Interestingly to me, I find that Jesus is almost trendy is today's society. The majority of people believe in God and many people will say they like Jesus...or Jesus Rocks...or Jesus is my homeboy...or whatever. The more interesting part is that Jesus CHRIST is much less trendy. I don't hear people casually saying, I love the Christ. I love Jesus Christ. Christ Jesus. Anything like that. I feel like there is something to this.
Biblically, I checked it out, and in Paul's letters he refers to Jesus almost 200 times, and in less than ten of those does he refer to our Savior as simply "Jesus." He almost always writes Christ. When he doesn't specify the title Christ, he makes certain to write "the LORD Jesus." Often times he would combine them: "The Lord Jesus Christ." In the Gospels Jesus is conversly referred to as simply Jesus, but this makes sense as the stories are about the man Jesus. His life and work. Luke especially focuses on Jesus as a man, as a type of theme, and the other three Gospels refer to Jesus as "The Christ" the first time they mention Him and defer to simply "Jesus" after that.
SO WHAT?
So what? Why does this matter? I don't know. But I think it may be significant. I feel like our emphasis on having a personal relationship with God has something to do with it. Now I'm not taking ANYthing away from this. Our God is a personal, loving, wonderful God who truly wants to know us and this is what sets the True God apart from many other gods. It is also a crux of Christianity. What I do fear is that we have forgot that Jesus is also ALMIGHTY GOD. He is our Lord. We don't grasp that terminology in our society as much. But he is our Boss, our Superior, our King. He is the Authority. He is also the Christ! The Messiah. He is the one promised to come and save His people from their sins. He was long awaited as the Ruler who would finally deliver peace to the world.
Listen, God is a paradox. 100% of many different things. He does call us His friends, and this is so wonderful and important and life-changing. But He is also our Master. We are servants; and more literally - his slaves. I don't want to forget the importance of Jesus as LORD. As Almighty God, whom we are to fear! He created all! He will judge all! Mountains melt before him! He is truly awesome in every sense of the word.
I just want everyone to have a clear view of WHO GOD IS. So...I ask you to consider, the next time you talk about Jesus, think about saying "Christ" as well.
The world has stolen his Holy Name as a curse word. Let's reclaim it.
