Jesus Is Lord

Jesus is Lord In the New Testament Jesus of Nazareth is proclaimed Lord. "Jesus is Lord" is the fundamental Christian confession of faith. The confession "Jesus is Lord" at once defines both his person and his relationship to the Christian believer. This appellation was so widely used among early Christians that it became the instantly recognized and universally acknowledged description of Jesus in every geographical location where Christianity spread. The confession "Jesus is Lord" occupies a prominent place in the churches of the New Testament era, and indeed was probably the prevailing confession of faith within firstcentury Christianity. The heart of the early Christian confession is the Lordship of Christ.

The Word Lord in English

Lord in the Bible

In the English language, a Lord is a person who has righteously power and authority. It implies exercising power responsibly. Lordship, in fact, must include power to exercise control as well as possession of power within the boundaries of a welldefined system such as law, according to justice. A despot (a person who wields power oppressively, a tyrant) is only a caricature of the legal term “Lord” or “ruler.” The etymology of the English word lord goes back to Old English hlaf-weard (loafguardian) – reflecting the Germanic tribal custom of a superior providing food for his followers. In feudalism, a Lord (in Italian signore, in French seigneur) has aristocratic rank and has control over a portion of land and the produce and labour of the serfs living thereon. The serf would swear the oath of fealty to the Lord, or "keeper of the loaves". Such lords normally inherit their position and expect allegiance similar to that owed to a monarch. The word "Lord" can have different meanings depending on the context of use. Women will usually (but not universally) take the title 'Lady' instead of Lord. It may also come from words meaning "loafkneader".

The English word "Lord", in the Hebrew Bible, usually translates adon [‫]אדו‬. It is used more than 300 times in the Old Testament for a human's rule over another person. This is to be distinguished from baal [‫( ]על‬lord, husband, master) in that adon represents a personal relationship of the subjection of one person to another, while baal designates the owner of things, including slaves and women. At times persons would address someone of equal social status as “lord” out of respect. In the New Testament the Greek word kurios [κύριος] can designate both one who exercises rule over persons as well as the owner of goods. It is also used in respectful address to a father (Matthew 21:2930) or to a ruler (Acts 25:26). In the era of the Roman caesars (emperors), the title kurios symbolized the emperor's position as absolute monarch. It did not mean necessarily that the emperor was a god, but such a concept was conveniently promoted. Christians would respect the political authority, but would object its divine character. They proclaimed that only Jesus was the divine Lord, and the Lord of lords.

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“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. “ (Philippians 2:4-13). “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know-- this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it (…) Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, "'The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.' Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified." (Acts 2:22-36)

The Theological Meaning of the Confession When the early Christians referred to or confessed Jesus Christ as "Lord". The root meaning of the Greek term kyrios was "legitimate authority," and this meaning carried into New Testament usage. Jesus Is Divine First, this confession meant that Jesus is divine or Jesus is God. The term kyrios, applied to Jesus in the New Testament, was the word used in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) to represent the Hebrew name of God, YHWH or Jehovah. It is striking that this term is used without hesitation or qualification in the New Testament to refer to Jesus as well as to God. For example, the angelic announcement of Jesus' birth refers to him as "Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:14), and Paul can apply Old Testament passages which speak of God to Jesus (e.g., Rom. 10:13). The ascription of Lordship to Jesus implies acknowledgment of his essential deity. Jesus Is Exalted Savior Second, confession of Jesus' Lordship meant acknowledging him as exalted Saviour. The New Testament uses the title "Lord" to refer to a new and distinctive phase of Jesus' ministry, one marked by exaltation (beginning with his resurrection) and entry into the exercise of kingly prerogatives in contrast to his earlier (pre-resurrection) state of humiliation. A crucial passage here is Acts 2:36. In this first public proclamation of the gospel following Jesus' ascension, the Apostle Peter drew attention to Jesus' death, resurrection, and exaltation to the right hand of God (Acts 2:22-35), and then declared that "God has made Him both Lord and Christ" (v. 36). Jesus entered a new phase of his messianic ministry, a new function of his total messianic mission. In his exaltation Jesus becomes the Messiah in a new sense: he has begun his messianic reign as the Davidic king. It refers to the installation of the God-man Jesus in the position of divinely-exalted Redeemer and his entrance into the exercise of such authority as that position entails (such as bestowing the Holy Spirit, v. 33). Lordship here is an ascription of sovereignty in vivid contrast to the cruci-

