CHRIST AS LORD

I wish to try and shew what I understand is involved in believing on the Lord Jesus and in confessing Him Lord. To understand this we must consider the conditions in which He was made Lord and the present condition of this world. In Acts 2 the Holy Spirit, by Peter, charged the Jews with having made use of the Roman power to crucify Jesus. “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands [or by the hands of wicked men] have crucified and slain”, v 23. The Jews by the hands of the Romans had crucified and slain the Christ of God. This agrees with Psalm 2, where it says: “Why do the heathen rage, and the people [that is, the Jews] imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed”, &c. Thus we see that the whole world, the religious Jew and the godless heathen, joined together to crucify the Son of God. All are implicated in this supreme sin, though the greatest guilt rests upon the Jew. Hence the Lord, in speaking of the coming of the Holy Spirit, said: “He will reprove the world of sin ... of sin because they believe not on me”, John 16: 8. The world has seen and hated Christ and the Father. This stamps the world with its true character. This is the controversy God has with this world.

The last time the world saw Christ was on the cross, in all the ignominy they had heaped upon Him when they crucified Him between two malefactors, and it will never see Him again till He comes in glory to execute the judgment of God, Rev 19. Men do not believe this. They would fain believe the world of today is not the world which crucified the Lord, and judging from outward appearances it might appear to be so. But no new world has come into existence since the cross. Men are the same; the flesh is unchanged. What is deceiving, is the fact that the world we see around us is a Christianised world, clothed with the profession of Christianity. But that is only an outward garb, under which there is the same hostility to Christ as always, as witnessed by the persecution of the true witnesses from Stephen onward; and in this the religious part of the world has always been foremost, Acts 7: 51, 52; 1 Thess 2: 14, 15; Rev 17: 3-6; 18: 24. Such is the present world, and such is the light in which God regards it. It only awaits the day of the Lord when it will be completely destroyed by the judgment of God, to make room for a new world which will be of God, 1 Thess 5: 2, 3; Matt 24: 37-39.

All this shews what a tremendous breach has come in between God and men. The world on the one side has crucified Jesus, God on the other side has raised Him from the dead, exalted Him, and given Him a name above every name and made Him Lord of all. There can be no compromise between God and the world. There can be no thought of God improving or bringing into order such a world. What He is now doing is to call men out of it, and so saving them from its doom. This being so, believing on the blessed Lord Jesus and confessing Him must involve separation from the whole system of this world. In Acts 2, when those who believed the preaching of Peter were convicted of their sin and said “Sirs, what must we do?” (v 37), he called upon them to repent and be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ. In so doing they in a formal way renounced their sin and separated themselves from the rest of the nation. Separation accompanied their confession. In Acts 11 it says of those who believed the preaching that they “turned unto the Lord”. In turning unto the Lord they must have turned from something—they not only turned from their former lawless ways, but from their former associations. If we have not done these two things we have not truly turned to the Lord. Walking in self-will and going on with the world are incompatible with faith in the Lord Jesus. He had to say to some in His day, “Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?”, Luke 6: 46. Again, in 2 Corinthians 6 the apostle says: “What concord hath Christ with Belial? ... wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing”, vv 15-17. Speaking for himself, the apostle could say, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world”, Gal 6: 14. In the light of the death of Christ the world to him was a judged system, and he had died to it, as the Lord said, “Now is the judgment of this world”, John 12: 31. “Let every one who names the name of the Lord withdraw from iniquity”, 2 Tim 2: 19.

May the Lord give every believer grace and courage to be true to his confession, so that it may not be in word only—but in deed and in truth. Whatever the difficulty, His grace is sufficient. As we call upon Him day by day we shall find daily salvation, and grace to follow and serve Him till we share His glory in the coming age.

From The Believer’s Friend vol 3 (1911)