Bibleline Radio Show – 2014-02-26 – Lordship Salvation Pt.1
Transcription:
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s Word on Bibleline, everywhere, every time. Here God’s truth on Bibleline. Welcome to Bibleline with Dr. Ralph Yankee Arnold, pastor of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida. Clearly declaring the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the radio and the internet. Your regular prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the air. You can reach us toll-free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made by clicking on the donations link on the BibleLineMinistries.org home page.
We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, and that today’s first part of this two-part message will be a blessing to you and your family. Tonight, this is on a subject that I know fairly well, preached it many times, but I need to have you sold on what I’m saying. If you’re ever going to teach anybody how to win people to Christ, or if you want to stay strong in the Lord, know how to defend your faith.
those who teach that lordship salvation is true, lordship salvation is impossible. It is not of God. Lordship salvation boils down to making Christ the Lord the master of your life in order for you to be saved. It means committing your life to Him, your will to Him, your mind to Him, every area of your life to Him and serving Him in order to be saved. And whether you do it to be saved or to stay saved, it’s both wrong.
It’s works for salvation. And there are people that teach that damnable heresy. And yes, I said that because I believe it’s so wrong, there’s so much damage that many people don’t see the area in it. But anyway, if you look there in your notes, because of the length of the material I may stick with the Scriptures that I’ve already wrote down, they’re the same as what you’ll find in your Bible. It’s from the King James. But if you look there at the top of the page, there is a message being preached today in many Bible-believing churches.
By born again pastors, preachers that really know the truth. But for some reason rather they have slipped into air and teach things that they don’t really believe. But because they hear others preach it, it sounds so good and they sound so successful that they copy them. Years ago a man by the name of Billy Graham made very popular the idea of coming forward in a church by doing it in his big crusade that he had around the country, which was really started by a guy by the name of Billy Sundey.
When he used to have these, I could say, tent meetings and logging camps. That’d be so much mud that they would bring in a lot of sawdust, and they would put sawdust down the aisles and in the front and he’d tell people to hit the sawdust trail. And so they would come down and come to what they call the mourners bench. And many people got to where they didn’t think you could actually be saved unless you hit the sawdust trail.
And you had to come to the mourners bench and weep and wail and pray through and people get around you and lay their hands on you and pray that you could get saved. And all the time, it was a gift. It’s a free gift. And all you had to do was believe on what Christ did for you. And that you don’t have to beg God to save you. You don’t have to plead with God to save you. That is so wrong.
God’s already done everything He can do to save you. There’s only one thing left. Will you believe that He died for you and paid for your sins. It would solve a lot of problems. But because Billy Graham was so successful, all those people that saw and hear what he said and did, they copy. And sometimes they don’t really believe, that’s what you have to do, but they didn’t know a better way to do it. And I believe there’s people today that know the Lord, love the Lord, and they’re just preaching a muddy message without knowing what they’re doing or thinking things through.
You see, I was saved and before I went to Florida Bible College, I also had some errors in my message. I remember preaching in a rescue mission one time and I told the people, I said, it’s just like you hanging over the cliff and you’re hanging on all these roots and they keep breaking and you’re hanging on these roots and you know if you don’t hang on, you’re going to fall and an angel comes up behind you and tells you, let go and simply trust me.
And you are hiding it onto your sins and you’ve got to let go of all of your sins and simply trust the Lord. Now it sounded good. It really sounded good. Just let go. But if you’re hanging on and you can’t see the angel behind you scares you to death. So you don’t know whether or not to hang on or let go.
And I knew the truth. I just didn’t know how to explain the truth. So unless you see and understand it, you will be surprised how messed up you can get. So look there at this statement, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and make him Lord of your life and you will be saved. You must make him Lord of all and if he is not Lord of all then he is not Lord at all. This doctrine has been termed Lordship Salvation, making Christ the Lord of your life and has absolutely no support from the Word of God.
The next statement, Christ is the Savior. The reason that one statement is so important is because Christ is the Lord. You don’t make him Savior and you don’t make him Lord. You see, that’s who he is. He is Lord, he is Savior. He is Savior because that’s what he does. He saves. When you mix the grace of God with the efforts of man, you rob the gospel of its power to save. Man needs salvation, he cannot save himself, he needs a Savior.
Jesus This Christ is the Savior, the people of Samaria said unto the woman, now we believe, not because of thy saying, for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world. John chapter 4 and verse 42, we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world. You see, in the Old Testament they look forward to the Christ, the Messiah, Mashiach. They look forward to the Messiah coming, but they understood in the Old Testament that the Messiah would be the Savior of the world.
And that’s why John, when he saw him, says, behold, the Lamb of God, which take of the way the sin of the world. So even though in the Old Testament, they may have made sacrifices, but they knew that the Messiah, Christ coming into the world, is to be the Savior of the world. He was to make a payment for the sins of the world. He was to be the sacrifice for the sins of the world. So is the whole world saved?
