The purpose of this chapter is to pursue the theological undergirding of the name-turned-title “Lord,” since—similar to Paul’s use of “Son of God” (see chap. 7)—the christological implications of this usage are considerable. The significance of this language is so great that the reader is inevitably led to an understanding of Christ that can be explained only in terms of full deity, of a kind similar to that found in John’s Gospel and in Hebrews with the descriptor “Son.” Indeed, this usage especially requires one to indulge in theology, like it or not. This is because (1) the risen Lord shares every kind of divine prerogative with God the Father apart from “initiating” the saving event itself, but he does so (2) within the context of absolute monotheism and at the same time (3) in his redemptive and mediatorial roles always with God the Father as the first or last word.
The data of the present chapter, therefore, would seem to demand that one either give up monotheism (which is what Paul will not do) or do as the later church did as the result of the writings of Paul, John, and the author of Hebrews: find a way to understand and speak of the One God as triune—as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All contemporary scholarship that promotes what the early church understood as unorthodox, or “heresy”—namely, to subordinate the Son and the Spirit to the Father—is thoroughly unbiblical and thus lies outside the parameters of the orthodox Christian faith. We use the adjective “unorthodox” in the sense that such views promote what seems to be a considerable misunderstanding of Paul’s writings, which the early church included as part of its Holy Scriptures.
The title “Lord”—as with the term “Son of God” discussed in part 3—is laden with messianic implications. But in this case the implications have to do with the eschatological dimension of Christ as Messiah, where the messianic Lord—in “fulfillment” of a crucial moment in the Psalter (110:1)—is seated at the “right hand” of God, from which he will return to accompany his people into eternity. In the ancient world this imagery was used exclusively to indicate primacy of position in relation to a sovereign. As we’ll see below, Paul takes up this language and applies it to the risen Lord, Jesus.
Jesus Christ, Exalted Messianic Lord
1 CORINTHIANS 9:1
Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not the result of my work in the Lord?
The language Paul uses to describe his life-changing encounter with the risen Christ serves as a good starting point for our discussion. In a crucial moment in defense of his apostleship (“Am I not an apostle?”), Paul rhetorically asks the believers in Corinth a follow-up question as the first line of evidence of his apostleship: “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” (1 Cor. 9:1). Paul then returns to this encounter at a later point in the letter when referring to Christ’s appearance to him after the ordinary time of resurrection appearances had passed: “he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born” (15:8). Although it is possible (but unlikely) that this latter imagery is a self-effacing reference to the Apostle’s small stature, it is much more in keeping with what he indicates elsewhere to be his way of acknowledging that his encounter with Christ occurred some time after appearances of the risen Lord had ceased. But in either case Paul’s point is clear: he has seen the risen Lord.
The Apostle’s language in this passage indicates quite clearly that he did not think of his encounter with the Lord as a visionary experience of some kind. Rather, he considered it to be of the same kind as those encounters that the earliest disciples had experienced. The risen Christ “appeared to me also” (15:8), Paul writes in the same language he uses to describe Christ’s appearances to the disciples—therefore suggesting that Christ appeared the same way. To be sure, Paul did have visionary experiences, as he reveals in a moment of “boasting” to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 12:1–5), but of these moments he refers not to “seeing” the Lord but to “hearing” heavenly things that cannot be expressed on earth below. Thus there can be little question as to Paul’s own understanding of what happened. He asserts that he saw the Lord, even though this had clearly happened postascension and thus outside the normal time span of the other appearances. This encounter is further evidenced in Luke’s condensed secondhand version of this commissioning in Paul’s speech before Agrippa (Acts 26:12–18).
Paul’s encounter with the risen Lord is where he first received his commission to serve as an apostle. That seems to be the intent of the juxtaposition of the three rhetorical questions that begin the somewhat discursive moment in an argument with the believers in Corinth. Clearly against their will, he absolutely prohibits their attending meals at the temples of idols (1 Cor. 8:10). So in response to their (anticipated) objections to this—that is, Why can’t we since the “gods” have no real existence?—he unleashes a series of rhetorical questions that includes, “Am I not an apostle?” From what follows there can be little question that some of the Corinthians had a measure of doubt on this score. So Paul follows this question with the two primary kinds of evidence that substantiate his apostleship. He asks rhetorically, “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” In Paul’s view, this is the first requirement for apostleship. It is uncertain whether the Corinthians themselves would have known this, but what he asserts is clear enough: he has seen and been commissioned by the Lord himself. For the Apostle this was the first standard of apostleship.
