Tozer on Lordship Theology

From No Saviourhood without Lordship – The Root of the Righteous

Are you saved? Is Jesus Lord of your life? All of your life? Modern evangelism teaches that you can receive Jesus as Savior without accepting Him as Lord of your life. Get saved first, then work on surrendering your life to Christ later.

Never one to mince words, Tozer calls this teaching extremely simple and quite popular, ready-made for both the hearer and the teacher, requiring no thinking by either.

Tozer poses that you cannot divide Christ in either Savior or Lord, He is both or neither. One has to understand that Jesus doesn't give salvation – He is salvation. He is also Lord. He cannot be one or the other but is always both.

“It is altogether doubtful that a man can be saved who comes to Christ for His help but with no intention to obey Him.”

The word ‘intention’ here is quite critical. Of course, we cannot obey Christ perfectly as soon as we are saved. Indeed, it may not even be possible to obey Him completely in this life. But if we ‘intend’ to obey Him and refuse to settle for anything less, then we have accepted Jesus as Lord.

Consequently, if there is some area of our life that dishonors God, that is counter to His Word, and we are not striving diligently to overcome it, then it is doubtful that we can claim Jesus as Lord or Savior.

I believe that we Christians should be manifesting the character of Christ every moment of every day and in every situation. Failure to do that should help us to see what areas of our life still require surrendering to His Lordship.

Lovers of Self

2 Tim 3:1-5
But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
For men will be lovers of self,…
Holding to a form of godliness,…
Avoid such men as these.

Loving yourself, as discussed in the post “Loving Yourself”, requires action. Love in the Bible is usually an action verb requiring you to do something. Loving your neighbor means giving him drink when he’s thirsty, food when he’s hungry, clothes when he is naked, etc., etc. In loving ourselves we automatically do all those things for ourselves. But pop psychology would have us do much more for ourselves so that we feel good about ourselves; is that what Christ wants from us?

Matt 16:24
Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.”

If Jesus loved Himself would He have spent 40 days in the mountains fasting? Would He have voluntarily suffered the pain and humiliation of the scourging and the cross? No! He endured such things because He loves the Father, not Himself – “nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done!”

2 Tim 2:11b,12a
For if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him. If we endure, we shall also reign with Him.

Dying, enduring, these are not words of love unless the dying and enduring is for someone else. Dying and enduring are sacrificial acts – acts of agape love. But agape love takes no thought of self, it is selfless and sacrificial. Is it possible to be selfless for your self? It’s an absurd contradiction!

Definition: Agape is selfless, sacrificial, unconditional love, it gives and expects nothing in return. It is the highest of the four types of love in the Bible.

The lowest type of love in the Bible is Eros. It might be better defined in English as lust rather than love. As Plato pointed out, Eros doesn’t have to be physical. We certainly lust for things that are not sexual – this is Eros. It has an element of selfishness in it and is the only one of the four biblical words for love that does.

In my opinion, loving yourself can only be accomplished as Eros, lust, the lowest form of love. It is the very thing that scripture teaches us to die to so we can live to agape.

I’m not saying you can’t love yourself and love others with a godly love. I’m saying that if you do, one has nothing to do with the other. The first is sin (according to A.W. Tozer); the second is God!

Worship - According to Tozer

Worship – Another paraphrasing of A.W. Tozer

The kingdom of God has suffered a great deal from men who would rather fight than pray. It has also been done great harm by men who would rather be nice than be right.

False worship:
Cain worship – Assumes God to be different than Who He is,

- Assumes a relationship to God that isn’t there,

- Assumes sin is not as serious as it really is.

Samaritan worship – Heretical worship
- Picks out what you want to believe and rejects or ignores the rest.

True worship:
“Worship must lie within the confines of eternal truth. God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

Only the Holy Spirit can enable man to worship God acceptably.

Only the Holy Spirit can pray acceptably, or do anything acceptably. I believe that all the gifts of the Spirit not only ought to be but have been present in His church all down the centuries.”

