THE pithiest expression of faith in the New Testament has to be “Jesus is Lord” (e.g. Romans 10.9). Paul says that the gospel concerns “Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 1.3-4).
This theme of Christ’s Lordship features in both our main creeds, but in usefully different ways: “One Lord” in the Nicene Creed; “Our Lord” in the Apostles’ Creed. The latter — “Our Lord” — presents the gospel in terms of community and relationship. In contrast, the language of “one Lord” focuses on singleness of devotion. Both aspects are already present in that great creed of the Old Testament, the shema: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone” (Deuteronomy 6.4). That’s plenty to think about as we explore “the gospel in all of the creed”.
THE phrase “Our Lord” relates Jesus to his body, the Church, formed by having Christ as its Lord. The gospel is heard here as an invitation to join that community — by taking Christ as Lord, by standing alongside all who have been summoned and shaped by their allegiance to him. We will see more of that when we turn to the gospel in what the creeds say about the Church.
While that adjective “our” is about gathering, the other adjective — “one” — presents the gospel in terms of separation. It proclaims Christ’s Lordship over and against other authorities. The gospel invitation here is to full allegiance, to forsaking false gods. We might recall Joshua’s great injunction: “Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24.15).
This is good news, although it’s counter-cultural to say so. Christ’s lordship is good because of what Christ as Lord rescues us from; because of all that follows from being under Christ’s rule and care. It matters whose kingdom you belong to. The lordship of Christ delivers us from death’s rival claim (Romans 14.8-9; 1 Corinthians 15.15-26).
THAT idea of a lord as protector may not speak so directly to us today, but it is central to the theology of the New Testament. As Karl Barth wrote, it belongs to “divine mercy” for us to have Christ as Lord, and in that way to be delivered “from all other lordships”. Not for nothing does a famous passage from Romans end its list of vanquished impediments to life in God with invocation of Christ as Lord: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8.38-39).
The cost of confessing allegiance to “one Lord” was not lost on early Christians. Martyrs, burned alive or sent to the lions, demonstrated the consequences of belonging to only one lord, when that lord was not Caesar. The benefits, however, were not lost on them: “He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1.13-14).
THE idea is as old as the Bible. Already in the Old Testament, God’s rule is set out as gospel: that “Your God reigns” is “good news” (Isaiah 52.7). Indeed, the foundational story of the Old Testament is the Exodus narrative: “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand” (Deuteronomy 6.21; cf. Leviticus 25.42).
We would do well to recover this sense of Christ as Lord in a clash of powers, whether earthly, heavenly, or cosmic: the defeat of sin and death. Talk of the Kingdom of God today tends to emphasise the ethical and social dimensions: justice, care for the poor, and so on. That is indeed central, but I suspect we often miss something central to the theology of the Bible — and subsequent centuries — if we neglect the equally important sense that the Kingdom is about deliverance, rule, and protection.
NOTHING compares with Christ’s authority, or takes priority over this lordship. Other legitimate authorities exist, but they must fall under Christ’s lordship, and be judged by it (e.g. Romans 13.17; 1 Peter 2.13-17; John 19.11). In that, we hear yet more good news: that under the providence of God, and with the example of Christ before us, good government — national and local — is possible, and virtuous leadership, and careful exercise of power for the sake of the common good.
In a world that has grown cynical about government, and suspicious of leadership, the primary message — “Jesus is Lord” — brings a secondary message in its train. Christ shows us that leadership can be benign; that authority can be exercised well. In this way, the confession of “Jesus Christ, our one Lord” has been the backdrop for holding rulers and leaders at every level to a high calling.
I BEGAN by saying that we have three words to think about in this column: “our”, “one”, and “Lord”. To that, we might add one more small word, namely “in”: “I believe in one Lord.” The force of this preposition is lost on us in English, just as in Greek (eis) it also soon became standard usage. When Christians first started using this word in this way, however, it had power to raise eyebrows. It presents us with belief as a form of trust. It’s not belief about Christ as Lord, but something more like believing into Christ as Lord.