The next rhetorical question serves equally as substantial evidence: “Are you not the result of my work in the Lord?” From Paul’s perspective, therefore, his apostleship was based on the two primary factors of (1) his having seen and been commissioned by the risen Lord and (2) his having founded communities of believers. This was for him especially true among gentiles, who by way of faith in Christ Jesus were part of God’s newly formed people apart from adherence to the law. For the Apostle the inclusion of gentiles was clearly the eye-opener that lies behind his impassioned argument that the gentiles are not beholden to keep the law.
This tight series of rhetorical questions is undoubtedly compressed, but the basic realities are in place. At issue for us, therefore, in terms of Paul’s Christology is where Paul came by this use of language, this calling the risen Jesus “Lord.” The answer in part is that such language belonged to the earliest believers from the very beginning—well before Paul became one of them—as evidenced by the Aramaic-speaking community’s prayer, Marana tha (“Come, Lord,” 1 Cor. 16:22), perhaps in conjunction with the Lord’s table. It seems likely that in keeping with others in the earliest community of believers, Paul had come to understand this new title for Jesus in light of Christ’s own interpretation of a crucial moment in the Psalter, which had been passed down among them: “The Lord [= Yahweh] says to my lord [King David]: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’” (Ps. 110:1). For several reasons this had become a significant messianic text in Second Temple Judaism. It is the Old Testament passage most frequently cited or alluded to in the New Testament, including by Jesus himself in controversy with the Jewish leaders (e.g., Mark 12:35–37). Paul refers to it no less than four times in his preserved letters, which deserve examination here.
1 CORINTHIANS 15:25–27
For [Christ] must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ.
ROMANS 8:34
Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
Set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
EPHESIANS 1:19–23
That power is the same as the mighty strength [God] exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
PSALM 110:1
The LORD [= Yahweh] says to my lord [= King David]: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”
In his long argument with the Corinthians about the future bodily resurrection of believers, Paul brings forward this Davidic moment to speak of Christ’s present reign, a reign that will last until the final enemy, death, is brought under his feet (1 Cor. 15:27). In Paul’s context this refers to the time when those who have put their trust in Christ are raised from the dead. This usage has clear messianic implications since in the psalm he is alluding to, “the Lord” is the one who reigns on high (Ps. 110:1).
In his letter to the Roman believers, the allusion takes on the interesting dimension of reference to Christ’s present ministry of heavenly intercession for those who are his (Rom. 8:34). Here Paul picks up in a larger metaphorical sense that the one at the right hand of a king was regularly recognized as having the most influence with the king. Thus, in his later letter to the believers in Colossae, the same allusion is used as a reference point regarding Christ’s present position and is intended, as it was in his letter to the believers in Rome, to serve as both encouragement and exhortation (Col. 3:1). And finally, in what was most likely something of a circular letter to believers in the Roman province of Asia that ended up in the capital city of Ephesus, the same affirmation occurs in the opening thanksgiving and prayer (Eph. 1:19–23). Here, as in 1 Corinthians 15, the allusion to Psalm 110 is used to refer to Christ’s present lordship over all the demonic powers (Eph. 1:20–21).
We can note three observations about Paul’s references to the risen Christ as sitting “at the right hand” of God the Father. First, in none of these allusions does Paul use the title “Lord,” the actual language of Psalm 110 as it appears in the Septuagint. Although this omission could be incidental, having to do in each case with the issue at hand, this phenomenon nonetheless also fits well with the Apostle’s usage elsewhere, especially in light of our next point.
