Was Jesus Made Lord by God or Was He Always God?
“The idea of divine agency was clearly exemplified through the ministry, resurrection and Lordship of Jesus Christ. To the early Christians, Jesus was Lord and that Lordship was an essential element of faith. …if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; Paul declared that salvation was dependent on an acknowledgement that Jesus was Lord and believing that God raised him from the dead. The two points were important because the resurrection was the confirmation that Jesus was the Messiah or anointed one. Jesus was Lord because God has made him Lord and God has proved this by raising him from the dead. There was no explicit teaching by the Apostles’ that Jesus was God raised from the dead to be made Lord—which could be understood as a definitive expression of later Trinitarian theology. Of course, the natural tendency for many is to see Lord as an equivalent statement for Jesus is God. The reason for this is the assumption that Lord automatically means deity. However, Lord was used in a wide range of contexts and could also mean sir, master, teacher or someone in authority. In Old Testament translations, LORD referred to God, and was commonly used to translate the Tetragrammaton YHWH. Religiously observant Jews reading YHWH would substitute other terms such as Adonai, which meant LORD. However, there was another word that was translated Lord (lower case) and we find an example of both words being used together in Psalm 110:1… The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” The first LORD refers to YHWH or Adonai and the second Lord is Adoni, a term of respect used for a master or a king. In this passage, the LORD (God) was speaking to David’s Lord and we know that this particular Lord refers to Jesus, because this passage was quoted in the New Testament. In Acts 2, on the day of Pentecost, Peter confidently noted that David had died, was buried and that his tomb was with them until that day. However, he also noted that God had sworn to David that one of his descendants would sit on the throne. In addition, this descendant would not be abandoned to the grave and neither would his flesh suffer decay like David. Peter continued to explain that these prophecies referred to Jesus who is the Christ, whom God had raised and exalted. Peter finished by quoting Psalm 110:1 and declaring that God had made this Jesus both Lord and Christ. The difficulty for a Trinitarian perspective is that God (LORD) made Jesus Lord. If Jesus were fully God, it would be unclear why he would need to be granted lordship—a distinction that might even suggest a relative subordination. The key point is that Jesus has been anointed by God to be the Christ and he is therefore Lord. The significance of these ideas cannot be overlooked for they underpin the Apostles’ teaching that in Christ, God was reconciling the world unto himself. While scripture declares that God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Christ, the way the New Testament writers refer to God and the Lord Jesus Christ suggests that they regarded each as distinct from the other. Consider the following examples… Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, Paul tells us there is one God who is the Father, and there is one Lord who is Jesus Christ… …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. According to the Apostle Paul, the Father is God – one God who is the Father to be exact. This verse suggests that there is one God and one Lord - two separate entities. One of these is the man that God raised from the grave to be Lord - the Son of God, the Messiah, the Christ. God is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. God delivers us through the Lord Jesus Christ. We have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. For the Christian, the Lord Jesus Christ is the one through whom all the benefits of knowing God are made available. Because God has made Jesus Lord, Jesus can act as God’s agent, revealing the Father to us, interceding on our behalf, establishing God’s Kingdom and leading and building the Church. The concept of divine agency is inherent in the title Lord—and, importantly the New Testament does not explicitly teach that salvation depends on a belief in Jesus as the pre-existent member of a triune God.”
Summary
Early Christian texts do link salvation to confessing Jesus as Lord and believing in his resurrection, and the New Testament distinguishes between God the Father and the Lord Jesus. However, while the term “Lord” can denote authority rather than deity, many early writings and later doctrinal developments do present Jesus as divine, and some apostolic letters explicitly call him God. Thus, the claim that the apostles never taught Jesus’s divinity is not fully supported.
Sources 60 searched
- If Jesus Never Called Himself God, How Did He Become One? : NPR
And then exaltation Christology ... to a position of divinity. The earliest Christians, during those first 20 years, the very earliest Christians, appeared to have thought that that's what happened....
- Jesus's Divinity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus | Church Life Journal | University of Notre Dame
One of the enduring findings of modern scholarship on the New Testament and early Christianity over the past two centuries is that the followers of Jesus, during his life, understood him to be human through and through, not God.
- Jesus in Christianity - Wikipedia
Some do not believe that Jesus is God, instead believing that he was a messenger from God, or prophet, or the perfect created human. This is the view espoused by ancient sects such as the Ebionites, and modern-day Unitarians. ... Deharbe, Joseph (1912). "The Second Article: 'And in Jesus Christ, ...
- God the Father - Wikipedia
1 Corinthians 8:6 shows the distinct Christian teaching about the agency of Christ by first stating: "there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him" and immediately continuing with "and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through ...
- Did the Earliest Christians Believe Jesus *Became* God? - The Bart Ehrman Blog
My view is that there probably is no consistent “earliest (attainable) Christian” view on such things. I suspect even during his ministry his followers had all sorts of conflicting ideas about Jesus’ relationship to Yahweh and where he fit on the divine spectrum.
- Was Christ Human But Not Divine? Another Early Christian View | The Bart Ehrman Blog
The author of the Little Labyrinth indicates that the Theodotians maintained that their view — that Jesus was completely human, and not divine, but that he was adopted to be the Son of God – had been the doctrine taught by the apostles ...
- God as Father - The Gospel Coalition
This so angered the Jews that they were moved to cry out that “God is our Father,” a recognition of the very thing that they were criticizing Jesus for saying but a claim to which the Old Testament bears witness (John 8:37–59).
- "There Is One God, the Father...and One Lord, Jesus Christ" | United Church of God
We are not explicitly told, but the classification is used elsewhere in Scripture. In Psalm 110:1, Israel's King David referred to an intermediary between God and himself as Lord. The verse begins: "The Lord [Yhwh] said to my Lord .
- Nine Early Church Fathers Who Taught Jesus Is God
Origen (AD 185-254) was another early Christian theologian. He writes, Jesus Christ...in the last times, divesting Himself (of His glory), became a man, and was incarnate although God, and while made a man remained the God which He was.31
This fact check is free and donation-based. $1 powers ~30 fact-checks.
