Ever since the very beginning, the church has declared that Jesus is Lord; and I suspect that ever since pretty early on in there, large chunks of the church have proceeded to go out and ignore that proclamation. When we say that, we’re not saying any small thing. Rather, we’re saying that we acknowledge him not merely as the one who saves us, not merely as someone who blesses us, not merely as someone who loves us and whom we love, but also as the God of the universe, the one who created and sustains and commands everything that is; we’re bowing before him as the one who has the undisputed right to our wholehearted worship, our absolute allegiance, and our unquestioning obedience. No exceptions; no qualifications; no ifs, ands, or buts.
Which is easy enough to say; but of course, just saying it isn’t good enough. This is one of those things, if you just say it and don’t do it, you haven’t really said it at all. Making this confession commits us to actually living it out—and that’s the rub, because there are always places where we don’t want to do that. We tend to want to tell Jesus, “OK, you can be Lord of 95% of my life, or even 98%—but I have this thing over here that I want to hang on to, that I want to keep doing my way. It doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t affect anything else, so just let me keep doing this one thing and you can have the rest of my life.” To us, that makes sense; to us, that seems perfectly reasonable. We don’t understand why Jesus looks back at us and says, “No. You need to give me that, too”; but that’s what he does, every time.
In truth, whatever is the last thing we want to give up is the first thing Jesus asks of us, and the first thing that truly acknowledging his lordship requires of us. It may be a sin, or it may not; it may be something he intends to take away from us, or it may be something he intends to let us keep. Indeed, it may be our greatest gift, the one thing he will use most powerfully in our life for our blessing and the blessing of others. But whatever it is, good or ill, we have to give it over to him and let it be his, not ours. Anything we will not give up, anything of which we’re unwilling to let go, is something which is more important to us than Jesus is; and anything which is more important to us than Jesus is an idol, and God will not tolerate idols in our lives.
It’s tempting to look at this and say, “No, it really doesn’t matter that much.” Even if what we’re trying to hang onto is a sin, we can always convince ourselves that it’s not that big a deal; and if it isn’t—well, marriage, for instance, is a good and biblical thing, and if we’re married and love the person to whom we’re married, it doesn’t seem particularly unreasonable to tell Jesus no, this person is all mine. God can have the rest of my life, but my marriage is all mine.
Now, certainly, we have enduring allegiances in this world that are good and right. But here’s the rub: every single one of those allegiances, and every last one of those loves, has to take its proper place—behind our love for and our allegiance to our Lord Jesus Christ. We love our family, our friends, our church, our country, maybe our jobs, and then along comes Jesus and says, “Anyone who comes to me and doesn’t hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, cannot be my disciple.” No, I didn’t make that up, it’s Luke 14:26. Obviously, “hate” is a strong word, especially when Jesus commands us to love everybody, but this is a rabbinic way of speaking—he’s saying that our love for everyone other than him has to come so far second to our love for him that we’ll put him and his will first, even if it means that others come away from it thinking we hate them. This is the degree of allegiance our Lord wants from us, and the totality of worship he desires from us—with no competition, no exceptions, and nothing else smuggled in.
That sounds pretty demanding, but it really isn’t; it’s simply what’s necessary. C. S. Lewis explained this well when he wrote,
God claims all, because he is love and must bless. He cannot bless us unless he has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, he claims all.