What does it mean that Jesus is Lord?

It is the testimony of the Lord. I must stress that first of all. What does the title mean? It means His authority, His absolute rights over us; He is sovereign Lord. And we are not faithful to the colours if we are not owning that and carrying it out in practical living. "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in thy heart that God has raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." That means open and definite subjection to His will, and rallying to the colours. It was what Saul of Tarsus did when he cried: "Lord, what will Thou have me to do?" But who would not be subject to Him whose love for us surpasses all our knowledge and whose will and way for us is our greatest blessing?

"Lord" means master, sovereign owner, One whose right it is to give His word, and it is ours to obey. Ah, He has served us, He lives now to serve our needs, but He claims, yea the Holy Spirit claims for Him, absolute, implicit, unwavering obedience.

Here is the test: "No man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed." if the Spirit of God is working in a man, he never lowers Christ. What is the bearing of that man's teaching? Does it depreciate Christ? On the other hand no man can say that Jesus is Lord, but etc. He particularly takes up the lowest form of exalting Christ. For of course to say "Lord" is far from being the highest way of naming Christ. It is what every soul on its parting company with the world, when one repents and believes the gospel, is called on to own. "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus," etc. Hence it was the very first confession all through the Acts. A person could not be owned as a Christian till he owned Jesus as Lord. Paul preached that He was the Son of God. This is personal glory. But "the Lord" means that He is the one that God has exalted, not only raising Him from the dead but setting Him over everything. It is by the Holy Ghost that this testimony is produced, and it is important to know the least testimony that the Spirit in the fulness of His grace puts His own stamp on. It is not even a question of believing what is taught or spoken in the assembly. It is a question of what the Spirit of God is doing. What lowers Christ is not of the Holy Ghost, what exalts Him is of the Spirit of God.

But there is more in the title "Lord" than authority. He has been put into that place of power to dispense the grace of God to men, and that is a very important side to this great title. In the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle to the Romans you will find salvation is constantly connected with him as Lord. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved" (Acts 16:31). "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus … thou shalt be saved" (Rom. 10:9). Salvation is connected with the Lord. He is the dispenser of the grace of God. This is illustrated, in type, in the case of Joseph. He was made ruler or lord over all Egypt, and all were commanded to bow the knee to him; but in that position he was the dispenser of Pharaoh's favours. To all the Egyptians who sought any favour from Pharaoh the king said, "Go to Joseph." The Lord Jesus Christ is upon the throne of God to dispense for men the grace of God. The One who loved us so much that He laid down His life to save us is now the One who administers all the grace of God, and all who would have that grace which saves eternally must go to Jesus the Lord.

I may observe here that, the Greek word kurios represents two Hebrew words; 1st, Jehovah, which is one of the most sacred names of the Jewish scriptures — a name never given save to Him who is personally God in the highest; 2nd., Adon, master, lord, proprietor. The expression, "hath made," proves that the word kurios, lord, here means master; and the contrast is between the past humiliation and the present glory of Jesus. Crucified by the Jews on earth, Jehovah hath made Him universal master and Christ. In the authorised version the translators rendered the Hebrew word Jehovah by LORD in the Old Testament, and the word (master, Adon,) they rendered Lord. Jehovah, or Lord, is a sacred name, never, as I have said, applied, save to the most high Himself. To talk of making any one Jehovah would be nonsense. The term is justly applied to the Lord Jesus (Isa. 6:1, compared with John 12:41). Read the context, John 12:20-41; and this may be seen also in Zechariah 11:12-13, "And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prized at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord." Here Jehovah, or Jesus, was prized at thirty pieces of silver (Matt. 26:15). So again, Zech. 13:7: "Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones." This likewise was the blessed Lord (Matt. 26:31). To none from among men could the name of Jehovah be applied save to Jesus — He alone is so — in Him, too, dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. But "Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord" (1 Peter 3:6).

