When he gave Jesus the title “lord,” Paul did not mean that he was God. The careful wording of the hymn made it clear that there was a distinction between the kyrios and God. Even though Paul and the evangelists all called Jesus the “son of God,” they were not making divine claims for him. They would have been quite shocked by this idea. For Jews, a “son of God” was a perfectly normal human being who had been raised to special intimacy with God and had been given a divine mandate. Prophets, kings, and priests had all been called “sons of God;” indeed, the scriptures saw all Israelites as the
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