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fied Jesus. Certainly Peter's call for repentance (v. 38) demanded of his Jewish hearers no less than an acknowledgment that the Crucified One had now been raised from the dead and exalted to God's right hand. Other passages which similarly express or imply a contrast between Jesus' exalted state and his previous condition of humiliation include Romans 1:4, which declares "Jesus Christ our Lord" to be appointed "Son of God in power" through his resurrection from the dead, and Matthew 28:18, where Jesus claims for himself "all authority in heaven and on earth" in his resurrected state. Jesus Is Supreme Authority Matthew 28:18, with its claim of universal authority for Jesus, leads to a third aspect of the confession "Jesus is Lord." It involves the recognition that Jesus is the supreme authority in the universe, under God the Father. An important passage in this regard is the much-discussed Philippians 2:9-11. Here Paul draws a sharp contrast between Jesus' state of humiliation and death (Phil. 2:6-8) and the subsequent state of exaltation into which he entered (vv. 9-11). After his humiliation God "highly exalted" Jesus and "bestowed on Him the name which is above every name," that at his name "every knee should bow" and "every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." A persuasive case can be made that the name which the Father bestowed on Jesus at his exaltation is the title "Lord," the name contained in the universal confession of verse 11 ("Jesus Christ is Lord"). This confession will eventually be offered by every personal being in the universe, which suggests that for some it will not be a confession arising from faith but an acknowledgment compelled by undeniable fact: Jesus has been made absolute sovereign of the universe, God's mediatorial agent in exercising his own divine rule. That confession which believers now make by the aid of the Holy Spirit, "Jesus is Lord" (cf. I Cor. 12:3), shall one day be on the lips of all, even those who now reject his Lordship. Jesus Is My Rightful Sovereign Fourth, the confession of the Lordship of Jesus includes the willing acknowledgment that Jesus Christ is the rightful sover-

eign of the Christian believer. The confession moves beyond the recognition of objective facts to the subjective application of those facts. In the very act of making this confession--if it expresses a genuine exercise of faith--the Christian assumes his rightful place before him who is the divine and exalted Saviour and sovereign of the universe. Since the concept of Lordship signifies legitimate authority, then accepting Jesus as Lord means making him the authority by which we conduct our lives. This is the acknowledgment in principle of the Lord Jesus' rightful authority and sovereignty over the Christian believer. The working out of the implications of Jesus' Lordship in practice will require the lifetime process known as sanctification in order to be accomplished, and this in no way serves as the ground of the believer's justification before God. The confession of Jesus' Lordship is simply the equivalent of repentance: it constitutes the giving up or relinquishing of one's rebellion against God and the assumption of one's rightful place before him who is Creator and Ruler of the universe. The establishment of Jesus' Lordship over believers seems to have been one of the purposes of God in the death and resurrection of Christ, according to Paul's statement in Romans 14:9. Paul there declares, "For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living." Paul's statement in this context should be understood as applying to Christian believers, and that the Lordship to which Paul refers was not Christ's inherent Lordship of creatorhood but the acquired sovereignty of redemption. It is a sovereignty which believers are bound to recognize and honour, for, as verse eight declares, "whether we live or die, we are the Lord's."

The Significance of the Confession for the Church If the confession "Jesus is Lord" bore such full and weighty content within the context of primitive Christianity, then the question next arises, what was the practical significance of this confession for the life of the church? What place did it occupy in the lives of early Christian believers and

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worshipping communities? The New Testament makes several points clear. The Central Confession First, "Jesus is Lord" was the central confession of early Christianity. Thus Paul writes in Romans 10:9, "if you confess with your mouth 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (NIV). The confession and belief referred to, of course, imply trust in Jesus as the crucified and risen Saviour and constitute an explicit acknowledgment of him as the exalted Lord. Again in 1 Corinthians 12:3, Paul writes, "no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit." Here he assumes that "Jesus is Lord" is the basic confession of the Christian fellowship. A passage already examined, Philippians 2:9-11, incorporates this confession as that which will be offered by the whole universe: "Jesus Christ is Lord." The confession "Jesus is Lord" occupied a prominent place indeed as the central Christian confession of the New Testament era: it was that affirmation to which every Christian gave assent and which distinguished the Christian community from the unbelieving world. A Personal Confession Second, the confession of Jesus' Lordship was a personal confession. It was an expression of the individual believer's convictions and trust. The Apostle Paul makes this confession pointedly personal when he writes, "If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Rom. 10:9, NIV). The personal nature of the confession was also perfectly captured by the believing Thomas when he exclaimed upon seeing the risen Saviour: "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28). The Christian confession of the Lordship of Jesus means the recognition of what God has done in exalting Jesus, and personal submission to and acceptance of his Lordship. No one could be considered a Christian or admitted to the Christian community while rejecting the Lordship of Jesus. A Corporate Confession Third, "Jesus is Lord" was a corporate con-

