Tuesday: The Earliest Creed: Jesus Is Lord
WEEK 25
TUESDAY
THE EARLIEST CREED: JESUS IS LORD
Philippians 2:9-11
Of all the clarifications that have ever taken place in religion at anytime, anywhere, the greatest and the profoundest was in the earliest Christian creed.
Someone has said that all great discoveries are reductions from complexity to simplicity. Error and evil are complex; they have to attempt to stop up all the holes, for there are many. But truth and goodness are simple. On the wall of a superintendent’s office in a rubber factory is this motto: “The answer when found will be simple.” It always is. But of all the reductions from complexity to simplicity, the greatest and profoundest was in the earliest Christian creed: “Jesus is Lord.” Three words, and yet three worlds are in them: heaven, earth, and hell.
This earliest creed is found in these words: “If you confess . . . ‘Jesus is Lord,’ . . . you will be saved” (Rom 10:9). Again: “Every tongue [should] confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil 2:11). And: “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3). But note that this was not the repetition of a creed; it was a confession, a confession of an attitude: ‘“Jesus is Lord’ to me.” It was a committal of life as well as repetition of a creed.
How did it happen that this phrase arose out of a fiercely monotheistic people whose central confession was: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deut 6:4 RSV)? The people who had repeated, “The LORD our God is one LORD,” now found themselves repeating, “Jesus is Lord.” Was Jesus doing something that only God could do?
Was his touch upon nature and upon human nature the very touch of God? His impact upon nature and human living was so tremendous that they found their unwilling lips making the most momentous confession that ever fell from human lips anywhere at any time. It was life’s central revelation. And the revelation was this: “This Man, who walked our dusty roads, slept upon our hillsides, was crucified on one of our trees, and was laid in one of our rock tombs, was at the right hand of final authority—was Lord and would have the final say in human affairs.” That confession was breathtaking.
O Lord, here we are at the crux of human living: this is so or not so. Help us not to make a mistake here; for if we do, then all life will go wrong with it. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Jesus is Lord—of all my thoughts, all my actions, all my relationships, everything.