Introduction
When speaking on and teaching others about what it means to make Jesus Lord, a commonly referenced scripture is Luke 14: 25-27. Jesus clearly states that He has to be #1 in the lives of his disciples with no rivals to his throne. His language is purposefully strong to illustrate the magnitude of how nothing else should remotely compete with Him for the disciples’ love. He follows suit by explaining how it is essential that they carry their cross, or in the words of Paul, “nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there” (Galatians 5:24). Jesus concludes this thought by saying that those who do not do these things cannot be His disciple. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. No ambiguity. No grey area; just simple Lordship.
Later on in that chapter (verse 33) Jesus states, “So you cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own.” Again, no blurred lines. He very clearly communicates that He is to be our everything, or nothing to us. The first time I read these scriptures I was bewildered. Jesus saying NO to people!? What happened to just believing and saying a prayer of forgiveness to accept Him into your heart? What happened to everything was going to be OK because God knows my heart? This revolutionized the way I saw God and His Word. I decided I wanted to make Him Lord over my life and follow Him by His terms and not my own; to follow Him, by the way, He was commanding me to follow Him in the Scriptures.
But then, once I made Jesus Lord over my life and began to share with others what the scriptures had to say about being a Christian, I unintentionally compromised the teaching of Jesus. I looked at and taught these verses in Luke 14 as decisions to choose Jesus over whatever might be competing with Him in that moment. So if your mother asks you to lie for her, you choose Jesus’s will over hers. If you have income, you tithe. If you work every Sunday and don’t have the time to make it to church, you search for another job that will enable you to make it to church and foster relationships that will help you to keep fighting for your faith. I explained the concept of making Jesus Lord in verse 33 as being willing to give up anything that may be or become an idol (false god) in your life.
Giving up Everything
The problem with this line of thinking is that Luke 14:33 does not say “be willing” to give up everything you own. It simply says to give everything up, and if not you cannot be His disciple. I unconsciously inserted this qualifying phrase because it did not make sense to me that Jesus would ask EVERYONE to forfeit all they had to be homeless, shirtless, penniless Christians. So, in the spirit of logic, I justified that he had to have meant having the spirit of “if it interferes with me loving and living for you Lord, I will happily give it up.” This was a grave sin on my part, for I was perpetuating the very thing I verbally condemned: compromising/watering down God’s standard. What I once thought was spiritual maturity; I have come to learn is actually God’s standard. I write this now to show how God’s standard does not involve behavior modification, but rather a life of total worship!
In Mark 10:17-31, a rich man asked Jesus what he must do to make it to Heaven. We then find out that this is an exceptional man who does not make a habit of sinning. We might even say this man was a righteous and God-fearing man for living a life of obedience. But to Jesus, that wasn’t enough!
He told the rich man to go and sell everything he had and give the money to the poor “THEN come, follow me” (vs. 21, emphasis added). Jesus essentially told this man of righteousness that although he fought not to sin and fought to obey God in his life, he will not be able to follow Jesus UNTIL he sold everything and gave the money to the poor. Jesus looked through the man’s lavish exterior and straight into his heart to see that He wasn’t #1. To Jesus it wasn’t enough to obey.
The interesting thing is that we don’t know how this man handled his money. For instance, despite what many of the lower and middle class think, not all rich people are selfish. There is quite a bit of those with wealth who are very philanthropic; those that have a lot of money and try to bless others with it. Bill Gates is an excellent example. Not only is he one of the wealthiest people in the world, but he is one of the world leaders in philanthropic endeavors and charity donations/work. The rich man that Jesus was challenging could have been a philanthropist. He could have been “making Jesus Lord” over his money by being an active giver, both to his synagogue and to the poor. But Jesus saw that in his heart, the rich man would rather give up God than be poor himself.
Jesus went on to state twice how difficult it was to get into the Kingdom of God (verses 23-24). Superficially, Jesus exposed the selfishness of a man’s heart to want riches over God. But deeper, Jesus was making a statement; it’s not enough to not sin, but it’s about your life worshipping Me. This astounded everyone there, for they must have thought (as did I) that fighting with all you have not to live a life of sin _was _worshipping God. But according to Romans 12:1-2, a life of worship is to have everything in your life reflect, honor, and glorify him. This does not mean that you are perfect, for Paul states that there will be a time of perfection to come when we finish this race of life (1Corinthians 13:10). If the time of perfection is yet to come, that means it is not here yet, making us imperfect until that time when Jesus comes back. We, as Christians, don’t fight to be sinless to be perfect, but rather we obey God because He has already saved us. It is not our efforts (however maximal they may be) that make us holy, but rather the blood of Jesus (Hebrews 13:12). I used to think that as Christians, God was calling us to holiness, and we fought toward that holiness by not sinning and worshipping him. But it’s the complete opposite. If we have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus through baptism (Romans 6:1-5, 1 Peter 3:20-21, Colossians 2:12, and 1John 5:6), then we are already made holy! BECAUSE we are now holy through His blood, we must shun sin (1Thessalonians 4:3). If we have indeed died to sin at baptism, how can we continue to live in it? (Romans 6:2). For why would someone who has been scrubbed cleaned and dressed in pure white play in the mud?
