- I Cor. 12:3
We must consider two venues when we think of this basic confession of Christian Faith (Jesus is the Lord): the Church and the World.
- Within the Church:
We
make this very confession in this specific portion of the Creed:
“…Begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light,
Very God of very God; Begotten, not made; Being of one substance with
the Father; By whom all things were made: Who for us men and for our
salvation came down from heaven, And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of
the Virgin Mary, And was made man…”
The
Jewish people had once known the ineffable Name of God which is
represented by four Hebrew letters that correspond to our Latin alphabet
with the letters YHVH (יהוה). This is the Name
that is in the original Hebrew text every time that you find the word
LORD rendered with every letter in the higher case, that is, in the KJV
and other English translations that follow ancient Jewish and Christian
tradition. The prophet Jeremiah had said that, upon their return from
Babylon, this Name would no longer be pronounced by any man of Judah.
The tradition of the Jewish people was to use the word Adonai whenever reading aloud from Scripture the Holy Name of God, that name YHVH. The Hebrew word Adonai, which means
“the Lord,” would be substituted by a Jewish reader; and this still is
Jewish practice to this very day. The First century Christians who
relied on the Greek translation called the Septuagint (generally rendered LXX for the seventy rabbis who translated it) were accustomed to finding this Name of God translated as Kyrios (Κύριος), the Greek word for “Lord.”
So,
when we say that Jesus is the Lord, we are saying that this man who
walked the earth, lived, died and rose again is Himself to be identified
with the God of Israel who made heaven and earth. We are saying that
“the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” We are confessing the
Incarnation. On that day when the apostle Peter said to Jesus, “thou art
the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” the Lord answered him, “Flesh
and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father in heaven” If
you know, and can say with all your heart, that Jesus is the Lord, you
are saying that He is one with the Father. You are saying, therefore,
that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” You are saying that
God the Son has taken human nature into His Divine Person, our created
nature into not-created Person. You are saying that He has taken what is
alien to Him, our human nature, yet all the while remaining wholly
other from every created thing as the Word (λόγος) and only begotten Son.
This
He has done to save us from sin and death and to forever sanctify and
transform human nature, giving us by grace what we cannot by nature
have, and so make us partakers of the Divine Nature, as is written by
the apostle Peter.1 This is why you cannot say that Jesus is the Lord
but by the Holy Ghost. Yes, someone can say the words, perhaps, without
conviction. But, to speak of the Incarnation with faith, you must have
the Holy Spirit within you making Christ known to you.
- Confessing Jesus as the Lord before the world.
This
is more difficult. When the ancient persecution of Christians became
the law of the empire, to the ears of a Roman Magistrate such a
confession, that Jesus is the Lord, became a crime punishable by death.
The empire had one lord, and that was Caesar. Furthermore, Christians
were taught to obey and honor all earthly authorities, including Caesar;
but (and here is the rub) only as far as the informed Christian
conscience allows. The Church was taught to obey and honor Caesar’s
title as emperor, but not his ultimate title, his claim to total
authority over the human conscience. For that must be formed by the word
of God, not by culture, custom or politics.
Caesar
was believed to be the lord and god of his empire. Eventually, for a
Christian to save his life if charged with the crime of Christianity, he
had to renounce Jesus. The words in this section of the Epistle show
that persecuted Christians had been pressed to renounce Jesus by calling
Him accursed in the region around Corinth, like a preview of the
persecution that would soon be standard throughout the empire. Once the
empire began to enforce the law that made Christianity a capital crime,
one had to renounce Jesus as Lord, and then make an offering of incense
to the image of Caesar, thus recognizing him as the lord and god of the
whole world.
An early form of official persecution had taken place already in and around Corinth. Certain lapsed believers sought to be allowed back quickly into the fellowship of the Church by claiming that the Holy Spirit had guided them to renounce Jesus, even to call Him accursed, in order to be spared. Saint Paul addresses this by teaching that such a notion is impossible. Paul, in this passage, did not set aside the possibility of forgiveness and restoration of those believers into the fellowship of the Church (for God does forgive sins, and so must we); but nonetheless he firmly corrected their unacceptable excuse and wrong idea.
An early form of official persecution had taken place already in and around Corinth. Certain lapsed believers sought to be allowed back quickly into the fellowship of the Church by claiming that the Holy Spirit had guided them to renounce Jesus, even to call Him accursed, in order to be spared. Saint Paul addresses this by teaching that such a notion is impossible. Paul, in this passage, did not set aside the possibility of forgiveness and restoration of those believers into the fellowship of the Church (for God does forgive sins, and so must we); but nonetheless he firmly corrected their unacceptable excuse and wrong idea.
Here
in the modern Western world we cannot identify easily with the ancient
Christians, who could at any moment face denunciation to the
authorities, who might even have their services raided. However, in
other lands Christians in our own time are faced with the power of the
state, that Beast that has suffered a mortal wound and yet lingers
before that wound brings about its inevitable death,2 the power of the
state demanding to be acknowledged as lord and god by trampling the
human conscience. The Twentieth century saw more martyrs than all
previous centuries combined, and we see no change in the world even now
except for the fall of one state, the Soviet Union. How poor an excuse
it is, therefore, if under a threat no more serious than social
pressure, we fail to live up to the dictates of an informed conscience
and so declare by word and deed that Jesus is the Lord.
Of
course, it is also true that human pride is given no room by the
courageous examples of the martyrs; for Saint Paul tells us that if we
are faced with death it is only by the Holy Spirit that we have the
power to confess Jesus as the Lord. C.S. Lewis once wrote: “Courage
is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the
testing point.” And, this virtue requires the Holy Spirit giving us
grace to say “Jesus is the Lord.”
The confession that Jesus is the Lord means that He is equal to God. It acknowledges, by using His human name, Jesus,
that the Word was made flesh. It carries within it the truth that
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”3 It proclaims in its
present tense form that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, and is
alive today. This confession is a manifestation that the Holy Spirit is
in us. Jesus is the Lord of life and death, of heaven and earth, and of
all things; He is One with the Father. This confession, Jesus is the
Lord, foretells that Jesus Christ will come again to judge the quick and
the dead, and that His Kingdom shall have no end.
********************
1.*
“Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that
by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the
corruption that is in the world through lust. (II Pet. 1:4)”
2. Rev. 13:3 seems to predict a mortal wound to the empire, but survival of its basic evil.
3. I Tim. 1:15
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