Titles of Jesus, Christology

Introduction:  A title is a designation which describes or refers to some particular function or status of a person and hence may indicate the honour which is ascribed to him.  Names and titles are closely related.  Sometimes what began as a name would become a title, and vice versa.  These rather general considerations are relevant to a consideration of the titles given to Jesus in the Bible.  These designations bring out his personal identity, nature and character as well as his mission. Let us sturdy some titles  which are commonly applied to Jesus bellow:

1          Lord:      The NT refers Jesus as ‘Lord’ (Kyrios) in two primary senses:

(a) often the terms is simply a title of respect, used in the same way that English idiom uses ‘sir,’ 

(b) at other times it has a more exalted sense, used of someone who has lordship or dominion. 

In the latter sense, gods, emperors, and kings were called ‘lord.’  The Jews used the term to refer to their God, Yahweh.  In Greek there are two words for ‘lord’ and ‘master’ : (a) despotes, and (b) Kyrios.

             (a)Despotes (δεσπότης) denotes the lord as owner and master in the sphere of family and public life, where lordship sometimes entails harshness and caprice.  Despotes is twice used with reference to Jesus in 2 Pet.2:1 and Jude 4 which uses the same underlying idea.  In both passage the term is used in opposition to heretical statements.

             (b)          Kyrios (κύριος);  Kyrios which occurs more often means lord, and carries with it overtones of the legality and acknowledged authority of lordship.  Kyrios as applied to Jesus is in the first instance a polite form of address, as it is with other people.  Thia form of address also implies recognition of Jesus as a leader, and willingness to obey him (Mt.7:21; 21:29ff; Lk.6:46).  As ‘Son of Man,’ Jesus is also ‘Kyrios’ of the Sabbath.  He has control over the holy day of God’s people (Mk.2:28f).  Even after his death and resurrection the words of Jesus have unrestricted authority for the Christian community.  By the resurrection God had demonstrated that Jesus was indeed the Lord, and the early church applied the words of Ps.110:1 to Jesus in virtue of the resurrection event (Acts 2:34-36).  This text had  already been used by Jesus when he taught that the Messiah was David’s Lord (Mk.12:36) and in reply to the high priest at his trial (Mk.14:62).  The Lordship of the Messiah, Jesus, is a present reality.  He is exercising in a hidden way God’s authority and lordship over the world and will bring it to completion in the eschatological future.

             In the biblical tradition, God and Lord are understood and used as interchangeable titles.  Therefore, it is significant to note that though many people rejected Jesus’ divinity, that is, Jesus as God, the immediate Easter community’s confession was ‘Jesus is Lord’ (Acts 2:36; 1 Cor.12:3; Phil.2:11) and the Jewish opponents of Jesus and his movement seem to find nothing objectionable in that confession.  If Jesus was now Lord, it followed that the task of the early church was to lead people to recognize the status of Jesus.  New converts became members of the church by acknowledging Jesus as Lord (Rom.10:9 cf. 1 Cor.12:3).  The great significance of the confession is seen in Phil.2:11 where the climax of God’s purpose is that all creation will acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord.

2          Christ:  Jewish hopes were centered on the establishment of God’s rule or kingdom, and this hope was often associated with the coming of an agent of God to exercise his rule.  Such a person would be a king, anointed by God and belonging to the line of David.  The term Anointed One, which would be used to describe a king, priest or prophet, came to be used as a technical term in the inter-testamental period for this expected agent of God.  The Hebrew word was ‘masiah,’ from which was derived the transliterated Greek form ‘Messias,’ anglicized as ‘Messiah’; the corresponding Greek word meaning ‘anointed’ was ‘Christos,’ from which comes the alternative English form ‘Christ.’  Since the expected ruler was expected to be a King and a Son (that is, descendant) of David, these two terms were also used as titles or designations for him.

             The term ‘Messiah’ (Christ) is rarely found on the lips of Jesus.  In Mk.12:35 and 13:21 he speaks about the Messiah and claimants to Messiahship without directly identifying himself as Messiah.  In Mt.23:10 and Mk.9:41 he is represented as teaching his disciples, apparently with reference primarily to the situation in the early church.  It follows that Jesus did not refer to himself as Christ (Messiah ) in his public teaching to the crowds and that at best he used the title rarely in speaking to his disciples (Jn.4:25f.).  On the other hand, many of Jesus’ activities could be regarded as those of the Messiah.  His baptism with the Spirit was regarded by both himself and the early church as an anointing (Lk.4:18; Acts 4:27; 10:38).  He proclaimed the coming rule of God, associated its coming with his own activity, and acted with an authority that suggested that he stood in place of God (Mt.12:28; Mk.2:7).  At his trial he was asked whether he was the Christ (Messiah), and on this occasion he did publicly admit the fact (Mk.14:61f).  At an early point Peter named him as the Christ (Messiah), and Jesus did not reject the identification (Mk.8:29f).

3          Son of God:        This title was used in the OT to refer to the people of Israel as a whole and to their king in particular and to express the relationship which they had to God in terms of divine care and protection on the one hand and human service and obedience on the other.  It is possible that by NT times the Messiah was beginning to be regarded as in some special sense the Son of God, and the thought that godly individuals were the special objects of God’s fatherly care and concern had also developed.

