Lordship necessary for salvation

Please show me one piece of scripture that uses that phrase "accept Jesus as Savior". That was merely my reply when you said there is no scripture that says to "accept Jesus as Savior and Lord". Emphasis on "accept".

Darren

 

Sorry, I don't want to go down this road. It's not connected with the OP. It would derail the thread, and thus in an Internet forum be rude to the writer of the OP, not to mention breaking the rules.

 

I'm very close to deciding to ignore you from now on. You have insulted me for the second time. Please pay close attention. Lean in to the screen. I never said any passage anywhere in the Bible denies Jesus as Lord! For you to intimate that I did is insulting.

It is very important for a Christian to acknowledge Christ as Lord (not to be saved, but as soon as possible after salvation). It is vital for a Christian to give his all to Christ and follow Him with every fiber of his being. I gave up all I had, everything I am to be a missionary to Japan, and I don't consider that to be special--I consider it to be the normal Christian life, something all Christians should do, not just missionaries or other full time workers.

Now, I'm still waiting for you to define the Gospel that we are commanded to proclaim to the entire world.

 

You're insulted?? You must be joking. This discussion references the conditions to OBTAIN salvation between either Savior or Lord or BOTH. I said elude to Lord not deny. I think you've simply misread the context of what I was saying.

The gospel of the good news entails all of the life, death and resurrection of Christ as I have already stated. Go back and read my previous post regarding belief (to believe) in the person of Christ; I think I was very clear. Anyway, I'll leave it there, I'm just having a plain discussion, I don't feel any negative emotions neither do I have the mind to insult anyone, sorry you feel that way.

Darren

 

You first insulted me by presuming to know what I preach in Post #34:

Yes, I'm insulted. And I didn't misread the context. You used the word "deny" in post 60, as can be seen in my quote of your post, then you changed it to "omit."

Now, as the Bible commands, I've informed a brother of your offenses towards me. What say ye?

I just read all of your posts in this entire thread, and found nowhere until this very post where you answered my repeated question about what you believe the Gospel to be. If you mean to be just having a plain discussion, then let's interact with each other, not ignore what each other is saying.

I'm glad to say you don't mean to insult anyone. But sometimes insults come without meaning them to. In your case, by making assumptions about what I am and what I preach, you have been offensive. I take very seriously what I preach, and I preach the Lordship of Christ to believers.

 

The Lordship of Christ must be presched to un-believers as well. Unless they accept Him for who He is they are not repenting and are not getting saved. :thumbs:

 

It goes without saying that a person must believe Jesus is Lord to be saved, you must believe he is the Son of God who died on the cross for our sins and was raised again. Only God can forgive sins.

But nowhere will you find as a condition of salvation that a person must promise to quit sinning to be saved. What did Paul and Silas tell the Philipian jailer?

Acts 16:31 And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.

Did Paul and Silas tell the Philipian jailer he must make a commitment to quit all sins? No. They said he must believe on Jesus, that is, to trust himself to Jesus for the forgiveness of sins.

If we must make a commitment to quit sinning to be saved, then nobody is saved, because we all continue to sin. Even Paul said he did the things he did not want to do, so he never fully ceased from sinning.

So, then you come to the question as to how obedient you must be. If no one is 100% obedient to Jesus, how obedient do you have to be to be saved?

This is error. When you receive Jesus, that is exactly what you are doing, receiving Jesus himself. He lives inside of you and he cannot sin. You do not have to make a commitment not to sin because the Holy Spirit within you cannot sin, it is impossible.

At the same time, the scriptures show we still have the sinful flesh that wars against the Spirit, so we cannot do the things we will.

Gal 5:17 For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

The scriptures clearly show we have two natures when we get saved, the flesh and the Spirit. When we obey the flesh we will sin, when we obey the Spirit we cannot sin.

But nowhere is it shown as a condition of salvation that we must completely cease from sin, if so, then we are all lost.

 

I think you are confusing repentance with perfection. They are exclusive one of the other. The one thing that men do not want to do is submit themselves to a God that has the rule over them. This alone is what we are called to in repentance. It is a change of mind about our real place in regards to God. This is not 50% or 75% or 99%. it is 100%. or there is no salvation. From the heart of the person they come to the place where they are willing to do anything to get right with God. many things can bring this about but it all ends at the same place, the cross.

As for Paul he never suggested that he was living in sin. The passage you refer to is not about him sinning. This is a liberal view so as to justify their own sin. Paul actually said that he was blameless even while under the law (prior to salvation). If he kept the law before Christ he certainly obeyed it after he was saved. By the way here is the scripture.
Phil 3:4-6

And no we do not have two natures. Only one. While lost a nature to sin and rebellion. Once saved a nature to obey and live to God in Christ. We are left with the flesh which we are to control and can but we do not have two natures.
Salvation only comes to those who repent towards God. That means they surrender, not reform.

 

For your information I changed that almost immediately after I wrote it. I know I meant "omit" or "elude" not deny. Thus the reason why I quickly changed it.

I said -

It was written at 6:37 and edited at 6:47. Mate you are getting all fired up for nothing.

