Close your eyes. Picture yourself walking up to someone and addressing him as “my Lord.”
Okay, how did your imagination fill in the scene? What was around you? I’m thinking there had to be fancy clothes, maybe a throne. Had to be some shining armor.
The word was more at home at least a few generations back—unless you are a Christian. Then, with or without a thought, this is how you refer to Jesus. Calling Jesus our “Lord and Savior” is the required first step.
Does this mean Christians think of Jesus as a rich guy with an English accent?
Even if the word was common back in 1563, the Heidelberg Catechism still thought it deserved a clear explanation. Here is how this long-used and well-loved Reformed summary of Biblical Christianity addresses it
34 Q. Why do you call him “our Lord”?
A. 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.
The Catechism understands lordship to be about ownership.
- We used to belong to someone else—the devil, a tyrant who oppressed us.
- Jesus took action to change all that—he bought us to free us from that slavery.
- Now we belong to him—and that makes him our Lord.
If the simple word “lord” is uncommon today, the idea that lordship means outright ownership is completely unknown. Thinking we are someone else’s personal property is beyond countercultural. At face value it is offensive. We value independence and individual autonomy above all things.
It is, however, the Catechism’s consistent message. It echoes the famous first question, where we declared that our only comfort in life and in death is that we belong to Jesus rather than to ourselves.
How can being owned be good news?
Here in Q34 this transfer of ownership is a simple description of what Jesus has done for us. The Catechism portrays this as the solution to an enormous problem it detailed in Q3-Q11,
- Belonging to ourselves led to bad choices.
- Bad choices led to misery.
- Misery included slavery to a tyrant.
- We were powerless to escape.
Jesus has delivered us from slavery, from tyranny, from misery. He would be a fool to send us out to live on our own again. We would be fools to want it.
The One who loves us more than his own life has taken ownership. He’s going to teach us how live as truly free people—people who live in the way he instructs.
The irony is that American Christians say they “take” Jesus as their Lord and Savior.
Yes, Jesus is Lord. I’m very happy he took me.
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Thank you for this post. I always enjoy hearing your reflections on the Heidelberg Catechism.
Your reflections make me think that the catechism could become the basis for a kind of “declaration of independence.”
If I am owned by Jesus, I can declare myself independent from my own self-imposed self-definitions (usually too generous, too harsh, or just plain wrong).
If I am owned by Jesus, I can declare myself independent of socially-imposed self- definitions (in our society, usually created to sell stuff and spur competitiveness).
In other words, “Jesus is Lord” is the basis for a kind of independence that has nothing to do with radical individualism.
Gary, that is a very fine analysis! Independence of what typically ensnares us and keeps us from the true freedom of living as we were created to live — as the beloved who belong to Christ.
Very interesting, though I wonder if the Heidelberg Catechism has other explanations? I ask because I’m not sure if St. Paul and the other early Christians would have had this explanation in mind as the primary reason for calling Jesus “Lord.” (I wonder if this explanation has to due with the culture in which it originated? In Western Christianity, the traditional form of prayer [folded hands] was originally a submissive sign a slave made to a master/lord – and it’s still used in Catholic ordination services where the newly ordained submits to the bishop by this manner. This form of prayer is foreign in Eastern Christianity, where the more ancient orans stance [hands lifted up] has been retained.)
For me, the primary reason St. Paul and other early Christians called Jesus Lord was to make a claim to his divinity. By the first century the most commonly read Old Testament was the Greek Septuagint (LXX), which translated the divine name (YHWH) as Lord. Thus, to call Jesus Lord was to identify him as YHWH, the deity of the Old Testament (thus it is was Jesus who walked in the Garden with Adam, it was Jesus who revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush, it was Jesus who gave the Law, etc.). This is clear in the Gospel of St. John, where Jesus uses the divine name, in the form of “I AM,” several times to refer to himself – this is much more clear in the original Greek than in English translation.
If one digs deeper into the matter, it’s interesting to note that St. Paul never calls Jesus the one God. His phrasing, for example, is always, ” χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ” ([Gal 1:3 RSV] Grace to you and peace from God the Father AND our Lord Jesus Christ). Even the Nicene Creed follows this formula: I believe in One God, the Father Almighty…AND in one Lord, Jesus Christ…
Now, of course, the questions is: when the word “Lord” replaced YHWH in the LXX, what did they mean by it? Did they mean a master/slave relationship, with the sort of “ownership” implied by the Heidelberg Catechism? It’s worth exploring, especially since the major image of God and his people is not master/slave, but rather husband/wife (or, if you’re reading the prophets: faithful husband/harlot). This wedding imagery is also used over and over again in the New Testament, with Christ being the unexpected bridegroom. Then again, St. Paul, does, at times, use the word δοῦλος (slave/servant) – but in a variety of ways. However, even if St. Paul uses the word “slave,” is he using it in reference to Jesus being called Lord? I’m not so sure he is. In the few times he refers to himself as a slave of Christ, he doesn’t call Jesus Lord (cf., Romans 1:1, Philippians 1:1).
I really hadn’t thought too much about this before, so I’m just working out my thoughts here. Thanks!
Thanks Fr. Dustin.
For the idea of being owned by God due to the work of Christ, the key text they had in mind was 1 Cor. 6:19-20, the central and relevant phrases being
“Or do you not know that … you are not your own? For you were bought with a price…”
The 1563 text also cites 1 Pet. 1:18–19 & 2:9, as well as 1 Cor. 6:20 & 7:23 at this point.
Very true. That idea isn’t absent from the N.T.
Another thought:
Is it the Heidelberg Catechism and it’s definition of Lord that has led Protestants to use the terminology of “accepting Christ”? Accepting here implying a form of submission to God as master.
I know some theologians who are very uncomfortable with that language. Some have even gone so far as to postulate that the origins of that sort of language came from contact with Islamic scholars in the Middle Ages – Islam, of course, meaning, “voluntary submission to God.” I’m not sure if I’m convinced by that argument.
At any rate, the idea of “accepting” Christ is foreign in Eastern Christianity. Because the image of marriage is so predominate, the Orthodox stress “union” with God – [Gen 2:24 RSV] “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.” Of course the idea of union with God, and the idea of becoming one with God, leads to the theology of theosis/deification (John 17:11, 21-23; Romans 12:5; I Corinthians 1:13, 12:12; Galatians 3:28; Ephesians 4:3-6; Colossians 3:15).
Just a few more thoughts as I “chew” on this post.