The New Testament is not, strictly speaking, one book at all: it is a collection of documents of different literary types and dates. And yet we rightly give these scriptures a common title and treat them as one book because the diverse writers unite to say, “Jesus is Lord” (I Cor. 12:3 –all quotes from RSV unless indicated otherwise). From the gospel of Matthew to the Revelation, the New Testament is an eloquent testimony that Jesus of Nazareth is Lord. It is an affirmation of the promise that one day every knee shall bow to him and “every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10-11).
A powerful term
“Lord” has become for us a rather pale and colorless term. To understand it today as the Spirit of God wants it to be understood, we need to review what empowered this title to inspire the loyalty of believers so that their lives became wholeheartedly devoted to the Lord.
The Greek word most often rendered “lord,” kurios, means “having power or authority” (Liddell-Scott Greek Lexicon). The definition reminds us of the words of the Lord: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18). Significantly, this Greek word for “Lord” appears in every New Testament book except Titus and John’s epistles.
The appropriate title
For the New Testament writers there was no other title which could so compellingly and comprehensively express all that Jesus signifies as “Lord.” “Lord” clothed him with his appropriate glory. The angel who announced the Savior’s birth to shepherds proclaimed him as, “Christ the Lord” (Lk. 2:11). At Pentecost, Peter asserted that the God who vindicated the crucified one and exalted him to glory at His own right hand “made him both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). The apostle Paul could sum up the ecclesia’s confession of Jesus as Son of David and Son of God in the words, “Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 1:4), and the ecclesia awaiting his return, prays, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20).
“Lord” speaks of commitment
By this title, believers acknowledged him and committed themselves to him as the one who, by virtue of his redeeming life and death, had won the right and power to rule over all angels and authorities and powers both now and in the age to come. The Lord is the only one in whom they could find life and salvation. Indeed, he possesses the only name given under heaven whereby any can be saved (Acts 4:12). They knew that by God’s appointment history was moving toward his coming, his judgment over all the world and his rulership (Acts 17:31).
A key to understanding
The lordship of Jesus gave the believers the key to understand history as revealed by God. They understood the pattern of the history of Israel recorded and interpreted in the Old Testament and they recognized their Lord as the center and heart of the logos that began with the Edenic promise and confirmed in the calling and blessing of Abraham. The apostle Paul tells us plainly that Jesus’ lordship was prefigured at the beginning calling Adam a “type of the one who was to come” (Rom. 5:14).
Old Testament foreshadowings
However far back believers might look, they saw typical anticipations of the Lord’s glory. He is the “yes” of all God’s promises (II Cor. 1:20), the greater son of David, God’s anointed, the Christ (Acts 2:34-36), the prophet greater than Moses (Acts 3:22), the passover sacrifice that sets God’s people free for the final exodus and ultimate deliverance (I Cor. 5:7), the priest-king who offered himself as the final perfect sacrifice and inaugurated the new and eternal covenant (Heb. 7:27; 9:12,26; 8:6).
For us, He reigns as Lord now
The “rulers of this age” who put him to death, “crucified the Lord of glory” (I Cor. 2:8), after which he was “designated son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4). The S on of God in power is lord of the present, “the head over all things for the church” (Eph. 1:22). Those, who by God’s grace, have become “his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23) can say now, our Lord reigns! The lamb that was slain can take the sealed book of God’s counsel, break the seals and open the book and carry out God’s work and sovereign will (Rev. 5).
Among his followers, his rule and lordship are acknowledged, proclaimed and praised. Among them, Jesus is Lord to the exclusion of all other lords who might lay claim to lordship over them (I Cor. 8:5-6). For them, he is all and in all (Col. 3:11). His word dwells richly and his peace rules in their grateful hearts (Col. 3:15-16). Whatever they do in word or in deed is done “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Col. 3:17).
To us, he is Lord forever
Nothing can call in question his comprehensive lordship. Suffering cannot dim its glory for those who call him Lord (Rom. 5:3,11). Not even the last and mightiest enemy, death itself, in whose grip all other lordships cease, can end his reign: “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living” (Rom. 14:8-9).
The coming Lord of glory
Jesus is Lord; his Lordship shines forth from the past and it illuminates the present. But above all, he is Lord of the future. The Caesars of Rome, who were acclaimed as “lord” by zealous subjects, have no future. The ecclesia, the people of God gathered under his Lordship, is animated by one hope — the living, confident and trusting expectation that her Lord will return to manifest and exercise his Lordship in open glory.
As we remember him
When his people gather to eat bread and drink wine as the sign and means of his unbreakable communion with them, they do so with their eyes fixed on the future: they “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (I Cor. 11:23-26). They pray, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (I Cor. 16:22; Rev. 22:20). They pray, rejoicing with confidence that “the Lord is at hand” (Phil. 4:5) and wait “for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life” (Jude 21).
A Lord who frees from slavery
Life under Jesus’ Lordship is not futile enslavement. When the Lord takes people as his own, he sets them free from sin and death (John 8:36).
We dwell in a world filled with restless and anxious people. Men can find no rest or freedom apart from the Lordship of Jesus Christ. If we choose to live and work for him, our life will have purpose and meaning far beyond our little today. He knows our needs; he hears our prayers; he intercedes for us; he mediates God’s blessings now — and most importantly — he will come!
The Lord gives his people hope
The English novelist, historian and sociologist H.G. Wells once said, “Man, who began in a cave behind a windbreak, will end in the diseased, soaked ruins of a slum.”
But Wells knew nothing of the power of Christ. His people will not be consumed in hopelessness’s; they will rejoice forever in the coming of their Lord and King.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One