Darren

 

If repentance means to turn from sinning, then God is a sinner. The scriptures show God repenting several times.

Gen 6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

What we are to turn from is unbelief. We are to cease from trusting in our own works and trust and depend upon Jesus only to save us. If a person has to commit to quit sinning to be saved, then salvation is dependent upon our actions. This is not depending on Jesus, it is depending on ourselves.

Salvation is a free gift (Romans 5:15,16,18). There are no conditions or price to be paid for it, only receive it or refuse it. That is all you can do with a free gift. If you have to quit sinning to be saved, that is not a free gift.

 

I agree, I think at the "pre-salvation" phase a sinner is not asked to stop sinning, rather to change their mind about what they think about the true God. Repentence of sins is a natural process in the life of a believer.

I can't see how coming to Christ for the complete package of who is HE, what HE did, what He is doing; makes no sacrifices upon salvation being a free gift. A sinner comes to Christ, Christ takes them in.

Rather than thinking I can come to Christ just for this one thing (free gift) but I don't have to think there is anymore to the Person of Christ other than "Savior". Would that really do justice to "believe ON the Lord Jesus".

Darren

 

Darren, suppose I told my kids this:

"Kids, you have been very disobedient to me all week and I am very upset with you. However, if you will from this moment on obey me until 6 PM this Saturday evening I will take you to the fair Saturday night."

Now, isn't going to the fair conditioned upon their obedience? Isn't it conditioned upon their works?

Is it a free gift, or is it an earned reward?

But this is what you are teaching. You are teaching that if we make a commitment to stop sinning that Jesus will save us. If we do not make that commitment he will not. So, salvation is no longer a free gift but an earned reward conditioned upon our obedience.

 

I'm afraid you have taken it the wrong way. Salvation is a free gift BUT coming to the Lord and not acknowledge from day 1 that HE is THE Lord, will be giving the sinner the wrong impression and thus one reason why there is so many problems with the direction a new convert will take.

I never said salvation was not a free gift. It is about the attitude of how that sinner comes to Christ. Just the same as they must acknowledge they are sinners. Figure this out with me, if Lordship salvation implied "salvation via reward" (which it doesn't), then salvation can either be lost, have little or no assurance but more important either eternal life given at the end of the life of the believer or given in "credit" that they'll continue to "obey" the Lord.

No I don't believe that and if you'll notice no one has taken that position either. No one has even said you must stop sinning (in order) to be saved.

As I said, if one comes to Christ they get all of Him not just the parts they want to highlight; as a result salvation is a free gift when that person comes to Christ with that right attitude. And as I said, God takes responsibility to judge when the sinner has met the correct attitude/faith conditions anyway, so that God will bring them into the new covenant.

Darren

 

Wrong answer, spiritually speaking.

 

It was not an answer but a statement of fact. Get some thicker skin pal, I never made any personal attacks against you, that's a fact.

Darren

 

If I may chime in,

Lordship salvation does not teach that one must "clean up his act" before they can be saved (I suppose there are probably some guys on the internet and perhaps even in print who have taken it to this extreme). That IS works salvation, not Lordship. On the contrary, repentance IS true belief, and faith is repentance. They are one in the same, and are only separated topics for systematic purposes.

In the West, we are very comfortable with the idea of mental, intellectual belief which makes no impact or affect on how we live. This is not the faith of the Bible. The faith of the Bible is not begun in works, but is demonstrated by it. Our actions reveal what we truly believe. This is precisely James' argument in Js. 2. Real faith works. It is not abstract, it is concrete. It makes a difference in how we act, think, and live.

A closer analogy would be a man asking a woman to marry him. She says, "Yes, I would love to marry you, but I also want to have all these affairs on the side. As long as you're okay with that, I'll marry you." What righteous man would marry her? That's the same as a person wanting to come to salvation without repentance. (See Hosea 1-3)

Just my take.

Randy

 

Randy that is a very good post! :thumbs:

 

This is one of the better articles I have seen on Lordship Salvation, and I tend to agree with it.

 

There is an obvious confusion between coming to Christ and being of Christ. In any case the moment someone comes under Christ, or Christ in them they fall into the category of any believer that is, any christian should and ought to submit to the authority of Christ. Should any christian say He's my Savior but not my Lord? Therefore even a new convert has Christ as their Lord immediately before they have enough understanding on how to "obey" the Lord.

Someone said you don't make Him your Lord, HE is the Lord and to recognise that sooner rather than later.

I was in a pentacostal church that took Lordship Salvation to the extreme, so I pretty much know the ugly way it can be taken but that said they taught that one needs to keep themselves saved by their obedience, which we know is impossible and really has no part in the new covenant.

Darren

 

The last paragraph of that article makes the important distinction. You cannot really obey Jesus as Lord until you are born again and have Spirit.

You don't get the Spirit by submitting to Jesus, you get the Spirit by trusting (Eph 1:13). Only after receiving the Spirit is a person able to submit to Jesus as Lord.

Eph 1:13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,

Trusting Jesus as Saviour comes first, submitting to him as Lord follows.