‘In Jesus Christ, our Lord’

THE pithiest expression of religion within the New Testament must be “Jesus is Lord” (e.g. Romans 10.9). Paul says that the gospel concerns “Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 1.3-4).

This theme of Christ’s Lordship features in each our essential creeds, but in usefully alternative ways: “One Lord” within the Nicene Creed; “Our Lord” within the Apostles’ Creed. The latter — “Our Lord” — presents the gospel by way of community and relationship. In contrast, the language of “one Lord” focuses on singleness of devotion. Both points are already present in that great creed of the Old Testament, the shema: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone” (Deuteronomy 6.4). That’s plenty to take into consideration as we explore “the gospel in all the creed”.

THE phrase “Our Lord” relates Jesus to his body, the Church, formed by having Christ as its Lord. The gospel is heard here as an invite to hitch that community — by taking Christ as Lord, by standing alongside all who’ve been summoned and shaped by their allegiance to him. We will see more of that after we turn to the gospel in what the creeds say concerning the Church.

While that adjective “our” is about gathering, the opposite adjective — “one” — presents the gospel by way of separation. It proclaims Christ’s Lordship over and against other authorities. The gospel invitation here is to full allegiance, to forsaking false gods. We might recall Joshua’s great injunction: “Choose today whom you’ll serve, whether the gods your ancestors served within the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you might be living; but as for me and my household, we’ll serve the Lord” (Joshua 24.15).

This is sweet news, even though it’s counter-cultural to say so. Christ’s lordship is sweet due to what Christ as Lord rescues us from; due to all that follows from being under Christ’s rule and care. It matters whose kingdom you belong to. The lordship of Christ delivers us from death’s rival claim (Romans 14.8-9; 1 Corinthians 15.15-26).

THAT idea of a lord as protector may not speak so on to us today, nevertheless it is central to the theology of the New Testament. As Karl Barth wrote, it belongs to “divine mercy” for us to have Christ as Lord, and in that solution to be delivered “from all other lordships”. Not for nothing does a famous passage from Romans end its list of vanquished impediments to life in God with invocation of Christ as Lord: “For I’m convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come back, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor the rest in all creation, will give you the option to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8.38-39).

The cost of confessing allegiance to “one Lord” was not lost on early Christians. Martyrs, burned alive or sent to the lions, demonstrated the results of belonging to just one lord, when that lord was not Caesar. The advantages, nevertheless, weren’t lost on them: “He has rescued us from the facility of darkness and transferred us into the dominion of his beloved Son, in whom we’ve redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1.13-14).

THE idea is as old because the Bible. Already within the Old Testament, God’s rule is about out as gospel: that “Your God reigns” is “excellent news” (Isaiah 52.7). Indeed, the foundational story of the Old Testament is the Exodus narrative: “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, however the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand” (Deuteronomy 6.21; cf. Leviticus 25.42).

We would do well to recuperate this sense of Christ as Lord in a clash of powers, whether earthly, heavenly, or cosmic: the defeat of sin and death. Talk of the Kingdom of God today tends to stress the moral and social dimensions: justice, look after the poor, and so forth. That is indeed central, but I think we frequently miss something central to the theology of the Bible — and subsequent centuries — if we neglect the equally essential sense that the Kingdom is about deliverance, rule, and protection.

NOTHING compares with Christ’s authority, or takes priority over this lordship. Other legitimate authorities exist, but they need to fall under Christ’s lordship, and be judged by it (e.g. Romans 13.17; 1 Peter 2.13-17; John 19.11). In that, we hear yet more excellent news: that under the windfall of God, and with the instance of Christ before us, good government — national and native — is feasible, and virtuous leadership, and careful exercise of power for the sake of the common good.

In a world that has grown cynical about government, and suspicious of leadership, the first message — “Jesus is Lord” — brings a secondary message in its train. Christ shows us that leadership might be benign; that authority might be exercised well. In this fashion, the confession of “Jesus Christ, our one Lord” has been the backdrop for holding rulers and leaders at every level to a high calling.

I BEGAN by saying that we’ve three words to take into consideration on this column: “our”, “one”, and “Lord”. To that, we’d add yet one more small word, namely “in”: “I feel in one Lord.” The force of this preposition is lost on us in English, just as in Greek (eis) it also soon became standard usage. When Christians first began using this word in this fashion, nevertheless, it had power to lift eyebrows. It presents us with belief as a type of trust. It’s not belief about Christ as Lord, but something more like believing into Christ as Lord.

