Behold His lordship

Christ The Lord

Lift your praises now

All our lives to Him we bring

Lift your praises now

Let every heart make room for Him

Let fear and striving cease

His blood has made us clean

Now all can enter in

Through Christ the Lord

Raise your voices now

For there is One upon the throne

Raise your voices now

And make His praises glorious

Every knee will bow

Every tongue cry out

The praises of our God

Christ the Lord

Give Him glory now

For Christ our God has overcome

Give Him glory now

For all that He has done for us

Let His Kingdom come

Let His will be done

Let His praise be sung

Christ the Lord

There will come a day

When our eyes will see Him 

Oh we will see Him

And on our faces we’ll fall

Joining with heaven

Singing His praises

Devotional

Often, upon first coming to salvation, we are first overwhelmed by what Christ has done for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). We read of His suffering and of the love for us that motivated Him. We are moved. And within that we come to know Christ as our Saviour. But Scripture tells us something striking. We find Scripture doesn’t just call us to repentance in light of Christ as our Saviour, but also Christ as our Lord (Romans 10:9). 

What this means is that we cannot come to abide in Christ without accepting both His sacrifice for us and His lordship over us. 

This is so because, in resurrecting Christ, God didn’t just return to Him His breath, but He made Him Lord over all at the same time (Ephesians 1:19-23, Romans 6:23, 8:39, 1 Corinthians 6:11). There does not exist for us a Saviour in Christ who is not also Lord over us. 

Jesus Christ as Lord is also what the disciples consistently preached. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul makes it clear that the concept of Christ as Lord is in fact inextricably at the heart of the Gospel (2 Corinthians 4:5).

We must come to the reality of the nature of the Christ Who saved us. He is Christ received in whole, not in part, though we hope to ever grow in the extent to which we know the whole. John Piper explains it thus: “…from the time of our first saving acceptance of Christ, He is our King and Lord and Savior and Priest and Prophet and Counselor. All that He is, He is for those who are His. And then begins a life of faltering and growing yieldedness to Christ in all that He is.”

This yieldedness begins when we know His salvation, and it continues for the rest of our lives, actively manifest in daily acts of submission, faith, trust, obedience and worship. The Word calls us continually to yield all we are to God (see also Hebrews 12:1), and to do so to such an extent that we even become “slaves” to God – devoted entirely to the will of our Master and Lord. 

We were once slaves to lawlessness and impurity and stood to receive the “wages of sin” which is death. But through Christ we have been offered a gift – one of eternal life (Romans 6:17-19, 23). 

Brothers and sisters in Christ, choose to surrender today and every day. “Present your members as slaves to righteousness”. Be convinced that He who has saved you, is also your Lord. 

Reflections

1. Knowing Christ purely as your Saviour and not as your Lord also, can lead to overly emotional responses and hyper-grace doctrines. Knowing Him only as your Lord might lead to dead works or a relationship characterised by fear. How then does knowing Christ as both allow us the freedom to live for Him and draw near to Him without fear? 
2. What will yieldedness look like in your own life? List a few things or ways you can begin to yield to God.
3. How can being in community help us to grow in yieldedness?