R.C. Sproul (0:00)

Because God has bestowed the title, the imperial title of Kurios. And not just Kurios, but Kurios Kurion, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, upon Jesus. Whenever you hear the name of Jesus, you bow.

Nathan W. Bingham (0:21)

Titles mean something. They tell us a lot about someone. Take a general or a judge or a doctor or a professor. We get a sense of what they do for a living, their educational background, and their level of responsibility and authority. Welcome to the Monday edition of Renewing youg Mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham. Today we'll be beginning a series that helps us answer the vital question, who is Jesus? And to do that, RC Sproul will be considering several of Jesus titles and names used throughout Scripture. The these messages come from his 12 message series, names of Jesus. You can own this series. Plus we'll send you a copy of the Word Made Flesh, the Ligonier statement on Christology, as our way of saying thanks for your donation of any amount@renewingyourmind.org I'll tell you more about both of those resources after today's message. Well, here's Dr. Sproul on Jesus our Lord.

R.C. Sproul (1:22)

The title that is used most frequently for Jesus in the New Testament is the title Christ, which means Messiah. The title that is in second place in terms of numerical frequency, which is extremely important to the New Testament witness to Jesus is the title Lord. Now, this title has a rich background and etymological derivation, and it's extremely important that we understand it. We've looked at this title, incidentally, in the past when we looked at the names for God, because one of the important titles, the most important title that is given to God the Father in the Old Testament, is the title Lord. And we mentioned in passing that in translation and in printing of English Bibles frequently we'll see the name Lord written, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. And other times capital L, little O, little R, little D. And the publishers will usually give you some information at the beginning of the Bible about their method of translation. And they'll tell you that when you see the name Lord written in all capital letters, that that word is translating the ineffable name of God, the Tetragrammaton, Yahweh, the name that God reveals to Moses. But when they give you the title Lord, capital L, little O, little R, little D, it's usually a rendition of some form of the title Adonis Adonai, which means in translation, the one who is absolutely sovereign. And that is a title that is for the most part reserved for God in the Old Testament. Now that the New Testament would ascribe this title Lord to Jesus is extraordinary. In fact, it's one of the arguments that builds the case for the New Testament claim of the deity of Christ, because Jesus is given the title that is reserved for God. And also we've mentioned in the past that the most frequently cited or alluded to Old Testament passage in the entire New testament is Psalm 110, where the Psalmist in that psalm declares, the Lord says to my Lord, sit thou at my right hand. Where usually in the Old Testament, when you have a combination or conjunction of the two names, Lord, the name Yahweh and the Hebrew Adonai, it always refers to one and the same person. The psalmist says, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all of the earth. It's O Yahweh, our Adonai, how excellent is thy name in all the earth. But here in Psalm 110, in startling manner, the psalmist says that the Lord Yahweh says to my Lord, to David's Lord, sit thou at my right hand, so that God the Father is speaking to someone else, and calls that someone else the Adonai or the Lord of David. And this is not missed by the New Testament writers who call attention to Jesus as being both David's Son and David's Lord. Now, in the early Church, one of the great crises that emerged in terms of persecution that developed vis a vis the Roman government had to do with the Roman government's complaint that Christians were seditious. The early apologists, for example, such as Justin Martyr, wrote an apology or a reply to the emperor Antoninus Pius, responding to some of the charges that were made by the Roman government against the Christians. They were accused of cannibalism because it was said that they ate somebody's body and drank somebody's blood in secret and so on. But the biggest charge that was given against the Christian community was that they were rebellious to the Roman Empire. This despite the manifold references of the New Testament teaching the Christian community to bend over backwards, to be model citizens, to pray for their leaders and to be submissive as far as they possibly could for conscience sake to the civil magistrates of their day. But the point that got them in trouble, as we saw, for example, when we did our biographical sketch of some of the early Christians, such as Polycarp, that part of the loyalty oath that was required by people in the Roman Empire was to recite a simple phrase. And that phrase was the phrase Kaiser Kurios K U R I O s Kaiser Kurios, which being translated means Caesar is Lord. And it was at that that the Christian community balked. They said, caesar is emperor. Caesar can be king. Caesar can impose taxes. We'll pay the taxes. We'll drive our chariots at the speed limits that Caesar decrees. But what we cannot is bow the knee to Caesar and declare he