Lord
In the NET Bible translation, the English word “Lord” occurs 176 times in our three books. The first occurrence is in John 1:23 which quotes John the Baptist proclaiming his work in the wilderness as the forerunner of Jesus: John said, “I am the voice of one shouting in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”
This statement of John the Baptist is a very important quotation from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah:
40:1 “Comfort, comfort my people,”says your God.
2 “Speak kindly to Jerusalem, and tell her
that her time of warfare is over,
that her punishment is completed.
For the Lord has made her pay double for all her sins.”
3 A voice cries out,
“In the wilderness clear a way for the Lord;
construct in the desert a road for our God.
The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew. In it were multiple names for God, each emphasizing a different aspect of His Being. For instance, the Hebrew word el, and in many manifestations of the word, references God’s “Highness” or “elevation” above mankind, and our domain of space time. Such word el is likely the origin our English words elevation and elevated, meaning something high up. So,when the Old Testament makes reference to God as el it is doing so to draw our thinking to God’s attribute of greatness far above, far beyond, anything comparable in mankind, creation, or our direct physical experience.
Another Old Testament word for God is extremely important, as it is His personal name, by which He identified Himself to mankind and to men (and of course, we mean “men” in the inclusive sense of men and women). Some English translations present this personal name of God by the word LORD, using all capitals. Notice the transition in the text below from Genesis 2 (NET translation) which begins with only the word “God” (translated from el) and then begins in verse 4 “Lord God.” I have put in bold font all references to God and Lord God, and also underlined “Lord” for emphasis:
Genesis 2:1 The heavens and the earth were completed with everything that was in them. 2 By the seventh day God finished the work that he had been doing, and he ceased on the seventh day all the work that he had been doing. 3 God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he ceased all the work that he had been doing in creation.
4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created—when the Lord God made the earth and heavens.
5 Now no shrub of the field had yet grown on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. 6 Springs would well up from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. 7 The Lord God formed the man from the soil of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
8 The Lord God planted an orchard in the east, in Eden; and there he placed the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow from the soil, every tree that was pleasing to look at and good for food. (Now the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were in the middle of the orchard.)
10 Now a river flows from Eden to water the orchard, and from there it divides into four headstreams. 11 The name of the first is Pishon; it runs through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is pure; pearls and lapis lazuli are also there). 13 The name of the second river is Gihon; it runs through the entire land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is Tigris; it runs along the east side of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.
15 The Lord God took the man and placed him in the orchard in Eden to care for it and to maintain it. 16 Then the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat fruit from every tree of the orchard, 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.”
Beginning at vs. 4 above, we have the personal name of el (God) revealed to us, namely: the Hebrew word, retained in all Old Testament scriptures only by four Hebrew consonants, YHWH. The vowels that presumably were part of God’s name are not recorded. The general understanding for this is out of extreme reverence for God that whatever was known of the pronunciation of YHWH by those people of the Old Testament, like Moses, who literally heard God’s voice, was not recorded in the written scriptures. The four consonants are known as the “tetragrammaton” which means, literally, four writings (i.e., letters). In English translations of the Hebrew YHWH, translators have inserted guesses at the vowels, and hence pronunciation, as either Yahweh or Jehovah. YHWH is extremely important in the Old Testament for many reasons. Of course given that it is the name of God is reason enough for its importance. But further the word YHWH occurs more than 6,000 times (!) in the Old Testament. And, YHWH occurs at many, if not every, propitious moment and place in the history of the Old Testament, beginning as in the text from Genesis 2, at the beginning of creation.
More importantly for our purposes is the translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into the ancient Greek language. About 200 years before the birth of Christ, a very important translation of the Hebrew language Old Testament was made into the common and widely used Greek dialect of the time, koine (meaning “common”) Greek. After the widespread dominion of Alexander’s armies beginning some 100 plus years prior (ca. 320 B.C.), Greek had become a widely used language, and Hebrew became a declining used language among the dispersed Jewish people and even among the Jews living in the territory of Israel. Accordingly, Jewish scholars sought to have an Old Testament that could be read by those who were not fluent in Hebrew, either Jews or Gentiles. That Greek translation is known as the Septuagint (meaning “the 70,” in reference to the number of translators involved), which is commonly abbreviated by the Roman numeric equivalent, namely LXX.
