Is Jesus Your Lord?

My pastor once asked this thought-provoking question: Is Jesus your Lord as well as your Saviour? I had assumed that those two titles naturally go hand-in-hand with each other. However, that is not always true.

When we accept Christ into our hearts, we often ask Him become our Lord and Saviour.

But what does that actually mean?

When we accept God's gift of salvation from our sins, He saves us. This is only possible because of Jesus’ death, in which He was the atonement for our sins; and resurrection, in which He triumphed over death, the penalty for our sins.

By accepting Him into our hearts, He casts our sin as far as the east is from the west and, though we really deserve punishment from our just God, He remembers it no more (see Psalm 103:4).

Because Jesus took the punishment for our sins – death – and rose victorious from the grave, we can have the same victory over sin and death through Him. We no longer have to fear death because we can have it eternal life in heaven. Hence, Jesus is our Saviour because He saved us from sin and death.

What Does It Mean to Make Jesus our Lord?

The Oxford English Dictionary define the word lord as “master or ruler.” Therefore, when we submit our lives to God, we submit everything – our plans, our dreams, our futures, our difficulties, our relationships, our decisions. Everything.

God’s will is not something we can pick and choose from. We can’t give Him our hearts and still hold on to our own plans. We can’t choose to obey some of the Bible and ignore the rest.

Submitting our lives to God includes submitting everything.

We cannot abide by God’s will and our own simultaneously unless our will is for the Lord’s to be done.

Now, God isn’t a mean God Who doesn’t want us to get what we want. In fact, Psalm 37:4 says, “delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart” (NKJV).

The word delight means to take great pleasure in. When we take pleasure in the Lord and the things of God, He sees that we truly desire Him. And truly desiring His will and more of Him will lead to our submitting our own wills to Him.

So many Christians only make Jesus their Saviour and not their Lord. They may be saved and have accepted Him into their hearts, but have they accepted Him into their lives?

Have they surrendered every part of their minds, hearts, and desires to Him and allowed Him to make them into a new creation? Have they given Him control of their pasts, presents, and futures?

Far too many times, the answer to these questions is sadly no.

I pray that we would make the decision today, if we haven’t already, to make Jesus the Lord of our daily lives and to seek His perfect will above our own. His plans are always good and are plans to give us a hope and a future, to prosper us and not to harm us (Jeremiah 29:11).

Will you trust Him today as your Lord?

Let’s do it together.

-Olivia

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