(ABP) — The New Testament declares that Jesus Christ is Lord, that followers of Christ are those who live under his lordship now, and that one day Jesus will be acknowledged by all as Lord:
“Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10-11).
Jesus taught that mere verbal confessions of his lordship are not enough; he wants to see us do God's will, and this is the true test of whether he is our Lord:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21-22).
Jesus also taught that his authority extends to the whole cosmos and that therefore no arena of life can be exempted from obedience to his rule:
“All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt.28:18-20).
The earliest pages of the New Testament teach that the lordship of Jesus Christ is deeply threatening to this world's powers:
“'Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east, and have come to worship him.'” When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him” (Matt. 2:2-3).
The last pages of the New Testament reflect on the price paid by those who affirmed that Jesus Christ alone is Lord amidst the hostile Roman Empire:
“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their loves so much as to shrink from death” (Rev. 12:11).
Jesus Christ may be Lord of all, but woe be to those who suggest that this might have implications for how Christians spend their money, what they do with their bodies, how they vote, or how they think about the laws and policies of this nation.
Woe to those who suggest that being a Christian means more than just being a good middle-class American who finds time for church among his or her many other civic activities.
Woe to those who suggest that the policies of a beloved president or party might in some cases fall short of the moral standards taught in the pages of the Bible.
Woe to those who suggest that the United States is not God's chosen nation and that even the behavior of our own beloved country must be tested by the criteria demanded by the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Woe to those who suggest that defending this nation is not the highest good for those who have pledged their lives to Jesus as Lord.
Woe to those who suggest that torture, humiliation, degradation, and indefinite detention of prisoners in the name of national security might have to be rejected by those who claim Jesus Christ as Lord.
I gave an interview yesterday for a film on the “German church struggle” of the 1930s. The questions involved reflecting on how so many German Christians did not see any contradiction between their loyalty to the Nazi party, or the Nazified German state, and their loyalty to Jesus Christ, their purported Lord. And I was asked to try to delineate what — if anything — set apart the resisters (like Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer) from those who capitulated to Nazism.
The basic answer is that Barth and Bonhoeffer really meant it when they said that Jesus Christ is Lord, and they understood the radical implications of that claim. Christ's lordship meant that the nation, the party, and the Fuhrer could not claim and did not deserve total lordship over any Christian's life; that the Bible rather than any other authority must have supremacy; and that in situations of radical evil, Christians are called to offer an even more radical and unflinching witness to Christ's lordship.
Baptists argued for decades over theories of inspiration while many churches were slowly dying the death of a thousand cultural assimilations. I think it is clear that we should have been arguing over whether we really mean it when we say at baptism that we are committing our lives to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
I forecast that the days of cultural, Southern, Baptist Christianity are passing — the days of just good regular American folks going to church because that's what their mama and grandma did. Our churches will survive — if they do — not on cultural Christianity, but on people totally committed to the lordship of Christ.
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— David Gushee is distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. www.davidpgushee.com