“And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me,” says the Lord Almighty. (2 Corinthians 6:18)

To Christians ears, calling Jesus “Lord” does not sound strange or earthshaking. Even in our post-Christian Western society, Christian terminology endures, and most can easily slip into using the term “Lord” in reference to Christ. However, the implications are huge.

The term can harken to medieval Europe to refer to a certain level of nobility or even to the present-day “House of Lords” in parliament of the United Kingdom. In the first century, however, “Lord” was used to address someone in authority or simply as a formal term of respect. It was not limited to and did not always imply divine authority.

However, Jesus is frequently called Lord, and often in contexts where the word “Lord” is used to translate the divine name of God in the OT. Remember that the Jews bordered on superstition in not ever verbalizing God’s name, Yahweh. In written form (throughout the OT), the consonants of Yahweh were present, but the vowels were not (as with all Hebrew writing). English translations routinely indicate the divine name as “Lord” in what we call small caps. When the ancient Jews read their scriptures, when they came across the divine name, they would say “The Name” or similar. It is critically important to understand that when the Greek translation (called the Septuagint or LXX for short) was produced, the word “Lord” was routinely used to render the divine name of God. That Greek translation was the text normally in use during the first century, not the Hebrew text.

So when the NT quotes from the OT, we often see the form recorded in the Greek version of the OT. Thus, our passage today, 2 Corinthians 6:18, loosely quotes and adapts 2 Samuel 7:14 or 1 Chronicles 17:13 and attributes this quote to the “Lord Almighty,” using language that was familiar to Jewish ears as a clear reference to God Almighty. In this letter to the Corinthians, Paul has been using the term “Lord” regularly to refer to the “Lord” Jesus Christ, no less than three times in the opening chapter of the letter alone! He says, “We do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord” (2 Cor 4:5). He closes his letter with the benediction: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ … be with you all” (2 Cor 13:14). Clearly, Paul teaches that Jesus Christ is the Lord Almighty! He is God! If Jesus was and is not God, then Paul committed a faux pas of blasphemous proportions, by referring to Him in the way He did as “Lord.”

Lord Jesus Christ, I am overwhelmed that You have made me to be Your child, a child of the Lord Almighty.