Thought of the Day !!

For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Romans 10:9 (NLT)

"Jesus is Lord" was the earliest confession of faith for the Church. They didn't need a bunch of Creeds or sets of beliefs because this was really all that mattered. The Greek word used here for Lord is "Kurios", which is the same word that the Roman Emperor would use when he would say that the people were to call him Lord. It's the same word that is used over 6000 times in the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures) when referring to the name of God.

So when the early Christians claimed that Jesus was Lord, they were setting him right up there with where the Roman Emperor wanted to be and where the God of Abraham was. They were in essence saying the same thing that the author of John claimed when beginning his Gospel by writing that he was with God and that he was God.

When we honestly make this claim, we are stating that he is the only one worthy of our worship, our time, our efforts, our lives. We will either be enslaved by the love of self, leading to love of what this world offers, or a love of the Kurios. Making this statement claims the latter.

Believing in our hearts meant something much different in the early Church. The heart was not a symbol of love and romance. It symbolized the core of one's being. And to believe with our hearts that Jesus was raised means that we believe this in the core of our beings. It's not simply an intellectual belief. It's what motivates us to live our lives.

If Jesus had just died, we'd have a dead faith. But the resurrection was the surest sign that Jesus was and is the Kurios. And this leads us back to Jesus IS Lord...not Jesus WAS Lord. If he died, he would have been. But since he defeated death, he not only lived...but still lives as well.

In the love of Christ,
greg