"Our Lord"

“Jesus is Lord” is the essential summary of Christian faith about him. That’s how the first Christian sermon concluded (Acts 2:36) and likewise an early Christian hymn declares that the exaltation of Jesus was his enthronement (Phil.2:9-11). The Greek word kurios (lord) occurs 717 times in the New Testament. It’s used most often by Luke and Paul who were writing to Gentiles for whom kurios/lord (rather than king) would have been more meaningful as a title of ultimate authority as it was used for the emperor, Caesar.

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Even more strikingly, in the Greek version of the Old Testament, kurios is the word used for God, and the same word is used simultaneously both for God and for the exalted Jesus (e.g. Acts 2:25,34,36). This recognition of Jesus as equal with God is expressed clearly in Thomas’s response to the risen Jesus: “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).

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So he is not just “Lord” – a statement about who he is. He is “our Lord” – a response of faith which owns him as Lord personally in our lives (Rom.10:9). However costly that might prove to be, any lesser response would be a denial of what we believe about him and of what he has done for us. He is Lord, so we follow him wholeheartedly (Rom.14:9).