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Jesus speaks today, saying:
“You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.”
All
too often, we pass over things that are extremely important and have such an
impact on our lives that to live without them would be fatal. This is
especially true of the things of God, not the least of which is because He
chooses to do His work among us with, what we would consider, weak, ordinary,
boring things.
So
it is today, that when we encounter Jesus’ title of
“Lord”,
we simply file it under
“things
to take no notice of”. Not only because we don’t have lords, masters, and kings
walking around anymore, but because we take it for granted and judge our time
best spent elsewhere.
Calling
Jesus
“Lord”
was of vital importance to the Church the Apostles headed, that they deemed it
worthy of their entire lives and their deaths. From the beginning, Jesus was
called
“Lord”
and it will be well worth our time to consider what
“lord”
means.
Like
I have mentioned, the word
“lord”
is in such disuse today and so we really have no idea what it means for us.
Since the wicked popes of the middle ages and the Reformation, the Church has
freed those in bondage to any lord or master who may enslave them. Because of
this, it has been said of American Christians that this is a
“land
of a thousand popes or lords”.
In
the first place, then, in order to become a lord, there must be a title granted
by someone who is one step above lord. Usually this involves owning land and
swearing fealty to a king or overlord and pledging your land’s resources to his
service.
This
is the first and second way to become a lord: buy land and have someone appoint
you the title. However showy this title may seem, it was not without
responsibility. The word lord comes from old English and it means bread-keeper,
meaning that the lord was in charge of feeding his subjects while they tended
the land.
the
third way of becoming a lord is the easiest, that is, inheriting the title;
being born into it. Almost a cheater way, but so it goes. You can even go
online today and purchase estates that come with a lordship or buy into a seat
at the House of Lords in English Parliament. So simple that it cheapens any
dignity the word once had.
So
how are we to understand it when Jesus calls Himself lord and then compels us
to acknowledge Him as such? Well, it seems to me, so far, that Jesus has
already fulfilled all the requirements that the internet requires in order to
be a lord on earth. He has been granted the title by someone higher than Him,
God. He has purchased, or rather created land which He manages and He has been
born into the correct family, that is King David, inheriting the title.
By
all human rights, Jesus is lord of earth. He has every right to exercise His
authority over everyone, indiscriminately. He is well within His means to
administer judgment and justice as He sees fit. This is not the type of lord
who fasts or does things on his own.
The
Lord of Earth and Sky is the man Whom so-called evangelicals can get behind. He
is high and lifted up. He hates sin. He is full of majesty and righteous anger
all directed at the so-called evangelicals opponents, coincidentally. So that
when He does finally come to take His throne, He will know who was on His side.
One of their favorite verses to latch onto is from Philippians 2 where Jesus
says:
“every
knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”
You
have Jesus as your Savior, but do you have Him as your Lord? By this the devil
means,
“have
you bowed yourself to the ground in abject deference yet”? Have you believed
like me? Are you living, thinking, and breathing just like me?
This
is not the way of the New Testament. Jesus being our Savior is not a prelude to
His being Lord over us. Jesus is the Lord who saves not by a raw act of His
sovereign power, but by humbling Himself to death on the cross. His lordship is
not a tyranny or dictatorship but suffering for us.
This
is where the devil and his temptations go wrong. He sees the poor excuse for a
lord, Jesus, in the wilderness and tries to make Him like God. Sound like our
OT reading?? He attempts to tempt Jesus as Lord, as in as YHWH the almighty,
maker of heaven and earth. For this is how the New Testament wants us to read
the word
“lord”.
When
you confess with your mouth and believe with your heart that
“Jesus
is Lord”, you are saying that this man, Who fasts and is tempted, is the lone
God of the entire universe. This is blasphemy of the highest order. That God,
YHWH, Jehovah could even think of associating with humanity on their own terms
is inconceivable.
Yet
it is at that point of inconceivability we see Jesus meeting us, not just the
devil.
