I Believe in Jesus Christ

May 28, 2008 in Worth's Sermons by WNG

The Apostle’s Creed has three divisions. The 1st is concerned with “God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth.” The 3rd is concerned with the person and work of God the Holy Spirit. It is the 2nd article of the creed that astounds us, for it is concerned with the historical person, Jesus of Nazareth, who is described as “Jesus Christ, (God’s) Only Son, Our Lord.”

I Believe in Jesus Christ

If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10:9

The 2nd article of the creed is second only in numerical order. It is first in historical order, for it is an expansion of what scholars regard as the earliest confession of the church. This original confession was only three words long. It is perfectly preserved in Romans 10:9. There we read:

If you confess with your lips that, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

This confession that “Jesus is Lord!” is saving; but it is also severing, for it is the knife that severed Christianity from Judaism. Moses said:

Hear O Israel the LORD your God is One! And you shall love the LORD your God with all of your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your strength. (Deuteronomy 6:4)

When Christians confess that “Jesus is LORD,” it means nothing less than that a man stands forth upon the stage of human history in the very place of God.

Upon hearing such a confession, a devout Jew would say, “How can you say that a human being can stand in the place of God?”

And Christians respond, “How this can be, we do not know. It is a mystery. Yet we must confess it because God has so revealed God’s self.”

From the earliest days of the church until now, Christians have said that “Jesus is LORD!—Jesus is ‘Jehovah God,’ Jesus is YaHWeH!” [1]

So, the 2nd article of the creed is not just historically the “first”, it is also “first” in importance. It is “the light set in the middle of the room” that illumines the “dark corners” of the 1st and 3rd articles of the creed.

And someone will say, “Dark Corners?”

Yes! In the Old Testament, God the Father is frequently described as “shrouded in clouds and darkness.” At best, apart from God’s revelation in Christ, we view God the Father as:

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
in light inaccessible hid from our eyes.

Likewise, even Jesus compared God the Holy Spirit to a mysterious wind that “blows where it wills.” (John 3:8) We may hear the sound of it, but we don’t know whence it comes or whither it goes.

By contrast, it is in “the face of Christ Jesus” that we have seen “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God!” (2 Corinthians 4:6)

Now, with that as background, I want you to hear the 2nd Article of the Creed just once more. I will give it to you in context:

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and (Please note the conjunction—it is important, it is impossible to speak about God the Father without also speaking of God the Son!) in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, Our Lord, who was, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. He went to the place of departed spirits. The third day he rose again from the dead, and ascended to the Right Hand of God the Father Almighty, from thence will come to judge the living and the dead.

The 2nd article of the creed makes a number of points that are infinitely worthy of discussion. They can be summed up by a two-fold affirmation. On the one hand, Jesus Christ is fully Divine. On the other hand, Jesus Christ is fully Human. To say it in a way that it must be said, “He is fully God and fully Man.”

First, it must be said that Jesus Christ was and is fully God. He is “the Only Begotten Son of the Father.” The Nicene Creed, which often expands and interprets the Apostle’s Creed, adds that he was “begotten not made,” and that he is “one substance with the Father.”

The human child carries the DNA of his father and mother. God the Father does not have DNA, but if he did, then we would have to say that Jesus has inherited it! The New Testament teaches that he is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) ; and, “in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell.” (Colossians 1:19)

All the other prophets pointed “out there” somewhere and said, “there is God!” According to the author of the 4th Gospel, Jesus jerked his thumb against his chest, and said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father!” (John 14:9)

And the author of the 4th Gospel wrote, “No one has ever seen God, the Only Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” (John 1:18)

When we say, “Jesus is LORD!” we are not committing blasphemy, but worshiping God in God’s highest revelation of Himself. With this worship, God is pleased! God is a jealous God (Exodus 20:5), but God the Father is not jealous of God the Son. (Philippians 2:11) It is in the person of God the Son that God the Father is revealed at his most glorious. Let me illustrate.

What people do you admire the most? Do you admire the soldier who sits comfortably behind the lines with his cannon and reigns death upon the enemy? Or, do you admire the soldier who falls on a grenade to save his comrades? Do you admire Donald Trump the celebrity who styles himself as a man of wealth and the power that flows from wealth? Or, do you admire the late Mother Teresa who, though born to comfort, forsook it to take up the cause of those who were dying in the filth of the streets of Calcutta?

Not long after the death of Princess Diana, the press tried to compare the life and death of Diana the Princess of Wales with the life and death of Mother Teresa. They were particularly eager to point out that both of them had helped the poor. One reporter was smarter than the rest. He saw through the comparison.

“There is none,” he said, “for Diana visited the poor, Mother Teresa lived among them!”

That is it! God did not just visit the poor, in the person of Jesus Christ, God lived among us! In 1st Corinthians chapter 9, St. Paul says of him that, “..though he was rich, for (our) sake he became poor, so that by his poverty (we) might become rich.” (2 Corinthians 8:9)

When is God at God’s most glorious? Was it when God flung the stars into their places? Or when God said to the proud waves of the sea, “Thus far shall you come, but no farther?” Or was it when, in the person of the eternal Son, God emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross?

