Lordship Series a Surrendered Life

In Paul's second letter to the Corinthian church, he makes mention of Jesus as Lord 29 times, and it is this emphasis of Christ's Lordship that is foundational to the series of messages I bring before you, friends, on the Lordship of Christ. I never knew a man who embodied the theme of the Lordship of Jesus Christ more than Dr. Stephen F. Olford. Dr. Olford was my homiletical mentor, colleague, and friend.

I was in his first graduating class of his School of Preaching, and Stephen Olford and I co-wrote a book together on his homiletical mentor, Dr. Graham Scroggie, entitled Olford on Scroggie. I literally spent countless hours under the preaching of Stephen Olford, and his main message that he preached was the Lordship of Jesus Christ. I believe, friends, that the most neglected doctrine in the church today is the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the rights and claims that Christ has on all followers of his has been delegated to the ash heap by pastors today who prefer to teach a more lenient gospel and a more sin-tolerant Savior.

But unlike most of us preachers today, Jesus never preached sin and religion. God bless the preaching ministry of Stephen Olford through countless transformed lives who heard him. My own life was turned upside down by a sermon Dr. Olford preached on Lordship, and God will bless the preacher who highlights in his sermons the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and that's where we are going to go, friends, in this series of messages on the Lordship of Christ.

2 Corinthians 5.15 declares, And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. The Lordship of Christ is a life of submission of Christ Jesus. It is utter surrender to a living Lord.

It is the willingness to bow daily and hourly to the sovereignty of Christ and to the authority of the Word. Through this submission to Christ comes victory in Christ for a daily living, as seen in 2 Corinthians 3.17 which states, Now the Lord is that spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. This can be understood where the spirit is Lord, that is, where he is given his true deity and sovereignty, there is liberty.

We will see, friends, in this series that the victorious Christian life is a surrendered life to the Lordship of Christ. Let us pray.