This is not just true for those who believe it. It is true for the whole world. For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men , especially of believers. God has provided men, the Savior, Jesus. There are not many ways to heaven, there is only one:. Again God is crystal clear on this. He is the only Savior. No one will stand before God the Father unless they come through the Savior, Jesus. With some truths, the consequences of being unaware or uncaring toward it are minimal.
An example of this is with the number of hats in Vermont. But the truth remains truth whether we believe it and acknowledge it or not. With other truths, the consequences are more serious. Failing to understand the truths of physics can be a matter of life and death if you get too close to the edge of a cliff. Likewise, believing or not believing the truth that God has testified regarding His Son has eternal implications. Our belief or lack of belief does not change the truth but it can change us.
Anyone can make a claim that they are the Savior. What is it that sets Jesus apart? We know this to be true from the testimony of the Scriptures. Jesus says,. There is another who testifies of Me, and I know that the testimony which He gives about Me is true. You have sent to John, and he has testified to the truth. But the testimony which I receive is not from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. He was the lamp that was burning and was shining and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light.
But the testimony which I have is greater than the testimony of John; f or the works which the Father has given Me to accomplish—the very works that I do—testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me. The very works that Jesus did while on earth are a testimony to Him. Jesus did many miracles:.
All of these are incredible miracles. None of them could be done apart from God. Yet, the greatest of all evidences that Jesus is both Lord and Savior is in His resurrection and exaltation. There have been many men recorded in history that have performed miracles. All of them died. None but One of them have risen from the dead, to never die again. Jesus the Christ was crucified by the hands of the Romans.
We must not fail to communicate the "whole council of God. For Jesus to be Lord of your life means that He is the ruler, the boss, the master of your whole life.
He cannot be Lord of a part — He must be given control of the entire life - the whole life. When thinking about the whole life of a person, we must think of various parts that make up a person. Paul wrote, "Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" I Thess.
Paul makes it plain that the whole person is made up of spirit, soul, and body. A person has an inner, private, unseen-to-the-natural-eye aspect of life and he has an outer, visible, and public life that is seen and heard by those with whom he comes in contact day by day. Jesus desires to be Lord of the seen and the unseen, the visible and the invisible, the private aspects of our life and the public aspects of our life. He wants to be Lord of our spiritual life and of our physical life. The inner sanctuary, the spirit and soul, contains the mind, the emotion, and the will.
It is in our spirit and soul that we think, feel, choose, decide, dream, and plan. Battles are fought and won or lost on the battleground of our private life. Is Jesus Lord over this area of your life? The writer of Proverbs said. Don't underestimate the importance of our private life.
Although more attention is often given to the physical body, our true spiritual health is determined by the spirit and soul — not the body. The outward life expresses the inner life. The outward life involves our eyes, our ears, our lips, our hands, our feet, our entire body.
Our public life is expressed by what we see, what we say, what we hear, where we go, and what we do. It is so important that Jesus be Lord over our public life.
We need to see the public life in the context of home life, the workplace, the classroom, and the neighborhood. We need to see it in its relationship with friends, family, work colleagues, neighbors, and classmates. We need to see it in its attitude toward possessions, obligations, and responsibilities, and the use of time and resources. If we agree with the view of S. Zwemer "If Jesus is not Lord of all, the He is not Lord at all" , then there are many areas of life that must come under His lordship.
Is Jesus Lord of your thoughts? Is Jesus Lord of your emotions? Is Jesus Lord of your speech, of your relationships, of your possessions? Is Jesus Christ Lord of your whole life? What must a person do in order for Jesus Christ to be Lord of his life? The easy answer is, "Yield your life to Him. Such an important question requires more than a surface answer.
For Jesus to become Lord of a person's life involves absolute and total surrender. I can think of no better example of total surrender than F. He was a Baptist preacher and pastor of Christ Church in the heart of London in the nineteenth century. In the midst of a successful ministry, F. Meyer confessed that something was lacking in his life and ministry. Jowett recounts the following story: "Dr.
Meyer has told us that his early Christian life was marred and his ministry paralyzed just because he had kept back one thing from the bunch of keys he had given to the Lord.
Every key save one! The key of one room was kept for personal use, and the Lord shut out. The effect of the incomplete consecration was found in lack of power, lack of assurance, lack of joy and peace.
The joy of the Lord begins when we hand over the last key. We sit with Christ on His throne as soon as we have surrendered our crowns, and made Him sole and only ruler of our life and its possessions. Meyer experienced the lordship of Jesus Christ when he handed over the last key.
He had kept back the key to one room in his life and it brought great defeat. Remember, if He is not Lord of all of every room , then He is not Lord at all. Have you yielded keys to every room in your life? Does He have the key to every room in your private life? Is there a room marked "private — keep out? There is a second element to yielding our lives to the Lord. In addition to absolute surrender , there must also be an acknowledgment of His ownership.
Paul addressed the subject of ownership in 1 Corinthians "Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? We are not our own. We were bought at a price. We belong to Jesus.
We are His purchased possession. When a person yields to the lordship of Jesus Christ, he or she acknowledges His ownership and gives up his or her personal rights. Yielding to the lordship of Jesus Christ also involves total and unreserved obedience. If He is the Lord of your life, you are going to do what He tells you to do.
If asked what I consider to be the most important word in the Christian vocabulary, I would say, "Obedience. I like to read the account of Elijah's response to God in 1 Kings 17 and The Word of the Lord came to Elijah, and he did what God told him to do.
Thus with regard to other religions, Christ the Saviour is also mysteriously at work. In this task he unites to himself the Church, which is in a way the "sacrament of communion with God and of unity among all men" Lumen gentium, n. Christ alone can satisfy all our desires5. I would like to conclude with a wonderful passage from the Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, by St Louis de Montfort, which proclaims the Christological faith of the Church: "Jesus Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of everything He is the only teacher from whom we must learn; the only Lord on whom we should depend; the only Head to whom we should be united and the only model that we should imitate.
He is the only Physician that can heal us; the only Shepherd that can feed us; the only Way that can lead us; the only Truth that we can believe; the only Life that can animate us. He alone is everything to us and he alone can satisfy all our desires Each one of the faithful who is not united to him is like a branch broken from the stem of the vine.
It falls and withers and is fit only to be burnt. If we live in Jesus and Jesus lives in us, we need not fear damnation. Neither angels in heaven nor men on earth, nor devils in hell, no creature whatever can harm us, for no creature can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Through him, with him and in him we can do all things and render all honour and glory to the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit; we can become perfect and be for our neighbour a fragrance of eternal life" n.
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