The Gospel That Demands You Lower Your Personal Flag

Jesus Doesn’t Offer Rescue Without Surrender  What you won’t hear in most churches: Jesus doesn’t rescue rebels so they can keep ruling their own little kingdom.

In the rural world, ownership means something. A man doesn’t hand you the deed to his ground while you’re still flying somebody else’s flag over the barn. He doesn’t give you the keys to the house, the well, the tractor, and the timber while you refuse to recognize him as the owner.

Yet that’s the bargain being offered in more than a few churches today. A man is told he can keep the throne in his own chest, hold tight to his old rebellion, and still call himself saved. Jesus can be his Savior now, they say, and perhaps become his Lord later… if the man ever gets around to it.

But Scripture never divides Christ that way.

This isn’t a small argument over a few theological words. Interestingly, Charles Ryrie said the message of faith alone and the message of faith plus commitment of life cannot both be the gospel. One of them, he warned, must come under the curse pronounced in Galatians 1.

So the stakes are too high for a polite shrug. Church harmony isn’t worth much if we purchase it by burying the truth beneath the floorboards. Once we pull those boards up, we find two very different messages underneath.

Two Flags Are Flying Over the Church

On one side stands the old Christian teaching that a sinner must acknowledge Christ as Lord to be saved. Henry Thiessen put it plainly: to believe in Christ as Lord is to recognize Him as Lord, and a man cannot recognize Christ’s rule until he gives up his own claim to the throne.

In other words, he must abdicate.

That surrender is often pushed off to some later altar call, rededication service, or moment of “deeper commitment.” First you get saved, we’re told. Then, sometime later, you may decide to get serious and let Jesus run your life.

Yet Scripture joins repentance, faith, and submission at the very beginning. Thiessen wasn’t some wild-eyed Calvinist trying to sneak works into grace. He was an Arminian, while Ryrie was Calvinistic at times. On this point, historic Calvinism and historic Arminianism often stood on the same patch of ground: surrender belongs to the nature of genuine faith.

Now, that doesn’t mean a new convert becomes perfect before the sun goes down. He’ll still stumble. He’ll still fight old habits, old fears, and old appetites. But he has changed sides. He has lowered his flag.

The other message says Christ’s Lordship has nothing to do with salvation. Ryrie asked whether a person must commit himself to Christ as Lord of his life in order to be saved, and his answer was no. Commitment comes afterward. Submission is extra. A man may theoretically belong to Christ while continuing to live as though he belongs to himself.

That leaves us with a homestead bearing two deeds and a yard flying two flags. And you know the deal… a place like that can’t stand for long. Further, the entire fight turns on one word that modern preaching has rubbed smooth.

“Lord” Is Not an Empty Church Word

The Greek word is kurios. Vine explained it as one who possesses power or authority. Kittel described the kurios as the owner of slaves and property… the person with full authority over what belongs to him.

So when the apostles called Jesus “Lord,” they weren’t adding a polite religious title to His name. They were declaring ownership. They were saying that Jesus Christ has the rightful authority to command men, nations, households, churches, and kings.

What’s more, the apostles often used Lord where the Old Testament used the holy name YHWH. That makes the word larger, not smaller. It speaks of God’s active rule over His world and His people. It calls forth worship, loyalty, and obedient service.

Even the title Christ carries the same weight. Jesus is the Anointed One… the Prophet who speaks God’s Word, the Priest who offers the sacrifice, and the King who rules the kingdom. The Savior is also the Possessor. The Redeemer is also the Ruler.

Still, Ryrie tried to narrow the word. He argued that when a convert calls Jesus “Lord,” he only means that Jesus is the Jehovah-God of the Old Testament. But that argument collapses under its own weight. If lord means master and owner when used of an earthly man, it cannot mean less when used of the Son of God.

Jesus asked the question cheap-grace preaching can’t comfortably answer: “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”

A hired man who refuses every order has already shown what he thinks of the owner. He may use respectful words on Sunday morning, but his boots tell the truth on Monday. The New Testament never treats that rebellion as a minor paperwork problem.

The Apostles Never Preached a Part-Time King

Jesus didn’t leave this muddy. He said not everyone who calls Him “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of His Father. Verbal respect without obedience is counterfeit money. It may look fine in the dim light of a church sanctuary, but it won’t pass at the gate of the kingdom.

The rich young ruler learned that hard truth. He wanted eternal life, but he also wanted to keep his idol. As long as his fist remained closed around his wealth, he wouldn’t follow Christ.

Spurgeon warned his students not to comfort a man who knows the Lord’s will but has no intention of obeying it. Don’t tell worldlings they can accept Christ as Savior while remaining married to their idols. That doesn’t protect grace. It twists the gospel.