Well, no. Then how can can He be the Savior of the world?reatment of the world. Because He is the only Savior in the world and He is able to save the world, but the world has to believe on Him. The next statement, Christ can be a Savior without being your Savior. There is only one Savior for the world and that is Christ. But it is up to each individual whether or not He or she will trust Him for their salvation.
See, Christ is the Savior of the world. There is no other. But you as an individual must accept Jesus Christ as your Savior in order for Him to save you. There is no one else that can save you. You cannot save yourself. It is not by works of righteousness which we have done. The next paragraph says, When he was born, the angel declared, in Luke chapter 2 and verse 11, unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior.
Which is Christ the Lord. Christ the Lord is this title, that’s who he is. He is the Savior and he was the Savior of the world on the day he was born. Even though he hadn’t made a payment. Even though you could say, well he hadn’t saved anybody yet, but he was the Savior. See, that’s who he is. This is what he came to do. He came to save. And the prophet Isaiah quotes God as saying. I even I am the Lord.
When it’s all capital L-O-R-D, it means Jehovah. It’s a reference to God Himself. And beside me there is no Savior. Beside me there is no Savior. Well if Jesus comes and He claims to be the Savior of the world and God says there is no Savior beside Him, then Jesus must be God. Jesus must be Jehovah. Yes, it’s hard for us sometimes to understand all of that. The Scriptures are emphatic that God took on flesh in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ, and became man’s Savior.
John chapter 1, very interesting that in the beginning, God, yes, created the heavens and the earth in the book of Genesis. but here, God was in the flesh and He was in the world and the world was made by Him. And it says, He was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. You see, Jesus Christ is God.
He created all things and without him was not anything made that was made. So the Bible tells us who Jesus is and what he did. Not only did he create the heavens and the earth, the Bible says he took on flesh, coming into this world and he came for a reason. The next statement I want you to see there is this. Christ the Lord is who who is. It is his title. Saviour refers to what he does. He saves.
He saves. When you trust the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, He saves your soul from the penalty of sin in hell. That very moment. So you understand that when you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, He saves you from the penalty of sin in hell. When you accept Jesus Christ as the Lord or Master of your life after you’re saved, you are trusting Him to save you from the power of sin in your life. So, one you trust Him as your Savior to save you from the penalty of sin, which is in hell.
And the second thing, after you trust the Lord, we should allow the Lord to be the master of our life. And as we yield to Him, He gives us the power to deliver us from the power of sin in this life. So after we are saved, we have a life to live. So there is a place for Christ to spend the Lord of our life, the master of our life. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But when you try to make Christ the Lord and the master of your life in order to be saved, it’s wrong.
This is why sometimes people put on there, and I’ve seen it just recently on their website, that you must accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, as your Lord and Savior. But what does that mean? and they generally mean that you must accept Him as the Lord and the Master of your life be willing to change your life, turn from your sins, make Him in charge of your life, and or that He might save you. That is heresy.
And yet it looks like it’s so close, and yet it’s so disastrous because the consequences is is hell. And they use a lot of the same words, terminology, but it’s just so wrong. We have to be careful of the things that we say, the words that we say, the message that we tell people because see we will have to answer to the Lord for the gospel we preach. It’s not left up to you and I to change it, to manipulate it.
And just because we see the wickedness in so many Christians lives, you can’t change the gospel message to solve the immaturity in Christians. You have to hit them with the doctrines of other things that pertain to the child of God, but salvation is totally separate. But because many preachers don’t know how to do that, they put the disciplines of discipleship with the clearness of the gospel and put it all together and give them a glass of mud that they cannot discern.
So now they don’t know if they’re really saved or not because now they have to look at these works that do how they live and it produces turmoil. It produces fear. It produces terror because there’s no absolute, there’s no surety. There’s no confidence. So in this statement I have here, after salvation, your yielding to the lordship of Christ will save your life from the power of sin, but it cannot save your soul from hell. People can seek to make Christ the Lord in the master of their life and how they want to live, but that cannot save your soul from hell.
Impossible. To be saved from hell, you must accept the payment he made for your sins, and that is made by you trusting in Christ and Him alone without any works of yours whatsoever. The next statement in the book of Acts in chapter 4 and verse 12, it says, neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. According to that verse, there is no Savior outside of Jesus Christ.
Christ is the Savior. You can choose whether or not to accept Him as your Savior. Accepting Him as my Savior does not make Him a Savior. He already is a Savior. I am just allowing him to save me. But if I don’t trust him as my Savior, he is still a Savior. That’s what he does. I am thankful that I can stand here and say, He is my Savior because He has saved me. If He has not saved me, He is not my Savior.
And if He has saved me, then I cannot be seeking salvation. those who are still seeking to be saved are saying they are not yet saved and still need to be saved. And therefore they think they have to wait till the end of their life to see if they’re going to make it or not. Salvation is a gift. Look at the next statement. Man’s belief or lack of the belief in the savorship of Jesus does not change the fact that Jesus Christ Christ is truly the Savior.
When a man, this is very important statement here, when a man recognizes the fact that Jesus Christ is truly the Savior and trusts him to be his Savior, then and only then does that man receive the benefits of Christ’s saving power. Outside of that there is none. You see, the new birth is a miracle. The new birth is a spiritual birth. The new birth is of God, and God has to do it. Man cannot give himself a new birth.
