Christ Jesus Is Both Savior AND Lord
A.W. Tozer
The offer of salvation by faith in Christ carries with it the condition that there must also be a surrender of the life to God.
Luke 2:11
Today in the town of David a Savior (Deliverer) has been born to you; he is Christ (the Anointed One, Redeemer) the Lord (Master and Sovereign over all creation).
Luke 6:46
Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?
Acts 2:36b
God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ.
Edmund Calamy "Evidence for heaven containing infallible signs and reall demonstrations of our union with Christ and assurance of salvation"
True faith is a Christ-receiving faith; it receives and embraces the whole Christ, Christ as Savior and Christ as Lord in all His offices, Prophet, Priest, and King.
Samuel Ward "Christ Is All In All" (Colossians 3:11), 1636
As Saviour many will own him, but as Lord few do know him. Almost anything shall come before him. (Christ) will not be found by such that seek him but lazily and coldly, and yet desire all the world besides. He that desires anything above him, equally with him, or without him, shall never obtain him.
Thomas Brooks “Touchstone of Sincerity”
A hypocrite may be willing to embrace Christ as a Priest to save him from wrath, from the curse of hell, from everlasting burning – but he is never sincerely willing to embrace Christ as a Prophet to teach and instruct him, and as a King to rule and reign over him.
Richard Sibbes The Bruised Reed
Only those that will take his yoke and count it a greater happiness to be under his government than to enjoy any liberty of the flesh; that will take (the) whole Christ, and not single out of him what may stand with their present contentment; that will not divide Lord from Jesus, and so make a Christ of their own…may lay just claim to Christ's mercy. He is our Sanctifier as well as our Saviour; our Saviour from the power of sin by the effectual power of his Spirit.
Ezekiel Hopkins “The Almost-Christian Discovered” on Acts 26:28 "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian."
http://books.google.com/books?id=ZPgCAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA385&source
Are you persuaded to obey Christ in all, to take up his cross and deny yourselves, to oppose and mortify your lusts? Our persuasion to you must be, that, as you own Christ in an outward profession of him, so would you cleave to him by a true faith in him and obedience to him.
Joseph Alleine A Sure Guide to Heaven
When men close with His mercy, but yet love sin, hating holiness and purity; or will take Him for their Benefactor, but not for their Sovereign; or for their Patron, and not for their Portion; this is no thorough and sound conversion. The sincere convert accepts a complete Christ. He loves not only the reward, but the labour. He takes up the commands, yes, even the cross of Christ.
The unsound 'convert' takes Christ by halves. He is all for the salvation, but not sanctification. He is all for the privileges, but neglects the person of Christ. He divides the offices and benefits of Christ; what God has joined, King and Priest. They desire salvation from suffering, but do not desire to be saved from sinning.
The sound convert takes a whole Christ without exceptions, without limitations, without reserve. He is willing to have Christ upon any terms. He is willing to have the dominion of Christ as well as deliverance.
J.C. Ryle The Upper Room, Being a Few Truths for the Times
It is not the mere knowing Christ's name that (matters) - it is the knowing His mercy, grace, and power; knowing Him not by the hearing of the ear, but by the experience of your hearts. I want you to know Him by faith, - I want you, as Paul says, to know “the power of His resurrection; being made conformable unto His death” (Philippians 3:10). I want you to be able to say of Him, He is my peace and my strength, my life and my consolation, my Physician and my Shepherd, my Saviour and my God.
A.W. Pink, Satan and His Gospel, “The Gospel of Satan”, 1917
https://gracegems.org/Pink/satan_and_his_gospel.htm
Satan's gospel is to move preachers to present the atoning sacrifice of Christ and then tell their hearers that all God requires from them is to "believe" in His Son. Thereby thousands of impenitent souls are deluded into thinking that they have been saved. But Christ said, "Except you repent, you shall all likewise perish" (Luke 13:3). To "repent" is to hate sin, to sorrow over, to turn from it. It is the result of the Spirit's making the heart contrite before God. None except a broken heart can savingly believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thousands are deceived into supposing that they have "accepted Christ" as their "personal Savior," who have not first received Him as their LORD. The Son of God did not come here to save His people in their sin, but "from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). To be saved from sins, is to be saved from ignoring and despising the authority of God, it is to abandon the course of self-will and self-pleasing, it is to "forsake our way" (Isaiah 55:7). It is to surrender to God's authority, to yield to His dominion, to give ourselves over to be ruled by Him. The one who has never taken Christ's "yoke" upon him (Matthew 11:29), who is not truly and diligently seeking to please Him in all the details of his life, and yet supposes that he is "resting on the Finished Work of Christ" is deluded by the Devil.
