Weird Ideas: God's Son, Our LordSample

Back to the Apostles’ Creed. It calls Jesus “Christ” and identifies him as God’s son. It also calls him Lord.

“Lord” was a key title for the early Christians. Next to Christ, it’s the second most common title for Jesus in the New Testament. The Nicene Creed puts such emphasis on it that the first way it identifies Jesus is as “one Lord Jesus Christ.”

In its most general sense, a lord is a ruler or master. Anyone who rules can be called a lord. This is why Jesus is called the Lord of lords (Rev 19:16). He is lord over all.

But there’s more. Romans 10 will say that “If you declare with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” That’s some emphasis!

Theologians will identify three things going on in this passage. First is to recognize Jesus as ruler of the world and to come to him as your master, or lord.

Second is something more subtle. In the Old Testament, God reveals his name. Most people today pronounce it Yahweh. But that name was considered so holy and sacred, whenever Jews would come across it, they would say “Lord” instead. They even went so far as to put diacritic markings in the Hebrew Bible around God’s name so as to jog the reader not to say “Yahweh,” but to say “Lord” instead. (Anytime you see the all-capitalized LORD in the Hebrew Bible, it’s masking the name Yahweh. So in Psalm 23, “Yahweh is my shepherd…”) So when you call Jesus “Lord,” you are proclaiming that he is Yahweh!

That’s two things. The third? We’ll come to that tomorrow.