Note that solemn accumulation, in the language of my text, of all the
designations by which He is called, sometimes separately and
sometimes unitedly, the name of 'our Lord Jesus Christ.' We never
find that full title given to Him in Scripture except when the
writer's mind is labouring to express the manifoldness and
completeness of our Lord's relations to men, and the largeness and
sufficiency of the blessings which He brings. In this context I find
in the first nine or ten verses of this chapter, so full is the
Apostle of the thoughts of the greatness and wonderfulness of his
dear Lord on whose name he calls, that six or seven times he employs
this solemn, full designation.
Now, if we look at the various elements of this great name we shall
get various aspects of the way in which calling on Christ is the
strength of our souls.
'Call on the name of--the Lord.' That is the Old Testament Jehovah.
There is no mistaking nor denying, if we candidly consider the
evidence of the New Testament writings, that, when we read of Jesus
Christ as 'Lord,' in the vast majority of cases, the title is not a
mere designation of human authority, but is an attribution to Him of
divine nature and dignity. We have, then, to ascribe to Him, and to
call on Him as possessing, all which that great and incommunicable
Name certified and sealed to the Jewish Church as their possession
in their God. The Jehovah of the Old Testament is our Lord of the
New. He whose being is eternal, underived, self-sufficing,
self-determining, knowing no variation, no diminution, no age, He
who is because He is and that He is, dwells in His fulness in our
Saviour. To worship Him is not to divert worship from the one God,
nor is it to have other gods besides Him. Christianity is as much
monotheistic as Judaism was, and the law of its worship is the old
law--Him only shalt thou serve. It is the divine will that all men
should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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