             Jesus himself was undoubtedly conscious of a particular relationship to God whom he addressed in prayer by the intimate name of Abba (Mk.14:36).  It is against this background that we should understand his use of the term ‘Son’ to express his relationship to God as his Father (Mt.11:27; Lk.10:22).  Here he claims that the same intimacy exists between himself and God as between a son and his father, so that he alone is qualified to reveal God to men.  This sense of a unique Sonship goes beyond the general sense of a filial relationship to God which might have been held by a pious Jew.  It is further to be seen in the way in which God himself addresses Jesus as his Son in the stories of baptism and the transfiguration (Mk.1:11; 9:7), and also in the manner of address used by Satan and the demon (Mt.4:3; Mk.3:11; 5:7).  The evidence shows that Jesus himself was reticent to express his sense of unique personal relationship to God.

4          Son of Man:       The Gospels give the impression that Jesus preferred to use the title ‘Son of Man’ to refer to himself.   Apart from the Gospels this phrase appears elsewhere in the NT only in Acts 7:56.  The Greek form of the expression represents an earlier Aramaic expression ‘bar enash’ or its Hebrew equivalent ‘ben Adam,’ an idiom meaning either a particular member of the species ‘man’ (e.g. Ezek.2:1), or ‘mankind’ in general (E.g. Ps.8:4).  However, in the Gospels, this phrase has become a title for Jesus.  The title apparently identifies Jesus as the ‘one like a son of man’ in Dan.7:13.  Like earlier Jewish interpreters, such as the authors of Similitudes of Enoch and 4 Ezra 13, Jewish Christians interpreted the ‘one like a son of man’ in Dan.7:13 as the Messiah.  From that passage they developed the expression ‘the Son of Man’ as a messianic title referring to Jesus.

             The NT usage of the term ‘Son of Man’ at the first sight is very simple.  Apart from the citation of Ps.8:4 in Heb.2:6 and an allusion to Dan.7:13 in Rev.2:13, and with one exception (Acts 7:56), the expression ‘Son of Man’ is used by Jesus in reference to himself 

In the Synoptic Gospels ‘Son of Man’ is used by Jesus for himself.  Among the Synoptic, Mark presents a more theological significant usage of the term ‘Son of Man’ as applied to Jesus.  Jesus as the ‘Son of Man’ in Mark has three stages: (a) exalted ‘Son of Man’; (b) the suffering ‘Son of Man’; and (c) the coming ‘Son of Man’.  But in John ‘Son of Man’ as a self-referent of Jesus has a more varied usage, the most characteristic being those sayings that speak about the exaltation of the Son of Man, an expression that makes an allusion to the ‘cross’ and ‘exaltation’ (Jn.3:14; 8:28; 12:34).

5          Savior:   The title ‘Savior’ is applied to Jesus (Lk.2:11; Jn.4:42).  Though this title is applied to Jesus only twice in the Gospels, the idea is far more frequent.  For instance, Matthew explains the name Jesus as the one who saves his people from their sins (Mt.1:21); and in many of the healing miracles restoration to health is taken to be a sign of salvation- an ambiguity that was possible through the two-fold meaning of the Greek word ‘save’: to restore to physical health and to deliver from the final divine wrath.  Jesus is the ‘Savior’ because that is what the name ‘Jesus’ means.  ‘Savior’ means one who delivers from a present and, or a future danger.  The primary usage of the word ‘savior’ in the OT is in reference to judges and other leaders raised up by God to bring deliverance to Israel in times of national crisis (Neh.9:27).  It was also used of God, who of course, used these human saviors as his agents.  In the Deutero-Isaiah it became a recognized title for God (Isa.43:3) in connection with the deliverance brought to Israel in the return from the Exile.  This usage represents a turning point in the history of the word, since from then on salvation by God acquired more than purely political or military significance and prepared the way for its NT use in reference to the end-time salvation brought by Christ.

             ‘Savior’ also had political connotations.    With the adoption of the imperial cultus in the eastern Roman Empire, the emperors assumed the title ‘god and savior.’  This imperial usage may explain why the title ‘savior’ only became common in second century Christianity.  The true savior is not Caesar but Christ.  Here it is no longer used in the sense of end-time deliverer but to refer to Christ as the bringer of present, personal benefits such as cleansing from sin.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

6          The Word:          The term ‘Word’ is a technical term, translated from the common Greek word ‘logos’ which generally means ‘word,’ ‘speech,’ ‘account,’ ‘story,’ or ‘message.’  The term ‘Word’ (logos) is used 128 times in the Gospels.  Matthew and Mark use ‘Word’ (logos) in a non-philosophical sense but Luke begins to use ‘Word’ (logos) in a more technical sense.  The Johannine prologue uses ‘Word’ (logos) in a particular way to refer to Jesus.  Matthew and Mark use ‘Word’ (logos) fairly frequently with its general meaning of ‘speech’ or ‘message.’  Sometimes the word can bear the specific meaning of the ‘word of God’ or the ‘word of Jesus’ where it may refer to the message of the Scriptures, of the gospel or of the kingdom.   In a very few instances ‘Word’ (logos) describes the authoritative word of Jesus over evil.  Luke uses ‘logos’ less frequently with its general sense of ‘speech’ and more frequently for the particular ‘word’ of Jesus, whether it is his message or his authoritative word.  There is even an instance where Luke equates Jesus’ ‘word’ with the ‘word’ of God (Lk.5:1).

             In the Johannine Gospel almost every occurrence of ‘Word’ (logos) is in some syntactical sequence with Jesus or God.  The most distinctive sense in which John uses ‘logos’ (Word) is the personalization of ‘logos’ (Word) and its identification with Jesus (cf.1:1-3, 14).  The Word is the person of the Godhead through whom the world was created, who took on human nature in history and who is the source of life and light of humanity.