Mere Missions

J esus I s L ord : E ndearment • 35

who reigns” (Rev. 19.6). All those under the earth, the demonic cosmic forces and their rulers and authorities, all confess and shriek with terror at the Lordship and authority of Jesus (Matt. 8.28-34). It is strange that though the spiritual beings in the heavenly world and the underworld have no doubts as to the Lordship of Jesus, there are those on the earth who question, doubt, and even fight against it. King David captured it well in Psalm 2.1-4, “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.’ He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision.” Jesus is the Lord, “and the ruler of kings on earth” (Rev. 1.5). The declaration that Jesus is Lord goes deep into the sacred roots of the Church’s Great Tradition – “those doctrines, practices, and structures employed by the ancient Church as it sought to give expression to the truth concerning Jesus Christ” ( Sacred Roots: A Primer on Retrieving the Great Tradition, Dr. Don. L. Davis ). Some say that these three words, Jesus is Lord , sum up the Christian faith. The Apostles’ first-hand experience with Jesus of Nazareth as written in our Bible today, gives witness to over 650 times to the truth that Jesus is Lord. This is the heart of apostolic preaching and proclamation, “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’s sake” (2 Cor. 4.5). On the Day of Pentecost when the Church was birthed by the Holy Spirit, Peter stood before the nations that had gathered in Jerusalem and confessed “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2.36). The Apostle Peter was not preaching a wishful thought, possibility or probability. It was a certainty.