The creeds do not simply invite us to accept that a statement is true, within some list of ideas or opinions about what the world is like, or even what God is like. Belief in Jesus involves entrusting ourselves to him, investing ourselves in him. That is the invitation of the Christian Gospel across all of the creeds, and it finds no more focused expression than belief — as trust — in Christ as Lord.
The Revd Dr Andrew Davison is Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford and a Canon Residentiary of Christ Church.
Quotations:
“THERE is one Physician who is possessed both of flesh and spirit; both made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary and of God; first capable of suffering and then beyond it — even Jesus Christ our Lord.” Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Ephesians, 7, concluding a letter he wrote on his way to martyrdom.
“Enslavement to idols is the soul’s great infidelity. On account of it, a most furious war was waged against the gospel and against those reconciled to God: a war whose embers, though long lukewarm, are even now warming up again.” Augustine, Exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians, n. 51, on Galatians 5.22–23.
Julian of Norwich, writing of her visions of Christ: “And of all the sight it was most comfort to me that our good Lord, who is so to be revered and feared, is so familiar and gracious: and this most fulfilled me with comfort and assuredness of soul” Revelations of Divine Love, chapter 7.
Question: Why do you call him “our Lord”?
Answer: Because — not with gold or silver, but with his precious blood — he has set us free from sin and from the tyranny of the devil, and has bought us, body and soul, to be his very own. Heidelberg Catechism, 34.
Biblical passages
“INDEED, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth — as in fact there are many gods and many lords — yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Corinthians 8.5–6).
The most striking thing about this text may be its acceptance that the world is full of “gods”. To them, or to the one true God, we have to give our allegiance. But look a bit further, and its negotiation of monotheism is just as remarkable as its ironic endorsement of polytheism. Paul reworks the language of the shema (which we encountered above): “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” The way in which he does so opens up an additional aspect of what it means to confess Christ as Lord,(so far passed over in this article): namely, its power to describe Jesus as God.
Paul takes the two central words from Deuteronomy 6.4 — “God” and “Lord” — and divides them up, to give “one God, the Father . . . and one Lord, Jesus Christ”. He has expanded the shema, finding Christ within it. Indeed, the word he gives to Christ — Lord, or Kyrios — is precisely how a Greek speaker referred to the unspeakably holy name of God. Jesus is Kyrios. Yet, by working with that most revered text, Paul is also being as resolutely monotheistic as he possibly could. He confesses Christ as Lord, and, with that, as God, within the divinity of the Lord God of Israel. Nothing is replaced or taken away, but some insight of crucial importance is discerned. Monotheism has become Christological, as biblical scholars have recently put it.
IN THIS, so much of the gospel is present. God has visited his people to redeem them, not sent some emissary. As Lord, Christ stands before us able to deliver us from “many gods and many lords”. To bend the knee to the one Lord Jesus Christ is therefore liberation, not servitude.
With the idea of bending the knee in mind, note that the famous hymn to Christ in Philippians 2.5-11 plays out the same dynamic of expanded monotheism in relation to a different text, this time from Isaiah:
By myself I have sworn,
from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness
a word that shall not return:
“To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear (Isaiah 45.23)
Isaiah could not be more plainly monotheistic (“I am the Lord, and there is no other” vv. 5, 6, and 18), and yet Paul applies this very language to Christ: that every knee shall bow to Christ, and confess him as Lord. The Philippians hymn does with Isaiah what 1 Corinthians does with the shema: it includes Christ within the Lordship of God, in a way that continues to affirm monotheism. In this, Christ in no way supplants the Father, since recognition of Christ’s lordship is “to the glory of God the Father”.
The most monotheistic texts of the Old Testament are precisely the ones that Paul uses to confess Christ’s Lordship. There is only one Lord, and for him to be our Lord is to be delivered from every other.