It’s not often that a bumper sticker sticks with me. Rarer still is when I not only remember one, but actually like it. Still more rare is when one that I like comes from a Christian perspective. My boss is a Jewish carpenter hit all three the first time I saw it. Now I’m only beginning to have a few doubts.
When we took this job, face down in the dust, tears turning dust to mud, heart pummeled by twin earthquakes, gratitude and fear, we knew then what we were agreeing to. Whatever You ask of me, I will give. Wherever You call me, I will follow. Whatever You command, I will obey. But we have grown accustomed to His grace. Gratitude has given way to attitude, and fear is no where near. Our prayers are no longer paeans to thanksgiving, but thinly veiled labor grievances. We think we have a Jewish carpenter on our payroll; we think He works for us.
Forty years ago a new battle broke out within the dispensational camp. Two professors at Dallas Theological Seminary, Charles Ryrie and Zane Hodges, argued one could enter God’s kingdom having made no commitment to submitting to the Lordship of Christ. We could embrace Christ as our savior, and pass Him over as Lord. John MacArthur rode in on a white horse, reminding us of the gospel according to Jesus, who called us to pick up our cross. MacArthur won the battle, but who is winning the war?
The church has moved from affirming that some tongues need not confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to some tongues confessing that Jesus Christ isn’t Lord. Open theism, the poison fruit of the Pelagian tree, may require that the wind and the waves obey Him, but everything else is up in the air. He is the alpha, but we’ll have to wait and see if He will end up the omega.
Aren’t we, heirs of the Reformation, safe from this kind of rebellion? If Reformed means anything, it must mean knowing our own sin. Every sin we commit is, as one wise Reformed theologian put it, cosmic treason. He commands me to love Him with all that I am. All day, every day, I not only fail to do so, but in failing cry out that I will not have Him to rule over me. Affirming that Lordship salvation is the only salvation we yet reject His Lordship. That’s why we need to be saved. We strive, buffet and mortify. And we rebel. We prefer giving orders to taking them.
With each day we are made more like Him. Each day the dead rebel within us dies still more. Our boss not only directs us, but leads our steps toward eternity, preparing us for a place. But this too we forget. We who affirm His absolute sovereignty fall into a trap. Because we recognize that God has decreed whatsoever comes to pass, we become practical deists. He wrote the grand play, but now He sits in the stands, munching celestial popcorn. We think He has written no part for Himself.
God, speaking from the burning bush, gave Moses two names. He spoke, to be sure, His exalted name, I AM THAT I AM. Here He affirmed that He is above all things, that He rules all things, that He alone is independent and eternal. He likewise told Moses that He was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Here He speaks of His imminence, a closeness that comes complete with covenant love. In Christ, we are at peace with the source of all things. And in Christ we are called out, loved, by name. Which in turn helps us understand the hardship He sends our way.
Because He is exalted and lifted up, He sends hardship to us for His purpose, to glorify His name. He loves us by name, and sends hardship for our purpose, that we might be more like His Son. Because He is exalted and lifted up, everything that comes our way are orders from on high. My Boss, the Jewish carpenter, leaves a post-it-note on my desk- “I want you to lose your job.” He sends the congregation a bulletin- “Please confront this sin, and when repentance comes, forgive the offenders.” He sends a family a memo- “I want you to care for My servant with special needs. She needs loving attention.”
Even this, we can manage to accept. Our Boss has shown Himself to be faithful. He hasn’t given us any assignments that He hasn’t first taken on. His love for us is as evident as the backs of His hands. We glory in our Boss, precisely because He is the perfect combination of absolute power, and tender care.
What we tend to bristle under, however, is this hard truth, more often than not, the Jewish carpenter isn’t our immediate boss. Truth be told, my boss is a tax collecting (re)-publican. My boss is my editor, who has been given the authority to make sure I hit my deadlines. My boss is the elders at my church who will give an account for my soul (Hebrews 13).
All of these men are sinners. They have their own selfish agendas. They don’t know me and my weaknesses, nor even my strengths. These bosses are, as hard as this may be to believe, almost as corrupt as I am. Their sin, of course, isn’t in some discreet and quarantined place where I can’t be harmed. Instead their orders are sometimes given for their own pleasure. They sometimes flow out of their own foolishness. And so we seem to have gone back to Egypt.
Years ago I found myself in various venues across the country teaching on the family. Everybody loves the family, and so this calling seemed like light duty. The trouble is, everywhere I went I spent some of my time exegeting Ephesians 5:22, “Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.” That’s not an easy sell, even in conservative churches.
Paul helps us understand the respective callings of husband and wife by way of analogy to Jesus and His church. Husbands are to love wives as Christ loves the church, wives are to submit their husbands as the church is to submit to Jesus. Invariably someone brought this complaint, “I’d be happy to submit to my husband, if my husband were Jesus.” To which I invariably replied, “Congratulations! That is exactly your circumstance. You must submit to your earthly, flawed, sinful husband precisely because your heavenly, flawless, sinless Husband commands you so to do.”
Being born male, however, doesn’t change the situation. When we grouse under the sundry authorities over us, when we long for the return of the King that we might delight under His rule, we are actually bucking under His rule. Lo He is with us always. This is His gentle and tender command to us, that we would obey those tyrants that rule over us, who do so because He put them there.
We scoff at those theological liberals who are altogether happy to embrace the teaching of Jesus, but can’t stand that horrible Paul. Then we turn around and do just the same, only worse. Paul’s commission and authority, while real, are not nearly as clear as these words from his pen, “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves” (Romans 13: 1-2).
Two things come through here loud and clear- 1. We are to obey because 2. God established the authorities.
Our Master warned us we could only serve one. But we rebel against Him, and try time and again to moonlight. The freedom we enjoy in Christ isn’t having no masters, but having only one. But that one has established boundaries all about us; He has built fences for the sheep of His flock. The Lord of lords has given us lords that sometimes lord it over us.
We obey them in obedience to Him. We demonstrate that He is Lord of our lives by submitting to the lords in our lives. No bucking, no bristling, but giving our obedience as unto the Lord. We serve one master, but serve Him with all that we are, and all that we have. We will follow wherever He leads, even when He leads us through the valley of the shadow of death, even when He leads us to hired hands.
Beware of the leaven of the rebels. May our King permit us to live in peace and quietness with all men. May we be known the world around as a fiercely submissive people.
