Supremacy of God and Christ in Salvation

There is nothing that God is not supreme over, and it is easy to teach on the supremacy of God and Christ when your entire goal is to want to exalt and magnify God with all of your ability. Martin Luther said to Erasmus in one of his letters, “Your thoughts of God are too human,” (Luther); which is a valid reason why some preachers do not express God in a sound manner. Arthur W. Pink makes a similar charge to modern preachers by stating, “We, too, prefer the same charge against the vast majority of the preachers of our day, and against those who, instead of searching the Scriptures for themselves, lazily accept their teachings. The most dishonoring conceptions of the rule and reign of the Almighty are now held almost everywhere . . . countless thousands, even professing Christians, the God of Scripture is quite unknown,” (Pink). An indicator of when one lowers the supremacy of God is when one thinks to himself, “my God would never do something like that,” that is when you need to run to the scriptures to see if He would. If you hear the preacher say God would never do that; you better run to the scriptures to see if He would, and then submit your finite mind to the supremacy of God.

To be supreme over something means to be the highest of all over the matter. Christ is the highest authority over all and none can challenge His decrees. Our salvation rests in the hands of the good shepherd and He will not let any of His sheep go astray. Christ is supreme over all the deception of the world.

Matthew 7:15 Reads; Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

Christ warns us to be aware of false prophets who come in sheep’s clothing; but Christ declared in

John 10:28; And I give to them eternal life, and they shall never ever perish, and not anyone shall pluck them out of My hand.

It is Christ Himself who gives eternal life to us, and we shall never parish, and none who are His can be plucked from His hands. Glory to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who are supreme over all salvation. Praise Him who reigns over all from the throne of Heaven. Praise God for being supreme over your salvation; for it was not by your merit, will, nor your own decision, but solely and only by God, and our decision was based on His supreme eternal decision.

Romans 9:15,16 reads; For He said to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” 16 so then it is not of the one willing, nor of the one running, but of God, the One showing mercy.

We see how supreme God is over salvation. He is supreme over His mercy. It is by His mercy that God does not give all what all deserve, and that is hell. But it is by His mercy that God gives many what they do not deserve, and that is Christ the Son and giver of eternal life. So it is not by the person who wills or runs, which is a striking illustration of how incompetent we are to achieve salvation by our own will and works. No matter how much we work for it, and no matter how much will power we apply according to our “free will” oh, how some of my brothers and sisters like to boast about their free will. How my brothers and sisters fail to realize that, if it were not for the mercy of God’s choosing; and left to our own free will; our will may only serve us to lead us freely to hell. Brothers and sisters what seductive doctrine has beguiled you to believe your will is free. Our will is only free in the sense that it is able to make carnal choices in everyday practical life. But your will is not free in the sense that it is able to come to God. Our will is born in bondage to sin since the day we were conceived in our mother’s womb. Consider

Psalms 58:3; The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.

Acts 8:23 For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.

 

 

Jeremiah 13:23; Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.

So you see since our inception we are born with a natural inclination to sin, which is to disobey God. What a terrible predicament to be born in, and just as the Ethiopian cannot change the color of his skin which is natural to him; neither can the leopard change his spots, which are natural to him. To say to them you can do it because you have the free will to do it; is absurd. It is absurd because you cannot do anything that is against your nature to do; and we are naturally born spiritually dead and are unable to come to God apart from His Grace, which is a necessary factor for being born again in order to believe the Gospel. The point is, that no matter how hard anyone, or anything tries to do what is unnatural for them to do; they cannot. They would need a miracle. And so it is for the spirituality of man. Born in bondage to naturally disobey God’s commandments; unable to fully obey just for one day. That alone proves that our will is not free. There is a misconception on what free will really means. The only one with absolute free will is God; because God is the only being who can choose freely with no outside conditions or contingencies. There is nothing to obstruct His will, God feely decrees and it happens just as He decreed according to His sovereign will; and that is free will which no man possesses. Yes we choose whatever we desire, but as Jeremiah 13:23 says, our desires are accustomed to do evil. Since we struggle daily trying to do good, yet we do evil in deed and in thought; our will is not free. To say my will is free because” I” made the decision to accept Christ; only reveals the pride and arrogance of our hearts wanting to take credit for our salvation. What many are doing as a result of bad theology is robbing glory from God. Yet, It is still said by many that the one thing God will never touch; is the free will of man. Well then; on judgment day when God sentences men to the Lake of Fire and man cries with all his heart; “I don’t want to go! This is against my will!” Do you think God is going to honor that? What about those of us who are in Christ; and it is said that nothing can separate us from His love, and that the work of faith that was begun in us by God will be completed by God. If God had to overcome our will in order to assure we stay in His Grace; you may not have a problem with that would you?

John 6:44 reads; No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.

John 6:65 Christ said again; Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.

Every man that comes to Christ comes to Christ only because the Father chose to give him or her to Christ. In fact in verse 44 it reads that no man can come unless the Father drew him. Some will say; yes but He draws man only to the extent where it then becomes our responsibility to make the choice to accept Christ; the ultimate choice is ours by our own free will. The problem with that interpretation is the Greek word for drew. It is Helkuo Helku, which means to drag. Anything living that necessitates being dragged, automatically presupposes that it is being moved by force against its will. What this means is that until God decides to breathe life into your spirit by His grace and mercy you cannot and do not want to come to Christ. You must be born again and that is a miraculous work that God does Himself against your own will while you we were passive. When God does this then you have the freedom and ability to see Christ, understand the words of Christ, believe in Christ, choose Christ, confess Christ, love Christ, obey Christ, and if needed to; die for Christ. What I am doing here is exalting the supremacy of God and Christ’s will, because it is not done enough in modern Christianity.