Then Peter stood at Pentecost and preached the same Christ. “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” When the crowd was cut to the heart, Peter didn’t invite them to receive a Savior and settle the matter of Lordship ten years later. He commanded them to repent.

The numbers in Acts are striking. Christ is called Savior only a handful of times, but He is called Lord again and again… more than ninety times. The first Christian preachers weren’t embarrassed by that emphasis. They didn’t soften it for the crowd or hide it behind a fog machine.

Likewise, Paul told the Philippian jailer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus.” To a Roman man living beneath Caesar’s shadow, that wasn’t a vague spiritual slogan. It was a revolution. Caesar claimed lordship, but Paul announced a higher throne.

Romans 10 says that if you confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. The same passage says this Lord is Lord of all. Paul could have written merely that Jesus is divine, but he didn’t. He used the language of rule, authority, and allegiance.

The prodigal son gives us a picture anyone with mud on his boots can understand. The father didn’t walk into the hog pen, throw a robe over the boy’s shoulders, and tell him to keep feeding pigs. The son came to himself. He confessed his sin. He then got up, left the far country, and headed home ready to take the place of a servant.

That brings us to another word the modern church has hollowed out.

Repentance Is More Than Changing Your Opinion

At the root of every sin is a heart braced against its Creator. The sinner may be respectable, hardworking, and pleasant at the feed store, but he still wants God’s world without God’s rule. He wants rain on the field, breath in his lungs, and mercy at the judgment… just not a King over his life.

Therefore, anyone who says a man can be saved without submitting to Christ as Lord is really saying he can be forgiven while remaining in rebellion. To make that claim work, repentance must be drained of its biblical meaning.

Ryrie said the repentance that brings eternal life is simply a change of mind about Jesus. The people at Pentecost once thought Jesus was only a man. Now, he argued, they needed to recognize Him as divine and as the promised Messiah. Nothing more was required.

But Vine, Vincent, Ironside, Bancroft, and many others said repentance goes deeper. Metanoia certainly includes a change of mind, but in the New Testament that change turns a man away from sin and toward God. Ironside described it as a complete reversal of one’s inward attitude toward self, sin, God, and Christ.

That’s not merely swapping one fact for another. It’s a wagon turning around in the road.

Bancroft described repentance in terms of what a man sees, what he feels, and what he purposes to do. Pharaoh said, “I have sinned.” Balaam said it. Judas said it. Yet none of those words proved true repentance. A terrified man may admit guilt simply because he sees the storm rolling toward him.

True repentance takes God’s side against ourselves. It doesn’t merely ask, “What is this sin going to cost me?” It asks, “What does my sin mean before a holy God?” It stops defending the trespass and starts agreeing with the Owner about the boundary line.

Some object that requiring a changed direction adds human works to faith. But that’s zeal for grace aimed at the wrong target. Scripture says repentance itself is granted by God. A gift from God cannot become a meritorious human work.

The Thessalonians “turned to God from idols.” Notice the direction. You cannot honestly turn toward God while hugging the idol He commands you to abandon. And the risen Christ said repentance for the forgiveness of sins must be proclaimed in His name to all nations.

What modern preaching did to repentance, it soon did to faith.

Faith With Its Fists Closed Is Not Saving Faith

Thiessen said the voluntary element of faith includes surrendering the heart to God. Ryrie, by contrast, said faith plus commitment of life cannot be the gospel. Lewis Sperry Chafer called it unreasonable to impose surrender as an added condition of salvation because, he said, the sinner is incapable of surrendering.

But that’s an odd argument from someone who taught man’s depravity and total inability at Dallas Theological Seminary. By the same reasoning then, the sinner is incapable of believing. Chafer still insisted the sinner isn’t able… yet must believe. (Just confused I guess)

The Reformation didn’t teach salvation by faith plus a second ingredient called commitment. It taught salvation by a kind of faith that receives Christ as He truly is. Saving faith trusts, bows, and clings. It comes with empty hands because it has dropped both its weapons and its payment.

James asks what good it is if a man claims to have faith but has no works. “Can that faith save him?” Even demons believe Jesus is divine. They know exactly who He is, and they tremble. Mere agreement with correct facts is not the faith that unites a sinner to Christ.

John 3:36 places belief and obedience side by side. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, while whoever does not obey the Son will not see life. Believing and obeying aren’t identical, but neither can they be torn apart as though one belongs to salvation and the other is an optional accessory.

Again, this isn’t sinless perfection. The Christian life includes hard battles, bruised knees, and embarrassing failures. (I’m really proficient at the failure part.) So the issue isn’t whether a believer ever falls in the mud. The issue is whether he calls the mud home.

Still, the cheap gospel needed a safe category for the man who never changes. So soft preachers built one.

