A listener named Lawrence writes in to ask about two seemingly conflicting Bible passages. He asks, 1 Corinthians 12, 3 says that no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Parallel verses in 1 John 4, verses 2 to 3 say the same. However, in Matthew 7, verses 21 to 23, Jesus says that there will be many who will say to him, "Lord, Lord," to whom Jesus will reply, "I never knew you." Pastor John, how are we to understand these two statements as true?

So the issue here is the tension between two texts, and really, texts and our experience as well. And there are more than just these, and I'll probably point out one. 1 Corinthians 12, 3 says no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Spirit. Glorious text. We can't, we are so dead and so resistant to the Lordship of Jesus, we can't say Jesus is Lord except the Holy Spirit worked that in us.

But Lawrence points out, Matthew 7, 21, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven but the one who does the will of my Father." So there's a tension. It sounds like, whoa, they called him Lord and it wasn't by the Spirit because they're going to perish.

They're not even doing the will of God, so how do the two texts fit together? Let me add one more tension before I try to solve it. Romans 8, 15 says this, "You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, 'Abba, Father,' the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." So it sounds like, oh, if a person says, "Abba, Father," then they have the spirit of adoption and they're Christians.

But Jesus criticized certain Jewish leaders because they did call God their Father and he said, "You don't even know God as your Father." And today we know that people can call God Father and not be saved. In fact, the old liberal approach 100 years ago was to prefer to call God Father and they didn't have a substitutionary atonement at all in their theology.

They just loved the fatherhood of God. So it's possible to call God Lord, it's possible to call God Father, and not have it be any evidence of true faith at all. So what do we make of that? I think there are two pointers in these texts that help us understand how both Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 and in Romans 8 want to be, mean to be, understood.

So that if you call Jesus Lord and you call God your Father, you are truly under the influence of the saving work of the Spirit. So what would that be? What are these pointers? In verse 15 of Romans 8, he says, "You have received the spirit of adoption of sons by whom we cry, 'Abba, Father.'" And I wonder, I think, that Paul's choice of the word "cry" is to communicate to us, "I mean this is sincerely coming from your heart." This is not something that's just slipping off your tongue to cloak that there's no cry in your heart to God as your Father.

You really mean this. This goes down deep into your heart. The cry that rises up and overflows is a real childlike reliance upon a wonderful Father whom you trust. I think that's what he means when he says that by the Holy Spirit we cry, "Abba, Father." Not just by the Holy Spirit, we can say the words, "Abba, Father." A computer can say the words, "Abba, Father." Here's the second pointer.

Same thing, really, in 1 Corinthians 12, 3. Because there it says nobody can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Spirit. And the phrase is "Kurios, Iesous." Kurios is Lord, Iesous is Jesus. And my guess is that in the context of Corinth at that time, this phrase, as opposed to "Kurios Kaisaros," Caesar is Lord, would have carried such radical danger.

In other words, you're light. This is treason. This is treason. You're going to stand up and say in public, "Kurios Iesous," and have every eye turn to you and say, "You're dead. This is dangerous." You're going to get your head chopped off for talking like that. So my guess is that that phrase carried in itself, in that context, such loaded dangers and risks that only the sincere would say it.

And so Paul did mean when he said nobody can say it except by the Spirit, he meant nobody can say it and really feel it, mean it, be willing to risk your life because of it. So I think the answer to both seeming contradictions in Romans and 1 Corinthians is that both of them intend for us to mean our confession of Jesus as Lord and our confession of Jesus as our precious Father must be real and can only be real and authentic and heartfelt if the Holy Spirit is profoundly at work in our lives.

So the implication for our lives would be, number one, realize how helpless we are without the Holy Spirit. We cannot sincerely acknowledge Jesus as Lord and sincerely cry out like a little child to God as our Father if the Holy Spirit's not giving us the power. And secondly, we should cry out to Him for the Holy Spirit lest we prove to be hypocrites and just playing games in the end.

Thank you, Pastor John. That's a fascinating connection in Corinth, by the way. This episode reminds me of episode 346 we recorded back in May, which is titled "Can I Believe the Whole Bible and Not Be Elect?" Be sure to check that out in the archive. Tomorrow we talk about the family, specifically family worship.

It's a practice many Christian families engage in together at home, but what is it? What does it look like? And what are the aims? We welcome back to the podcast parenting expert Ted Tripp to explain. I'm your host Tony Renke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

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