The Name above Every Name

For His redemptive work, Christ has received “the name that is above every name” (Phil. 2:9). That name isn’t “Jesus,” as you might expect. Today, R.C. Sproul explains how the name bestowed on Christ declares His identity as our Savior and our Sovereign.

One of the reasons why the Christians became human torches to illumine the gardens of Nero and so on, is because as part of their loyalty oath to the Roman Empire, they had to make this simple affirmation: “Kaiser ho kyrios, Caesar is Lord.” And the Christians say: “Hey, we’ll pay our taxes. We’ll obey the magistrates. We’ll do everything you tell us to do. We’ll say that Caesar is Caesar. But one thing we will not do is take the title ‘Lord’ and render it to Caesar. We will render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, but unto God, the things that are God’s. And the title Kyrios, in its supreme sense ‘Lord,’ is to be applied only to God.” And so when the Christian church confessed that Jesus was Lord—and not just Lord, not just Kyrios, but Kyrios Kurion, “the Lord of Lords,”—it was clearly an ascription of deity to Jesus.

Remember the kenotic hymn of Philippians 2, where Paul says, “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, took his equality with God not as a thing to be grasped or tenaciously held onto, jealously guarded, but he emptied himself and took upon himself the form of a servant, became obedient, even unto death”—and so on, “wherefore hath God highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow and every tongue confess,” what? “That he is Lord, that he is Kurios, to the glory of God the Father.”

Now the question is, what is the name that is above every name? On the surface, it may appear in that text that the name that Paul is saying is above every name is the name “Jesus,” but Jesus had that name before He perfected His work of obedience. That’s the name He has from His childhood. It’s only in His ascension, really, and His exaltation, that He is given the supreme name, the name that is above every name. But what is that name? Lord. And that’s the name we were called upon to express on our knees and on our faces before Jesus. So that when we say that Jesus is our Lord, we say He is our Sovereign. He has authority over us. He’s not only our Savior, but He is our Sovereign.