DEDICATION TO CHRIST - Part 3

God gave His Son Jesus to save us from condemnation. Jesus died for our sins. Whoever believes in Him has eternal life, and that is why God sent Him into the world (John 3:16; 1 John 4:9-14). So that we could have eternal life.

The real, ultimate, eternally significant “Passover” is when we have our sins washed away by the blood of Christ (Revelation 1:5). What happened in Egypt was a type. A type is a person, place, thing, or event in the Old Testament that pointed to Jesus. Types taught lessons about Jesus. They prepared for Jesus. And the Old Testament is loaded with them because Jesus is what the Old Testament is about.

The passover event, and the exodus from Egypt, pointed to the death of Christ for our sins. Because of what God has done in giving His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us, we should live our lives in service to Him. That is done by thinking about Him. By thinking about what would please Him in every situation and always striving to do that.

When we read about Moses and the Israelites, we should be thinking about Jesus. Christ should always be on our minds when we read every part of the Bible. If He is not, we are not reading the Bible correctly.

It is not complicated to follow Jesus. It can be difficult to deny the flesh and do it. But it is easy to understand. This kind of gift and this kind of love should dominate our thinking. It should be our reason for reading these Old Testament stories. To appreciate Christ more.

Our lives should be completely about Jesus. When He dominates our thinking, He will dominate our lives. Give Him your thoughts. Give Him your heart. Everything that we do should be done in His name (Colossians 3:17). That means under His direction and for His glory. A life lived for the glory of Jesus is a life worth living.

Because Christ offered Himself as the sacrifice for our sins (Hebrews 9:15), we should offer our bodies as “living sacrifices” to Him (Romans 12:1). The Christian life is about two offerings. He offered Himself to God for us to save us. We offer ourselves to Him in appreciation.

Like the two crosses that the Bible speaks of (Galatians 6:14). Jesus died on the literal cross of Calvary for our sins (1 Corinthians 2:2; 1 Peter 2:24). But He also tells us to take up our cross and follow Him (Matthew 16:24-26). He literally offered Himself to God as a sacrifice. We figuratively do so by giving Him our lives. By loving Him and living for Him. By sacrificing our will and our desires to His will and His desires. By turning over our lives, and everything about them, to Him.

The cross of Jesus Christ calls us to a life of commitment. A life of being dedicated to Christ in every way. We receive Him as Savior, and we receive Him as Lord. To call Him Lord means that we do what He tells us to do. That is always the direction of our lives. Toward Christ, rather than away from Him. We are trying to do what He says.

What good does it do to call Him Lord if we do not obey Him (Luke 6:46)? That doesn’t make an ounce of sense. We should be able to think about that for five seconds and realize how silly that is. Not everyone who calls Him Lord will be saved. But only those who mean it by doing what He says (Matthew 7:21). It is not just what we call Him that matters. It is meaning what we call Him.

He is our Lord and He is our Teacher. “You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say it correctly, for that is what I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also must wash one another’s feet” (John 13:13-14).

It is easy to see what He is saying. He served others and told us to do the same. If we truly believe in Him, we will do it. We will obey Him. We will read the word of God to learn what pleases God, and we will try to do it every day. If He is our Lord and our Teacher, then we are to learn from Him, and do what He says.

He told us to come to Him, and to learn from Him (Matthew 11:28-30). Accepting Christ as Savior and Lord means accepting Him as our Teacher. He teaches, and we listen. He commands, and we obey. What He teaches is always right. There are errors in every human mind. And there are errors in every religious group on the planet. Many of them are serious errors. But there are no errors with Jesus. Everything He teaches is right and correct.

Following Jesus and doing what He says is right. It’s always the right thing to do. He gives eternal salvation to all who obey Him (Hebrews 5:9). The matter of obeying Christ is serious business. He does not boss us around to show that He can. He has revealed His heart of love and concern for us. He has revealed it in so many ways, we could not possibly know them all, much less list them. But the main one is His death for us on the cross, so that we can live eternally in heaven with Him. The cross is what shows the love of God in its most obvious and irrefutable way.

Obeying Jesus is a matter of being one with Him, being His disciples, which has an impact on the world. Think about your obedience to Christ in relation to its effect on the world. The things that He teaches, the commands that He gives, if followed—these things make the world a better place. They always have.

If you and I will see our obedience to Him as our part in changing the world, we will see that this is such an important matter for so many reasons. The main reason that we obey Him is because we love Him. He said that if we love Him, we will obey His commands (John 14:15). It is as simple as that. If you claim to love Jesus, look and see if you are obeying Jesus. If He is the Lord of your life.

He is easy to love. The real Christ—the true one who came into this world to die for us. There are false representations of Him. People get the wrong idea about Jesus because of the way religious people act sometimes. The religious world is full of hypocrites. And it is also full of people who just simply don’t know any better. But you cannot judge Jesus by people.

You have to know the Bible to learn about the true Jesus. The Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John will tell you about who Jesus really is, and it is your responsibility and mine to learn about Him. This is the word of God that we are talking about. This is not some regular book that you can just decide to toss aside and ignore. You are responsible for the ideas that you hold about the Son of God. And you will give an account for them. You cannot blame anybody else.

He is easy to love. But we are talking about the true Son of God. The one who came into the world. The one whose story is told in the New Testament. That is the true and living Christ. We love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). That is reality. We are one with the Christ who loves us. Our love is a response to His. And we should seek to grow in our love for Him every day.

We are one with the Christ who created us. The one who purchased us from our sins with His own blood (Acts 20:28). That is why everything He says to do is so important. It comes from Almighty God. And we should view our obedience as His inclusion of us in the greatest and most important work in the world. He could do it without us. But He loves us and brings us in to have fellowship with Him. To love and serve Him, because He loved us first.

He even served us first. Have you ever thought about that? Do you think about it on a regular basis? He lived a life of service. To show us what life is about (Matthew 20:28). True faith always leads to obedience. If we trust Him, we will obey Him. If we believe in Him, we will believe in Him enough to do what He says.

“But now as the prophets foretold by the command of the eternal God, the message has been revealed that Gentiles everywhere might come to the obedience that comes from faith” (Romans 16:26). Obedience comes from faith. Faith leads to obedience. He is Lord and Savior (2 Peter 2:20; Luke 2:11).

So, if you claim Him as your Savior, obey Him as your Lord. You cannot have Him as one without having Him as the other. Be dedicated to Christ.

Dewayne Dunaway