integrated personality. He is used as a means to almost any carnal end, but he is never acknowledged as Lord.

These quasi Christians follow a quasi Christ. They want his help but not his interference.

They will flatter him but never obey him.

VERSE

Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?

— Luke 6:46

THO/UGHT

To confess Christ as "Lord" without obeying Him reveals a shallow understanding of who He is. It is to live as the foolish builder (Luke 6:49) and ultimately experience complete destruction. Our obedience demonstrates our commitment to Christ's Lordship.

PRAYER

I declare that You are my Lord. May my life express obedience to You.

https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer