Royal Relationships

While watching a documentary on Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, I was surprised that Prince Philip walked five steps behind the Queen, although he was her husband. Likewise, he and the queen’s mother, Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon, bowed to her like the rest of the people under her rule. Royalty was greatly respected, and protocols were set to protect their prestige.

After every religious group tried to trap the Lord Jesus in his words and failed, Jesus set a puzzle before them: How could people say the Messiah was David’s son when David called him “Lord.” No one in that culture would call one’s son “Lord.” But that was what exactly David did. How could that be?

Now the text goes like this:

“Why do people say the Messiah is David’s son because David says in the Psalms: ‘YHWH said to my Adonai(Lord): Sit at my right hand until I made all your enemies your footstool.’ (Ps 110:1). In summary, David called him Adonai (Lord). How is his son his Adonai (Lord)?” (Luke 20:41–44).

Imagine a scenario where Lori or my mother calls me “Dr. Spurgeon.” Neither will do that. To them, I am “Andrew” or something like that (my mother called me mahene, a Tamil term of endearment for a son). Similarly, David would have never called Solomon (aka Jedidiah) “my Lord (Adonai).” He would have called him Solomon or Jedidiah. If so, why did the Jewish leaders call “the Messiah”—someone descended from David—Adonai or Lord?

The answer was simple: Jesus wasn’t merely David’s descendant but also God’s anointed king—someone coming from God as his and every Hebrew’s Adonai, Lord, or Messiah.

In the Hebrew text of Psalm 110, we find two words: YHWH and Adonai. The Greek translators of the Old Testament, the Septuagint writers, translated both these words as Kurios, “Lord.” This has blurred the difference between YHWH (God) and Adonai (Lord). The NT writers, however, have paid attention to this and faithfully called God the Father Theos, “God,” while calling Jesus as Kurios or Adonai, “Lord.” Why would the religious leaders call David’s descendant Adonaior Lord? The answer was simple: He was God’s anointed Messiah and superior to David.

In simple terms, Jesus was everyone’s Lord or Adonai, even David’s. The religious leaders knew that, but they were hesitant to accept it, perhaps because they thought Jesus would fight for the nation’s independence, and he didn’t.

But they were nearsighted. God had promised Adonai that he would make all his enemies his footstool. That was an ancient imagery of all enemies laying before a king and the king walking over them as if they were his carpet. Whereas the religious leaders thought Jesus failed as a Messiah because he didn’t defeat Herod’s descendants or Roman governors, Jesus and God were on a greater mission—defeating the two greatest enemies of humanity, Sin and Death, which he did at his death and resurrection. Sin and Death were far greater enemies than Herod Antipas and Pontius Pilate, and God killed them at Jesus’s death and made them his footstool so that humanity could be rescued once and for all. That was why David prophetically called his son, a descendant, Adonai—Lord, to whom God made a promise: submit everything to him.

We surrender because he is God’s right-hand ruler, the Adonai Lord.