“Jesus
is Lord” is the earliest form of a Creed in the Apostolic Church
Though
the devil wants to be king, he has no claim on any land, money, or titles of
recommendations. Though in our sin we want to be king, we are in the same boat
as the devil. In this sense, then, calling Jesus Lord is also learning how we
are saved.
Dr.
Luther continues in the Large Catechism:
“For
when we had been created by God the Father, and had received from Him all
manner of good, the devil came and led us into disobedience, sin, death, and
all evil, so that we fell under His wrath and displeasure and were doomed to
eternal damnation, as we had merited and deserved. There was no counsel, help,
or comfort until this only and eternal Son of God in His unfathomable goodness
had compassion upon our misery and wretchedness, and came from heaven to help
us. Those tyrants and jailers, then, are all expelled now, and in their place
has come Jesus Christ, Lord of life, righteousness, every blessing, and salvation,
and has delivered us poor lost men from the jaws of hell, has won us, made us
free, and brought us again into the favor and grace of the Father, and has
taken us as His own property under His shelter and protection, that He may
govern us by His righteousness, wisdom, power, life, and blessedness.”
“Let
this, then, be the sum of this article that the little word Lord signifies
simply as much as Redeemer, meaning, ‘He who has brought us from Satan to God,
from death to life, from sin to righteousness, and who preserves us in the
same’. But all the points which follow in order in this article serve no other
end than to explain and express this redemption, how and whereby it was
accomplished, that is, how much it cost Him, and what He spent and risked that He
might win us and bring us under His dominion, namely, that He became man,
conceived and born without
[any
stain of] sin, of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary, that He might overcome
sin; moreover, that He suffered, died and was buried, that He might make
satisfaction for me and pay what I owe, not with silver nor gold, but with His
own precious blood. And all this, in order to become my Lord; for He did none
of these for Himself, nor had He any need of it. And after that He rose again
from the dead, swallowed up and devoured death, and finally ascended into
heaven and assumed the government at the Father's right hand, so that the devil
and all powers must be subject to Him and lie at His feet, until finally, at
the last day, He will completely part and separate us from the wicked world,
the devil, death, sin, etc.”
(LC:II:28-31)
This
is incomprehensible to the devil and blasphemous to us. That a lord would not
buy his own lordship, but instead redeem enemies. That a lord would not submit
and be of service to a higher power, but bow his head to sinners and serve them
and offer Himself to them. That a lord would give up His inheritance in order
to give it all away, does not make sense to our ears.
Yet
this is what the New Testament teaches us and reminds us of, whenever we call
Jesus
“Lord”
and we must be reminded of this over and over again, because we will never
fully learn so rich and comprehensive an article of faith.
Indeed,
now we must relearn the entire Old Testament with these new eyes that read
“Lord”
in the passages, but now automatically replace it with
“Jesus”.
The Lord is my Shepherd is now Jesus is my Shepherd. The Lord of Hosts is now
Jesus of hosts.
In
Jer. 23:6
“In
his days Judah shall be
saved, and Israel
Back
to the Fall of Adam and Eve in our Old Testament reading, it is Jesus who calls
out to Adam, Jesus Who clothes Adam and Eve afterwards, and Jesus Who seals the
Garden. In the Epistle reading, well, at least in that entire letter of St.
Paul, the word
“lord”
is used 28 times, noting specifically what it is that he preaches to the
congregations, that
“…we proclaim … not ourselves, but Jesus Christ
as Lord” (4:5).
What
becomes even more interesting is when we apply this new understanding to the
Gospel reading and find Jesus almost speaking in third person about
Himself. This is done on purpose to show how defeated the devil really is.
For now his temptations are silly, next to Jesus.
Jesus,
answering satan, says, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put [Jesus] your God to the
test.’”
And again, “Then Jesus said to
him, “Be gone,
Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship [Jesus] your God and him only shall
you serve.’”
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