So when Jesus told his disciples how hard it was to enter the Kingdom of God, after the rich man left, none were more confused and possibly discouraged that Peter; “We’ve given up everything to follow you” (Mark 10:28). Peter was one of the very first followers of Christ (Mark 1: 16-18), and he left everything to follow Jesus. He gave up “everything he owned” to be a disciple of Christ (sound familiar). He not only left his livelihood (fisherman), but Peter had a mother-in-law (Matthew 4:14), meaning he was married and possibly had children. Peter literally left his job, wife, children, and all he had to follow Jesus for over 3 years (Can you imagine leaving your family for 3+ years)! For him, it wasn’t just a willingness to give up whatever was competing with his relationship with God, but instead literally giving up everything to God because his life did not belong to himself any longer...it belonged to Jesus! So when Peter heard how it’s not just about _not sinning _and having a willing heart, he may have been dismayed. But Jesus assured him that by giving up everything to Him, Peter will have everything and more in the life to come.
For the rich man, one thing (which wasn’t even sin) kept him from Jesus and entering Heaven. We see Jesus teaching this principle of Lordship in Matthew 7:13-23. He exclaims how difficult it is to get into Heaven and how the “road is difficult” (verses 13-14). This is because it’s not just about making Jesus Lord over your actions, but your heart! There are many who have “made Jesus Lord” and have gotten baptized for the forgiveness of their sins and fought to live a life free of sin to honor God and baptized countless others to do the same. These people will not be allowed into the Kingdom of God because He was only Lord over their actions and never their hearts! That’s what makes the road so difficult because it constantly requires deep self-evaluation and sacrifice of anything that is not of worshipping God. Then Jesus goes on to say that you can identify a tree by its fruit, and people by their actions. I use to think this referred to hypocrites who don’t practice what they preach, but it’s clear now that it is not limited to hypocrites. It also is referring to those of us who don’t curse, or get drunk, or commit adultery, or lie, but do listen to music about sin, watch movies with porn and profanity, and do things that are not necessarily sin but are not acts of worship either. They can be identified as those who do all the rights things but whose hearts do not belong to God, and you can tell because their actions show how they are more concerned with not sinning than worshipping God with everything. This thought is continued in verse 21 when he blatantly exclaims how it is not about what you do, but your heart belonging to him.
This is something the Israelites never understood. God gave them so many physical reminders for them to obey Him; from tassels on their clothes (Numbers 15:37-40) to the Sabbath (Exodus 31:13) and all the law of Moses. But they continued to veer off the path by worshipping other gods because their focus was on trying to obey God’s law instead of going after God’s heart. If they saw how God went through great lengths to get them to realize how much He loved them, maybe the outcome of their journey and history would have been different. But that is why God exalted Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and King David. These were not sinless men by far, but rather men who understood that their life was not about being sinless for God’s sake, but rather worshipping Him with who they were. Where the Israelites were focused on behavior modification, these men were focused on their hearts belonging to God.
When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, He did not refer to the mission of saving souls (Matthew 28:18-20) or living a life dedicated to not sinning, but rather that we must love God with every bit of heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love others as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40). After all, if we live a life full of the mission, reading our Bible every day, and devoted to the church, but we miss what it means to love God and others, it would all be for nothing (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). To God it was never about obedience. Obedience is a result of your heart to worship Him with all of who you are. That is why 1John 5:3 doesn’t just say “loving God means keeping his commandments,” because there is more to it! The rest of that verse says, “AND his commandments are not burdensome” (emphasis added). You can keep His commandments all you want, but if they are a burden for you to do so, then that exposes your heart. It goes beyond behavior modification. If your behavior does not reflect your heart then it is all for nothing.
My error before was in thinking that Jesus required me to obey him, and then as I matured in Christ I would grow from the viewpoint of not sinning to my entire life being worship and a living sacrifice. But that is not what the scriptures say. Making Jesus Lord is not about modifying your behavior to reflect his will, but rather our hearts belonging to Him and having that reflected in our behavior. This is the standard of Lordship: total worship and not just behavior modification. Jesus did not tell the rich man to follow Him and give up everything in the process, but rather to follow him only after he first gave up everything. When we teach and help those in the world to repent and make Jesus Lord, we must do it from the standpoint of worship and not solely behavior modification. Giving up everything is essential and not just a possibility. Giving up everything means that your life no longer belongs to you, but Christ, and everything you had belongs to Him now (Galatians 2:20). Because you gave it all up to belong to Him, it must all worship Him. Not most of it, having the rest be neutral. All has to give him glory, for according to Jesus, if we do not give it all up for his glory, we CANNOT be his disciple. And if we are not his disciple by his standard, we cannot have our sins forgiven through baptism.
Conclusion
Now, if you already have been baptized and made Jesus Lord the best you knew how, but didn’t necessarily understand Lordship to this level, there is no need to fear. For in God’s perfect grace, we are commanded to approach the waters of baptism with a clear conscience, for it is effective when we trust God wholeheartedly (1 Peter 3:21 and Colossians 2:12). In essence, if you approached your baptism with a clear conscience that there was nothing you would hide or keep from Jesus and that your life did not belong to you any longer but Christ, His blood covers you! That is part of the beauty of God’s grace; we don’t have to have it all together and understand everything to approach Him. We need to surrender all, and He will teach us the rest as we go (Matthew 28: 19-20).
But for those who never really made Jesus Lord, search your heart and the Scriptures in prayer to find His will for your life. And a warning to those of you more concerned with setting your life up not to sin instead of understanding what things, INCLUDING SIN, are not worshipping God in your life, for you are on a dangerous path to not giving your heart to God. We are called to strip off EVERYTHING that does not help us run this marathon, not just the sin that makes us trip (Hebrews 12:1). Let us worship God wholeheartedly and give our hearts to Him to have forever!