Jesus is the Greek version of a fairly common name. Our Lord's name in Aramaic, the dialect of Hebrew that people spoke at the time, was Joshua. It means "God is salvation" - "for he will save his people from their sins", as the angel explained to Joseph. Matthew connects this with the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, of a virgin bearing a son who was to be named Emmanuel (which means, "God with us"). In Bethlehem, God's saving power came to be with us.
Today we use the name Jesus almost interchangeably with the name Christ. The gospel writers very seldom do this. In the gospels, Christ (and more often "the Christ") has its full meaning - the Anointed One (in Hebrew, messiah). Part of the "good news" is the way people come to recognize that Jesus the Nazarene was the person anointed by God, anointed with a new and decisive power and authority.
In Luke's gospel, it is the angels who tell the shepherds of the birth of "a saviour who is Christ, the Lord". In John's gospel, Andrew runs eagerly to his brother Simon and tells him, "We have found the Christ". Matthew and Luke report how Simon, now called Peter, confesses at the Transfiguration, "You are the Christ", and John tells us of Martha making the same confession. Mark entitles his gospel "The beginning of the Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God" - but in his account, nobody recognizes Jesus as the Christ. Only the church, after the Resurrection, would know who Jesus really was.
So we find Paul talking of Jesus Christ, or, with an emphasis on his messiahship, of Christ Jesus - and adding the epithet "Lord". Luke also, more than any of the other evangelists, refers to Jesus as "the Lord".
"Lord" (the Greek word is kyrios) can just mean "master", or "sir". But in the Greek version of the Old Testament, it is the translation of a name, of the very name of God. For God's name was regarded as so holy that it could not be uttered. Adam's son, Seth, had "begun to call on" the name. God had revealed its meaning ("I am who I am") to Moses from a burning bush in the desert. The name could be written, but when the scriptures were read aloud, the Hebrew word adonai, Lord, was used instead. (To this day, we can only speculate how the name was pronounced. Hebrew was written without vowels, and when a system of vowel pointing was introduced, the name JHVH was left, but the vowels from adonai were used. This gave us the name Jehovah, although it is most likely that the name was originally pronounced Jahveh (or Yahweh).)
Jesus, Christ, Lord, in these names we were baptized. The apostles preached and healed "in the name of Jesus", and Paul goes so far as to tell the Colossians that they should do whatever they do in the same name - the name at which "every knee shall bow". For we share in Jesus' nature to the extent that we live in his name. May we all be worthy of that calling!
HD