The Names of Christ

As we read through Scripture, we discover that Jesus has many names of the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess what that he is Lord that he is curios that he is not to the glory of God the father names of Jesus are given to us to help describe who is what is done today on Renewing Your Mind.

Dr. RC scroll continues is in the book of the person and work of Christ from his series, foundations, overview of systematic theology. If we misunderstand these important documents in danger of misunderstanding Christianity source joint Dr. scroll now on the fascinating elements of the Bible is the significance that is often attached to the use of names and of titles. Of course the names and titles for God the father, or many, and they're revealing about something of his character and the same is true for Jesus. I think it's safe to say that Jesus is the most titled person in all of recorded history.

Remember an occasion where at a theological seminary where I once worked they would hold an annual convocation where a leading scholar would come and give an academic address for the occasion, and on this particular day scholar who was invited was well known and everybody expected a very technical academic discourse during his 45 minute address and he surprised everybody by simply coming to the podium and opened up a piece of paper that had a long list on and as a litany, he began to recite the names for Jesus, but are found in Scripture just began to read from this list saying things like Lord, son of God, Son of Man, son of David, a man you well. The word our champion the Rose of Sharon Lily of the Valley and he went on and on and on for 45 minutes before he exhausted the number of names that are given to Jesus in the New Testament, and each one of these names or each one of these titles reveals something to us about the character of Christ or about the work in which he was engaged and that's an interesting study that you may do on your own measure. Going through the Scripture notice every time the Scripture assigns a title to Jesus known the brief time that we have in this session were going to look at some of the more prominent names or titles that are given to Jesus in the New Testament we know that we are familiar with the name Jesus Christ but to call this his name is itself a misnomer because it's not really his name. His name is Jesus, or Jesus bar Joseph or Jesus of Nazareth. Christ is a title it's like we would say of the present United States president of William Jefferson Clinton or whoever is the president. The time president is the title William is his name and so in this case the title that is used is Christ and this is the title for Jesus that is used more frequently than any other title in the entire Scripture. And it's because of its numerical frequencies because it's used so often in connection with Jesus that we've come to think of it as Jesus's last name Jesus Christ you notice how sometimes the Bible reverses the order and was speak of Christ Jesus. While the word Christ comes from the Greek word Christos which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament word for Messiah and it means the one who is anointed and we remember Jesus when he gave his first recorded sermon in the synagogue where that day. The reading for the congregation came from Isaiah 61 which says the spirit of the Lord is upon me, and he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, and so on. And Jesus after the reading of that text simply said to the congregation this day. This Scripture has been fulfilled in your midst, which he was identifying himself with the content that Isaiah was explaining with respect to the idea of Messiah.

While the concept of Messiah is extremely complex.

It is not a simple idea but there are several strands that are interwoven in the biblical progressive revelation of the function and the character and the nature of this Messiah who would come and deliver his people Israel, and in a sense for Christ to be the Messiah. He has to be the shepherd. He has to be the king. He has to be the Lamb. He has to be the suffering servant of God that is predicted in the book of Isaiah.

For example, there are many many different strands come together in a marvelous way of fact I think one of the extraordinary evidences for the divine inspiration of the Bible is to see how all these different strands of messianic expectancies set forth in the Old Testament all converge and are fulfilled in one person in a dramatic way.

I mentioned the other day.

The text in the apocalypse were John had his vision and he was expecting a lion instead of a lion he sees the land will Jesus fulfills both thousand. He is the lion of Judah, the new king of Israel, and he is also the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world know the second most frequently used title for Jesus in the New Testament, which is a title of great importance is the title Lord. In fact, this title is so important that it is said that the earliest creed of the Christian community. The first century church. The earliest confession of faith was a very simple one. It was the confession. Yet Jesus hello curios geniuses is the Lord.

That was the simple confession of faith and one of the historical reasons for that was that. That was at the point in which the Christian community embraced Jesus as Lord but got them into difficulty with the Roman authorities because of the Emperor called in Rome where for loyalty to the Roman empire. It was required of the citizens to recite publicly the words Kaiser curios Caesar is Lord, all the early Christians were deeply committed to the mandate that they had received from Christ and from the apostles to be obedient to the civil magistrates to pray for the king to honor the king and all of those things and so they did bend over backwards to pay their taxes, and obey the laws of the state and so on.

But the one thing they couldn't do would be to ascribe to Caesar the all honor and the majesty that went with this term. Now this term. Lord isn't always used in such a majestic way in the New Testament.

