Pollywog Creek: We Believe Him...

Follow Me A Call to Die, A Call to Live
by David Platt
Chapters 4-5

He is Lord

He is risen from the dead

And He is Lord

Every knee shall bow

Every tongue confess

That Jesus Christ is Lord

Platt gets in your face and ruffles your feathers, like his concluding statement in chapter 3 - that being born again "does not mean that you are making Jesus your personal Lord and Savior". I can almost hear the collective What?!?! It's a compelling lead into chapter 4, where this week's discussion begins.

Platt explains that to say that Jesus is your personal Lord and Savior is a true expression from those who have an "intimately personal relationship with Jesus," but to say that you are making Him Lord and Savior is an idea that he believes is a reflection of "dangerous trends in contemporary Christianity." We don't make Jesus Lord. He IS Lord, and those who follow Him submit to His Lordship - on His terms, not ours. To say that we make Him Lord promotes the idea that we can make "a personal Christ we create for ourselves."

Lest we think Platt is straining gnats, I think he has point.

Slowly, subtly, we take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into someone with whom we are a little more comfortable. We dilute what he says about the cost of following him, we disregard what he says about those who choose not to follow him, we practically ignore what he says about materialism, and we functionally miss what he says about mission. We pick and choose what we like and don't like from Jesus' teachings. In the end, we create a nice, non-offensive, politically correct, middle-class, American Jesus who looks just like us and thinks just like us. p. 76

We've all done it, in one way or another, and I believe this trend is related to the authority {or lack of authority} God's Word holds in our lives. In chapter 3, Platt states that part of the fruit of being born again is a new creation with a new heart and a new mind. If the Bible is the final authority in our lives, it should be the source of our mind's renewal, but if we don't read and meditate on God's Word or we don't believe it is the final authority, our minds are more likely renewed by the entertainment industry, secular thought, advertisements, friends, internet content {including blogs}, twitter, facebook, and our experiences and emotions. We say we are followers of Jesus, but in reality, we are only following the Jesus who agrees with us, not the Jesus who said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." {Matthew 16.24}

So we go as disciples of Jesus who love his Word and trust his truth. We go not simply as men and women who at some point decided to make Jesus our personal Lord and Savior, but ultimately as men and women who at every point are devoted to proclaiming Jesus as the universal Lord and Savior. We believe him as his disciples; therefore, we obey him and make disciples. p. 94

{To be continued with Chapter 5 Wednesday.}