To worship him in truth, I must believe what God says about Himself, about His Son, about me, about sin, and about grace.

We must never edit or apologize for God.

We must believe Jesus is our Saviour and Lord.

We must believe all that God says about us – what He will do for us, and that we are as bad as He says we are.

We must believe that sin is repulsive to God, and unacceptable in Eternity.

We must believe that God’s grace is as great as He says it is.

The Spirit Filled Life - A.W. Tozer (paraphrased)

Tozer
The Divine Conquest
The Spirit-filled Life

A brief paraphrasing of some excellent theology by A.W. Tozer.

Christians are all over the map when it comes to the filling of the Holy Spirit. Some will avoid the very idea like the plague; others think that you are as filled at conversion as you are ever going to be. (Ed: Some believe that all you have to do is ask and the Lord will fill you without any preconditions or prerequisites other than conversion.)

But, every Christian can have a dramatic outpouring of the Holy Spirit far beyond that received at conversion, or that enjoyed by most Christians today. God will not surprise a doubting heart or fill anyone who still questions the possibility of being filled. A reverent study of the Word of God should remove any doubts.

Before a man can be filled with the Holy Spirit, he must be sure he wants to be. Are you sure you want to be filled with a Spirit who, though He is like Jesus in gentleness and love, will nevertheless demand to be Lord of your life? Are you willing to submit your will to another, even the Spirit of God Himself? If so, He will expect unquestioning obedience.

He will not tolerate in you the self-sins even though they are permitted and excused by most Christians. By the self-sins I mean self-love, self-pity, self-seeking, self-confidence, self-righteousness, self-exaggeration, or self-defense. He will not allow you to boast, or swagger, or show-off. He will take the direction of your life away from you. He will reserve the right to test you, discipline you, or chasten you for your soul’s sake.

He may strip you of those borderline pleasures that other Christians enjoy, but to you are a source of refined evil. Through it all, He will enfold you in a love so vast, so mighty, so all-embracing, so wondrous that your very losses will seem like gains and your small pains like pleasures. Yet your flesh will whimper and cry out against a burden too great to bear as you are permitted the privilege of suffering to “fill up that which is left behind of the afflictions of Christ.” Now, do you still want to be filled with the Holy Spirit?

Before we can be filled with the Spirit, the desire to be filled must be all-consuming. I doubt whether anyone has received such a filling without first experiencing a period of deep anxiety and inward agitation.

Religious contentment is the enemy of the spiritual life. The biographies of the saints teach us that the way to spiritual greatness has always been through much suffering and inward pain.

(Ed: Jesus said, in Luke 9:23, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.”) The way of the cross has always meant, the way of rejection and loss. No-one ever enjoyed the cross, just as no-one ever enjoyed the gallows.

Complete self-despair need not be discouraging. Despair with self, when accompanied by faith, destroys one of the hearts most potent enemies and prepares the soul for the Comforter. If we resist the sense of utter emptiness, of disappointment and darkness (Ed: The dark night of the soul, as it were), we may miss nearly everything the Father has in store for us.


If we cooperate, he will tear away our natural comforts and that false thing the Chinese call “face” (Ed: read – pride) and show us how painfully small we really are. When He is done, we will know what “Blessed are the poor in spirit” really means.

Be sure that during this process the Lord will never leave us nor forsake us, but will keep us as the apple of His eye, and keep us under His wings. His love will never fail even while He is taking us through this experience of self-crucifixion so real, so terrible, that we can express it only by crying, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

The value of the stripping experience lies in its power to detach us from life’s passing interests and to point us back to eternity. It serves to empty our earthly vessels and prepare us for the inpouring of the Holy Spirit. We must give up all and undergo an inward death; death to our self.

We must remember that the Holy Spirit is a person Who hears and sees and feels like any person. We can please Him, grieve Him, or silence Him. But to walk with Him, we need to continue in the Word, in prayer, in obedience, and in His purpose (will). And, we need to keep our thought-life clean and holy. If we do these things, He will make known to us the mystery “which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”



God bless you.