We Need To Be Definitely Personal About Jesus

A pastor friend, whose initials are not KD, but who has achieved a certain amount of fame, or infamy, depending on your worldview, employing those letters to post his observations on faith, politics, and the foibles of, well pretty much everyone including himself, has said about Jesus that it's rather poor form to claim Him as yours when you don't know Him. And, because, I have a mind that often takes a peculiar turn, and spends far too much mental effort contemplating the significance of the insignificant, I have been thinking a lot about personal possessive pronouns and their use in sentences that also contain the name of the Lord.

Personal possessive pronouns are words like my, mine, yours, ours, his, hers, and their. Think of the song "Shout to the Lord," My Jesus, my Savior... The only folks who get to use personal possessive pronouns when talking about Jesus are people who belong to Him. When Jesus has come and sought you out and made you one of His, well you get to call Him your Savior. If He is not your Savior, well you don't get to call Him yours, and, obviously, you aren't saved because no one gets saved except by Him. I'm sure I've made myself absolutely unclear, so I'll go on.

In addition to pronouns there is another part of speech called the definite article. The definite article separates a person, object, idea from a group and identifies it over and above all others. There are lots of songs in the world, but the song I quoted was "Shout to the Lord." Notice, it isn't "Shout to a Lord," but "the" Lord. Always and forever, when it comes to Jesus, he is The Lord, whether you want to acknowledge Him as such or not.

But when I get to talking about salvation, well I want to be more than definite, I want to get personal, because, well, salvation is personal. No one is saved as part of a group. There is no class-action suit that can get you into heaven. Either Jesus is your Savior, and you're good to go, or He's not and you're not.

More confused, and wondering why I'm writing this? Well, when I'm talking with others about Jesus, or when I'm praying aloud in a group, I always try to make sure folks understanding that Jesus is definitely the Lord, the one and only. But I also want to make sure that as far as being Savior, well, that's personal, and I want people to hear the difference between being definite about His Lordship, and secure in the personal knowledge of Him as Savior. So, I try while I always try to identify Him as the Lord, I also try to always say He is my or our Savior, because while Lord of all, the truth is Jesus only saves some.

By no means am I suggesting that there is any other way of salvation, it's Jesus or nothing. But, and this is all about the sovereign will of God, not all will be saved, because not all are willing to personally receive Jesus and His gift of salvation. So, what's the sum of all this? When it comes to Jesus, we definitely need to get personally possessive.