What Lord actually means

Private letters recovered on papyrus from Greek-speaking Egypt open with a son addressing his kyrios father, or a widow petitioning a kyrios magistrate. A slave used it for the person who owned him. In the Greek of Genesis 18, Sarah calls Abraham kyrios, which 1 Peter later quotes as an example of a wife's respect. So when a man kneels in front of Jesus in Matthew 8 and says kyrie, the word alone does not tell you whether he means sir or something far larger. Context decides, and the Gospel writers exploit that.

Alexandrian scholars translating the Hebrew scriptures into Greek in the third and second centuries BC put kyrios where the Hebrew had the four letters of God's name, following the synagogue practice of saying adonai out loud instead of pronouncing it. A Greek-speaking Jew therefore met kyrios thousands of times in the Psalms as the name of God. That is why it matters when Paul takes a line from Joel about calling on the name of the kyrios and applies it to Jesus in Romans 10.

Inscriptions across the eastern provinces call the emperor kyrios, and Domitian encouraged dominus et deus, master and god. Provincial governors used the confession as a loyalty test. When the elderly Polycarp was arrested in Smyrna in the mid-second century, the officials pressed him with a simple line: say Caesar is kyrios, offer the incense, go home. He refused and was burned. Saying that Jesus was kyrios was a political sentence as much as a devotional one.

A British newspaper uses Lord for a man with a seat in the upper house of Parliament. A fantasy paperback hands it to the villain on the cover. As a religious word it has worn completely smooth, and readers process it as a synonym for God with no content attached, which is exactly the range the Greek did not have. Kyrios stretched from a bus-stop courtesy to a claim about who owns the world, and English readers cannot hear either end of it.

English Bibles print LORD in small capitals where the Hebrew has God's personal name, and Lord in ordinary type where the word is adonai or kyrios. Read aloud, in a sermon or at a wedding, the two are identical. A name and a job title are being held apart by the height of four letters, and the distinction survives only on the page.

The flattening costs something in the Gospels specifically. A man with a skin disease kneels and says kyrie. Thomas says kyrie when he has no idea what Jesus is talking about. Peter says kyrie when he is objecting to having his feet washed. Printing Lord in all three makes every line sound like a creed being recited, when some of them are closer to a startled sir.

The NGET prints Master in most places. Lord has collected four centuries of religious use and now communicates almost nothing, while Master still does the job kyrios was doing: naming someone whose instructions you follow. That fits the argument of Matthew 7, where Jesus says that not everyone who calls him Master, Master will get into the kingdom, only the person who actually does what the Father wants. The whole point of that line is that the title implies obedience and the speakers have not delivered any.

So Peter says Master, you are going to wash my feet. Paul, on the road, asks who are you, Master. The word does the same work it does when an apprentice uses it of the person teaching him a trade, which is close to the relationship the Gospels are describing between Jesus and the people following him around Galilee.

Master has its own freight in American English, and the translation does not pretend otherwise. It is the word a slave used of an owner, and this translation also prints slave rather than the softened bondservant where the Hebrew and Greek mean it. The judgment made here is that the discomfort sits closer to the first-century social picture than Lord does. Other translators weigh that differently, and the argument is real. Lord survives in a handful of places, chiefly where it stands beside the divine name in the compound the Hebrew writes as adonai YHWH, so that the title stays distinguishable from the name.

And also: "Yahweh knows that the thoughts of the wise amount to nothing."

1 Corinthians 3:20

So I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Breath of God says "Jesus is cursed," and no one can say "Jesus is Master" except by the Breath of God.

1 Corinthians 12:3

I don't want to see you just in passing this time — I'm hoping to spend some real time with you, if the Lord allows it.

1 Corinthians 16:7

Because Yahweh watches over those who do right, and he listens to their cries for help. But he sets his face against those who do evil."

1 Peter 3:12