ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
August 12, 2026
Jesus is Lord might be the oldest Christian confession we have. When the Apostle Paul wrote those words, he was not offering an original declaration, but echoing what he had heard. In an essay by Dr. Joerg Rieger entitled: Why Paul Was Never a Conservative, he suggests that the word kyrios (Greek word for Lord) was “not a vague religious honorific in the first century. It was an official title of the Roman emperor,” and the use by the early Jesus followers was not some empty religious rhetoric. Rieger invites his readers to run a test, referencing a teaching of Jesus:
Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. We hear a division: religion over here, taxes and politics over there. But ask a faithful Jew of that period what belongs to God, and the answer is not some things. The answer is everything. Which leaves precisely nothing for Caesar. The line is not a compromise. It is a joke, and the joke is at the emperor’s expense.
Remember, Paul was executed in a similar fashion as Jesus, a form of execution kept exclusively for threats to the Empire. Sometimes we read the Apostle Paul, and our thought is that of a moderate who was trying to find a middle ground. According to a growing number of scholars, there is probably nothing further from the truth. The way Paul preached Jesus was a threat to the very fabric of the Empire, and the Romans recognized it. Had he just been a common teacher with a message of religious niceties, the Romans would have left him alone because his message would have quietly encouraged compliance. Remember, Jesus did not encourage people to be compliant with the Empire, but live as those who were residents of the Kin(g)dom of God, most beautifully revealed in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), where Jesus told his followers to love both neighbor and enemy, to turn the other cheek, to forgive others as God had forgiven us, and to claim how blessed were the peacemakers… just to name a few of those teachings.
Paul believed Jesus was Lord, and for that reason, he could not and would not play by the unjust and unloving rules of the Roman Empire. In fact, before his execution, he spent a lot of time in jail because he continued to live a life that stood in radical contrast to that of the Roman Empire. I think I need to do some rereading of Paul.
Continue to teach me what can be found beyond my assumptions that have often become rather stuck. Holy God, provide me both a vision of your reign of grace and mercy, and then reveal to me tangible ways of living as a resident of that reign. Amen.
