The most radical thing about the early Christians wasn’t that they worshiped Jesus as God—the Greco-Roman world was awash in gods. Indeed, from the very beginning Christians did believe that Jesus was God, but the radical and dangerous thing about them was that they worshiped Jesus as emperor! This is what they meant when they confessed, “Jesus is Lord.” The titles “Son of God,” “King of Kings,” “Savior of the World,” “Prince of Peace, and “Lord of All” were already in circulation as imperial titles on Roman coins when the Christians began re-appropriating them in their worship of a Galilean
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