Jesus is Lord

"Jesus is Lord" (Greek: Kurios Iesous) is the shortest credal affirmation found in the New Testament, one of several slightly more elaborate variations.(Kelly:13) It serves as a statement of faith for the majority of Christians who regard Jesus as both fully man and God. It is the motto of the World Council of Churches.

In antiquity, in general use, the term 'lord' was a courtesy title for social superiors, but its root meaning was 'ruler'. Kings everywhere were styled 'Lord' and often considered divine beings so the word acquired a religious significance.(Richardson:130) When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek in the Septuagint long before Christianity, Kurios was used for the divine tetragrammaton JHVH which was no longer read aloud but replaced with adonai a special form of the Hebrew adon = 'lord'.(Whiteley:103f)

For a Christian to recognise Jesus as Lord caused problems for society. When in 27 B.C. Roman Emperor Octavian received the title of “Augustus” it carried religious overtones, suggesting a special relationship with the world of the gods, symbolised by the cult of the Emperor’s ‘genius’, a veiled form of emperor-worship.(Frend:16) To refuse to honor the national gods was unpatriotic and akin to sabotage.(Workman:44) By around 150 A.D. provincials had made up their minds that the Christians by refusing to worship the gods were responsible for all manner of ills such as famine, plague and earthquakes and of practices such as cannibalism and black magic.(Frend:70)

J.G. Davies comments that the Christian begins from the confession of Jesus as Lord – Jesus who is sovereign over the individual’s relation to the state, “we must understand the state in the context of the command to love one’s neighbour.”(Davies:48) He had earlier quoted from an article on ‘Priests and Socialism in Chile’ written in 1971 by Maruja Echegoyen: “Loving one’s neighbour, which is the first commandment by definition, today means working to destroy the structures that can destroy my neighbour, the people, the poor”.(NB)

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