Second, although Kyrios occurs throughout the Septuagint as a translation of the divine name, Yahweh, into Greek, Paul uses this title exclusively for Christ. Thus, despite its regular appearance in his Greek Bible as the rendering for Yahweh, Paul does not use this noun as a reference to God the Father. He uses the term Theos exclusively for God—with only two possible exceptions: Romans 9:5 and Titus 2:13, each of which comes in his citations of the Greek Bible where the mention of God is not pertinent to the point of the citation as such.1
Third, notwithstanding one or two early exceptions, Paul consistently uses the title Kyrios when referring either to Christ’s present reign or anticipated coming. The primary exceptions occur when he refers to something said by Jesus (e.g., 1 Cor. 7:10, 12; 11:23; and possibly 1 Thess. 4:15). Thus “Jesus” or “Christ” but never “the Lord” died for us, though in Paul’s earliest letter he does speak of the crucifixion as the killing of “the Lord, Jesus” (1 Thess. 2:14–15). In this single case, however, the clause seems to be deliberately full of irony (in their own ignorance of who he was and is, the people crucified the Lord of the universe!). Paul is reflecting on what his own people did: they had the Romans execute their Messiah, Jesus, whom God the Father would reinstate as Lord of all.
The other possible exception to Paul’s consistent usage occurs in a quite indirect way in an important paragraph regarding Christ’s role as the “firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20). At a crucial moment in his argument, where Paul is trying to convince the Corinthian believers of the future bodily resurrection of the dead, he uses the language of a messianic psalm (Ps. 110:1) to note that this will happen at “the end” when Christ hands over the kingdom to God the Father (1 Cor. 15:24). As part of that event Christ will “put everything under his feet” (v. 27). But here Paul’s sentence has no expressed grammatical subject, therefore putting this apparent exception into an altogether different category as to whether the intended referent of the pronoun is Christ or God.
For Paul it is “Christ” (= the Messiah) who is “seated at the right hand of God,” which very likely also reflects the intent of the psalmist. Paul’s use of the title “Lord,” however, is quite unrelated to the messianic referent involved. Rather, “Lord” is the title by which Paul regularly and exclusively includes Christ in the divine identity.
Throughout the extant Pauline corpus, Paul remains singularly consistent with his use of Kyrios when citing or echoing the Septuagint. To be sure, he had come to this through his own tradition where, by way of substituting Adonai (= LORD) for Yahweh in oral readings, the Jewish community would never take the divine name in vain. Nonetheless, for Paul the designation “Lord”—which was first of all the Greek form of substitution for the divine name itself—becomes a title bestowed on Christ. Even though the title sometimes carries a degree of ambiguity because of its initial point of reference, for Paul it is used altogether as a title—exclusively with reference to Christ, the Son of God—and never as a name. To this matter we now turn.
The “Name” above Every Name
Five crucial affirmations offer us the clues to our theological understanding of this name-turned-title given to the risen Christ Jesus (1 Cor. 8:6; Phil. 2:9–11; Rom. 10:9–13; 1 Cor. 1:2; 2 Tim. 2:22). What is stated explicitly in these several moments of extraordinary affirmation serve as the presuppositional basis for our understanding of Paul’s regular and consistent use of Kyrios with reference to Christ and therefore of his basic understanding of who Christ is. We treat each of these passages in turn.
Jesus, the Lord of the Shema
1 CORINTHIANS 8:6
For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.
Very early on in the extant Pauline corpus, Paul uses the fundamental expression of Jewish monotheism, the Shema (“Hear, O Israel, the LORD [= Yahweh] our God, the LORD [= Yahweh] is One”; Deut. 6:4), to include Christ in the identity of the one God. This moment was occasioned by some Corinthian believers who, in the name of gnosis (knowledge), had laid hold of this monotheistic reality so as to argue that, since there is only one God, the “gods” and “lords” of the pagan temples do not exist. Thus they had concluded that attendance at feasts in the environs of pagan temples should be a matter of indifference since there is no actual “god” in the temple.
