As i lay down my Cornerstone pen after four years to depart soon for a sabbatical leave, I ask myself if any discernible theme has united my monthly contributions to CHRISTIANITY TODAY. I have not developed a single motif in any deliberate way, for I have written ad hoc articles as they have arisen out of my studies and travels. Yet I think the fundamental truth underlying each is that Jesus Christ is Lord. Of the widespread ramifications of the lordship of Jesus, I seem to have concentrated on three.
The first is theological, and concerns the deity of his person. Since the publication of The Myth of God Incarnate (1977), I have written three pieces about the Christological debate, and about the gravity of allowing flagrant Unitarian heresy to be unanswered, unchecked, and undisciplined in the church. The central issue is neither one of semantics (the meaning of words like “myth,” “incarnation,” “nature,” and “person”) nor of credal formulation (whether the Chalcedonian definition is adequate for our day), but rather of salvation (whether Jesus can in any sense mediate between God and mankind if he is not himself both God and man) and of discipleship (for we cannot worship him, believe in him, or obey him if he is not God).
Yet on these points, disputed as they are today with a great display of learning, the New Testament leaves us no room for doubt. The early Christians not only called Jesus “Lord,” in spite of their knowledge that kyrios was the Septuagint rendering of the sacred divine name “Yahweh,” but actually applied to Jesus a variety of texts and concepts which in the Old Testament related to Yahweh. So they worshiped him.
Indeed, “Christolatry” (the worship of Christ) may be said to have preceded “Christology” (the developed doctrine of Christ). Moreover, the New Testament letters contain no hint that the divine honors given to Jesus were the subject of controversy in the church, as was the case, for example, with the doctrine of justification. There can be only one explanation of this. Already by the middle of the first century, the deity of Jesus was part of the faith of the universal church. It cannot and must not be compromised today.
To confess that “Jesus is Lord” has ethical as well as theological implications. The counterpart of his lordship is our discipleship, and authentic discipleship involves bringing all our thinking and living under his authority. We evangelicals have always held this in theory, but tended to restrict Christ’s dominion to personal ethics.
In recent years, however, we have begun to take more seriously the great challenge of social ethics. We are latecomers in this field and have a lot of catching up to do. So I have struggled to write on euthanasia and abortion, work and unemployment, industrial and race relations, the nuclear horror and the new international economic order. I have been criticized: “Stott is abandoning evangelism for social action,” my detractors have said. This is not true. What I have been trying to do is to become a more integrated Christian, whose principle of integration is the lordship of Jesus.
What does it mean to “have the mind of Christ” and “be renewed in the spirit of our minds” (1 Cor. 2:16; Eph. 4:23), so that we think Christianly about even so-called secular topics? How can we “take his yoke upon us and learn from him” as our Teacher and Lord, and seek to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (Matt. 11:29; 2 Cor. 10:5)? I sometimes wonder if our minds are the last stronghold to capitulate to Jesus the Lord. Of course, major questions remain to be answered in the contemporary hermeneutical discussion. Yet we can safely say that no hermeneutical method or conclusion can be Christian which fails to honor Christ by enthroning him as Lord.
Further, world mission or worldwide evangelization is best understood under the rubric of Jesus Christ’s lordship. I have written about this on several occasions. The universal commission to go and make disciples of all the nations was the direct consequence of the universal authority which the risen Lord claimed to have been given (Matt. 28:18–19). As Bishop Lesslie Newbigin has aptly expressed it in his book The Finality of Christ (1969): “The universality of Christ’s lordship over all nations and over all creation is not, in the New Testament, a ground for leaving all the nations as they are. It is on the other hand exactly the ground for the Church’s mission to preach repentance to every man and to all nations.”
“We preach … Jesus Christ as Lord,” writes Paul (2 Cor. 4:5). If we are to follow his example, we shall have to reject all false positions that in one way or another contradict the New Testament’s witness to his supremacy. For example, the pluralism which seeks to preserve all religions, each in its own integrity, and the syncretism which prefers to blend them both deny the uniqueness and the finality of Jesus. Universalism is a more subtle enemy of evangelism. It claims to exalt Christ’s lordship by declaring that all people will acknowledge it in the end; but in principle it makes the proclamation of the gospel unnecessary, and fails to recognize that evangelism presents people with a choice, so that some confess “Jesus is Lord,” while others cry “Jesus be cursed” (1 Cor. 12:3; Rom. 10:9–10).
There are evangelical as well as liberal hindrances to evangelism, however, of which we need to repent. There is the spiritual lethargy manifested in a narrow parochialism and inhibiting us from developing a global concern. Then there is arrogant imperialism that attempts to impose our culture on others, fails to respect theirs, and makes our message unacceptable,
Another grave obstacle is our chronic evangelical divisiveness, whereby we are competing with one another instead of cooperating, and so confuse our hearers who want to choose Christ but find themselves presented instead with a choice between his followers.
Finally, there is our tendency to overemphasize verbal proclamation at the expense of the visual. It is another case of “this ought you to have done, and not left the other undone.” Jesus plainly told us to let our light so shine before men that they may see our good works and glorify our heavenly Father (Matt. 5:6). Thus words and works, hearing and seeing, truth and love belong inseparably to each other.
No incentive to evangelism is greater than a vision of the exalted Lord Jesus and a zeal, even a “jealousy,” for his glory. God has superexalted him and given him the preeminent name in order that every knee should bow to him and every tongue confess him Lord. Then we must share the Father’s desire for the universal acknowledgement of the Son. It was “for the sake of the Name” that the first Christian missionaries went out (Rom. 1:5; 3 John 7); the same concern for the honor of his name should motivate us today.
Jesus is Lord!
JOHN R. W. STOTT1John Stott is on sabbatical leave for six months. Half of the time will be spent at The Hookses, his cottage in Wales, where, in his words, “I hope to unwind, to breathe some sea air and take some exercise, to read, think, and pray, and to seek a fresh vision of the Lord himself and a fresh mandate from him for the future.” Another three months will be spent in Australia, Lappland, and Alaska in various ministries, as well as in his favorite hobby, bird watching.