In John Chapter 6 verse 66 we see an interesting response from the crowd. Jesus just finished preaching to the multitude about their incapability to believe in Jesus Christ unless the Father first draws them.

Jesus Christ is supreme over all salvation and no man can resist His decisions.

Matthew 25:32 says; And all nations shall be gathered before Him. And He shall separate them from one another, as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats.

All nations will stand in front of Christ, and it is Christ who will separate them one by one; just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. Christ is supreme over all His sheep and looses none. Christ said in

Luke 15:4; What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after that which is lost until he finds it?

Which of you if you had one hundred sheep would not leave the 99 in the wilderness to look for the one until it is found? And while the sheep strayed from the flock; does that mean that the sheep ceased belonging to the shepherd? No! The very act of the shepherd looking for his lost sheep implicates that the lost sheep still belonged to the shepherd the entire time. Likewise the 99 that were left alone in the wilderness to find the one did not cease to belong to the shepherd, while they were in a period of solitude away from the shepherd. Just because you may have strayed from the flock and fallen into a season of sin, it does not mean that you do not belong to the Father. Christ is supreme over His sheep and will lose none. All who struggle with their sin need to rejoice in their suffering because the lost goats rejoice not in their conviction of sin, but instead they rejoice in their lust. The goats are not concerned about their sin by any means. They walk in a dark pathway where at any given moment when they least suspect it; God will remove from them the very support under their feet which holds the life of sin which they treasured.

God said in Deuteronomy 32:35; To me belongs vengeance, and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.

Romans 2:5; But according to your hardness and your impenitent heart, do you treasure up wrath for yourself in a day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God

Revelation 6:17; For the great day of His wrath has come, and who will be able to stand?

No unrepentant sinner will be able to stand the great judgment and condemnation of God. He will free fall through the bottomless pit of hell into the hands of an angry God. A God who was longsuffering while they were alive waiting for them to repent of their sins, and follow the Son whom God put on the cross to die with the sins of all whom believe and will believe in Christ. The Son whom was raised from the dead making a spectacle of death by revealing His supremacy over death. The Son who will return to judge the world and resurrect our mortal bodies from the grave to give immortality to our bodies; that our bodies may be united with our spirit and finally be together in the Kingdom of God as its written in 1Corinthians 15:54, Glory to God for His supremacy.

Even in wrath, anger, and condemnation Christ is supreme; consider

Revelation 14:4-20; And I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and on the cloud sat one like the Son of man, having a golden crown on His head, and a sharp sickle in His hand. 15 and another angel came out of the temple, crying in a great voice to Him sitting on the cloud, Thrust in Your sickle and reap, for the time has come for You to reap, for the harvest of the earth was dried. 16 and He sitting on the cloud thrust in His sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped. 17 and another angel came out of the temple in Heaven, also having a sharp sickle.18 and another angel came out from the altar, who had authority over fire. And he spoke with a great cry to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, thrust in your sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe. 19 and the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the anger of God. 20 and the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even to the bridles of the horses, for the space of a thousand, six hundred stadia.

An ancient Israel winepress was an open air system made from rock in the similar shape of a shallow pool. In the pool like substance men would tread on grapes with their feet. The juice would then flow through a sloped channel into a smaller holding area called the vat, where people may use jars to fill with ready pressed wine.

In the depiction of Revelation 14; we see a horrible image of God in His anger treading on unbelievers in a similar fashion. With relentlessness God places all who reject the son into a winepress, treads on all with His own feet; the blood of the rebellious flows down the sloped channel, and the flow of blood reaches in depth of up to the horse’s bridle, which illustrates a horse nearly drowning in human blood because the depth of blood reaches the horse’s mouth. This is hyperbolic language to convey to men the gravity of the situation. The anger and wrath of God is not to be taken for granted. Men may have rage and anger but even the rage of God is supreme compared to that of men.

Not only is God supreme over salvation and wrath, but He is also supremely merciful; and as a result God the potter provides an escape from His wrath to His created vessels.

Deuteronomy 30:19 I call Heaven and earth to record today against you. I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore, choose life, so that both you and your seed may live.

God has set before all men life and death; death for those who disobey His commandments, and life abundantly which is Christ for those who follow Christ. Choose life instead of death, choose the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ said in

Matthew 6:21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Every carnal treasure will one day cease to exist, and it may cease to exist for any one of us at any given moment because tomorrow is not promised to anyone. But if you forsake all worldly ambitions and seek only the greatest treasure ever to be available as gift; then seek Jesus Christ. Christ is the supreme treasure, and if Christ is what you treasure, then that shows that your heart loves God. Remember that for the unrepentant man; he treasures wrath for himself, but for seekers of Christ if our heart is in the treasure of Christ, then we are justified by faith and have been reconciled with God. Never forget that it was only by the power of God.

2Corinthians 4:6,7 For it is God who said, “Out of darkness Light shall shine;” who shone in our hearts to give the brightness of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us

The Apostle Paul is referencing Genesis where God speaks light into existence when darkness was over the earth; and just as by God’s will He shined light over the earth, God also shined light on men. We are talking about the awesome regenerating work of the spirit of man. Prior to us being born again our heart, soul, mind, and spirit was dead in darkness unable to bring life to itself until God decided to shine light on you by revealing the knowledge and glory of God in Jesus Christ, in your heart. We who believe in Christ have a treasure within us as earthen vessels. What treasure? Christ and His Gospel; for the purpose of one thing, so that others may also receive this illumination and treasure we have through us as we live for, and preach the Gospel of Christ; and in so doing only preach Christ, because nothing else matters. Never seek to entertain the audience by attempting to make the Gospel amusing to people, just preach the Gospel and let the Holy Ghost settle the difference within the their hearts, why? 2Corinthians 4:7 said, “so that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.”