Jesus is Lord- Covid-19 Reflections

The first 2 cases were reported on a Thursday, with the Ghanaian Health Minister delivering the news via a Facebook live address to Ghanaians. Three days later, the President of Ghana declared the borders closed and invoked constitutional powers that gave him the right to restrict people’s freedoms. A week later, he called for schools to be closed. In the coming weeks, a partial lockdown was announced, limiting movement out of the capital Accra and the second-largest city – Kumasi. In a matter of weeks – once parliament ratified the emergency powers requested by the President – Ghana transitioned from a democracy where everyone had rights to decide what to do and how to live, to a semi-authoritarian state where the President had the power to dictate where any of us could go, who we could visit, whether our children could go to school or not, even how many people could share a trotro, our favorite means of public transport.

One of the consequences of this transition was the deployment of security forces not just to enforce the lockdown, but to even arrest and submit to the legal system, people who flouted the regulations on lockdown. Quite a substantial amount of money has been accrued to the state via the fines that were realized from non-compliant citizens during this period. The President had made rules restricting our movements with regards to controlling and mapping out the spread of Covid-19, all for our own good. What was required from the citizenry was simple – obedience to the restrictions.

One of the frustrations I’ve had when I talk to people, especially Christians about the significance of the term “Jesus is Lord” has been the inability of a lot of people to connect with the reality of what that term means. But I believe the recent reality of Covid-19 and its management by the government of the day has given me another illustration by which I can communicate why the Lordship of Jesus was a living reality for many early Christians and should be for us as well.

Jesus is Lord – The Spiritualized Version

There are many ways in which people spiritualize this term. A few examples will suffice.

It is very common to hear, especially in response to someone expressing some difficult situation that they are facing, the phrase “It is well”, almost immediately followed by “Jesus is Lord”. To most folk Christians, “Jesus is Lord” is a synonym for another favorite term – “God is in control”. To such people, “Jesus is Lord” simply means that if the person experiencing this difficulty continuously expresses faith in Jesus, he will sail through this difficulty. The term “Jesus is Lord” then is just a balm that many folk Christians use to soothe life’s challenges.

Then there are those who are confused by the term “Lord” in this confession. Because translations of the Bible use the phrase “The Lord” in place of the divine name Yahweh – especially in the Old Testament – when some readers see “Jesus is Lord” in the New Testament, they automatically interpret it to mean “Jesus is God” aka that Jesus is divine. Whiles historic orthodox Christianity has always maintained that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity and therefore divine, this is not what Paul and other writers of the NT (New Testament)  mean when they say, “Jesus is Lord”.

These two very common go-to interpretations of this phrase have a devastating impact – the Jesus described above has very little impact on how many folk Christians live their day to day lives. But these interpretations couldn’t be further from the truth.

So, What Does it Mean Then?

One of the prooftexts that are often quoted during Christian evangelism sermons (more like tirades, if you ask me) is Romans 10:9

“If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Rom 10:9)

But have you ever stopped to ask yourself why Paul juxtaposes confessing “Jesus is Lord” with believing that God did raise him from the dead before on can be “saved”? Well, the key to understanding it lies in the same letter to the Roman church, for the very first verses of the letter set the tone for the rest of this wonderful letter. 

“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—  the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, (a)who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was (b) appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.  Through him, we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake.” (Rom 1:1-5, my emphasis)

There are 3 key points to pay attention to from Paul’s statements above. (a) By emphasizing on Jesus being a “descendant of David”, Paul was focusing on his humanity, and specifically as one coming from the royal house of David. (b) Paul goes on to say that by God resurrecting Jesus from the dead, God had confirmed that Jesus was indeed “Son of God” (again, a royal title meaning the chosen king by the “gods”. Note that Augustus Caesar, the Roman emperor, was also called son of god, but for different reasons). 

This is why believing that God did indeed raise Jesus from the dead is central to our ability to confess him as “Lord”. But what is the point of that confession anyway? Is it just as we Ghanaians say in pidgin, a  “mouth mouth” thing that we just say so we get “saved”? Well, that brings me to the third point and the key reason for this article.

The one thing that the announcement of any new king leads to is for every sub-king and subject of the kingdom to do 1 thing – swear loyalty and obedience to him.

The importance of this perspective cannot be overstated. And the recent Covid-19 decisions and enforcement by our President Nana Akuffo-Addo should help cement the ’s understanding of what the phrase “Jesus is Lord” should mean to us as Christian Ghanaians. 

Just as the Ghanaian President is able to tell us to stay home and not travel, and we obey even though we have the personal independence to not do so, by calling ourselves followers of “Jesus the Lord”, we are obligating ourselves to first and foremost obedience. And not just obedience to anything written in the Bible, but obedience especially to Jesus’ own words and example, mostly captured by the Gospels.

And for Jesus, the most important command he gave to his disciples was as follows.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34).

As people who claim to be Christians, how well are we doing against our first and foremost command? Because unlike the world’s kings and politicians who do one thing but tell us to do something else, Jesus is a king who puts his money where his mouth is. He loves his enemies even to death. So, when he says we should love our enemies, are we a people who are good at making excuses, or are we a people who do what the number one duty of a subject is – to obey their king?

Or because unlike our President Nana Akuffo Addo, Jesus doesn’t have a police force to run around and arrest us when we don’t love one another as even Christians (not to talk of loving our enemies), we perhaps think we are getting free lunch. Well, if that is the case, let me leave us with one more implication of the resurrection of “Jesus the Lord”

“For he [God] has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” (Act 17:31)

By the same resurrection from the dead that declares that “Jesus is Lord”, this king has been appointed by God to judge with justice (aka how we treat each other). Let us ensure that our justice to one another will be seen on that day.