fession of the Christian community. In the New Testament frequently Jesus is referred to as "the Lord" or "our Lord", suggesting that he is the commonly acknowledged Lord of the entire Christian community. Observe how Paul opens his letters to the Roman and Corinthian Christians. In Romans, his greeting includes an extended description of the gospel, which concerns "Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 1:4), and he wishes them grace and peace "from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 1:7), literally reads "Jesus Christ the Lord of us." Paul assumes that all Christians in fact acknowledge Jesus as Lord. In I Corinthians 1:2 Paul extends greetings to "those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours." Here Paul defines Christians as those who "call on the name of the Lord of us Jesus Christ". In view of the lack of practical holiness in the Corinthian church Paul refers to the believers there as those who have acknowledged in principle that Jesus is Lord, even if they were imperfectly working out the implications of his Lordship in their personal lives and in congregational matters. Christians were those who acknowledged the Lordship of Jesus and that this common confession served to identify them as a people and to distinguish them from the world. This was their corporate identity. An Eschatological Confession Fourth, "Jesus is Lord" was an eschatological confession. By means of this confession, the early Christian community was expressing two closely related convictions: that God had inaugurated a new era--the kingdom of God-with the life, death, and exaltation of Jesus; and that Jesus would return in glory to bring God's kingdom to its consummation. Such was the sentiment of the Aramaic exclamation in I Corinthians 16:22, "marana tha," meaning "[our] Lord, come." The ascription of Lordship to Jesus spoke with confidence of God's final victory over sin, death, and all that opposed God's rule.

"Jesus is Lord" Today When we move from the New Testament to the church of the present time, three points of application emerge.

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First, we may well ask whether the situation that prevailed in the apostolic churches ought not be the case today. That is, if confessing Jesus' Lordship was central to the thinking and life of apostolic Christianity, should it not also be central for the twentieth-century church? What better way to set forth the meaning of Christ's redemptive accomplishment, his authority over the believer and the church, and the expectation of his final victory than to make this confession central once again? Wha does it mean that Jesus is our Lord today?

Second, in our presentation of the gospel, the demands of Jesus' Lordship should have primacy. Is not the typical biblical order that of repentance and faith rather than the reverse (Acts 20:21)? When Jesus is described as both Lord and Saviour is it not always in that order (II Peter 1:11; 2:20; 3:2; 3:18; cf. also Acts 5:31, "a Prince and a Saviour")? Does not God call on all men everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30)? Would it not be expected that a rebel approaching his sovereign seeking forgiveness should be required to give up his rebellion as he casts himself on his lord's mercy? If so, then it may well be that this element of the message ought to have pre-eminence as we present the truth to men. The gospel makes demands as well as promises.

The lordship of Jesus has ethical consequences •

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Third, it is necessary that those who proclaim Jesus' Lordship should seek to live out the implications of that Lordship in their own lives. "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him" (Col. 2:6, N1V). For those who declare the message, as well as for those who hear it, the confession must become a living reality: Jesus is Lord. More questions for us How can humans be convinced that the crucified Jesus from Nazareth is the Lord—that is, that in Him God acted in the way that the Bible says and in the way that the world needs? • How can people be convinced that He is the Messiah of Israel and the Lord of all people, who comes near to all people as Friend and Brother? • How does the Lord of the cosmos become our personal Lord in His church? •

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He makes the significance of all other powers of only relative importance (1 Corinthians 8:5-6; Colossians 2:15). The Christian believer is foundationally freed from being servant to any thing or person in the human world (1 Corinthians 7:22-23). The believer devotes self to serve others, even the ones in power, as his or her lord in voluntary service (Mark 10:42-45). Speaking the word Lord or calling out to Jesus with the title “Lord” is not enough for salvation. Such calling must be accompanied by actions which correspond to the teachings of the resurrected, Crucified One and to His example (Matthew 7:21-22; John 13:14-

“Why Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do what I tell you? “ (Luke 6:46). “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. “ (John 13:13-15).