Can I Confess the Name of Jesus and Be Unsaved?
00:00:00.000 | A listener named Lawrence writes in to ask about two seemingly conflicting Bible passages.
00:00:09.760 | He asks, 1 Corinthians 12, 3 says that no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the
00:00:14.600 | Holy Spirit.
00:00:16.000 | Parallel verses in 1 John 4, verses 2 to 3 say the same.
00:00:19.680 | However, in Matthew 7, verses 21 to 23, Jesus says that there will be many who will say
00:00:24.560 | to him, "Lord, Lord," to whom Jesus will reply, "I never knew you."
00:00:29.520 | Pastor John, how are we to understand these two statements as true?
00:00:34.080 | So the issue here is the tension between two texts, and really, texts and our experience
00:00:43.720 | as well.
00:00:45.360 | And there are more than just these, and I'll probably point out one.
00:00:50.800 | 1 Corinthians 12, 3 says no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Spirit.
00:00:56.680 | Glorious text.
00:00:57.680 | We can't, we are so dead and so resistant to the Lordship of Jesus, we can't say Jesus
00:01:04.880 | is Lord except the Holy Spirit worked that in us.
00:01:08.320 | But Lawrence points out, Matthew 7, 21, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will
00:01:15.400 | enter the kingdom of heaven but the one who does the will of my Father."
00:01:19.400 | So there's a tension.
00:01:20.840 | It sounds like, whoa, they called him Lord and it wasn't by the Spirit because they're
00:01:25.480 | going to perish.
00:01:27.180 | They're not even doing the will of God, so how do the two texts fit together?
00:01:31.280 | Let me add one more tension before I try to solve it.
00:01:35.960 | Romans 8, 15 says this, "You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
00:01:42.160 | but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, 'Abba, Father,' the
00:01:49.120 | Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God."
00:01:52.520 | So it sounds like, oh, if a person says, "Abba, Father," then they have the spirit of adoption
00:01:59.260 | and they're Christians.
00:02:00.360 | But Jesus criticized certain Jewish leaders because they did call God their Father and
00:02:07.100 | he said, "You don't even know God as your Father."
00:02:10.340 | And today we know that people can call God Father and not be saved.
00:02:13.940 | In fact, the old liberal approach 100 years ago was to prefer to call God Father and they
00:02:19.580 | didn't have a substitutionary atonement at all in their theology.
00:02:23.940 | They just loved the fatherhood of God.
00:02:26.300 | So it's possible to call God Lord, it's possible to call God Father, and not have it be any
00:02:32.840 | evidence of true faith at all.
00:02:35.360 | So what do we make of that?
00:02:36.820 | I think there are two pointers in these texts that help us understand how both Paul in 1
00:02:45.100 | Corinthians 12 and in Romans 8 want to be, mean to be, understood.
00:02:51.060 | So that if you call Jesus Lord and you call God your Father, you are truly under the influence
00:02:59.080 | of the saving work of the Spirit.
00:03:01.200 | So what would that be?
00:03:02.200 | What are these pointers?
00:03:03.720 | In verse 15 of Romans 8, he says, "You have received the spirit of adoption of sons by
00:03:09.380 | whom we cry, 'Abba, Father.'"
00:03:12.880 | And I wonder, I think, that Paul's choice of the word "cry" is to communicate to us,
00:03:21.120 | "I mean this is sincerely coming from your heart."
00:03:26.080 | This is not something that's just slipping off your tongue to cloak that there's no cry
00:03:31.720 | in your heart to God as your Father.
00:03:35.040 | You really mean this.
00:03:36.680 | This goes down deep into your heart.
00:03:38.860 | The cry that rises up and overflows is a real childlike reliance upon a wonderful Father
00:03:45.680 | whom you trust.
00:03:47.120 | I think that's what he means when he says that by the Holy Spirit we cry, "Abba, Father."
00:03:52.860 | Not just by the Holy Spirit, we can say the words, "Abba, Father."
00:03:55.840 | A computer can say the words, "Abba, Father."
00:03:59.000 | Here's the second pointer.
00:04:00.960 | Same thing, really, in 1 Corinthians 12, 3.
00:04:04.060 | Because there it says nobody can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Spirit.
00:04:09.100 | And the phrase is "Kurios, Iesous."
00:04:12.740 | Kurios is Lord, Iesous is Jesus.
00:04:16.940 | And my guess is that in the context of Corinth at that time, this phrase, as opposed to "Kurios
00:04:29.980 | Kaisaros," Caesar is Lord, would have carried such radical danger.
00:04:36.700 | In other words, you're light.
00:04:38.420 | This is treason.
00:04:39.420 | This is treason.
00:04:40.420 | You're going to stand up and say in public, "Kurios Iesous," and have every eye turn to
00:04:47.340 | you and say, "You're dead.
00:04:48.900 | This is dangerous."
00:04:49.900 | You're going to get your head chopped off for talking like that.
00:04:54.180 | So my guess is that that phrase carried in itself, in that context, such loaded dangers
00:05:01.820 | and risks that only the sincere would say it.
00:05:05.020 | And so Paul did mean when he said nobody can say it except by the Spirit, he meant nobody
00:05:11.900 | can say it and really feel it, mean it, be willing to risk your life because of it.
00:05:19.240 | So I think the answer to both seeming contradictions in Romans and 1 Corinthians is that both of
00:05:28.180 | them intend for us to mean our confession of Jesus as Lord and our confession of Jesus
00:05:36.800 | as our precious Father must be real and can only be real and authentic and heartfelt if
00:05:47.540 | the Holy Spirit is profoundly at work in our lives.
00:05:51.660 | So the implication for our lives would be, number one, realize how helpless we are without
00:05:57.260 | the Holy Spirit.
00:05:58.820 | We cannot sincerely acknowledge Jesus as Lord and sincerely cry out like a little child
00:06:05.660 | to God as our Father if the Holy Spirit's not giving us the power.
00:06:10.300 | And secondly, we should cry out to Him for the Holy Spirit lest we prove to be hypocrites
00:06:18.100 | and just playing games in the end.
00:06:20.700 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:06:22.620 | That's a fascinating connection in Corinth, by the way.
00:06:25.660 | This episode reminds me of episode 346 we recorded back in May, which is titled "Can
00:06:30.100 | I Believe the Whole Bible and Not Be Elect?"
00:06:33.660 | Be sure to check that out in the archive.
00:06:35.740 | Tomorrow we talk about the family, specifically family worship.
00:06:38.620 | It's a practice many Christian families engage in together at home, but what is it?
00:06:42.540 | What does it look like?
00:06:43.540 | And what are the aims?
00:06:44.580 | We welcome back to the podcast parenting expert Ted Tripp to explain.
00:06:47.740 | I'm your host Tony Renke.
00:06:49.140 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
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