When you Confess with Your Mouth

I just finished reading the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan (I highly recommend it). The book provided a lot of food for thought. One of the things Francis says in his book is that lukewarm Christians are an oxymoron. If people claim to be Christians, but are not following God whole-heartedly, than they are not really Christians. That’s a hard statement to accept.

I was thinking today about that statement and comparing it with what the Bible has to say about salvation when this verse came to mind: “If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9). At first glance, it appeared to be a simple task- believe, acknowledge, and then salvation follows. There doesn’t seem to be anything about whole-hearted following. But then I thought a bit more about the first statement- “if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord”. I think that today we’ve spiritualized the word “Lord”. We’ve given it a Christianese meaning somewhere along the way, making it a synonym for God or divinity, and we’ve forgotten what the word originally meant.

In John 13 Jesus says, “you call me Master and Lord, and you say well, for so I am” (v.13) Here Jesus is using the word Lord in it’s traditional context. Your Lord was your master. He commanded and you obeyed. In Medieval times, the lord controlled all that his serfs could and could not do. What he asked for, they gave without questioning. When he commanded them to follow into battle, they went without a choice. In Strong’s concordance, the Greek word used in Romans 10, Kurios, is defined as, “he to whom a person or thing belongs, about which he has power of deciding; master, lord, the possessor and disposer of a thing, the owner; one who has control of the person, the master.”

When we confess Jesus as Lord, we are not merely acknowledging his deity. We are swearing fealty. We are promising obedience. We are surrendering our wills and agreeing to follow where he goes. Have you truly confessed Jesus as your Lord?