When we speak of
Jesus as the ‘Lord’, we do more than honour Him.[1] To call Jesus ‘Lord’ is also to acknowledge
that He exercises divine roles and authority.
One of these is that the Lord is the Creator. Another is that the Lord is exclusively the
Lord Jesus Christ. Also, the Almighty is
the Lord mighty to save us. We therefore
acknowledge that Jesus is God, participating in divine identity with the Father
and the Holy Spirit. I would like to
show how the first Christians related certain Old Testament passages to their
confession that Jesus is Lord and then show how this interpretation came from
Jesus Himself. In the use of the Old
Testament, we can find implications about Jesus’ Lordship that the title alone
does not reveal.
Think about the
full meaning of saying, ‘Jesus is Lord’.
This seems to have been a succinct way confession in the early Church
that indicated someone was a Christian. In
1 Corinthians 12.3, Paul says,
Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the
Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord”
except in the Holy Spirit.
In Romans 10,
Paul elaborates on this confession. He
says,
if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in
your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (v. 9).
Paul is making
two claims about being a Christian here, and we see these two things in the
verse that he quotes in v. 13 from Joel 2.32, which says,
And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the
LORD shall be saved….
First, the LORD
in this verse is God Himself. In fact,
the Hebrew word is Yahweh, the personal name of God revealed to Moses. He is not any deity but the God known only to His people.
Paul, though, quotes this verse with reference to Jesus. In fact, he says in Romans 10.12:
For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord
is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him.
Only God is
creator. Only God is the ruler of
all. Only God bestows riches on
all. This God, Paul claims, is the Lord
Jesus Christ. Thus, to be a Christian is
to confess that Jesus is God.
Second, the
quotation from Joel 2.32 says that the Lord is our Saviour. Joel says, ‘everyone who calls on the name of
the LORD shall be saved’. Who can save
but God? Thus, to be a Christian is to
confess not only that Jesus is God but that He has brought salvation. Those who call on His name will be
saved. There is salvation in no other
name.
Two other Old
Testament passages are significant for Paul’s understanding that Jesus is
‘Lord’. The first is from Deuteronomy
6.4, where we find the most significant Jewish confession in the Old
Testament. It was said daily at the
beginning of the prayer called the Shema:
‘Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one’. In 1 Corinthians 8.5-6, Paul says:
For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as
indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”—6 yet for us there is one
God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord,
Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
Paul wraps Jesus
into the identity of the One God. He
rejects any idea of two gods, a father god and a lord Jesus. The Shema is the confession that there is One
God, the Creator. Paul does not say that
there is a Creator God and a Lord God.
The unity of the Father and Jesus is in their being the One God.
Another Old Testament passage of great significance
for Paul is Isaiah 45.23, which Paul references in his creedal confession about
Jesus in Philippians 2.6-11. The Isaiah
passage contrasts the idols of other nations with the true God of Israel. It also claims that God is the Saviour. Isaiah 45.22-23 says,
“Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.
23 By
myself I have sworn;
from my mouth has gone out in
righteousness
a word that shall not return:
‘To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear
allegiance.’
Notice in this passage that the idols that are nothing at all
cannot save any people. Thus, the bowing
of the knee and the swearing of allegiance to God is to put trust in Him that
He will save. In the next verse, we have
the name of God, translated as ‘LORD’ in the Greek translation of the
passage. Thus, Paul says of Jesus:
Therefore
God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every
name, 10 so
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and
under the earth, 11 and
every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father
(Philippians 2.9-11).
When Peter stood
up before the rulers, scribes, and priests of Jerusalem to testify before them
about what the early Christians believed, he said,
And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name
under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4.12).
Peter’s words also echo the same understanding of Paul in reference
to Isaiah 45.22-23. Remember, Isaiah
45.22 says:
Turn
to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no
other.’
Peter was explaining Jesus to them in reference to Psalm
118.22. Jesus was the rejected stone
that became the chief cornerstone in this psalm. The whole psalm is a celebration of the
salvation of the Lord. The next verse,
v. 23, says, ‘This is the LORD’s doing’.
Earlier, in v. 14, the psalmist says, ‘The LORD is my strength and my song; he
has become my salvation.’ To call Jesus, ‘Lord’, is to identify Him as ruler and as the God of our salvation.
In addition to the
confession that Jesus is Lord in Paul and in Peter, we might also recall the
climactic confession of Thomas in John’s Gospel. Thomas would not believe that Jesus had been
raised from the dead until He saw Him and touched the wounds of the crucifixion
on His body. Then Jesus appeared to Him,
and Thomas saw His wounds, Thomas responded to Jesus with the confession: “My
Lord and my God!” (John 20.28).
What we have
seen so far is that the early Church confessed Jesus to be Lord. We have seen that this was a claim that He is
God. To be ‘Lord’ is to be the
Creator. To be ‘Lord’ is to be so
exclusively and therefore in participation with the Father’s singular identity. To be ‘Lord’ is to be the Saviour. We have seen how the early Church used
several Scripture passages to come to this understanding about Jesus. He alone is Lord. Yet where did this confession come from?
According to the
Synoptic Gospels, the confession came from Jesus Himself. He, too, used a passage from the Old
Testament to explain that He is Lord.
The passage is from Psalm 110.1:
The LORD says to
my Lord:
‘Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.’
Jesus quotes the
passage after a long and contentious argument between Himself and the religious
leaders in Jerusalem. When Jesus rode
into Jerusalem on a donkey, signalling His being a kingly figure, the Son of
David, a debate arose over Jesus’ authority.
Just who was He to do so? The priests
and elders, the scribes, Pharisees, Herodians, and Sadducees all tried to
overturn His authority by posing challenging questions to Him. This whole debate had to do with His claim to
have messianic authority. Once Jesus vanquishes all the bellicose
interrogations of the religious leaders, they have no further ammunition. They had failed to unseat the authority of
the would-be messianic king. Yet that was not a sufficient understanding
of Jesus’ identity. Jesus then raises
the matter to a higher level. His
authority is greater than one like King David.
He is not only the Messiah but also the Lord. After all the questions, Jesus poses a
question to the Pharisees: whose son is the Christ, the Messiah? (Matthew
22.42). When they cannot say, Jesus
quotes Psalm 110.1, attributed to King David.
He then asks, ‘If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?’ (v.
45).
Through Psalm
110, Jesus introduces a higher title and confession that He is the
Messiah. He is also the ‘Lord’, a title
everyone knows applies to God Himself.
Jews read Psalm 110 as a psalm about the Messianic ruler to come. Yet, as Jesus interprets the psalm, this
Messiah is David’s Lord, for He is God Himself.
Thus, when John encounters Jesus in his vision in Revelation 1, Jesus
says to him, ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega ,,, who is and
who was and who is to come, the Almighty’ (v. 8).
Conclusion
I have spoken of
the confession that Jesus is Lord as a confession that He is God. He not only participates in the Divine
Identity but exclusively inhabits the Divine Identity over against all other
claims of lordship. He is Creator and
Saviour. He has all authority over all
nations. To call Him Lord is to ascribe
this worth to Him—to worship Him.
Jesus’ Lordship
also pertains to us. In confessing Jesus
is Lord, we submit ourselves to Him, giving Him our exclusive devotion and
worship. (There is no legitimate ‘interfaith
service’ for the believer.) Our entire
existence is in His service. As Paul
says in Colossians, ‘And whatever you do, in word or
deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the
Father through him’ (3.17).
[1] I offer my own brief reflections on Jesus as Lord here. The reader may want to plumb the theological
depths of this confession through the worthy study of Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in
Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005).
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