is Lord. Because Rome had developed an emperor cult wherein Caesar was regarded as a deity. And the Christian community and the Jews as well, believed that it would be blasphemous and idolatrous to ascribe worship to any earthly king, even to Caesar. So in the early church, it's been said that the very first confession of faith faith of the Christian community in the first century was the confession Jesus ho Kurios, Jesus is Lord. It's much shorter than the Apostles Creed. It's the most brief affirmation of faith that they could make. But at the very beginning, the Christian community distinguished itself by this public confession of faith. And Jesus is Lord. There's an interesting footnote to that. I think that it is said in the Scriptures that no one can say that Jesus is Lord save by the Holy Ghost. Now, that's interesting because it seems to be in conflict with what Jesus himself teaches when he says in the Sermon on the Mount that many would come on the last day saying, lord, Lord, didn't we do this in your name? And didn't we do that in your name? And he's going to say to them, depart from me, you evildoers. I never knew you. He elsewhere said, this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. And so Jesus, as well as the rest of the New Testament writers, certainly acknowledged that it was possible for a human being to confess with their lips that Jesus is Lord without meaning it. So why then does the New Testament elsewhere say that no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Ghost? Well, the simple explanation for that would be to read that passage as being elliptical and that what is tacitly understood, though not explicitly stated, is that no one can say Jesus is Lord and really mean it unless that utterance has been motivated by the indwelling Holy Spirit. And that may be all that is meant by the text. Another possibility, as remote as it may be, is this, that at the time that that was written, people were not likely to go out publicly and say Jesus is Lord at this time of Roman persecution, unless they were being supported by the power of the Holy Ghost. Because to say it out loud was to invite execution. I only Say that to focus our attention on how profoundly important this title is in the New Testament for Jesus. Unfortunately, there is a little bit of ambiguity with respect to this title Kurios, which as I said, translates the Old Testament adonai. Because in the Greek language, the title Kurios can be used in more than one way. In fact, we're going to distinguish among three specific ways in which this term was used in the Greek speaking world. In the first instance, the title Kurios or Lord functioned as a common, simple form of polite address, very similar to our use of the word sir or mister. And that's important because when we read the many encounters that are told for us in scripture that Jesus had with various people, you have people coming up to him who presumably know nothing about him. We don't know that for sure, and that's why I say presumably. But we don't get the background that would indicate that they knew Jesus, Jesus formally. And they'll come up and they'll call him Lord and you think, well, how did they know? How did they recognize him? Well, maybe they didn't. Maybe the only thing that they are saying at that point is Mr. Or sir. So we can't jump to the conclusion that every time we see the word Lord in the New Testament that it is filled with the highest exalted meaning that can be attached to that word. It can simply refer to a polite form of address. Now, that may frustrate us, but we have something similar in English. I can call any man sir as a polite form of address. Yes, sir, no, sir, what can I do for you, sir, and so on. And yet in England, when a person attains peerage and is knighted by the queen or the king, whatever the case may be, and is given this honorific called knighthood, they are then thereafter known as sir, so? And so Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir Winston Churchill. So that here the common polite form of address sir in the English language now takes on a new, higher elevated dimension. So that's a parallel. It's not exactly the same as what I'm talking about here, but in the Greek language we have different uses of the term kurios. Now the second way in which this name kurios, and by the way, before I explain that second usage, maybe you're not a student of Greek and this is all Greek to you, but you may be familiar at least with a historic traditional liturgy that is used in the church called the kyria or the Kyria eleison, you know, where it says Kyriole son kyrioleison Christus Olaison. