3 Reasons Why Jesus Is NOT My “Personal Lord & Savior”

If you grew up in evangelical or charismatic church circles you were probably encouraged to “receive Jesus” as your “Personal Lord and Saviour”.

Doing this, usually done in the form of a “sinner’s prayer”, guaranteed you bypassed hell and went straight to heaven.  While I’m grateful for a lot of my church upbringing, there is a large portion of it that is demanding a reappraisal.

With that in mind, here are 3 reasons I have to say “no” to Jesus as my “Personal Lord & Saviour”.

1) Jesus didn’t go around asking people to accept him as “Personal Lord & Savior“

It’s interesting how the message that Jesus focused on seems so much different than the one of a lot of the present day church.  Jesus was announcing a new kingdom and way of ordering society.  He seemed to proclaim Good News where he went rather than focus on telling people what they needed to do.

For example in Matthew 9:3 a paralytic man is brought before Jesus.  The man thinks he is about to get healed but Jesus does something shocking!

He instead pronounces his sins are forgiven!

This poor handicapped man had not:

* received Jesus as his Personal Lord and Savior.   

* acknowledged he himself was a sinner

* even asked for any sins to be forgiven.

Jesus simply proclaims the Good News that God forgives him regardless.

Oh, and then to demonstrate to the religious folk who were upset by this turn of events, Jesus went on to heal the man’s physical handicap as well.

Or remember Zacchaeus?  The corrupt official that Jesus had dinner with one night in Luke 19.  One night hanging with Jesus and he decides to give all his ill gotten gains back to the poor.

No asking forgiveness…

No receiving Jesus as his Personal Lord & Savior…

And yet Jesus proclaims:

 “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

No alter call…no repeat after me prayers…no background worship team to heighten the emotional response.

Just God doing his thing…seeking and saving his children!

2) It turns a response to Christ’s work into a magic spell

When Jesus proclaimed “It is finished”… It was…  The curse was broken and a cure for what was diseasing humanity was released into the world.  Jesus showed us life didn’t have to be a never ending cycle of “power” that is maintained through threat, intimidation, and violence.  He instead showed us a world where love and compassion are possible and are underpinned through forgiveness and grace.

And yes, there is a response on our part to this finished work that is needed.

But somehow we’ve turned responding to the Good News into a magic formula. The church condemns Harry Potter yet sometimes I think it’s use of magic words (“repeat after me sinner’s prayers”) and magic rituals (alter calls) to replace a real transformed heart is much more damaging.

How many times have I witnessed someone who obviously had no idea what they were really doing get proclaimed “saved” by a minister who had just led them in a prayer.  Somehow that magic incantation is supposed transform someone from the Kingdom of Darkness to the Kingdom of Light?

I think not…

I know when I have met someone who is following in the Way of Jesus …and many of those people have never said a “sinner’s prayer”.

3) It minimizes the role of Jesus as King and his redemptive work in Creation 

Let’s face it…making Jesus a “personal Lord and Savior” greatly reduces who Jesus is.

Now just for the record

Jesus is King of Creation, King of Kings, and Lord of all Nations etc….etc…. throw in an Alpha & Omega or my personal favorite, “I AM” and you start to get the picture!

Point of fact, the disciples of Christ were not executed by Rome because they were sharing if you accepted Jesus as your “personal Lord & Savior” then in the afterlife you would go to the “good place” rather than the “bad place”.

No way…

They were killed because they were proclaiming a King higher than the emperor who was in authority NOW!

As N.T. Wright says they got in trouble for talking about someone new being in charge.

Really in charge…a new boss!

We in the Western church like to keep Jesus the “political” figure who was setting up a new government separate from the “religious” teacher who was teaching us about good morals and the afterlife.

We like our Jesus to be “personal”!

That’s why so many Americans can do things like say the Pledge of Allegiance or do Fourth of July celebrations during a church service.

Because Jesus isn’t King of a new government of which they are a citizen…

no…

Jesus is simply a Personal “Lord & Savior”

Can you imagine going into the presence of God and saying, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America…”

It’s absurd!

But we can do it because Jesus is not King of any real kingdom!

He is an ornament…a beautiful ornament granted…but an ornament none the less.

And when Jesus becomes the ornament, the magic lucky rabbit’s foot that guarantees our heavenly destination it steals the attention from the fact that Christ wants us to be his body in the process of redeeming all creation back to Himself.

That’s why Jesus is not my “Personal Lord & Savior”

That title is just way to small for me!