Where We Direct Our Allegiance

Where We Direct Our Allegiance

Our generation makes a great deal out of this, and we give it the name of "individualism." On the basis of our individuality, we claim the right of self-determination. In an airplane, the pilot who sits at the controls determines where that plane is going. He must determine the destination. Now, if God had made us humans to be mere machines, we would not have the power of self-determination. But since He made us in His own image and made us to be moral creatures, He has given us that power of self-determination. The poet Tennyson must have thought about this for he wrote in his "In Memoriam"; "Our wills are ours, we know not how; our wills are ours to make them Thine." Oh, this mystery of a man's free will is far too great for us! Tennyson said, "We know not how." But then he girds himself and continues, "Yes, our wills are ours to make them Thine." And that is the only right we have here to make our wills the wills of God, to make the will of God our will!

We must remember that God is Who He is, and we are what we are. God is the Sovereign and we are the creatures. He is the Creator and therefore He has a right to command us with the obligation that we should obey. It is a happy obligation, I might say, for His yoke is easy, and His burden is light" (Matt. 11:30).

Now, this is where I raise the point again of our human insistence that Christ may sustain a divided relationship toward us. This is now so commonly preached that to oppose it or object to it means that you are sticking your neck out and you had best be prepared for what comes. But how can we insist and teach that our Lord Jesus Christ can be our Saviour without being our Lord? How can we continue to teach that we can be saved without any thought of obedience to our Sovereign Lord"

I am satisfied that when man believes on Jesus Christ, he must believe on the whole Lord Jesus Christ - NOT making any reservation! I am satisfied that it is wrong to look upon Jesus as a kind of divine nurse to whom we can go when sin has made us sick, and after He has helped us, to say "Goodbye" - and go on our own way.

Suppose I slip into a hospital and tell the staff I need a blood transfusion or perhaps an X-ray of my gall bladder. After they have ministered to me and given their services, do I just slip out of the hospital again with a cheery "Goodbye" - as though I owe them nothing and it was kind of them to help me in my time of need? That may sound like a grotesque concept to you, but it does pretty well draw the picture of those who have been taught that they can use Jesus as Saviour in their time of need without owning Him as Sovereign and Lord and without owing Him obedience and allegiance.

Both Saviour and Lord

The Bible never in any way gives us such a concept of salvation. Nowhere are we ever led to believe that we can use Jesus as a Saviour and now own Him as our Lord. He is the Lord and as the Lord He saves us, because He has all of the offices of Saviour and Christ and High Priest and Wisdom and Righteousness and Sanctification and Redemption!! He is all of these things and all of these are embodied in Him as Christ the Lord.

My brethren, we are not allowed to come to Jesus Christ as shrewd, clever-operators, "We will take this and this, but we won't take that!" We do not come to Him as one who, buying furniture for his house, declares: "I will take this table but I don't want that chair" - dividing it up! No, sir! It is either ALL of Christ or NONE of Christ! I believe we need to preach again a whole Christ to the world - a Christ who does NOT need our apologies, a Christ Who will NOT be divided, a Christ Who will either be Lord of all or Who will NOT be Lord at all!

I think it is important to agree that true salvation restores the right of a Creator-creature relationship because it acknowledges God's right to our fellowship and communion. You see, in our time we have over-emphasized the psychology of the sinner's condition. We spend much time describing the woe of the sinner, the grief of the sinner and the great burden he carries. He does have all of these, but we have over-emphasized them until we forget the principal fact - that the sinner is actually a rebel against properly constituted authority! That is what makes sin, sin. We are rebels! We are sons of disobedience. Sin is the breaking of the law and we are in rebellion and we are fugitives from the just laws of God while we are sinners.

By way of illustration, suppose a man escapes from prison. Certainly he will have grief. He is going to be in pain after bumping logs and stones and fences as he crawls and hides away in the dark. He is going to be hungry and cold and weary. His beard will grow long and he will be tired and cramped and cold - all of these will happen, but they are incidental to the fact that he is a fugitive from justice and a rebel against the law.

So it is with sinners. Certainly they are heartbroken and they carry a heavy load. Certainly they labor and are heave-laden. The Bible takes full account of these things; but they are incidental to the fact that the reason the sinner is what he is, is because he has rebelled against the law of God and he is a fugitive from divine judgment.

It is that which constitutes the nature of sin; not the fact that he carries a heavy load of misery and sadness and guilt. These things constitute only the outcropping of the sinful nature, but the root of sin is rebellion against God. Does not the sinner say: "I belong to myself - I owe allegiance to no one unless I choose to give it!" That is the essence of sin!

But thankfully, salvation reverses that and restores the former relationship so that the first thing the returning sinner do4es is to confess: "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son; make me as one of Thy hired servants" (Luke 15:18-19). Thus, in repentance, we reverse that relationship and we full submit to the Word of God and the Will of God - as obedient children.

Now that happiness of all the moral creatures lies right here, brethren, in the giving of obedience to God. The Psalmist cries out in Psalm 103:21, "Bless ye the Lord, all ye his hosts; ye ministers of His, that do His pleasure." On the other hand, hell is certainly the world of disobedience. Everything else that may be said about hell may be true, but this one thing is the essence - hell is the world of the rebel! Hell is the Alcatraz for the unconstituted rebels who refuse to surrender to the will of God.

I thank God that heaven is the world of God's obedient children. Whatever else we may say of its pearly gates, its golden streets and its jasper walls, heaven is heaven because children of the Most High God find they are in their normal sphere as obedient moral beings. Jesus said there are fire and worms in hell, but that is not the reason it is hell. You might endure worms and fire, but for a moral creature to know and realize that he is where he is because he is a rebel - that is the essence of hell and judgment. It is the eternal world of all the disobedient rebels who have said, "I owe God nothing!"

This is the time given to decide. Each person makes his own decision as to the eternal world he is going to inhabit.

~A. W. Tozer~

(The End)