My Not Personal Relationship with Christ
Baptizer: Do you,(insert your name), believe that Jesus is the Son of God?Baptizee: Yes.
Baptizer: Have you accepted Him as your personal Lord and Savior?
Baptizee: Yes.
Baptizer: Upon your confession of faith I now baptize you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
That’s how baptisms go at our church. A lot of churches use some variation on that theme of Baptism. For years one phrase has stood out to me and I’m going to get this off my chest. Personal Lord and Savior. Where does that phrase come from? Churches also us that phrase when there’s an altar call of some sort. You know, “Raise your hand if you would like Jesus to be you personal Lord and Savior.” I wonder what its origins are? I could be wrong, but I can’t find the phrase in the Bible. (If it’s actually in there, I’m going to feel very stupid cuz I can’t find it.) My guess is that it comes out of a religious church culture that’s now emphasizing the relationship aspect of our journey with Christ. Its intent is to say that you have personally made the choice to believe in Christ.
I understand that in the end, when it comes down to it and I’m on my knees before God making accounts for everything that I’ve done, I am the only one accountable for my own actions. And I deeply believe in a relationship with the living God. But personal doesn’t say that to me. I think it implies a couple other things.
Personal implies that it’s no one else’s business. Like I said, no one else can account for me before God. But when I say something is personal that means I’m not going to share it with everyone. Well my walk with Christ is anything but personal in that aspect. I need to talk about it. God tells us to talk about it and Jesus modeled what that looks like. I’ve talked with people who say their relationship with God is personal and they would rather not talk about it. Some people won’t pray out loud with others for the same reason. Don’t take this to personal, but get over it!
Personal also says that something applies to me that does not everyone else or that it varies from person to person. Like personalized plates or checks. Is your personal savior different from my personal savior? As a Christian, Jesus is my savior. Well a couple billion people say that Jesus is their savior, how personalized is that? I understand that my relationship with Matt Simmons is different from my relationship with Matt Page, and my walk with Christ looks different than Matt’s. I think if it were up to us to define out relationship with God then it would be personal, but God defines our relationship. Like how he defines how we worship; “This mountain or that mountain, I don’t care, but worship in Spirit and in Truth.” The Bible also says that God so love the WORLD. Jesus is the savior of everyone, and everyone is saved by grace through faith and not of our own attempts at righteousness. It’s the same for everyone.
I know, maybe I’m digging to deep and if you dig deep enough you can always argue about semantics. Maybe I’m reading into it too much when they just mean that you personally have made the choice. Maybe my personal view is narrow. But when we say personal Lord and Savior we leave out a whole community. Jesus refers to Christians as a body. Not just a bunch of separate parts doing their own personal things. When we profess Jesus as Lord of our life, we join a community that’s very important to God. That’s why he would leave the 99 to bring the one back home.
A personal Lord and Savior could imply that we don’t worship together. It could imply that we don’t share that relationship with others. It could imply that we make it out to be what we want it to be. Or I could have just inferred it all. Either way, I think our baptisms should ask, “Have you personally accepted Jesus as THE Lord and Savior?” That makes more sense to me, but what do you think?
posted by Tim Oas @ 12:53 AM
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