It is possible to work in the name of Christ, and even to preach in His name, and though the world knows us, and the Church knows us, yet to be unknown to the Lord! (Matthew 7:22-23) How necessary it is then to find out where we really are; to examine ourselves and see whether we be in the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5); to measure ourselves by the Word of God and see if we are being deceived by our subtle Enemy; to find out whether we are building our house upon the sand, or whether it is erected on the Rock which is Christ Jesus.
May the Holy Spirit search our hearts, break our wills, slay our enmity against God, work in us a deep and true repentance, and direct our gaze to the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Cheap grace is the idea that "grace" did it all for me so I do not need to change my lifestyle. The believer who accepts the idea of "cheap grace" thinks he can continue to live like the rest of the world. Instead of following Christ in a radical way, the Christian lost in cheap grace thinks he can simply enjoy the consolations of his grace.
A.W. Tozer
I Call It Heresy
A notable heresy has come into being throughout our evangelical Christian circles - the widely accepted concept that we humans can choose to accept Christ only because we need Him as Savior and we have the right to postpone our obedience to Him as Lord as long as we want to! You cannot believe on a half-Christ. 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! He would not be who He is if He saved us and called us and chose us without the understanding that He can also guide and control our lives.
The Set of the Sail
Christ will be Lord, or He will be Judge. Every man must decide whether he will take Him as Lord now or face Him as Judge then.
The Warfare of the Spirit
Salvation comes not by "accepting the finished work" or "deciding for Christ." It comes by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, the whole, living, victorious Lord who, as God and man, fought our fight and won it, accepted our debt as His own and paid it, took our sins and died under them and rose again to set us free. This is the true Christ (of the Bible), and nothing less will do.
When a Christian ignores the commandment of Christ, he is guilty of sin doubly compounded. He violates holy vows, is guilty of rebellion against God and commits the grotesque sin of calling Jesus Lord with his words and denying His Lordship with his deeds.
Renewed Day by Day
How can so many continue to teach that we can be saved without any thought of obedience to our Sovereign Lord? I am satisfied in my own heart that when a man or a woman believes on the Lord Jesus Christ he or she must believe on the whole Lord Jesus Chris, not making any reservation! How can a teaching be justified when it encourages sinners to use Jesus as a Savior in their time of need, without owing Him obedience and allegiance?
Salvation apart from obedience is unknown in the sacred Scriptures. Peter makes it plain that we are "elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience." (1 Peter 1:2)
C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity
“I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God."
That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher ... You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool ... or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.
There will be two kinds of people in the end: Those that will say to God 'Thy will be done' and those to whom God will say 'Thy will be done.'
David Platt Follow Me
We all have a tendency to redefine Christianity according to our own tastes, preferences, church traditions, and cultural norms. Slowly, subtly, we take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into someone with whom we are a little more comfortable. We dilute what he says about the cost of following him, we disregard what he says about those who choose not to follow him, we practically ignore what he says about materialism, and we functionally miss what he says about mission. We pick and choose what we like and don't like from Jesus' teachings. In the end, we create a nice, non-offensive, politically correct, middle-class, American Jesus who looks just like us and thinks just like us.
He has spoken clearly through his Word, and we have no right to personalize him. Instead, he transforms our minds through his truth. And as we take Jesus at his Word, we proclaim Jesus to the world, for we realize that he is not merely a personal Lord and Savior (but) the universal Lord and Savior who is worthy of everyone's eternal praise (and obedience).