Jesus is Lord
By John Gavazzoni

It's the most ancient confession of the Christian community: "Jesus is Lord." By the anointing that all believers have received from God -- which anointing grants us participation in the Son of God's faith and knowledge (Eph. 4:11-13) -- there is unveiled a great compacting of gospel truth in those three words. The choice of wording is quite specific, beginning with "Jesus," in contrast to "the Son of God," or "Son of Man," or "Christ," for instance.

The identification of our Lord as Jesus (the human name given Him) in the confession draws our attention to both the Presence of God among humanity as one of us -- for He was to be called, according to the record of the Gospels, "Jesus," and "Emmanuel" (God with us) -- as God's saving Presence, for "Jesus," is our English equivalent of the original Hebrew identification, "Yeshua," meaning God saves. Further explanation of the inference to be drawn from that identification is given to us in the epistles, i.e., that He is God among us as seminally inclusive of all humanity. As is the true nature, and human experience of Jesus, so is the true nature of mankind, and so is its destiny.

The most essential meaning of "Lord," in the confession, originally, of course, according to the Greek of the New Testament, is "Owner." From this, the writers of the New Testament are amazingly joyful in their self-identification as "slaves," of Jesus Christ. So what is confessed is that the confession, Jesus is Lord, is intended to convey the message that God saves those He owns. Or we could state it as, God's salvation rules in and among men, or the salvation of mankind is a matter of Divine Sovereignty.

By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Peter, in delivering the first, and seminal, new covenant sermon, declared that God had made (again, specifically) Jesus both Lord and Christ. The unfolding of the New Testament message is one of implications being drawn out of very compacted statements. So it was in Peter's declaration. God has made Jesus (God saves) both Lord and Christ: God sent Him as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and made Him to be His (God's) salvation for, and over, all that He owns

We always, when faced with the subject of Divine Sovereignty in scripture, are confronted with salvation being the rule of God among men. Rather than salvation being an option presented to men, it is THE divine imperative, based upon the indicative of nothing less than mankind's union with God in Jesus. In the opening paragraph of this message, I've referred to the Son of God's faith and knowledge, as focused upon by Paul in Eph. 4:11-13, as that by which we all attain to that One Humanity of God's eternal purpose.

When reading from the KJV: "And he gave some apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ," one can presumptuously, according to theological convention, read into the text, that God leaves whether or not we all come to that desirable destiny dependent upon human choice, inferring incorrectly that it is OUR faith and OUR knowledge pertaining to Christ that is the issue, but that is not at all the apostle's thought here -- as we can determine from the whole body of his canonical writings -- but rather that it is the Son of God's faith and knowledge in and by which we all come to be the one new man of God's desire.

It is the Son of God's relationship with God, His Father (and in union with Him, our Father), which is a relationship of a trust based upon the conviction and persuasion that comes from the (true) knowledge of the Father's nature of faithful love, which is the ground of salvation. This is the righteousness (rightness) of faith that we are given to share with Christ by grace. Salvation restores us to that nuclear communion which is the anchor of all reality.

"Shout salvation, full and free, highest hills and deepest caves; earth shall have her jubilee, Jesus saves, Jesus saves," FOR Jesus in Lord.