The creeds don’t simply invite us to simply accept that a press release is true, inside some list of ideas or opinions about what the world is like, and even what God is like. Belief in Jesus involves entrusting ourselves to him, investing ourselves in him. That is the invitation of the Christian Gospel across all the creeds, and it finds no more focused expression than belief — as trust — in Christ as Lord.

The Revd Dr Andrew Davison is Regius Professor of Divinity within the University of Oxford and a Canon Residentiary of Christ Church.

Quotations:

“THERE is one Physician who’s possessed each of flesh and spirit; each made and never made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; each of Mary and of God; first able to suffering after which beyond it — even Jesus Christ our Lord.” Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Ephesians, 7, concluding a letter he wrote on his solution to martyrdom.

“Enslavement to idols is the soul’s great infidelity. On account of it, a most furious war was waged against the gospel and against those reconciled to God: a war whose embers, though long lukewarm, are even now warming up again.” Augustine, Exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians, n. 51, on Galatians 5.22–23.

Julian of Norwich, writing of her visions of Christ: “And of all of the sight it was most comfort to me that our good Lord, who’s so to be revered and feared, is so familiar and gracious: and this most fulfilled me with comfort and assuredness of soul” Revelations of Divine Love, chapter 7.

Question: Why do you call him “our Lord”?

Answer: Because — not with gold or silver, but together with his precious blood — he has set us free from sin and from the tyranny of the devil, and has bought us, body and soul, to be his very own. Heidelberg Catechism, 34.

Biblical passages

“INDEED, though there could also be so-called gods in heaven or on earth — as in truth there are a lot of gods and lots of lords — yet for us there may be 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 thru whom we exist” (1 Corinthians 8.5–6).

The most striking thing about this text could also be its acceptance that the world is stuffed with “gods”. To them, or to the one true God, we’ve to present our allegiance. But look a bit further, and its negotiation of monotheism is just as remarkable as its ironic endorsement of polytheism. Paul reworks the language of the shema (which we encountered above): “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” The way during which he does so opens up a further aspect of what it means to admit Christ as Lord,(to this point omitted in this text): namely, its power to explain Jesus as God.

Paul takes the 2 central words from Deuteronomy 6.4 — “God” and “Lord” — and divides them up, to present “one God, the Father . . . and one Lord, Jesus Christ”. He has expanded the shema, finding Christ inside it. Indeed, the word he gives to Christ — Lord, or Kyrios — is precisely how a Greek speaker referred to the unspeakably holy name of God. Jesus is Kyrios. Yet, by working with that almost all revered text, Paul can also be being as resolutely monotheistic as he possibly could. He confesses Christ as Lord, and, with that, as God, inside the divinity of the Lord God of Israel. Nothing is replaced or taken away, but some insight of crucial importance is discerned. Monotheism has grow to be Christological, as biblical scholars have recently put it.

IN THIS, a lot of the gospel is present. God has visited his people to redeem them, not sent some emissary. As Lord, Christ stands before us capable of deliver us from “many gods and lots of lords”. To bend the knee to the one Lord Jesus Christ is due to this fact liberation, not servitude.

With the concept of bending the knee in mind, note that the famous hymn to Christ in Philippians 2.5-11 plays out the identical dynamic of expanded monotheism in relation to a unique text, this time from Isaiah:
 

By myself I even have sworn,
from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness
a word that shall not return:
“To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear (Isaiah 45.23)
 

Isaiah couldn’t be more plainly monotheistic (“I’m the Lord, and there isn’t a other” vv. 5, 6, and 18), and yet Paul applies this very language to Christ: that each knee shall bow to Christ, and confess him as Lord. The Philippians hymn does with Isaiah what 1 Corinthians does with the shema: it includes Christ inside the Lordship of God, in a way that continues to affirm monotheism. In this, Christ under no circumstances supplants the Father, since recognition of Christ’s lordship is “to the glory of God the Father”.

The most monotheistic texts of the Old Testament are precisely those that Paul uses to admit Christ’s Lordship. There is simply one Lord, and for him to be our Lord is to be delivered from every other.