Thursday, October 30, 2008
Next Previous Today
Returning to Our lordship
Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and no one should ever imagine or try to take his place. To do so is to remove God, even if only in our minds, from his rightful place as Lord and ruler of everything. At the same time, we have been created in a glorious way in his image and likeness and need to realize again the stature of our creation. We need to take back what has been lost, even stolen from us, as a result of our rebellion.
Pantheism would have us believe that god is in everything and that as part of that everything, we are also divine. That's not what I am talking about or advocating. Current new age thought is similar. In some way, we are god, we are divine, in fact, we are the only god that now is. That's not what I am talking about either.
It is crucial that, "He is Lord" remains as the cornerstone of our confession and our faith. We must never compromise or go back on that or lessen who God is in anyway. However, I think that we have accepted a view of our own humanity that is less than how God sees us. We have made God less than who he is and we have made ourselves less as well. That is the consequence of sin that was not part of the original creation.
"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground'." (Genesis 1:27-28).
Enter Satan. In the form of a serpent, "more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made" (Genesis 3:1). And the first thing that he does is to try and remove God from his rightful place as Lord. "Did God really say?" was his question and he asks whether God has the right to demand this kind of obedience. And he encourages the woman to put herself forward "like God" (Genesis 3:5). God had given us everything and made us lord of everything under himself. Satan had already rebelled against that true Lordship and been thrown out of heaven and he encouraged the creation to do the same. And we fell for it and gave up our lordship to a "living creature that moves on the ground" instead of ruling over it as we had been told to do.
Without getting into a huge discussion, while we were created as scripture says, "a little lower than the heavenly beings [angels]" (see Psalm 8:3-8), they are not meant to rule over us. In fact, Hebrews says that their function is to serve us within the will of God: "Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?" (Hebrews 1:14, see Psalm 103:20-21). When we speak what is the will of God in any situation, the angels of God obey his word and act on our behalf. When we operate within the authority of Christ, even Satan and his demons must submit to us and have no power or authority over us! (see Luke 10:17-20).
We were created by God to be as someone has said, "lords of the earth." We surrendered our lordship when we settled for less than what God had given us thinking it to be more. Jesus Christ came to undo all of that and to put us back in the place where we were when we were originally created (2 Corinthians 5:17). What is the biggest part of our lordship that we need to reclaim? I think that it is our lordship over sin. We no longer need to be enslaved to sin. Sin is what caused us to lay it down in the first place. But Jesus has given us the right through his cross and resurrection, that having dealt with sin and death, we can return to our rightful place. Paul asks:
"What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death" (Romans 6:1-3).
Our union with Christ has moved us from the realm of sin and death over into the realm of life and righteousness. Our old sinful, submitting-to-the-one-who-was-not-really-lord self has been done away with. We have taken back our rightful identity. God says that we should now,
"In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. . . . Sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace" (Romans 6:11-12, 14).
God, not sin or anything else that falls short of his glory, should be our Lord and master. At the same time, Jesus has given us back the right and the authority and the privilege to stand up and be who we were created to be. We are supposed to rule, not be ruled over by sin or anything else. We are not poor and weak and miserable, we are creatures of glory, created in the image and likeness of God! Isn't it about time that all of us rise to the place of our birthright and be real men and women of God that reveal to the world what God desires to do in and for each one of us? Wouldn't you like to be that person, filled full of all the stuff of creation? Ask him! That is exactly what he came to earth to provide! I serve that God as a lord of the earth!
Next Previous Today | 
