What is the difference between accepting Jesus as my “Savior” and accepting Him as “Lord”?

The difference between accepting Christ as a Savior and as a Lord is substantial. When I accept Him as Savior, He saves me from the guilt and penalty of sin and gives me the new birth. He changes me from sinner to saint. This transaction is a glorious miracle and is essential to salvation. No one can be saved without it. “Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life” (Romans 5:18).

However, Jesus is not finished with me at this point. I have been born again, but His plan is that I also grow up to become more like Him, as Ephesians 4:13 says, into “the stature of the fullness of Christ.” When I accept Him daily as the ruler, or Lord, of my life, He, by His miracles, causes me to grow in grace and Christian conduct until I am mature in Christ.

The problem is that I want to run my own life, to have my own way. The Bible calls this mindset “iniquity,” or sin (Isaiah 53:6). Making Jesus my Lord is so important that the New Testament mentions Him as “Lord” 766 times. In the book of Acts alone, He is referred to as “Lord” 110 times and as “Savior” only twice. This demonstrates how important it is to know Him as Lord and Ruler of our lives.

Jesus placed continuing emphasis upon His Lordship because He knew that crowning Him Lord would be a forgotten and neglected imperative (2 Corinthians 4:5). Unless I make Him Lord of my life, there is no way I can ever become a full-grown Christian. Instead, I will end up “wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked” and, even worse, feeling that I “have need of nothing” (Revelation 3:17).

Key Bible Texts

Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: (Ephesians 4:13 KJV)