The Profound Significance of Jesus' Names and Titles

I think it's safe to say that Jesus is the most titled person in all of recorded history. I remember an occasion where at a theological seminary where I once worked, they would hold an annual convocation where a leading scholar would come and give an academic address for the occasion, and on this particular day the scholar who was invited was well-known, and everybody expected a very technical, academic discourse during his 45-minute address. [00:00:34]

And he surprised everybody by simply coming to the podium. He opened up a piece of paper that had a long list on it, and as a litany he began to recite the names for Jesus that are found in Scripture. He just began to read from this list saying things like, "Lord, Son of God, Son of Man, Son of David, Emanuel, The Word, Our Champion, The Rose of Sharon, The Lily of the Valley," and he went on and on and on for 45 minutes before he exhausted the number of names that are given to Jesus in the New Testament. [00:01:11]

And each one of these names, or each one of these titles, reveals something to us about the character of Christ or about the work in which He was engaged, and that's an interesting study that you may do on your own. As you're going through the Scripture, notice every time the Scripture assigns a title to Jesus. Now, in the brief time that we have in this session, we're going to look at some of the more prominent names or titles that are given to Jesus in the New Testament. [00:02:03]

We know that we are familiar with the name Jesus Christ. But to call this His name is itself a misnomer, because it's not really His name. His name is Jesus, or Jesus bar Joseph, or Jesus of Nazareth. Christ is a title. It's like we would say of the President of the United States, President William Jefferson Clinton, or whoever is the president at the time. President is the title; William is his name. [00:02:41]

And so in this case, the title that is used is Christ, and this is the title for Jesus that is used more frequently than any other title in the entire Scripture. And it's because of its numerical frequency, it's because it's used so often in connection with Jesus that we've come to think of it as Jesus' last name, Jesus Christ. You notice how sometimes the Bible reverses the order and will speak of Christ Jesus. [00:03:23]

Now, the word Christ comes from the Greek word Christos which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament word for Messiah, and it means the one who is anointed. And we remember Jesus, when He gave His first recorded sermon in the synagogue, where that day the reading for the congregation came from Isaiah 61, which says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, and He has anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor," and so on. [00:03:56]

And Jesus, after the reading of that text simply said to the congregation, "This day this Scripture has been fulfilled in your midst," in which He was identifying Himself with the content that Isaiah was explaining with respect to the idea of Messiah. While the concept of Messiah is extremely complex, it is not a simple idea, but there are several strands that are interwoven in the Biblical progressive revelation of the function and the character and the nature of this Messiah who would come and deliver his people, Israel. [00:04:34]

And, in a sense, for Christ to be the Messiah, He has to be the Shepherd; He has to be the King; He has to be the Lamb; He has to be the Suffering Servant of God that is predicted in the book of Isaiah, for example. There are many, many different strands that come together in a marvelous way. In fact, I think one of the extraordinary evidences for the divine inspiration of the Bible is to see how all these different strands of Messianic expectancies set forth in the Old Testament all converge and are fulfilled in one person in a dramatic way. [00:05:22]

Now, the second most frequently used title for Jesus in the New Testament, which is a title of great importance, is the title 'Lord'. And, in fact, this title is so important that it is said that the earliest creed of the Christian community, the first century church, the earliest confession of faith was a very simple one. It was the confession, Jesus ho kyrios, Jesus is Lord. That was the simple confession of faith, and one of the historical reasons for that was that it was at the point in which the Christian community embraced Jesus as Lord that got them into difficulty with the Roman authorities. [00:06:35]

Because of the emperor cult in Rome, where for loyalty to the Roman Empire, it was required of the citizens to recite publicly the words 'Kairos kurios', Caesar is lord. Now, the early Christians were deeply committed to the mandate that they had received from Christ and from the apostles to be obedient to the civil magistrate, to pray for the king, to honor the king, and all of those things, and so they did bend over backwards to pay their taxes and obey the laws of the state, and so on, but the one thing they couldn't do would be to ascribe to Caesar the honor and the majesty that went with this term. [00:07:34]

Now, this term 'Lord' isn't always used in such a majestic way in the New Testament. In fact, it's a little bit confusing for us because there are three distinct ways in which this word 'lord', which translates the Greek kurios, is used. The first place the word 'lord' can be and did function as the simple, polite form of address that you would give to any man. It's like saying 'Sir' to a man. [00:08:20]

But the highest use of the term in the New Testament is what's called the imperial use of the title 'lord'. And of course, that was the usage that Caesar had sought to arrogate to himself. And that, of course, was the one that caused the Christians all the grief. And in this sense the New Testament gives us somewhat cryptic statement which says no one can call Jesus Lord except by the Holy Spirit, almost seems to contradict what Jesus Himself said in the end of the Sermon on the Mount, when he said, "Many will come on the last day" saying what? "Lord, Lord, didn't we do this in your name and didn't we do that in your name," and he said, "I will look at them and say, 'Depart from me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you'." [00:11:07]

The term Adonai refers to God's absolute sovereignty over all of His creation. Now, we come to the New Testament. We read the amazing hymn that Paul uses in the second chapter of his epistle to the Philippians, sometimes called the Kenotic hymn. "Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus: Who being in the form of God took His equality with God not as a thing to be grasped or jealously guarded or tenaciously held on to, but he emptied Himself and took upon Himself the form of a man and became obedient as a servant even unto death" and so on. [00:15:17]

Now, we have a special series that we've done at Ligonier that goes into this in much greater detail and we can't do it in the quick overview of this series, but it's one I do commend for people who want to go deeper and it's called 'The Majesty of Christ'. And many folks have told us that that's helped open up the New Testament view of Jesus for them, and I'd just commend that to you in passing. But in any case, these are the first two titles used for Jesus in terms of their numerical frequency. [00:17:16]

When we get to the third title in terms of numbers of use really the title Messiah is used hundreds of times and also into the hundreds is the title 'Lord'. And then when we get to the third in the frequency list, we drop down dramatically to the low 80's and that is the title Son of Man. Son of Man. Now, what's unusual and fascinating about this title for Jesus is that though it ranks third in the frequency of usage of titles for Jesus in the New Testament over all, it is far and away the number one title that Jesus used for Himself. [00:17:46]

If we go back to the Old Testament, particularly to the book of Daniel, and we see the vision that Daniel has into the inner chambers of heaven, we have a scene there in which God appears in the throne of judgment as the Ancient of Days, and He welcomes into His presence the One who comes to Him on clouds of glory who is called the Son of Man. And it is the Son of Man who is given the authority to judge the world. And so in the New Testament usage of this title, the Son of Man is a heavenly person Who descends from Heaven to the earth and He represents nothing less than the authority of God. [00:21:01]