Then it would be of the flesh by the will of man, and it is by the will of God.” The next statement, Christ died and rose again for all Hebrews chapter 2 and verse 9, that Jesus Christ was made lower than the angels for the suffering of death, that He might taste death for every man. So that every man can have salvation. In 1 John chapter 2 and verse 2, it talks about how that Jesus is our perpetuation. He is the satisfaction for ours and God was satisfied with the payment Christ made for our sins.
But He also says, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. So not just those who believe, he also paid for the sins of those who don’t believe, but the payment is not put to their account unless they believe it. They still must have the righteousness of God given to them as a gift in order to go to heaven. The next statement here, but he saves only those who trust him, that is to say, even though So he is the Savior of the world.
He saves only those in the world who personally and individually receive Him by faith. God invites whosoever will to trust in His Son, but it is an amazing truth of God’s Word that men can forbid the Savior to save them. Such men die without a Savior. Though one was available to them all the time, like in John 3, 16 through 18, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Christ did not come into the world to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved. And He that believeth is not condemned, but He that believeth not is condemned already because you believe if not in the name of the only begotten Son of God. The last paragraph on this page, just as you receive the Savior by faith and He becomes your Savior, when you allow Christ to control your life, He becomes your Lord. He is Lord.
But see there’s a great benefit in submitting your will to His will. There are great blessings in this life by the Lord, been the master of my life. In other words, someone who can tell me what I should and should not do. But God wants us as His children to voluntarily yield to His authority. Now you can if you want, you can rebel if you want. But to yield to Him, God will bless your life and reward you when you get to heaven.
If you do not, then God is going to have to chase and discipline. Maybe take you home before your time. But now notice, there is an increasing number of evangelicals today who are preaching that in order for a man to be saved. He must not only receive Christ as his Savior, but also must make Him absolute Lord and Master of his life. Christ is the Lord. He is the Lord Jehovah, God into flesh, and Lord can also mean Master.
And that is who He is. In Mark chapter 12 verse 28 through 33, I want to read these verses to you. And then I want to make some comments. Because see, if Christ must be the Lord and the Master of my life, what am I actually doing with an individual? If I tell a lost man, this is what you must do in order to be saved. is not your Savior or your Lord, unless He is Lord of all. He is not Lord at all.
And therefore you must make Christ the Lord and the Master of your life. That sounds so spiritual. Sounds so good. It’s just the same as telling a person, you must love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, body, soul, and strength. And you must love your neighbor as thyself.” I wonder where I’ve heard those before. Look in verse 28 of the book of Mark, one of the scribes came, having heard them reasoning together and perceiving that he had answered them well, ask Him, which is the first commandment of all?
Jesus answered Him, the first of all the commandments is here, O Israel. The Lord our God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment. And the second is like namely this. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. And the scribe said unto him, well, master. Master? thou hast said the truth, for there is one God, and there is none other but He, and to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love His neighbor as Himself is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.
Do you notice there’s a word, three little letter word, not IRS, the word all, mentioned over and over and over and over. Do you know the main thing about the Lordship Salvation? He must be Lord of all, or He’s not Lord at all. Well, what does that mean? This is what it means. This is the law. When you tell a person that he must make Christ the Lord and the Master of his life, you are placing that person under the law to obey the law.
All the law. Every law. Look what he says. In verse 30, “…and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all died heart, all thy soul, all by mine, all by strength. This is the first commandment. This is a commandment. So when you tell a lost man, this is what you must do. He has to be Lord of all. You’re putting that person under the law to be saved. Which means that you’re telling a lost man, he has to prove that he’s worthy of salvation by the commitments that he’s made by the life that he’s lived, by the sacrifices that he’s made, all of that, all boiled together, and not just between him and God, but the second commandment is likened to this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
So it’s not just you living wholly between you and God, you must live a certain way with people. And if you don’t, you fail the law and the penalty for breaking the law was death. And yet there’s preachers that take lost people. It’s as though Christ’s crucifixion, His death, burial and resurrection had absolutely no effect, meant zero and are trying to keep people under the law. And there’s a lot of people on radio and television that preach this dandable message.
You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tappa, Florida with Dr. Ralph Arnold. We pray that you were blessed by today’s message. Part two of this teaching will conclude with tomorrow’s broadcast. If you have enjoyed our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, you can reach Bibleline and pledge your support to keep us on the air in your area by dialing toll-free, 1-800-576-3771. That’s 1-800-576-3771. To listen to today’s message again or to obtain a free download of any of our Bibleline programs, just go to our homepage at BibleLineMinistries.org and click on the radio broadcast link.
If you are in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4011 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Our Sunday morning services begin at 1030 and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcast of our services may be seen by clicking on the Calvary Community Church link at BibleLineMinistries.org. Thanks for joining us on Bibleline, and now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound, and we will be changed.
Caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day, believing that the Lord is coming soon, and just keep looking up.