In countering this gnosis of theirs, Paul first affirms the correctness of the basic theological presupposition, “there is but one God” (1 Cor. 8:6). But he vehemently rejects what they are doing with it, for two expressed reasons. First, such an action on the part of the so-called knowing ones plays havoc with other believers for whom Christ died but who cannot make these fine distinctions. But second, even more significant, they have misunderstood the true nature of the idol. Paul will eventually assert that even though these “gods” and “lords” do not exist as deities, the pagan temples in which the idols dwell are the habitations of demons. What is altogether impossible is for those who believe in Christ as Lord to eat at the Lord’s table and also at the table of demons (10:13–22).2
But in his initial rejection of their reasoning, Paul does a most remarkable thing (1 Cor. 8:4–6). For the moment he acknowledges that for those who do not know the one and only God there are indeed “many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’” (v. 5). “Yet for us,” he continues, there is only “one God” and only “one Lord” (v. 6). How Paul comes to this is one of the truly significant moments in early Christian theology. He divides the Shema itself into two parts, something available to him only in the Septuagint. In the Septuagint the Shema reads: “[the] Lord [= Yahweh] our God, [the] Lord is One.” And because the risen Christ had “the name” Lord bestowed on him at his exaltation, Paul now does this truly remarkable thing: he applies the two words of the Shema, “God” and “Lord,” to God the Father and Christ the Son respectively. What Paul here asserts is that the exalted Son of God is understood to be included in the divine identity, as the efficient agent of both creation and redemption (“through whom all things came”), of which God the Father is seen as the ultimate source and goal. Paul does this in a way that does not impinge on either the Corinthians’ or our understanding of his basic monotheism. For the Apostle, when citing or echoing the Old Testament (where Kyrios = Adonai = Yahweh), Kyrios consistently and exclusively is applied to the risen Lord, Jesus. The clue as to how this came about is to be found in the next passage to be examined (Phil. 2:9–11).
But before we turn to Philippians, we need to call attention to what is said in the present affirmation about the one Lord: that he is both the preexistent divine agent of creation and the incarnate agent of human redemption. Since nothing further is made of creation in this immediate context, the affirmation may simply be nothing more than a typically Jewish affirmation about God vis-à-vis all other so-called gods and lords. But it is also possible, and even likely, that this affirmation about the one Lord as agent of creation prepares the way for a later affirmation in this letter (1 Cor. 10:26) at the beginning of the next section of the argument (10:23–11:1). Here Paul is expressly dealing with food sold in the marketplace, which is purchased to be eaten in one’s own domicile. Thus it stands in considerable contrast to his earlier absolute prohibition against eating in the pagan temples.
Now believers are encouraged to “eat anything” available to them in the market (1 Cor. 10:25) since, in the words of an earlier psalm, “the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it” (v. 26; cf. Ps. 24:1). For Paul, the one Lord, Jesus Christ, who was the divine agent of creation in the first place, is the same Lord before whom every knee will eventually bow.
Thus Paul places Christ the Lord as the preexistent agent of creation, but he also sees him, with reference to Psalm 24, as the Kyrios to whom the whole of creation belongs. This is evidence of Paul’s especially high Christology, which he simply assumes in his argument. By the time this letter was written (within two decades of the crucifixion and resurrection), this is now presuppositional language for which Paul does not even feel the need to argue.
The Bestowal of the Name
PHILIPPIANS 2:9–11
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
In the grand christological passage in his letter to the believers in Philippi, Paul concludes his narrative of the essential Christ story by affirming God the Father’s vindication of the Son—that the one who was equal with God (Phil. 2:6) demonstrated the real character of Godlikeness by the twofold act of pouring himself out, so as to become servant of all, and humbling himself in his obedient, sacrificial death on the cross (vv. 7–8). In the conclusion, divine vindication takes the form of God bestowing on Christ the name, which is identified as “above every name” (v. 9).
Any careful reading of this passage should make it quite clear that Paul’s language can refer only to the divine name, which functions as a central feature of Israel’s self-understanding. The name of Israel’s God, Yahweh, first revealed to Moses at Horeb/Sinai (Exod. 3:1–6), was to serve as Israel’s primary identity symbol. The Israelites were people of “the name,” that is, of their God, Yahweh, who eventually chose Jerusalem as the place where they were to build a “temple for my Name” (1 Kings 5:5), and in whose “Name” all Israelites were to make and carry out their oaths.