In fact, it's a little bit confusing for us because there are three distinct ways in which this word Lord, which translates the Greek curios as soon as the first place. The word Lord can be and did function and as the simple polite form of address that you would give to any man.

It's like saying Sir to a man, and so when we have people who don't know Jesus and the medium for the first time the New Testament may address them as Lord. We don't want to jump to the conclusion that they all of a sudden have this deep understanding of the full measure of the majesty of Christ. They may have simply been addressing him in a polite way saying, Sir you know here's my problem. What can you do about them. So what that word sir.

Even in the English language can have a more exalted meaning can't it and when someone is knighted in England for example and are elevated to peerage when they are given. That might would they are now addressed by the name Sir Sir Winston Churchill. Sir Lawrence Olivier is a title originally given to lights. Sir Galahad, and so on. Will the second way in which this term is used in the New Testament is with specific reference to a slave owner who would be a wealthy person who had enough money to purchase servants who work for him and the slave was called a new loss in the New Testament, and you couldn't be and do loss unless you belong to a curios to award so here the term Lord was used to refer to one who owned slaves know that's one of the usages of the title Lord that the apostle Paul was fond of wasn't how often this. He described himself. Paul do loss of Jesus Christ. Paul, a slave of the Lord Jesus and he will say about all of us.

You are not your own, for you have been bought with a price, so that when we confess that Jesus is Lord we understand in that that Christ owns us. He has purchased us in the atonement and so we are his possession. When we call him Lord, the highest use of the term in the New Testament is what's called the Imperial use of the title Lord, and of course that was the usage that Caesar had sought to arrogate to himself and that of course was the one that caused the Christians all the grief and in this sense the New Testament gives a somewhat cryptic statement which says no one can call Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit almost seems to contradict what Jesus himself said in the end of the sermon on the mouth when he said, many will come on the last day saying what Lord, Lord, then we do this in your name and then we do not your name, and he said I will look at them and say depart for me, you workers of iniquity.

I never knew you.

Then again Jesus said this people honors me with their lips while their hearts are far from me. So Jesus obviously understood that a person could open their mouths and use the phraseology and call him by the title Lord even in the Imperial exalted sense and still not be redeemed. So then, why does the Scripture say no man can call Jesus Lord except by the Holy Spirit was two ways we can interpret that one is that the state in this elliptical and what is omitted and must be inserted is that no one can sincerely call Jesus Lord, unless he has been given that through the Holy Ghost that only the regenerate. People have a genuine confession of faith by which they call Jesus Lord, or may have reference to the time of persecution where the one thing people who were not true believers didn't want to do publicly, was to open their mouth and say Jesus is Lord, because if they were caught saying it and they could become a human torch in the garden of Nero or a featured attraction in the Circus Maximus. In any case, the real significance of this title is found in what it translates from the Old Testament in the Old Testament just as it as Christ has many titles in the New Testament. So God has many titles in the Old Testament's name in the Old Testament is Yahweh. But you will read text in the Bible where it says all Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all of the earth where the Lord said to my Lord, sit thou at my right hand and when you read those texts sometimes you will see the strange markings in the English printing of the Bible where one time they will have the name Lord in all capital letters and then in the you see the word Lord with lowercase letters the same English were but is printed differently. Why because SLORD. The editor is letting you in on the secret that the word that is being translated by this term.

Lord is the name of God your way.

The sacred name of the ineffable name and whenever you see L little little our little Billy that indicates that a different Hebrew word is used usually add on or add on hi some form of that name, which was the highest title used by the Hebrew people for God in the Old Testament it was a title that God was given uniquely, it indicated that God, who is Adam I Lord, O Lord, O Yahweh our Adonijah. How excellent is thy name in all the earth. The term Adam and I refers to God's absolute sovereignty over all of his creation, we come to the New Testament we read the amazing him that Paul uses in the second chapter of his epistle to the Philippians, sometimes called the commodity can have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God took his equality with God, not as a thing to be grasped, were jealously guarded or tenaciously held onto but he emptied himself and took upon himself the form of Amanda became obedient as a servant, even unto death, and so on.

And then what's the climax of that expression of pulses. Wherefore, God hath highly exalted him and given to him a name that is above every name, that the name of Jesus every knee would bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God the father know there's a little awkwardness in the construction of that text and so that many people read that text and if we would say to them what is the name that is above every name in the immediately reply what the name Jesus, because of the way it says and he gives him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee would bow no it is to Jesus that God gives the name that is above every name, so that when you hear the name of Jesus you bow and confess that name that is given to him that is above every name, and it is the name Lord that the name of Jesus every knee would bow and every tongue confess what that he is Lord that he is curios that he is not to the glory of God the father.

