Turning from a selfish gospel

"I've accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior." How many times have you heard those words? Maybe you've uttered them before as I have, describing your relationship with Christ in a way that sounds more like a business transaction than a life rescue.

Let's break that phrase down for a minute. "I've accepted Jesus" - Had he previously been unacceptable? Has it truly come down to what you needed to do in order for Jesus to have a place in your life? Do we accept Him or does He accept us? "My personal" - Is this really like an earthly relationship, complete with the pitfalls that we encounter with those whom we are friends with? Could we just stop returning His calls or even ignore Him altogether until His behavior suited us? "Lord and Savior" - These two terms are often used in conjunction, but where do we see them as so in Scripture? Can they really be separated into two separate terms? Aren't "Lord" and "Savior" identical titles, inseparable in their meaning and essence? If He's Lord then He's Savior and vice versa.

My point in this is not to slam what most of us who are followers of Christ have come accustomed to when it comes to talking about our relationship with Christ. Truth be told, it's only faulty semantics and most of us mean nothing negative by the phrase. Yet isn't there a bit of selfishness in all of this when we claim that we told Jesus He could have a place in our life, that our relationship was almost in a sense approved by us before it could even begin?

Let's face it, salvation is all about God, not us. There will be arguments in and out of Reformed circles of what our role is in responding to the gospel message but my intent is not to hash that out here. What I do believe is that the gospel is completely about Jesus and His redemption of fallen man. He saved me; I am a victim of His grace. Just how He did it I'm don't clearly understand but when He invited me to be lavished in His grace that was poured out on the cross, I was drawn to Him like a fish to water. And now that I am His disciple my goal is to glorify Him more and to fully enjoy the relationship that I have been granted to have with God through Jesus Christ.

When John the Baptist said "He must increase, but I must decrease" he said it all, didn't he? He has first place, He is Lord, He is mentioned first. Any mention of us comes last. This isn't beating ourselves up. It's acknowledging the preeminence of God, and the beautiful part of this is that God invites us to worship Him in His glory. When we do so we experience a greater joy that we can ever imagine. We get God.