In this crucial moment in the history of Christian theology, Paul asserts that this is the name that has been bestowed on the risen Christ at his exaltation. Now, however, the name is no longer reprised in its original Hebrew form, “Yahweh.” Rather, by way of this happy accident of history, for Paul and the early church it appears singularly in its Greek expression, Kyrios. So the risen Christ is not Yahweh himself, who is always referred to by Paul as God. Rather, the preexistent Son of God returns by way of his resurrection to receive the honor of having bestowed on him the substitute name for God, which for Paul then becomes a title for Christ as “Lord”—and this “name” is now used by Paul exclusively for Christ and never for God the Father.
This was the reality already in place when Paul made his earlier assertion regarding the Shema in 1 Corinthians 8:6. And now, when writing to his beloved friends in Philippi, this usage is made altogether certain. Here Paul’s intertextual use of the divine oath is expressed in the first person in a Yahweh oracle in Isaiah (45:18–24). Yahweh has sworn by his own name that “before me every knee will bow” (v. 23). In place of Isaiah’s “before me,” referring to Israel’s one God, Yahweh, Paul now insists that the promise of every knee bowing before “him” and every tongue confessing “him” as God alone has been transferred to the risen and exalted Lord, Jesus Christ. And thus apparently not satisfied with just the text of Isaiah as it stands, Paul rather lavishly elaborates the “every knee” and “every tongue” to include all created beings: “in heaven, on earth, and under the earth” (Phil. 2:10).
For the Apostle there was coming a “day” when even the current Roman emperor, Nero Caesar, who was ultimately responsible for the present suffering of the believers in Philippi, would acknowledge the lordship of the Messiah. The final result is that the incarnate eternal One whom the empire had once tried to eliminate was part and parcel of the ultimate divine design. In what had by now come to be in typical fashion, here Paul clearly understands that God chose once more to take what the world would consider foolishness as his own way to “shame” those who consider themselves to be “the wise” (1 Cor. 1:27).
This passage in Philippians thus serves as a classic example of the transfer of a singularly divine prerogative—and thus of every kind of divine privilege—to the risen Lord, as demonstrated throughout the Pauline corpus. In Paul’s repeated citations and intertextual use of the Septuagint he consistently identifies the Kyrios (= Yahweh) of the Septuagint with the risen Lord, Jesus Christ, whenever Kyrios is the reason for, or otherwise an important part of, the biblical citation.
This passage also has a singularly eschatological perspective to it. According to Paul this universal acknowledgment will take place at the end, the eschaton. We thus turn to our third significant text to point out that this phenomenon, the lordship of Christ, serves as the entry point for all who would embrace Christ as Savior and thus become part of the newly formed people of God.
Confessing the Name
ROMANS 10:9–13
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. . . . For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” [Joel 2:32].
DEUTERONOMY 30:14
The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
In his letter to believers in Rome, the majority of whom he does not know personally, Paul argues that God is not finished with his ancient people Israel. Even though in the present time the newly formed people now very likely included more gentiles than Jews, Paul makes a typically bold move with regard to an important Old Testament passage with its promise of covenant renewal. At a key point in his argument in Romans 10, Paul applies the language of “mouth” and “heart” from an especially important moment in Deuteronomy (30:14), where Yahweh assures Israel that the word will be neither too difficult for them nor too distant from them. This, Paul says, is how Jew and gentile together become the one eschatological people of God: by confessing with the mouth that the Lord is Jesus and by believing with the heart that he is the risen (and thus exalted) one.
This juxtaposition of what is believed with the heart and confessed with the mouth is significant. What is believed is that God has raised the crucified Messiah from the dead and exalted him to the highest place, having bestowed on him the name (Phil. 2:9–11). Thus the confession with the mouth that Jesus is Lord is based on this prior belief with the heart that Christ, through his resurrection and exaltation, has assumed his present role as Lord of all. That the confession of the mouth refers to the same phenomenon as in the Philippians passage is made certain by the follow-up citation of the passage from Joel. There is no distinction between Jew and Greek on this matter, Paul says, because “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom. 10:13; cf. Joel 2:32). Here again the Apostle has taken a very important eschatological text—as it appears in the Septuagint, where “the name of the Lord” refers specifically to the divine name Yahweh—and has applied it directly to the risen Christ. Thus the declaration of Jesus as “Lord” (Rom. 10:9)—which mirrors the eschatological confession of the name (Phil. 2:10–11)—is for Paul the way of entry into the new covenant people of God.