The translators of the LXX were confronted with how to translate YHWH into Greek in all those many thousands of usages in the Old Testament. The Greek word used for such purpose in essentially every instance is the work kurios. So, the translation equation is: Hebrew “YHWH” = Greek “kurios.”
Now, we turn our attention to the New Testament, and specifically our three books of John, Acts, and Romans. All the New Testament was written in Greek, in essentially the same dialect of the koine Greek. So, how was kurios used in the New Testament? It is most commonly used as the title of Jesus Christ. So our translation equation is: (OT) Hebrew “YHWH” = (OT) Greek “kurios”= (NT) “Jesus Christ,” where OT and NT is reference to the Old Testament and New Testament.
Finally, considering our English translation of the New Testament, such as the NET Bible used in Three Books, the Greek kurios, is translated by the word “Lord” exactly as YHWH of the OT. (This is true of essentially every English translation of the Bible). So, addressing our translation equation again, we have: (OT) Hebrew “YHWH el” = (OT) Greek “kurios God”= (OT) English “Lord God” = (NT) “Lord Jesus Christ.”
Putting this succinctly, the Lord Jesus Christ, as revealed to us in Three Books and the rest of the NT is the very Being YHWH (Yahweh / Jehovah) of the OT.
This truth claim would have been shocking even abhorrent to a Jew at the time of Christ, as it has been since that time, because it makes the claim that Jesus was the Messiah (which is the Hebrew word for the Greek word “Christos” from which we get our English word “Christ”). The offense of this claim is much worse. The word “Messiah” / “Christ” means one sent by God for a deliverance purpose. Such Messiah would have special, supernatural powers and authority. Jesus was certainly all that in the eyes of those who came to faith. However, what the Jews, nor anyone else, understood was that “Messiah” was not to be just some super special prophet or king or priest in the line of OT examples of each or all of these categories. No, the work required by God to deliver His people, us all, was that God Himself, Jesus God, was Messiah. So, yes, in a certain sense Jesus was “sent” from God. But literally He was God Who came into space-time as both man and God to do the work on the cross required to pay, by substitution, the sin penalty of all who believe (which faith itself is a gift from God to us). Christ did claim to be Prophet, Priest, and King, but more importantly He was proclaimed to be the “Lamb of God” (John 1), the very sacrifice for sin on our behalf. How that ‘worked’ is beyond us, given as it was a work that transcended space-time into the infinite-eternal whereby God Himself paid God’s righteous requirement so that forgiveness could be a free gift (i.e. grace), because forgiveness could not come any other way but freely, because we fallen beings could not ever ‘work’ to achieve it on our own behalf.
You must conclude, as the CS Lewis essay contained in Three Books states, that this is either the most astonishing message in the history of the world, or it is the most utter lunacy ever conceived. There is no middle ground for a “good man” Jesus. He is either who said He was and did what He accomplished, or He was an abject lunatic, as all of us must likewise be who believe Him to be what He said He was and did what He said He did.
So when someone who does not believe thinks this message is the most stupid of all stupidities, they are right in reaching that conclusion. Because if one does not believe that Jesus God is the Christ, that is the only proper conclusion. Alternatively, if someone claims not to believe in Christ, but finds people who do believe to be “reasonable,” that person is not even close to understanding the claim of the Bible, the essence of the Gospel, the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Consider now, again, the texts of John, Acts, and Romans where Jesus is referred to as “Lord.” Please go to the key words listing for the titles of Jesus for each of these three books and note the references to “Lord.” For the Gospel of John, go here to see all the name references to Jesus.