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Christ have mercy. And so on. It's derived from that word kurios. There's another word that's very common in our language that is also derived from the word kurios, which I'll get to in a moment. But first, let's look at the second meaning, and that is when we see the term kurios occur in the New Testament in conjunction with the concept of the bond servant or the slave. A kurios in the Greek world in a more distinctive sense was not just any gentleman, but it was a person who particularly was in possession of slaves that they had purchased. And this is frequently an allusion that Paul makes in his writings where he calls himself a slave to the Lord Jesus Christ. And Paul elsewhere says of us, you are not your own, but you have been bought with a price, and the purchase price was the blood of Christ. And so Christ is not only Lord in the sense of mister, but he is also Lord in the sense of one who owns slaves. Us, we are purchased of Christ, and we belong to Him. But the third usage, the one I'm most concerned about here, is what we would call the imperial use of the title Lord in the New Testament. First of all, that's the use that is given to it in the Old Testament. Hebrew, when the Old Testament refers to God as Adonai or Lord, they're talking about His Imperial Majesty, his ultimate sovereignty. Likewise, we've seen with the formula that the Caesars required, Kaiser Kurios, they were not simply saying that you were required to say sir when Caesar showed up, or even to grant that Caesar owned slaves, but that you were to acknowledge His Imperial Majesty, his sovereignty over all things. So that's what we call the majestic or the imperial use of the title kurios. That's the way it functions for God, and that's the title that is then transferred to Jesus in the New Testament. One of the most important passages that deals with this is in the Kenotic hymn of Philippians 2, where Paul gives this famous statement, chapter 2 of Philippians, beginning at verse 5. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name. Now, hear what Paul is saying here in this admonishment to Christians, that we ought not to think too highly of ourselves and that we ought to imitate the humility that was present in Christ, who, even though he was equal with God, took his equality with God not as something to be jealously guarded or tenaciously grasped, but he emptied himself not of his deity, but of his exalted status and took upon himself the form of a man. He cloaked his glory, hiding it, as it were, behind the shell of his human nature. Not that the human nature was just a shell, but in any case, he takes the role of the servant, becoming obedient, even unto death. Wherefore God now highly exalts His Son. And how does he exalt Him? Well, one of the ways that the Father exalts the Son is bestowing upon him the name that is above every name. Now, here's where the problem comes in. If you ask 100 Christians, what is the name above every name, I don't know what the percentage of response would be, but my guess would be it'd be somewhere around 90% would answer that question by saying, oh, well, the name that is above every name is Jesus. Now, the one who is above everyone is Jesus. And in no way do I want to diminish or demean the significance of the name Jesus. But that's not what Paul has in view here in the Philippian passage, and it's somewhat confusing because of the grammar here. If we read it again, we say he's given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow. I mean, no sooner does Paul say that God gives Jesus the name that is above every name, that the next name he mentions is the name Jesus. And so you jump to the conclusion. Well, the name that is above every name is Jesus. No, Paul is saying that because God has given this one the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, who is the one who has been given the name that is above every name, every knee should bow and every tongue confess what? That he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. See, the title that is the title above every title is the title that in the Old Testament was reserved for God, the title Adonai, the title Kurios. And because God has bestowed the title, the imperial title of Kurios, and not just Kurios, but Kurios Kurion, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, upon Jesus that whenever you hear the name of Jesus, you bow. Why? Why does the knee bow and the tongue confess that he is Lord? Because we are acknowledging that God has appointed him the King of the kings and the Lord of the lords. And the proper response is one of obeisance. We fall to our knees and we confess this name that is above every name. He is curious. One final thing that I said I would say later, and it's now later. The common word that we hear all the time in our language that derives from this is the word church. In Scotland, it's kirk. In Holland, it's Kirk. In German, it's Kirche. If you notice, all those have the same pard consonant sound, ch or K with the r in there and just a different vowel. They all come from the Greek kurioke, which is a form of the name Kurios and means those who belong to the kurios. So that even the word church derives from this name Kurios. As we are the people of the one who reigns as Lord of the of Lords, what does it mean to you to say Jesus ho Kurios, Jesus is Lord. Chances are to say it. In our day in this country, you may have people look at you funny and you may have people angry with you, but chances are you're not going to be executed for it. But beyond that, what does it mean to you that Jesus is Lord? In biblical categories, it means two things. One, he is absolutely sovereign over you. He is your Master. And to be a Christian is to bow the knee before the dominion of Christ, to recognize his authority over us, and also to recognize that he owns us. He has bought us, he has purchased us. And he is not just King, but above the title of King stands the title Kurios Kyrios Kyrion, Lord of the Lords. He's not just my Lord, he's your Lord. He's not just my Lord and your Lord. He's the Lord of every king. He's the Lord of every president. He's the Lord of every person in this world because God has placed him as the Lord over all.