Lordship Salvation: True, False, or Confused? Pt 4
Lordship Salvation Is More About How the King Creates Submission than Our Submission
Ephesians 1:22-23, “And He put everything under His feet and appointed Him as head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fullness of the One who fills all things in every way.”
Acts 5:30-31, “But Peter and the apostles replied, ‘We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had murdered by hanging Him on a tree. God exalted this man to His right hand as ruler and Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.‘”
We have already used the Ephesians text in prior articles, but it is rich with various implications. Consider how the exaltation, position and power of the King is said to be a fullness that fills those who are united to Him. Meaning, the Lordship of Christ is about how the accomplishments of Christ from where He is fills and shape things (persons) beneath Him. The throne is a place which fills His subjects with the things from Himself which enables them in themselves to live before Him. Meaning that the Lordship of Christ is more about how that royal authority and position creates submission through gracious filling than demands it through legal willingness (though both are true). The exalted and triumphant Lord has a throne that fills those He rules over which then enables them to overflow from His enabling power. Which is to say that for Paul, the Lordship of Christ that saves is more about how the King makes us willing than the necessary willingness of the subjects that authenticates their willingness. Yes, our willingness is necessary but the Lordship of Christ is more about how the sovereign will of the King makes us willing. The Lord is One whose redemptive grace and position creates and supplies an internal responsive willingness, and that is the very crux of this Lord’s authority. It is more biblical to speak about how the Lord has the power to create submission amongst the visible church (with the invisible elect) and how He does so through His gracious means than to endlessly rant about how submission is an instrumental necessity for redemptive efficacy. You see in the Lordship camp and conversation that it is the necessary and continent submission of the professing Christian which becomes the relentless preaching point. It sounds like this, “If you do not surrender your will to all of God's law and trust, you cannot enter into this domain and you are not part of this domain.” However, what we see here is that the scriptures emphasize the Lord's sovereign ability to create submission amongst rebels and rebelliousness. God and His so-called preachers do not need to threaten and demand submission; God's Lordship creates the submission which He commands (through word and Spirit). Whenever the Lordship of Christ is emphatic about the human's will more than the King's, you can be sure that the world views of Arminianism have snuck through the back door. The passage in Acts is similar as God is said to be the One who has been exalted in royal authority to graciously grant and create the repentance He demands. The Lordship world sees this authority as being essentially about demanding and requiring an immediate volitional allegiance for legitimacy and yet the biblical world of Lordship is about the emphatic reality that the Lord creates that which He requires in His subjects. It is more biblical to speak about how the Lord has the power to create submission amongst the visible church (with the invisible elect) and how He does so through His gracious means than to endlessly rant about how submission is an instrumental necessity for redemptive efficacy. Submission to Jesus is the inevitable consequence of His redemptive Lordship not the necessary requirement for entrance. The King's decrees of His gospel Lordship create submission rather than simply demand it. The words of the King are creating and converting words more than they are demanding and instructing words. This passage in Ephesians is telling us declaratively what the King's words do to us by their own efficacy not the efficiency of our devotion. The Lord’s decrees about His redemptive work create that which they demand. Hence it is our primary burden to declare that royal triumph that creates willingness rather than demand the willingness that is morally appropriate.
Lordship Salvation Is More About Where He Places Us than How We Act in Our Place
Colossians 1:13-14, “He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son He loves. We have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, in Him.”
Here we have another text that speaks on the King and His Kingdom as it pertains to His subjects. Notice something obvious in the passage concerning the passivity of the subjects and the activity of the sovereign Lord. God has moved us into the King's domain which is said to be the place that is defined by the belovedness of the Son of God (the Kingdom of the Son He loves). Notice, however, what the text does not say. It does not say that God has transferred us into the Kingdom that is filled by those who love and have surrendered their all to the King. It says that this Kingdom is filled with those who have been brought into the belovedness of the Son for His own sake. It is a domain of belovedness for Christ the Son's sake. Secondly, notice that the text says that we were transferred into this Kingdom rather than saying we have surrendered ourselves into it. It talks about the King bringing us in not what is in us that was the cause to be brought in. Again the Kingdom and Lord language leans to the emphasis of the Lord's doings and the Lord's status rather than the subject's doings and their subjective states of morality. We are saved by the Lord because He has transferred us by His royal power not because we have made Him the Lord of our hearts. We are saved by the Lord because He has transferred us by His royal power not because we have made Him the Lord of our hearts. Said another way the Lord transferred our hearts into His conquering domain rather than our hearts being that which transferred us into His domain. The language of our relation to the King is that of sovereign transfer not self- surrender. We are saved because we are in a domain defined by the belovedness of Christ not the Godward affections of the subjects. This text is about the end time inbreaking of the new creation into the world and about how God is transferring His elect into that new creation domain. Being in the Lord's domain and Kingdom generates affections but it is not the affection in the subject that generates the Kingdom. God is saying that God has placed us into a domain and Kingdom that is defined by these Christ-specific realities not us-specific realities. Lordship salvation as it is stated here is more about the truth that God has placed us into a Christ caused and defined domain than the subjective and personal piety that justifies or makes logical our existence in that domain. The Kingdom of God is more about where we are in light of who Christ is and what it means for us to be in such a domain than being about who we are and where we are at volitionally in reference to the King's rules. It is us being in the King's transferring actions and gospel domain that consequentially create submission to His rules. Said another way it is where you are (in the King's domain) that will determine who you are not who you are that will determine where you are. The Lordship camp often inverts this order and so loses the very ground that is needed for true submission to the King. The Kingdom of God is about what it means to have been transferred into such a domain and reality in light of the Who that created, caused, and sustains it. The Lordship camp seems to be more obsessed with how the subjects can know they are in the Kingdom for what is in them and where they are at while the text proves that God is more concerned with where they are in light of who Christ is. The Lordship camp seems to be more obsessed with how the subjects can know they are in the Kingdom for what is in them and where they are at while the text proves that God is more concerned with where they are in light of who Christ is. Kingdom values are always about personal Kingdom inclusion and jurisdiction through faith not endless calls and qualifiers about Kingdom values. Paul is giving us objective descriptions of the King's domain which we are benefiting from and have been graciously placed into rather than giving us subjective personal measures to run through. Lordship salvation is about God monergistically placing you in a heavenly eschatological domain defined by the merited covenantal belovedness of Christ the Son and telling you what it means to be in such a place rather than telling you all the things that you must do in that domain to verify that it is truly your domain. Lordship salvation is more about where you are because of whose you are and what that means and less about who you moralistically prove yourself to be in that domain. Lordship salvation is more about the God who transferred you into His Kingly domain and less about your subjective moral state that accompanied your transfer which is why it is called the Kingdom of the belovedness of the Son.