What happens both at the entry point and at the eschatological conclusion serves for Paul as a way to identify God’s newly formed people. This usage further plays itself out in Paul’s letters in a variety of other ways that reflect this total transfer to Christ of the “name” of Yahweh in its Greek form Kyrios (“Lord”). These early believers could have it both ways: keep the divine name Yahweh in place, but now in its Greek form, and transfer it to the risen Christ. The problem for us later readers in English is that “Christ” can stand alone as a name, although one may also refer to “the Christ,” meaning “the Messiah.” But that is not at all possible with Kyrios, which in English can never be a name but is always an identifying word, “the Lord.” In translation, therefore, what could happen with a degree of subtlety in Greek is not possible in English. Hence for the English reader it is always a title, and never a name, an impoverishment in the otherwise richest and most flexible language in the Indo-European family of languages.
Calling on the Name
1 CORINTHIANS 1:2
To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours.
Pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
The language of Joel 2:32, which we encounter in Romans 10:13, also occurs in two other places in the Pauline corpus, in both cases as a way to identify all of God’s new covenant people. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, Joel’s language appears in the salutation in an elaborated form, which was almost certainly intended to catch their attention (1 Cor. 1:2). Paul reminds the Corinthian believers that they belong to a much larger network of believers and therefore need to keep in step with that larger community. Thus he refers to “the church of God in Corinth” who have been “called to be his holy people [or ‘saints’]” along with “all those everywhere who call on the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours” (1 Cor. 1:2). With this one line Paul is able to offer three reminders: (1) that the Corinthian believers’ conversion meant that they had now become a part of God’s holy people (traditionally “saints”); (2) that in so doing they had joined a much wider network of believers, all of whom “call on the name of the Lord”; and (3) that they are thus under the lordship of the one on whom they call. Here, then, for Paul is the biblical language that emphasizes the universalizing aspect of the work of Christ and the Spirit.
In Paul’s much later letter to Timothy, the Apostle’s young disciple is urged to join with others who “call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Tim. 2:22) and thus to live in keeping with the name on which they call. The command to Timothy is a clear pickup of the second “solid foundation” of the newly formed temple of God, and Timothy is thus encouraged first to remember that “the Lord knows those who are his” (v. 19)—echoing an affirmation made by Moses during the Korah rebellion (Num. 16:5).
But the second “foundation,” Timothy is reminded, is that those who belong to the Lord—“everyone who confesses the name of the Lord” (echoing Isa. 26:13)—must “turn away from wickedness” (2 Tim. 2:19), clearly intending that Christlike behavior is assumed and thus expected of those who confess the name. Thus the name of the Lord, which was to be the identifying symbol of God’s people Israel, has in each of these cases been transferred to the newly formed people of God, where “the Lord” whose “name” now identifies them is the risen and exalted Christ Jesus. And in keeping with what he regularly urges in his letters to churches, “those who call on [the name of] the Lord” (v. 22) are expected to conduct themselves in a way that will not bring shame on the name.
Other Matters Done in the Name of the Lord, Jesus
1 CORINTHIANS 6:11
But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God.
2 THESSALONIANS 1:12
We pray this so that the name of our Lord, Jesus, may be glorified in you, and you in him.
COLOSSIANS 3:17
And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord, Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
1 THESSALONIANS 5:27
I charge you before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers and sisters.
2 THESSALONIANS 3:6, 12
In the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers and sisters, to keep away from every believer who is idle and disruptive and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. . . . Such people we command and urge in the Lord, Jesus Christ, to settle down and earn the food they eat.