In the first instance, God is a fearful and wonderful God. In the second instance, God is a glorious God! In the first instance, God is a power. In the second, God is a passion. In the first instance, God is untouchable. In the second instance, God allows himself not only to be touched, but also to be scourged and beaten, and driven out of the world onto a cross!

When the armies Napoleon were marching across Europe, the Emperor found himself suddenly without the money to pay his men. In lieu of payment he passed among his soldiers passing out bits of colored ribbon, bestowed for bravery in battle. He was heard to say, “It is amazing what a man will do for a little bit of ribbon, if only it means that he has done his duty and acted bravely.”

I was a peacetime Marine, but I was in the Corps when it marked the death of the most decorated Marine in history, Chesty Puller. Maj. General Puller had so many “ribbons” and “medals” that “scuttlebutt” said that he was the only Marine ever who had the permission of the Commandant to wear his decorations on the left and right breast of his “blouse” or “uniform.” He had five Navy Crosses, the decoration that ranks just under the Congressional Medal of Honor.

God, in the person of his Son, has only one cross, but it was The Cross, and no decoration could have bestowed any greater “honor” than this cross of wood that he earned by his, “Amazing pity, grace unknown, and love beyond degree!”

We Christians will never tire of talking about this one act of God. James Montgomery, the Moravian hymnist said it best when he wrote:

Long as we live, and when we die,
and when in heaven with him we reign,
This son, our song of songs shall be,
“Worth the Lamb who once was slain!”

And some will say, “It sounds nice. But how do we know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?”

The creed says, “He was conceived by the Holy Spirit (and) born of the Virgin Mary.” It is fitting that the Son of God should have a unique birth, but that is not our proof. In the New Testament, there is one primary miracle by which we know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and the creed sounds it loudly when it says, “…the third day he rose again from the dead.”

This confession by the creed is an echo of what Paul said in Romans 1:4:

…he was designated Son of God in power, through a Spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead.

In the history of this world, there are just a handful of people who know beyond all possibility of doubt that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, but their testimony of radically changed lives is impressive.

Take the case of the men called “disciples” who went about with Jesus during his earthly ministry. After his death they were totally dispirited. Their dreams were destroyed, their hopes crushed. At first they merely huddled together in a tiny room, with the doors locked out of fear that the people of Jerusalem might do to them what they did to their Master. Then, three days after the death of Jesus, he stood among them again, Alive! And for forty days he appeared to them. Then he ascended to his God and Father. Then he received the promised Holy Spirit and poured it out upon them. Suddenly their lives were turned completely around. They were no longer fearful, they were fearless! Never did any man or woman act more bravely than did these first disciples of Jesus. They lived by the sign of the Cross that their LORD had won on a hill called Calvary!

And what about one who did not belong to their number. Indeed, he had been their opposite number. I am speaking of Saul of Tarsus. He was an eyewitness to the Risen Christ, and it changed his life, too. It was not a change he wanted. In the 3rd chapter of his letter to the Philippians he reminds us that he was very happy in his life as a Jew.

4 If any other man thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law a Pharisee, 6 as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law blameless.

During this time, Paul knew Jesus “from a human point of view.” (2 Corinthians 5:16) At that time, he thought Jesus was nothing but a fake, a charlatan, a blasphemer. Then, on the Road to Damascus (Acts 9), the Risen Christ, appeared to him saying, “Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?”

“Who are you, sir?” he answered.

“I am Jesus whom you are persecuting!” came the response.

Saul was converted, his life turned around, his name changed. Soon Christians were saying of Paul, “He who once persecuted the church is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy!” (Galatians 1:23)

And Paul was saying of Jesus, “Whatever gain I had (as a Jew under the law) I counted as loss, for the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ my LORD!” (Phil 3:8)

Would you like to be a witness to the Risen Christ? Chances are you will not have that opportunity. When St. Paul described his own experience he wrote, “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also unto me.”

Would you like to know the Risen Christ? That is a possibility. In the 1st Letter to Timothy the author writes:

I know whom I have believed,
and am persuaded that he is able,
to keep that which I’ve committed,
unto him against that Day!

When, in this verse, Paul says that he “knows” Jesus Christ, he is not thinking of their brief meeting on the road to Damascus. He is thinking of the same Jesus Christ whom he knew by faith as an unseen presence, and as a constant companion through all the days of his life. Jesus was with Paul in sunshine and in shadow, on high days and low, in pain and in pleasure, in sickness and in health, always. Period.

That same Christ is available to us today. He wants to be our Lord, and our Saviour. He wants to be our Friend! Through the power of the Holy Spirit, he is as close to us as the air that we breathe. He has promised that where even two, or three are gathered to gather in his name, he will be present. He has promised to hear us when we call upon him.

The Apostle’s Creed confesses that Jesus Christ is “Our Lord!”, but only we can make him so. He will not force himself. He will not come where he is not wanted.

