I have already posted two ‘At Home in the Bible’ posts about names (here and here) and since Christians are into 3s I thought I would round it off with a third (although in truth it is more a title than a name).

One phrase I find fascinating in the Bible is “Jesus is Lord”.  I find it fascinating because it is one of those phrases that has become so common in my Christian-eese language that when I read it I seldom stop to think about what it really means, but when I do, the depth of it blows me away.  The author who used this phrase more often than any other writer of the New Testament was Paul (who wrote Romans through to Philemon) – so what did he mean by it?

‘Lord’ is the Greek word kyrios (pronounced ku-ree-oss) which has a variety of connotations. It was often used simply in a polite sense, just as we might use the term ‘sir’ (it is used in this way many times in the gospels).  It also was used in terms of those who owned slaves (i.e. a master). However, research suggests that Paul had in mind two particular uses of the word ‘Lord’, especially when writing the phrase ‘Jesus is Lord’.

The first of these comes from the Greek translation of the Old Testament. This translation was made from the original Hebrew a couple of hundred years before Christ, and is known as the Septuagint (LXX for short). A part of Jewish culture was that you did not say or write God’s name (and in that way you would not accidentally take God’s name in vain).  Instead, they often used a substitute word, which is exactly what translators did when they wrote the LXX, translating the name Yahweh as Kyrios (Lord). (The English has followed this practice and you will notice that in the Old Testament, God is often referred to as LORD (written in capitals so you know it’s a translation of God’s name).  Almost all of those to whom Paul wrote would have been Greek speakers and would therefore have read/heard the Greek version of the Scriptures.  As one of the first readers of Paul’s letters it would therefore have been near impossible to read ‘Jesus is Lord’ without connecting this to the Old Testament statements about God…and it would have been glaringly obvious to them that Paul was in fact claiming that Jesus is God.

The other major use is the Greco-Roman use of ‘lord’ in reference to their deities (gods), and particularly their emperor (Caesar). As a good Roman citizen, you knew that ‘Caesar is lord’…which meant that you owed him your total allegiance.  To claim ‘Jesus is Lord’ was therefore a hugely controversial and counter cultural thing – to say that Jesus is Lord is to say that Caesar is not!  It is not Caesar to whom allegiance should be given, but to Jesus…it is not Caesar who is to be worshipped but Jesus!   It is not Caesar who is God, but Jesus!

Clearly we don’t have a Roman emperor demanding we call him Lord today…but we do have many things that our culture holds up for us as ‘lords’ – things/people we should give our allegiance to and worship.  These things are the lords of our world.  So when we read and when we proclaim that Jesus is Lord, it is much more than a piece of Christian jargon…it is a reminder that “for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live” (1 Corinthians 8:6).

Jesus is God and Jesus is Lord…and it is to this Lord God (and no other) that we owe our worship and our obedience.