We conclude this chapter with this series of incidental moments in Paul’s letters where in an offhanded way he appeals either to “the name of the Lord, Jesus,” or simply to the Lord himself. A good place to begin is with the way he concludes his passionate disapproval of the two “brothers” in his first letter to the Corinthians, where one has defrauded another, who in turn has gone to the pagan courts to redress his grievances (1 Cor. 6:1–11). Paul begins with a contrast to participating in sins of all kinds common to life in Roman Corinth, spelled out in vivid detail in verses 9 and 10. This is then followed with three significant metaphors for conversion, where Paul reminds the believers in that great city that they have been “washed,” “sanctified,” and “justified in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ”—as well as “by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11).3
This fourth occurrence of the phrase “in the name of the Lord” in the letter (the most of any letter in the corpus) is most likely intended to serve as the believers’ primary identity marker. Just as with Israel of old, who were identified as a people of the name, so with believers under the new covenant. At their conversion they call on the name of the Lord precisely because that is the name by which they are now to be identified. Thus the Lord, Jesus Christ, has for Paul now assumed a role that belonged exclusively to Yahweh in the Jewish tradition of which Paul had been—and still considers himself to be—a part.
Closely related to this usage is Paul’s prayer for the Thessalonians in his second letter to them (2 Thess. 1:12). After a series of intertextual echoes in his thanksgiving, where Christ the Lord (= Yahweh) will mete out judgment on their opponents (echoing Isa. 66:4–6), Paul continues in this vein in his prayer for them (again echoing the same passage from Isaiah). What Paul desires for them is that by the way they live, “the name of our Lord, Jesus, may be glorified in you” (the italicized words are taken directly from Isa. 66:5). Thus not only are God’s newly formed people to be identified as people of the name; they are urged also to live in a way that brings glory to that name—which picks up the theme of Christ being glorified in his people. As with the Isaiah passage, so too in the conclusion of Micah’s great eschatological oracle (Mic. 4:1–5), the prophet contrasts God’s future Israel with the surrounding nations who “walk in the name of their gods” (= live by the authority of and in keeping with their gods). Israel, Micah says, will do the same: “We will walk in the name of the LORD [Yahweh] our God for ever and ever” (v. 5). Even though Paul does not use the metaphor of walking as such, he reflects this language in 2 Thessalonians as well as in two companion moments of exhortation where he assumes that everything in the lives of believers is done “in the name of the Lord, Jesus.”
Thus in a striking moment in his letter to the believers in Colossae, Paul concludes a considerable series of exhortations as to how to live as followers of Christ (Col. 3:12–17)—in contrast to those who live otherwise—by urging them (and indirectly those in Laodicea; 4:15–16) to do everything, “whether in word or deed, . . . in the name of the Lord, Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (3:17). This can mean only that they are to live in Colossae in such a way that the unbelievers in the city will know something about the Lord by watching his followers in action. Thus what identifies them as God’s new people is also the context in which they are to live out that identification in its entirety. In a companion passage in Ephesians, believers are urged especially in the context of worship to offer their thanksgiving to God “in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:20).
The final group of passages in which this idiom occurs is especially, and directly, tied to what Yahweh had commanded Israel to do: take their oaths in Yahweh’s name alone (Deut. 6:13). Thus in a variety of ways and circumstances Paul reflects this usage of the name as the name that (Yahweh = Lord) has now been bestowed on Christ. The phenomenon occurs first in Paul’s earliest letter, where he charges the Thessalonian believers “before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers and sisters” (1 Thess. 5:27). When similar language is picked up again in his next letter to them, he commands them “in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ,” to avoid the disruptive idle (2 Thess. 3:6). This same command is enclosed a bit later (v. 12), where it is now given “in the Lord” directly to the disruptive idle. In his first letter to the believers in Corinth, Paul likewise commands and passes judgment “in the name of the Lord” (1 Cor. 1:10).
Conclusion
In every instance examined in this chapter where Paul uses the Old Testament phrase “the name of the Lord,” the divine name Yahweh (= Lord) is now the name bestowed on Christ at his exaltation. Thus all of these passages reflect various ways whereby the divine name that belonged to God alone in ancient Israel has been transferred to the one to whom that name has been given in its Greek form, Kyrios. In light of this reality, we turn in the next chapter to examine a whole variety of phenomena wherein Paul understands the Lord, Jesus, to have assumed roles that in the Apostle’s Jewish heritage were the unique prerogatives of Yahweh alone.