I am confident that you want him to be your Lord, else why would you have paid such close attention to this lengthy sermon?

The creed also teaches that Jesus Christ is fully Man. “He was born of the Virgin Mary,” it says.

The fact that Jesus was “born of the Virgin Mary” is the primary testimony of his full humanity. Mary did have DNA. If it were possible for you look at the DNA of Mary under a microscope, and the DNA of Jesus under a microscope, and if you knew what to look for, then you would say, “Yes, this human son belongs to this human mother.”

Jesus Christ was fully human! He wept. He knew fatigue. He knew hunger. He knew cold. He knew want. He knew disappointment. Listen to what the creed says in this matter. Listen to its cadence, its insistence, its persistence. It first confesses, “he was born of the Virgin Mary”, then, the very next word is, “suffered”, “he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, buried, he went to the place of departed spirits….”

You know the first, and greatest heresy to attack the church? It was not the denial of the divinity of Jesus, but the denial of his humanity! There were some, even in the time of the New Testament, called Gnostics, who said that “Jesus was not a man, he only looked like a man.” They said, “He did not really suffer on the cross, he only appeared to suffer on the cross.” They said, “He did not really die, he only appeared to die.” They said, “On the cross, the Divine Part of him, the Son of God, separated from the human part of him, the man Jesus, and returned to his Father in heaven.”

But the creed will not allow it. It says that when God stepped down upon the stage of human history as a man, he stepped down to die. It teaches that death not did hold him, but that his humanity did hold him! It teaches that the incarnation was not just for 30 years, but for eternity.

The Creed teaches that the same Christ who, “rose again from the dead,” has “ascended to the right hand of God the Father from thence he will come to judge the quick and the dead.”

In Acts 17 St. Paul says:

God has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness, by a man whom he hath appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men, by raising him from the dead!

In Philippians 2, the same apostle says that, on that day:

“…every knee will bow, both in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’ to the glory of God the Father.”

III

There is a final point that needs to be made. The two natures of Jesus Christ—Divine and Human, existed in perfect harmony. Both were and are essential to the mission of Jesus.

Take the matter of his death of the cross. He had to be human in order to die. But he had to be divine in order for that death to mean all that Christians say that it means. The fact that Jesus was not just human, but also divine means that the cross was not the bad end of a good man, but a road traveled once, for all, by our now victorious Lord and Saviour.

Consider also, the matter of his resurrection and ascension. The fact that the Risen Christ was not just divine, but also human that means that Jesus has lifted our humanity, out of death all the way to “…the right hand of God the Father Almighty.”

I love the way the first hymn of our Easter Liturgy describes it:

The graves of all his saints, Christ blest,
and softened every bed.
Where should the dying members rest,
save with the dying Head?

Thence he rose, no more to die;
and showed our feet the way,
to follow Him, enthroned on high,
on the great Rising Day.

Let me sum up for you. In the Incarnation, Perfect God became Perfect Man, to die on the cross for the sins of those who are not so perfect. In the Resurrection and Ascension, Perfect Man becomes Perfect God again, lifting our humanity to a position of honor at the “right hand of God.”

All these events belong to the life of Jesus who was called the Christ of the Jews, “(God’s) Only Son, Our Lord.”

What does it all mean? The late Dr. Karl Barth sums it up best.

Barth was one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century. His books fill two shelves in my library. When in the course of lectures on the Apostle’s Creed, Karl Barth came to this, the 2nd Article of the creed he said something like this:

We have come to the very center of the creed. I am a professor of theology, but I want to speak to you now as a Sunday school teacher might speak to his kiddies. You yourselves are students of theology and soon to be “Masters of Divinity,” but you must listen like those who are four years old, for what I have to say, any four old can understand, “The world was lost, but Christ was born, rejoice!”[2]

Here then is the central fact of the Christian faith. Decide what you believe about the 2nd article of the creed, and you decide whether you are a Christian or an unbeliever. We Christians may spend a lifetime debating the little details of the life of Jesus, even those confessed in the creed, but we cannot linger too long debating him, the God-Man, for Jesus Christ is not a point of question, he is the point of decision.

Notes:

1. Many early Christians, like Jesus himself, spoke Aramaic. It was the common language of 1st century Jews. The New Testament was written down predominantly in Greek. One of the few Aramaic expressions preserved in the Greek New Testament is found in 1 Corinthians 16:22. “Maranatha!”, meaning, “Our Lord Come!”

2. For the sake of a sermon which was delivered orally, and without notes, I have “summed-up” and “modernized” what Barth actually wrote in his Dogmatics in Outline. What he actually said can be found on pages 66-67 of that work, translated by G. Thomas Moore and published in New York by the Philosophical Library in 1949. I have read enough Barth to know that he would be in sympathy with my rendition. The essence is the same, and the final quote exactly so.

Finis

Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.
EverydayCounselor©
New Philadelphia Moravian Church
4440 Country Club Road
Winston-Salem, N.C. 27104