The “Carnal Christian” Escape Hatch

Ryrie’s position required room for what he called carnal Christians. Chafer described them as saved people who walk according to the course of this world and remain dominated by the flesh. Bill Bright famously drew one circle for the natural man and another for the carnal Christian. The sins inside looked almost the same; the main difference was a small cross drawn inside one circle.

Scripture won’t carry that much weight on such a thin line.

Jesus said a tree is known by its fruit. John said the children of God and the children of the devil become evident because the person who does not practice righteousness is not of God. Paul said the mindset on the flesh is death… not merely fewer rewards or a smaller pile of crowns at the judgment seat.

The danger here is deadly serious. A mere professor may settle into false assurance like a man taking laudanum while his house burns around him. He may sleep peacefully right up until he hears the words, “I never knew you.”

Much of the confusion leans on the sexually immoral man in Corinth. Yet Paul didn’t pat him on the shoulder as a safely saved but unusually carnal brother. He commanded the church to put him out, so that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord. That warning makes little sense if Paul considered the man’s salvation unquestionable.

Paul called him a “so-called brother.” Then, a few lines later, he warned that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. The church was not to soothe the man’s conscience but to expose him to the seriousness of his condition.

If we use the phrase carnal Christian at all, it should probably describe an immature believer in whom the fruit of the Spirit is present but still mixed with much weakness. It cannot mean a lifelong rebel with no visible evidence of new birth. Assurance without a changed life is opium at the edge of hell.

That is why the apostles told professing Christians to examine the crop before declaring the field healthy.

Before You Trust the Deed, Look for the Fruit

Paul told the Corinthians, “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith.” George Truett once estimated that a vast number of professing Christians had never been born again. Yet today, anyone who questions his salvation may quickly be told that doubt itself amounts to calling God a liar.

Sometimes doubt is unhealthy. Sometimes it’s the result of looking inward instead of looking to Christ. But sometimes those doubts are the mercy of God rattling the shutters and waking a sleeping man before the fire reaches his bed.

1. B. Thieme reportedly taught that a person could later become an atheist and still remain saved if he had once accepted Christ. A. A. Hodge gave the better answer. The biblical doctrine is not that salvation is certain merely because we once believed. Rather, perseverance in holiness is certain if we have truly believed.

A young man once claimed he was a Christian who didn’t mind sitting in heaven’s bleachers. He had chosen, he said, to go to heaven the carnal way. J. O. Buswell answered with the kind of common sense that belongs on a working homestead: a regenerate child of God may fall into carnality, but as long as a professing Christian remains settled in that state, no pastor has solid ground for assuring him he was ever regenerated.

Yep, a man can know he belongs to Christ. Job knew his Redeemer lived. Peter told believers to make their calling and election sure. Christian assurance rests on God’s promises, the Spirit’s inward witness, and the outward evidence of a changed life.

Paul’s working assumption was sober: where there is no fruit, do not casually declare the root alive. Many pulpits now reverse that. They assume salvation because someone remembers raising a hand, walking an aisle, repeating a prayer, or signing a card decades ago.

Then they explain away the barren field.

The Owner Claims the Whole Homestead

James A. Stewart called easy-believism Satan’s masterpiece. Churches have treated the Lordship of Christ like a second blessing or an optional clause buried at the bottom of the contract. As a result, whole congregations are startled when they finally hear the real gospel. It sounds new because the sharper parts were hidden from them.

1. C. Ryle warned that hearers can be stirred into professing what they have never truly experienced. Then they discover there is a cross to carry, a narrow road to walk, and a King to obey. Soon the excitement cools, the old idols come out of storage, and the person returns to his former life.

Stewart said the Son of God does not save rebels while leaving them in their rebellion. There must be real submission… not flawless performance, but a real transfer of allegiance.

Christ didn’t come merely to save people while they remain in their sins. He came to save His people from their sins. He gave Himself to redeem us from lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people of His own possession, eager to do good works.

Grace doesn’t leave the squatters in charge. It drives out the old master, cleans the rooms, opens the shutters, and hangs the rightful Owner’s name over the door. Faith trusts His mercy, but it also bows to His will. The God who pardons sinners remains fiercely jealous for His holiness.

So you can call the property yours. You can nail a wooden cross over the gate, sing hymns in the kitchen, and leave your old flag snapping in the yard. You may even convince the neighbors.

But the Owner isn’t fooled.

God has made this Jesus both Lord and Christ. He died and rose again so that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living. He doesn’t offer half a kingdom, and He doesn’t accept half an allegiance.

A rebel doesn’t receive the keys while he’s still claiming the throne. So lower the flag. Come out of the hog pen. Confess the Name that means Master… and, by the grace of God, mean it.

Source: https://www.offthegridnews.com/religion/the-gospel-that-demands-you-lower-your-personal-flag/