Jesus Today …

JESUS IS LORD!

No one can say, “Jesus is Lord, “ except by the Holy Spirit. -- I Cor. 12:3

One of the British theologians tells how on a visit to the beach a young man passed him wearing a T-shirt that read Jesus is my Lord. It reminded him that few people are willing to give that kind of public testimony to what concerns them most deeply, but he nonetheless appreciated the young man’s witness, observing that this was the creed of the earliest church. At that moment the centuries seemed to disappear, and that young believer became one of the primitive Christians who was willing, even in the face of persecution, to bear witness to a sea-shore crowd to their one creed, Jesus is Lord! .

Since Rome had already decreed that Caesar was Lord, this brought the believers into deadly conflict with the powers that be. When Jesus was born the emperor that ruled the empire was deemed so magnificently divine that he was called Augustus. He was the unifying bond and power of a vast, homogenous people. He was accepted as divine because Rome was divine, the emperor being the embodiment of the goddess Roma. It was at first only the dead emperors who were Kyrios (Lord), but gradually the title and the honor were given to the living monarchs, who were at first reluctant to be hailed as gods. But they accepted it more easily when they saw it as a politically unifying influence.

Malcolm Muggeridge, the British journalist who was converted from atheism by discovering the Jesus of the apostolic writings, writes of the confrontation that loomed between Caesar Augustus and the lowly child born in Bethlehem, who was among the least significant of his millions of subjects. At the time Jesus was born Augustus was enjoying such prosperity and success that it was supposed that his empire would stand forever, and already he was being worshipped with all the appropriate rites due a god.

“As it turned out,” says Muggeridge in his Jesus: The Man Who Lives,” their roles were to be reversed; for centuries to come Jesus would reign over men’s minds and hearts, when Augustus’s kingdom existed only in history books and ruins.

Emperor worship was made compulsory in Rome. Once a year one had to enter a temple and burn a pinch of incense at the altar, confessing aloud, Caesar is Lord!, thus proving his loyalty to the empire. Once he did this he could worship any other god he pleased. This the believers would not do, for to them there was but one Lord and that was Jesus of Nazareth. This brought persecution and martyrdom, such as the famous case of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who was burned at the stake in about 156 A.D. Respected for his good life and old age, the authorities sought to avoid his execution by urging him to show his loyalty to the empire by acknowledging Caesar as Kyrios.

“Now what harm is there in saying ‘Lord Caesar’ and thus saving thyself?,” they asked the aged bishop, reminding him that he could still follow Jesus also if he wished. Like his Lord, Polycarp was silent before his persecutors, but when the proconsul, in the very shadow of the stake, commanded him to curse Christ and live, the old brother said, “Eighty and six years have I served him, and he hath done me no wrong; how then can I blaspheme my king who saved me?”

Emperor worship was so gross in Pergamum that Rev. 2:13 refers to the city as “where Satan’s throne is,” indicating that Satan actually ruled over it. As early as 29 B.C. a temple was built in Pergamum to the divine Augustus and Roma, and at the time Jesus wrote to that church there was a local cult dedicated to Aesculapius, whose symbol was a serpent. There was also a monument erected to Zeus as Savior. It is understandable that Rev. 2:13 would describe Pergamum as “where Satan dwells,” and it is here that we are told of Antipas, whom Jesus describes as “my faithful martyr who was killed among you.” It is likely that Antipas was killed because he would not confess to the lordship of Zeus, Augustus, Roma or Aesculapius. Jesus is Lord! He had no other creed; he would confess to no other lord.

It is in the context of persecution that we can best understand the passage that begins this study: “I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says, ‘Jesus be cursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (I Cor. 12:3). The curse of Jesus probably refers to the customary litany of curses pronounced in Jewish synagogues, this curse being added during the height of Jewish persecution against believers. Sometimes, as in the case at Corinth, believers met near or even next door to a synagogue (see Acts 18:7) where they would hear the curse ring forth, amidst a chant of many curses, Jesus of Nazareth be cursed! In answering questions about the Spirit, the apostle assures the Corinthians that they can know for sure that the Spirit of God is not with such people.

Some think that Paul may be referring to nonsense expressions of those babbling in a tongue, for even believers would sometimes cry out Jesus be cursed! Paul is telling them, perhaps in response to an inquiry about it, that no person is motivated by the Spirit who talks that way. The first interpretation is to be preferred.

As for the confession Jesus is Lord, the apostle does not mean, of course, that if one can merely pronounce those words that this proves she has the Spirit. It may have reference to making that good confession before Roman authorities upon the pain of death. Only the Spirit can empower one to stand up for Jesus as Lord at a time like that. Or the apostle may, since he is writing on the diverse gifts of the Spirit, refer to the greatest of all the gifts of the Spirit, that of being a Christian. To say that Jesus is Lord is the way they professed being a Christian, and no one can be a Christian, Paul is saying, except the Holy Spirit be with him and in him. He says this in so many words in Rom. 8:9: “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.”