I we have a special series that we've done oligomeric goes into this in much greater detail on what we can't do it in the quick overview of this series, but it's what I do commend for people who want to go deeper and it's called the majesty of Christ, and many folks have told us that that's helped open up the New Testament view of Jesus for them and I just commend it to you in passing, but in any case, these are the first two titles used for Jesus in terms of their numerical frequency when we get to the third title in terms of numbers of use really the title Messiah is used hundreds of times and also into the hundreds is the title Lord and then will we get to the third and the frequency list.

We drop down dramatically to the low 80s and that is the title son of man, son of man know what's unusual and fascinating about this title for Jesus is that though it ranks third in the frequency of usage of titles for Jesus in the New Testament. Overall, it is far and away the number one title that Jesus used for himself. Now that's significant because one of the things that we all tend to deal with in our daily lives is people mispronouncing our names. Even Mrs. Smith gets turned and mispronounced the Shirley Collier's life from behind the back but you know I people call me sprawl and I say when you call me Sproul I Grau because I want to have my name pronounced properly. It strolled rise were sold, and so on. But that can be a matter of vanity and pride to them. All of that, that sort of thing, but it is a matter of courtesy to call people what they want to be called and it significant to me that Jesus obviously had a preference because there are 82 or 83 or forget the exact number of references to this title in the New Testament at all but three of them are used by Jesus himself, which also has some further significance when you have the higher critics coming to the text and tried to tear it apart, with her negative attack on the Bible will say that so much of the picture and portrait of Jesus that we have in the New Testament was manufactured by the zealous companions of Christ and the early church is not strange.

This meant that when they reproduce the portrait of Jesus and give us the story of his life that if they were really doing that you would expect them to put in Jesus mouth, their favorite designations for him rather than his net of the 80 some times that this title occurs in the Bible and the New Testament all the three of them are attributed to Jesus himself and that's significant because Jesus is saying here is how I identify myself. What's the significance of the Son of Man. Some people see in it an expression of Jesus humility he's being humble. I'm just a poor country preacher. I'm just a common ordinary human being.

None none none none. If we go back to the Old Testament particular to the book of Daniel and we see the vision that Daniel has into the inner chambers of heaven. We have a scene there in which God appears in the throne of judgment as the ancient of days and he welcomes into his presence. The one who comes to him on clouds of glory who is called the Son of Man and it is the Son of Man who is given the authority to judge the world and so in the New Testament usage of this title.

The Son of Man is a heavenly person who descends from heaven to the earth, and he represents nothing less than the authority of God and he comes to bring crisis or judgment to the world because he is the judge who is embodying the divine visitation to this world the day of the Lord on the day of God's visitation and so this is a quite exalted title that is given uniquely to Jesus in the New Testament and I would ask you to be careful as you read through the Scriptures to every single time you come upon this title Son of Man stop and look at its context, and you will begin to see how majestic and exalted. It is as a representation for Jesus. Every name that is given to Jesus in the New Testament is significance. Every name has meaning. Every name was something to us about who use what and as we spend more time in Scripture. Each name of Christ begins to mean something to us personally, Lord, son of God, Son of Man, son of David, Emmanuelle 19th century pastor Octavius Winslow said.

Each title embodies a distinct meaning and illustrates a particular truth.

The significance and preciousness of which the Holy Spirit can alone unfold in the believing heart alone appreciate your listening to Renewing Your Mind on this Wednesday and today's message comes from Dr. RC Sproul series, foundations and overview of systematic theology. We like to send you the special edition of the series. There are eight DVDs when you contact us today with your gift of any amount will be glad to send it your way. You can reach us online@renewingyourmind.org or you can call us at 800-435-4343 and let me thank you in advance for your gift of any amount if you're looking for a Christmas gift for family and friends that let me suggest a gift subscription to table talk. It's a monthly discipleship magazine designed to help Christians grow in their knowledge of Scripture, theology, church history, and a range of other topics. Click the gift tab when you go to table talk magazine.com Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of lords, ruling and reigning over all he created. Prior to his resurrection and ascension, Jesus had to experience unspeakable humiliation. We hope you'll join us as doctors goal looks at how Jesus was both exalted and humble next Thursday on renewing your