1. In both cases there is considerable ambiguity in the structure of Paul’s Greek sentences. Both are brief, offhanded moments, and in both cases two (or three) different understandings are viable options of Paul’s otherwise ambiguous Greek clauses. In the first instance, Rom. 9:5, the alternatives are given in the NIV footnote. Did Paul intend (a) “the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised” (as in the text itself) or (b) “the Messiah, who is over all. God be forever praised” or (c) “the Messiah. God who is over all be forever praised”?
What speaks against the NIV rendering is the absolute uniqueness of such a way of speaking in the entire Pauline corpus. Why would Paul, in this singular instance, abandon his consistent usage of “God” as a referent to God the Father and of “Lord” as a referent to Christ? After all, the Apostle himself already has it “both ways,” as it were, in his consistent use of the Septuagint translators’ rendering of “Yahweh” as “LORD” and applying such moments to the risen Christ. This in itself should cause the translator in the present case to lean toward one of the two other options, which seem equally preferable.
The translational problem arises from the twofold reality that (a) Paul never elsewhere uses the Greek word Theos (“God”) when he refers to Christ and that (b) the “substitute” Kyrios (= Yahweh) of the Septuagint is now used exclusively by Paul as a referent to Christ and never to God the Father. So even though Paul’s grammar could go in another direction, his consistent use of Kyrios and Theos elsewhere to refer to Christ and God respectively should tip the scales decisively in this direction here.
This accounts for our departure from the NIV text in this singular instance, especially so in light of Paul’s own strong affirmation that “for us there is but one God [Theos] the Father,” and “there is but one Lord [Kyrios], Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 8:6). And while Ralph Waldo Emerson’s line that “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” is often true, in this case Paul himself is so thoroughly consistent one would need especially strong evidence of any kind to imagine that Paul has here deviated, since his consistency is by no means “foolish.”
The passage in Titus is equally ambiguous in terms of the actual structure of Paul’s sentence. Did he intend, “the appearing and glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” or “the appearing and glory of our great God, even our Savior, Jesus Christ”? The problem in this case is further complicated by the fact that the Greek of the three Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Tim. and Titus) differs just enough from the other ten Pauline letters to have made them suspect as to authorship—a problem we prefer to resolve in terms of Paul’s use of a different amanuensis who was also allowed a bit of freedom in the actual “writing” of the letter—and that is not to mention their unique nature as letters to individuals rather than to churches.
At any rate, the combination in both cases of the ambiguity of the Greek and Paul’s otherwise absolute consistency in terms of usage should cause translators to favor Pauline consistency over a desire to affirm Christ’s deity in this less than certain way. After all, that deity is writ large throughout the church corpus, and going the other route here seems especially difficult since it stands in considerable tension with Paul’s earlier affirmation that “for us there is but one God, the Father, . . . and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 8:6).
2. It is surely one of the unfortunate realities of many modern readers of Scripture, especially those in Western cultures, that demons are understood as only belonging to ancient mythology. But anyone with even minimal experience in so-called third-world settings knows that the reality of the satanic world is alive and well indeed. Only in our so-called educated Western settings has Satan so completely won the day! People in majority-world cultures are not so gullible as to be so thoroughly deceived by his cunning. The existence of demons is part and parcel of both their worldview and their experience.
Perhaps the even greater difficulty for later readers in a more democratic culture, where eating together is much more of a norm, is to appreciate what would have been the norm at the time of Paul’s writing this letter. One need only to be reminded of the presentation on American public television of the British series Upstairs Downstairs to have a sense of how radical such cross-cultural eating would have been for the first recipients of this letter. It simply was not done.
Thus for Paul, and against all culturally defined standards, this was a crucial leveling of the playing field for followers of the crucified one. And later readers, raised and conditioned by more democratic eating habits in contemporary Western cultures, need at least to try to imagine the radical nature of what Paul here asserted. One can scarcely imagine the well-to-do householder sharing a table with hoi polloi, or commoners, yet for the Apostle this had become the crucial matter whereby all believers are acknowledged as sisters and brothers in the one divine family.
3. With these verbs Paul covers the ground, as it were, of the entire experience of conversion. They have been “justified” as an act of God through Christ; they were “washed” by way of baptism, which signifies death, burial, and resurrection to newness of life; and they were “sanctified” in the sense of being set apart as God’s newly formed holy people, to bear God’s likeness in both word and deed in a still fallen world.