This is radically frank and puts the finger on the basic ingredient of being a true Christian: the enthronement of Jesus Christ as the Lord of one’s life. Paul is saying that this is the mission of the Spirit in the believer’s heart. He can’t say -- can’t really accept the reality of -- Jesus is Lord! except by the help of the Holy Spirit. No Holy Spirit, no lordship of Jesus; no lordship of Jesus, no Holy Spirit. This is what ails the carnal Christian. Jesus is not really Lord to her, and will not be until she surrenders to the influence of the Spirit.

The apostle Peter places Jesus’ lordship at the heart of the gospel: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). Peter must be saying that Jesus was made Lord, or perhaps coronated Lord, through the resurrection. While the disciples referred to Jesus as Lord during his earthly ministry, they probably would have thought of his lordship only in the past tense (He was our Lord) had it not been that he became the risen Christ. So, Jesus is Lord! became their only creed.

Peter’s declaration that Jesus is hath Lord and Christ again gives us the heart of mere Christianity. It is one thing to believe that Jesus is the Christ, but it is even more to make him the master of our lives. And this is the relevance of Jesus today. As Lord he has loving control of our lives. We are willing slaves who look to him as the source of our strength, the provider of all our needs. We no longer have wills of our own, except as they are lost (and thus gained) in his will. We realize that since he is mankind like ourselves, as well as divine like the Father, he is uniquely qualified to deal with our troubled existence. One Scripture indicates that Jesus’ lordship and priesthood could have come in no other way than for him to become like us: “He had to be made like his brethren in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make expiation for the sins of the people” (Heb. 2:17).

What this means to us today is further clarified in Jn. 13:13, where Jesus accepts from his diciples such descriptions as Teacher and Lord, but he did a most unusual thing to show them that there is more to it than what they call him, however honorific such titles may be. He proceeded to wash their feet. The Son of God washing the feet of sinful sons of men! Is that not one of the profundities of the gospel story? He then says to them; “If 1 then, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet” (In. 13:14).

This is poetry in action. We are being crass to suppose that the Lord-Teacher is referring to literal washing of feet, which would have little meaning in our world. He was giving an object lesson of the new commandment that he went on to talk about, “As I have loved you, you are to love one another” (verse 34). We wash each other’s feet by caring for one another in all sorts of ways. And this is the meaning of Jesus’ lordship in our lives today, that we love even as he loves. So the confessional creed Jesus is Lord!, probably the only baptismal creed the earliest church had, is more than a creed. It is our way of life as believers. That Jesus is Lord is what it is all about. But still it is a creed, and Rom. 10:9 makes it basic: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” We are being superficial when we make this a “step” in a plan of salvation, as if confession is “taken care of” once we say we believe in Christ and then go on to be baptized, the final step. This is only to abuse the word. In the first place, the apostle writes in the present tense, as if to say, “If you keep on professing Jesus as Lord,” which may allude to doing so repeatedly to an unbelieving world, yea, even a persecuting Roman procurator. Or it refers to a lifetime of consistent profession of the lordship of Jesus. But it is certain and overt, allowing for no “closet” Christians: If you keep on confessing with your lips… The apostle does not promise that they will not be killed, only that they will be saved!

We are not only unkind to Scripture when we make this verse a prooftext for a step in a plan, but also when we hasten to move from it to other prooftexts, lest someone get the idea that this is all that one has to do to be saved. It is hardly the way to treat the Bible, as if the readers of Romans had a New Testament like ourselves and could turn to all the proof texts in the plan! I am willing to leave it as it reads. The apostle says if the Romans, who were already Christians, will lead a life that acknowledges the lordship of Jesus and will keep on believing that he is the risen Christ, they will be saved. It would surely be unthinkable to the apostle that anyone who so confesses and so believes would be lost.

The apostle seemed to have a cosmic view about this confession, concluding that everyone will one day yield to the lordship of Jesus, even if not for salvation: “At the name of Jesus,” he says, pointing to his authority, “every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10-11). What a contemplation! Whether angels or demons or kings or tyrants, all will eventually concede that Jesus is Lord. We would think it might come hard for a Hitler or a Stalin or a Mao, and it is certainly bad news for my dear fellow Texan, Madelyn O’Hare, who probably now has no such intention. But Paul says it will come, some way, somehow. Jesus is Lord has cosmic reality.

But for us who believe the matter is not so complex, or, to put it another way, our responsibility is different. Even when we accept Jesus’ lordship as a reality in our lives, we are to understand that there is a dimension beyond this: “In your hearts reverence Christ as Lord,” we are told in 1 Pet. 3:15, and the apostle, writing to a persecuted people and possibly alluding to the threat Rome held over those who were true believers, added, “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you.”

Now we have our mandate from Scripture. Whether at the factory, at home, on campus, at church, or out among them there is one thing about our lives that is to be apparent, and this affects all our choices and values. Jesus is Lord! We reverence him and enthrone him in our hearts as such, and we acknowledge him before the world as the reason for our hope. -- the Editor