DR. JAMES FOWLER: Superficial Believism (Part 3)

The risen and living Christ is the eternal Lord and Savior. He cannot cease to be Who He is. He cannot refrain from functioning as Who He is.

Dr. Fowler is a dear friend serving on our Board of Directors. He has written over 30 books on the believer’s union with Christ. I have been blessed with some of the Lord’s finest theological mentors of our age, but none quite like Jim. You will enjoy his profound entries on our IM Writer’s Forum. Welcome Jim!

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Christ’s function as Savior extends beyond the historical action of submitting to execution by crucifixion on the cross of Calvary for the redemption of the death consequences of sin.

Christ’s function as Lord is more than a theological assertion of deity, sovereignty, or abstract authority. In His Person and work, Jesus Christ always functions as Lord and Savior, and certainly continues to do so as He indwells the Christian.

A strange separation of Christ’s Being and function has developed in modern evangelicalism. There are some who advocate that an individual can “accept Jesus as their Savior” to become a Christian, and then later can “accept Jesus as their Lord” to become a disciple of Christ. This dissection of the Being and function of Jesus into two parts became the issue of the “lordship salvation” debate of the late 20th century in American evangelicalism. Unfortunately the debate tended to polarize the two sparring groups, rather than finding the balance of the two truths of the dialectic of Christ’s work as Lord and Savior. Christ’s function as Lord and Savior is always conjunctive, and neither can legitimately be separated from the other.