Lordship Salvation

Today, I was asked to weigh in on the topic, "Must Jesus be Lord to be Savior?" I haven't had a conversation about this topic in years. But I thought I'd let the readers of this blog in on the conversation.

Below is the question I received and my reply.

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I am running headlong into the heresy that some believe and teach that we can accept Jesus as Savior without taking Him as Lord – or that we can be saved and take Him as Lord somewhere down the road. If I recall, [a mutual friend] had said you had some document or work that addresses this. I don’t have the time or desire to recreate the wheel, so any help you might be able to offer in this area would be appreciated. Thanks.

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This has been a debate that was most prevalent in the late 80s and early 90s. It was hotly contested at my seminary and, I’m sure, at most others.

In 1988, John MacArthur wrote a book called “The Gospel According to Jesus” where he espoused what some have called “Lordship Salvation.” The idea is that Jesus is Lord and that we must accept Him as Lord and Savior in order to be saved.

Then, in 1989, Charles Ryrie, theologian and prof at Dallas Theological Seminary and the “Ryrie Study Bible” guy, took exception to the concept by saying that making Jesus Lord is tantamount to a “works oriented” salvation. His book was “So Great Salvation: What It Means to Believe In Jesus Christ.”

John Piper then weighed in on the topic and landed where MacArthur did.

I think this article is very helpful in summarizing the issues.

Piper has a great letter you can find in his book “The Pleasures of God” and also here.

Piper loads his letter with scripture after scripture. To me, it’s really a no-brainer. Piper's biblical logic and evidence overwhelms Ryrie and other non-Lordship proponents like Zane Hodges.

I land firmly on the Lordship side of things. However, I would not say that non-Lordship salvation teaching is a heresy. If we call it a heresy, then we have to say that a guy like Charles Ryrie is a heretic. I can’t quite do that. Ryrie clearly holds to the basics of the faith.

But I think non-Lordship teaching is a spurious teaching that does spiritual damage. Some people can gain a false sense of assurance with the non-Lordship teaching. I would say that if a person just wants Jesus as Savior but not as Lord then he or she is not truly saved. You can’t have Jesus as Savior without having Him as Lord because He is, after all, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Sometimes, those who believe that they had Jesus as Savior and then say that they later made Him Lord (we hear testimonies like this a lot!) are not understanding the true work of grace of God in their lives and are, therefore, communicating their testimony in a biblically flawed way. Receiving Christ as Savior and Lord does not mean that a new Christian is wholly committed. But it does mean he or she is committed to seek to be holy under the Lordship of Jesus.

I believe that Jesus must be Lord from the moment of our salvation. Our experience since conversion becomes an experience of being more or less yielded to Jesus as Lord over our lives. Even at conversion, no one fully submits to the Lordship of Jesus. But then, no one is fully submitted even after many, many years of following Jesus b/c no one is sinlessly perfect. As Piper says, “The Christian life is one that begins with accepting and bowing to Jesus as Sovereign ruler and Lord . . . with a progressive degree of experiential submission as one matures. The Lordship of Christ is not something one discovers and yields to only once but thousands of times over the course of our Christian experience.”