Stuff We Say…
“Lord and Savior”
Chances are you’ve never heard that said the other way around — ‘Jesus is my Savior and Lord’!! It sounds wrong, right? That’s because the phrase ‘Lord and Savior’ is so commonly used it’s become what’s referred to in linguistics as a ‘fixed collocation’. The term fixed collocation describes words or phrases that always go together in a set pattern without any variance (like the US flag is always ‘red, white, and blue’, not ‘white, blue and red’). The trouble with them is they’re usually disconnected from deep feeling and end up landing with even less impact on the listener. Maybe it’s time to look at it a bit deeper.
When’s the last time you asked yourself what a “lord” is anyway? Long ago the term carried grave significance for the masses of people whose lives were at the mercy of lords. According to Google, lords were the absolute authority over their lands and people, they “established and administered their own legal systems, gathered taxes, designed their own currency and even managed how crops were grown”. In other words, Lords dictated everything about your existence and could end you if they wanted to without any recourse. I’m willing to bet you, like me, are completely disconnected from anything that remotely resembles that kind of experience with the word ‘lord’. It leaves me curious how much power the term has to inspire awe, reverence, and obedience in us like it must have for people long ago. What if we try just getting a bit more descriptive and say, “Jesus, the one my life depends on, the one who’s in control of my life” — what’s that evoke in you?
The word ‘savior’, by merit of the fact that it clearly relates to the word ‘save’, admittedly retains a bit more weight. Still, how often do we use it in a disconnected and vague sense? Imagine you were stuck in the trunk of a car barreling toward a cliff, terrified and hopeless, flinching in expectation of pain — suddenly a man miraculously pulls you to safety! Would ‘savior’ be your word of choice to describe him? Perhaps, or perhaps not. How in touch do you feel with the reality that savior is related to ‘safe’ and ‘safety’? ‘Savior’ attempts to capture the fact that harm was upon us and Jesus intervened to bring us to safety. “Jesus, the one who brought me into safety, the one who pulled me from harm”. Maybe that helps it hit a little different.
Am I saying we shouldn’t call Jesus ‘lord’ or ‘savior’?
Nope, not at all. Rather I’m suggesting those phrases have treasure buried inside that we can mine out. I’m saying let’s think deeply about what we say, and ensure our words are meaningful!! What phrases are you using on autopilot or repetitively? What descriptions are you borrowing by default without any connection to the truth they communicate? Some deeper examination can often help break open these words and revive them in our vocabulary.
I like to call Jesus my king — that evokes more in me than ‘lord’.
I like to describe him as ‘the one who saved my life from the pit’ — that hits me real deep in the feels.
What names and descriptions of Jesus help you connect? Share below