Jesus as Savior….AND Lord?

by Isaac Cantrell

You cannot have Christ if you will not serve Him. If you take Christ, you must take Him in all His characters, not only as Friend, but also as Master; and if you are to become His disciple, you must also become His servant. I hope that no one kicks against that truth. Surely it is one of our highest delights on earth to serve our Lord, and this is to be our blessed employment even in heaven itself: “His servants shall serve Him: and they shall see His face.”

This thought also enters into our idea of salvation; to be saved, means that we are rescued from the slavery of sin, and brought into the delightful liberty of the servants of God. O Master, Thou art such a glorious Lord that serving Thee is perfect freedom, and sweetest rest! Thou hast told us that it should be so, and we have found it so. “Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” We do find it so; and it is not as though rest were a separate thing from service, the very service itself becomes rest to our souls. I know not how some of us would have any rest on earth if we could not employ our daily lives in the service of Christ; and the rest of heaven is never to be pictured as idleness, but as constantly being permitted the high privilege of serving the Lord.

Learn hence, then, all of you who would have Christ as your Savior, that you must be willing to serve Him. We are not saved by service, but we are saved to service. When we are once saved, thenceforward we live in the service of our Lord. If we refuse to be His servants, we are not saved, for we still remain evidently the servants of self, and the servants of Satan.”

                                                                                              -C . H. Spurgeon

Are you actually serving God with a zeal that is equal to His gift?…or do you happily accept his gracious gift of salvation only to treat it just as a little child opens a gift at Christmas-time and is happy for a short while, but immediately starts looking for the next gift to open? If you are not serving Him, take a long, hard at yourself and compare yourself to this verse: “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” (James 2:17).

Christian, if God never did another thing for you, you would still be blest. He saved you from an ETERNITY of immense pain and suffering away from His Holy presence. Does this ALONE not “demand your soul, your life, your all”?

Let’s serve Him today and for the rest of our short pilgrimage here on earth!