​The essence of Christianity is the Lordship of Christ

Jesus is the most significant person to live on the face of the world, Paul Powell, dean emeritus at George W. Truett Seminary, shared during a Monday afternoon workshop at the Annual Meeting in Frisco. Speaking on the Lordship of Christ, Powell shared how integral Jesus was in the history of the world.

"The name of Jesus," said Powell, "is not merely written in history, but plowed into history."

Powell explained the importance of the confession that Jesus is Lord and supported the claim through evidence rooted in scripture.

Who Jesus is and what He has done will be proclaimed throughout the whole earth in the coming time, Powell said. He concentrated on the initial confession of the Church, the essential confession of a Christian and the eventual confession of the whole earth.

The initial confession states Jesus Christ is Lord, the recognition that there is a Lord over your life. The essential confession with our mouths acknowledges what we know to be true. The eventual confession is portrayed in Philippians 2, when God has so highly exalted Jesus that every knee should bow and every tongue will confess.

When we are saying Jesus is Lord over our life, we are saying He is God.

"He is not partly God," explained Powell, "sent from God or just related to God. He was and is God."

Powell referenced a quote from Donald Trump, "You can believe what I say because of what I accomplished" because we are able to see the evidence Paul uses to support his claim. Miracles verified who Jesus was, prophecy showed the accurate foreknowledge of God, and the resurrection and ascension of Christ proved the power of the Holy Spirit within Christ.

Powell closed with the expansion of what that word "lord" means. He explained it was the equivalent to a slave to his master, subject of the king and the Jews to their God.

"He is the king we obey," Powell said, "the master we serve and the God we worship. Jesus owns me, He is my king and I will follow Him. He is my God, and I will worship Him."

He further explained Jesus is the God of our life. He is the hub, which holds our life together and "when people stop believing in God," said Powell, "they will believe in anything."

He historically analyzed the meaning of the king we obey through the eyes of the Roman Empire at the time of Christ. By saying Jesus is King, they were refusing to give supreme allegiance to anybody but Christ, which included Caesar. By saying He is the master we serve, we recognize that Jesus bought us through His blood on the cross, Powell said.

The essence of Christianity is Jesus Christ is God.