The light thrown upon this scripture by its citation in the New Testament is remarkable. But before we proceed to this, a glance at the context will be both interesting and profitable. In verse 22, following upon the assertion that, in contrast with idols, Jehovah alone is God, that "there is no God beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me," we have the universal invitation of grace, "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth." Then comes the solemn asseveration, enforced by a divine oath, "That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear;" that is, Jehovah, the Creator — God, has thus decreed. Turning now to Philippians 2, we find that these words are applied to the One who humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. There are, moreover, two notable explanations added — explanations which never could have been discovered, had they not thus been divinely given. The first is, that "every knee" applies to all in heaven, to all in earth, and to all under the earth; i.e. to all intelligences, whether in heaven, or in earth, or in hell; all demons, as well as all angels, saints, and men. Secondly, "every tongue shall swear" is seen to mean the confession to the glory of God the Father that Jesus is Lord, all alike owning the exaltation and the given name, which is above every name, of Jesus as Lord, in virtue of His death on the cross. What an unfolding, both of the glory of the person of our blessed Lord, as well as of God's appreciation of the life and death of Him who was known on earth as Jesus of Nazareth! In Romans 14:10 we find another application. Why, says the apostle, dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.* For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. (vv. 10-12.) In this scripture bowing the knee is referred to our accountability to God in judgment; and we are exhorted, because all alike have before them theprospect of the judgment-seat, to desist from judging one another. (Compare 1 Cor. 4:3-5.) We know from another scripture that the Father hath committed all judgment to the Son; and this fact, taken in connection with the statement of the apostle, brings out again the essential and personal glories of Him who will be the Judge of all. These several scriptures, when combined, contain a remarkable revelation of the purpose of God as to the absolute supremacy of His beloved Son, and also of His will to have that supremacy universally owned. Jesus of Nazareth is already, and one day shall be confessed to be, Lord of all, to the glory of God the Father.

The fact is that the moment we come in faith to God, believing that He raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, we also, for salvation, confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord. (See Rom. 10:9.)

What does this confession involve? Surely nothing less than this, that we belong to Jesus as our Lord, that all that we are, and all that we have are His absolute property, for him to dispose of at His will. He has a right to us, we are His bond slaves, and our freedom and our joy are the ability and permission to do His will.

We have then, so far, two things: first, that God has made Christ Lord on the ground of redemption, giving Him this place of universal supremacy to mark His appreciation (if we may thus reverently speak) of the work which He had wrought out by His death; and secondly, that, as we saw in the last chapter, Christ has acquired Lordship over all by purchase. This thought we find in one of the parables: "The kingdom of heaven is like to treasure hid in a field; the which when a man has found, he hides, and for joy thereof goes and sells all that he has, and buys that field" (Matt. 13:44). The consequence is that He is Lord of all, having "power (ἐξουσίαν — authority) over all flesh" by the appointment of God (John 17:2; see also Acts 10:36; Rom. 14:9). When, however, we, as believers, speak of Christ as "our" Lord, we express another thought, because then we bring in the idea of relationship — the relationship of servants. It is the same Lordship, but we, by the grace of God, have been brought to own it, to bow before Him in this character; to accept His authority and rule, and to take the place of subjection. This, indeed, was one of the objects of His death, as Paul tells us — "He died for all, that they who live should not henceforth live to themselves, but to Him which died for them, and rose again" (2 Cor. 5:15). And again, "None of us lives to himself, and no man dies to himself. For whether we live, we live to the Lord; and whether we die, we die to the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and living" (Rom. 14:7-9). We, therefore, recognise, through the grace of our God, not only that Christ is Lord of all — as He truly is — but also that He is in a more intimate way our Lord. He is our Lord, not only in virtue of His appointment as such, as the rejected Christ and now glorified Man, but also because He has acquired this place over us through redemption. It is, therefore, our joy to confess Him as Lord; and how solemn to remember that all, even those who reject Him in this day of grace, will one day be constrained by power — power, too, significant of destruction — to own Him also as Lord (Phil. 2:10-11). It is the more incumbent upon us who are believers to recognise, declare, and be subject to His authority, that we may, in some measure, be witnesses for Him in this day of His rejection.

By the Prince of Life going into death, the Holy One bearing the judgment due to us and rising out of it, He not only abolished death, and rendered null him that had the power of death, that is the devil, but all power in heaven and in earth was given to Him— power over all the living and all the dead. Hence we are told, “To this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.” (Rom. 14:9.) In the place then of universal authority, the Head of all principality and power, the risen, ascended, glorified Man Christ Jesus, He has absolute lordship over every human being whether living or dead. Having died for all, having sent the gospel to all, having been long-suffering to all, He is now at God's right hand “Lord of all.” There God righteously set Him. He was “obedient to death, even the death of the cross; wherefore [mark well this word wherefore], God also has highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things [or beings] in heaven, and in earth, and under the earth [that is the infernal regions], and that every tongue should confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2:8-11.)

Being "made" Lord and Christ is quite consistent with His having been both during His sojourn on earth. These things were ever His, but now He was officially installed as such, as the risen and glorified Man. Wonderful news for us; but terrible news for those who had been guilty of His crucifixion. It simply guaranteed their dreadful damnation, if they persisted on their course.