"The Great Option: A Study of the Lordship Controversy," Baptist Reformation Review 5 (Spring 1976):
The Lordship of Christ
therefore not worthy of death (cf. Rom. 6:23), He suffered the guilt of our sin: "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righ teous ness" (1 Peter 2:24).
The death of Christ for us was the ultimate sacrifice. It paid the penalty of our sin in full and opened the way for us to have peace with God. Romans 5:8 – 9 says, "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. . . . Having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him."
Even in death Christ was Lord. His resurrection was proof of that. Paul writes that Christ "was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead" (Rom. 1:4). Philippians 2:9 – 11 describes the Father's response to Jesus' humility and death: "Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
Therefore, when we invite people to receive Christ as Savior, we ask them to embrace One who is Lord and was declared to be so by God the Father, who also demands that every knee bow to His sovereignty. Salvation belongs to those who receive Him (John 1:12), but they must receive Him for all that He is — "the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords" (1 Tim. 6:15).
Jesus Is Lord
Jesus is Lord. Consistently Scripture affirms the lordship of Christ in every way. He is Lord in judgment. He is Lord over the Sabbath. He is Lord over all (Acts 10:36). He is called Lord (kurios in the Greek text) no less than 747 times in the New Testament.4 The book of Acts alone refers to Him as Lord 92 times, while calling Him Savior only twice. Clearly in the early church's preaching, the lordship of Christ was the heart of the Chris tian message.
The centrality of Jesus' lordship to the gospel message is clear from the way Scripture presents the terms of salvation. Those who dichotomize between believing in Christ as Savior and yielding to Him as Lord have a difficult time with many of the biblical invitations to faith, such as Acts 2:21: "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved"; or Acts 2:36: "Let all the house
4. For an excellent lexical analysis of the New Testament usage of kurios, see Kenneth L. Gentry, "Th e Great Option: A Study of the Lordship Controversy," Baptist Reformation Review 5 (Spring 1976): 63 – 69.
Jesus Explains His Gospel
of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ — this Jesus whom you crucified"; or Acts 16:31: "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved"; and particularly Romans 10:9 – 10: "If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved" (emphasis added).
All those passages indisputably include the lordship of Christ as part of the gospel according to Jesus. We have seen that Jesus' lordship includes the ideas of dominion, authority, sovereignty, and the right to govern. If those ideas are implicit in the phrase "confess . . . Jesus as Lord" (Rom. 10:9), then it is clear that people who come to Christ for salvation must do so in obedience to Him — that is, with a willingness to surrender to Him as Lord.
Not surprisingly, the opponents of lordship salvation have made Romans 10 a focus of their attack. Much has been written in recent years attempting to explain how one can confess Jesus as Lord yet continue to rebel against His authority. Some take the position that the term Lord, when used by Scripture in connection with the gospel, does not mean "sovereign master," but rather "deity." Charles Ryrie is the most articulate of those who have used this argument. He writes:
To be sure, Lord does [oft en] mean Master, but in the New Testament it also means God (Acts 3:22), owner (Luke 19:33), sir (John 4:11), manmade idols (I Cor. 8:5), and even one's husband (I Peter 3:6). . . .
. . . In I Corinthians 12:3 Paul said, "No man can say that Jesus is the Lord [literally, Lord Jesus], but by the Holy Ghost." Lord in this sense must mean Jehovah-God for the simple reason that unsaved people can and do say Lord, meaning Sir, in reference to Christ, before they even have the Spirit of God. . . .
Why is Lord Jesus (meaning God-Man) such a significant statement that it can only be said by the Spirit of God guiding a person? It is because this is the essence of our salvation since it focuses on the uniqueness of the Saviour. Almost all "saviours" claim mastery over the lives of their followers. . . . But what religion, other than Chris tian ity, has a saviour who claimed to be both God and man in the same person? If Lord in the phrase means Master, then the claim to uniqueness is absent. If Lord in the phrase means Jehovah-God, then Jesus is unique, and this is the very heart of the message of salvation in Chris tian ity. . . .
. . . This same emphasis is seen in Romans 10:9: "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus . . . thou shalt be saved." It is the