Lordship Salvation: True, False, or Confused? Pt 2

Lordship Is About Conquering Through Being Conquered

Under this heading I want you to consider two texts that are pertinent. The first is the entrance of Christ on Palm Sunday when He comes into Jerusalem on a donkey in accordance with the prophecy of Zechariah 9. The second is how God providentially through Pilate writes the King of the Jews (Matthew 27:37) while Jesus is on the cross. Both elements in the conversation of Christ’s Lordship share a commonality as to how we understand His Lordship. Jesus coming into the city in the humility of a donkey (as was custom) and not in the triumph of a white horse tells us something about how the King comes to conquer. He enters Jerusalem to conquer by being conquered as the suffering servant not by exercising direct conquering dominance over His subjects. His triumph is through being crushed and conquered for our sakes under the King’s wrath. The second example concerning the writing of Pilot is the same. Jesus’s Lordship is about how He has subdued us through being subdued under the curses of law as our substitute for us.God is said to be the crowned King through the writing on the wood of the cross. The way Christ is the conquering Lord is through Him conquering us through being conquered on the cross for us. The issue with the Lordship conversation is that it focuses on how the Lord conquers our will (and He does) instead of seeing the way that the Lord conquered us. The Lord did not conquer us by subduing our will (though He does) but He conquered us by Him being conquered and subdued. Jesus’s Lordship is a conquering of condescension. Jesus’s Lordship is about how He has subdued us through being subdued under the curses of law as our substitute for us (Gal 3:13; 4:4-6). He dominates us through having been dominated by sin and death not through direct and brute domination of the volitions.

While the Lordship camp seems to focus on the Lord’s volitional and direct domination over His subjects in the moment of and the moment subsequent to conversion, the bible’s conversation about the King’s subduing power seems to be directed towards how He subdues us through Him having been subdued for us. Part of the perpetual issue with the Lordship conversation is that it seems to regularly speak about Christ’s Lordship in an obsessively subjective way while being very dismissive of the objectivity of Christ’s Lordship. Jesus Christ is the crucified Lord which means that His crown of authority drips with the blood of His redeeming work. If we are going to articulate His Lordship well, we must do so within redemptive nuances which qualify the tone of His rule over His people.

Lordship Salvation Is More About the Allegiance of Faith Not Faithfulness

Romans 10:1 “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God concerning them is for their salvation! I can testify about them that they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Because they disregarded the righteousness from God and attempted to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted themselves to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. For Moses writes about the righteousness that is from the law: The one who does these things will live by them. But the righteousness that comes from faith speaks like this: Do not say in your heart, “Who will go up to heaven?” that is, to bring Christ down or, “Who will go down into the abyss?” that is, to bring Christ up from the dead. On the contrary, what does it say? The message is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. This is the message of faith that we proclaim: If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation. Now the Scripture says, Everyone who believes on Him will not be put to shame, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, since the same Lord of all is rich to all who call on Him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

In a very intriguing way, the Lordship conversation often goes to a text like this one to make a case for the conditionality of the subject under law as being the essence of this dynamic between God and His people. Let’s make a few introductory comments about the passage first. Note that in verses 1-3 Paul says that the issue with the non-believing Jews is that they are seeking to be in a covenant relationship with God by their keeping of His law conditions. In verse 4, Paul says that Christ is the end (telos/goal) of the law for righteousness to those who believe. This is his way of saying that the law conditions under Moses were not for the goal of Israel’s submission but Christ vicarious-representational completion. In verses 5 through 8, Paul makes a contrast with the operating principles of the Mosaic law covenant (which demand doing) and the righteousness that comes from the grace arrangement (which demand trusting). ...Israel is lost because they relate to God by the law covenant and the conditionality it demands rather than the grace arrangement which does not demand law-keeping but rather faith in Christ’s law-keeping. Notice the contextual conversation being about how Israel is lost because they relate to God by the law covenant and the conditionality it demands rather than the grace arrangement which does not demand law-keeping but rather faith in Christ’s law-keeping. So, in verses 8-10 we have a discussion about confessing Christ to be the Lord who was raised from the dead. We see a call to submission to Christ’s Lordship in a conversation that is all about how the unbelieving Jews had submitting wrongly by law effort rather than by faith reception. Which means that this submission and confession is an allegiance of a different kind than what was being offered in verses 1-4 (a law-keeping righteousness). Which means that when the bible speaks of Christ’s Lordship and the need to pledge allegiance to His authority, it is primary speaking about the submission of trust (Romans 1:5) in His person and work not conformity to His law (even though we are always subject to the King’s law). Again, it is not about either/or but the contextual emphasis pertaining to the topic and the logical priorities of the text at hand. The sovereign Lord is primarily and essentially calling for the obedience of the gospel which is an allegiance of passivity and receptivity to the Lord’s redemptive activity. Before God positionally our allegiance is passive (faith) but before man it is always active (works). The Lordship camp has a pre-existing paradigm for Lordship and submission that it then reads into the text in a way which has nothing to do with the actual contextual conversation. So ironically in a text where Christ’s Lordship is calling for the submission of sola fide in His for-us law-keeping, the Lordship camp sees the words Lord and confess and contorts the text to be calling for the immediacy and redemptive instrumentality of imperatival submission. Note that in this context Paul is not calling for the church to see faith in Christ and submission to law to be two complementary means to connecting with the authority of the Lord, but He is calling for one or the other (v.5-9). Suffice it to say that the allegiance to the Lord which is absolutely necessary for salvation is about the allegiance of faith outside of the instrumentality of any of our law conformity. The Lord’s gospel call is not a call to our law obedience, it is a call to our faith obedience. Submission to the Lord in a saving sense is not about the allegiance of trust and law-keeping but the allegiance of faith apart from our law-keeping.