His Only Son, Our Lord
Notes
Transcript
At one point in his ministry, Jesus and his disciples are on the road toward Caesarea Philippi. He turns and asks them a question:
Who do people say that I am?
The disciples answer with various suggestions: John the Baptizer reincarnated, Jeremiah or one of the prophets, Elijah.
Then Jesus asks them a followup question:
But you, who do you say that I am?
How we answer that question: “Who do you say that Jesus is?” is the bedrock of the Christian confession.
This morning as we continue to dwell on the truths of Scripture that are summarized by the Apostles’ Creed, we come to the largest portion, that of the confession of Jesus the Christ.
It is what Christians believe about Jesus which separates them from the other religions of the world. The claim that Jesus of Nazareth, a refugee carpenter’s son turned rural rabbi who was killed as an insurrectionist, the claim that he is the son of the living God, the fulfillment of God’s Old Testament prophesies to save a people for himself, and is now exalted as Lord over all created things is the cornerstone of the Christian faith.
The reason we are called Christian is that the center of our faith is not an idea or a theory or a certain type of behavior or even a system of life. The center of our faith is a person, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, our Lord.
This morning, we’re going to look at the three pieces of this first part of the confession of Jesus’ identity. My prayer is that you, like Simon Peter, will be able to answer rightly, but the power of the Holy Spirit, the answer to Jesus’ question: But you, who do you say that I am?
Here’s our Big Idea this morning:
Because Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God, He was able to take on flesh and become the Christ. Through his person and work as the Christ, He is highly exalted as Lord of all.
Jesus, The Only-Begotten Son of God
Jesus, The Only-Begotten Son of God
Synopsis
The Bible makes a very bold claim regarding the identity of Jesus: that He is not merely man, but is in fact the second person of the Trinity: the only- and eternally-begotten son of God.
We start with perhaps the most well-known verse in all of Scripture:
For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
That phrase “one and only” it’s translated as “only-begotten” in the KJV, speaks to the uniqueness of Jesus as the Son of God.
As we’ve seen and will continue to see as we work through the Book of John in our regular preaching schedule, Jesus shares a unique and eternal love and glory with God the Father.
In chapter 17, we’ll get there in 2025 sometime, Jesus says this in his prayer on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane:
Now, Father, glorify me in your presence with that glory I had with you before the world existed.
Before time and creation began, Jesus shared the glory of God the Father. The writer of Hebrews says that He is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of His nature. To see Jesus is to see God Himself.
To read about the work Jesus did, healing the sick, proclaiming that God’s favor has come to humanity, compassionately welcoming sinners into his presence instead of condemning them, telling his disciples to put away their weapons — in all that we see God’s own work in the world.
Jesus can uniquely and perfectly reflect the character and work of God because He is God Himself. In all of this confession of the truth, we cannot move away from the foundation of the Trinitarian nature of God — one divine being expressed in three unique but distinct persons, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Jesus is the only begotten Son of God.
It is through that foundational truth, that Jesus is divine, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made that He is able to take on the title and role of the Messiah, the Anointed One.
Because Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God, He was able to take on flesh and become the Christ.
Jesus, the Christ
Jesus, the Christ
“Christ,” I know I’ve said this before, Christ is a title, not a name. Christ and Messiah both mean “anointed one.” As the Christ, Jesus is the one who fulfills all of God’s Old Testament promises to save a people for Himself.
To call Jesus the Christ is central to the Christian faith. Turn over to 1 John in your Bibles, that’s on page XXX of the pew Bible. 1 John 5.
If you remember from our study in the Book of John, the evangelist is very clear about his purpose in writing his gospel in chapter 20: He wrote them down so that you might believe. But specifically, he says he wrote them down that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, or the Christ.
He reiterates the results of that belief in verse 1 of 1 John 5:
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father also loves the one born of him.
Believing that Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one of God who fulfilled and fulfills all the promises of God is foundational to the Christian faith.
Side Note: I have heard many times from people, particularly people who may be uncomfortable with reciting the Creed, or it’s new to them, or they grew up in a very independent Baptist church that was pretty well-divorced from the historic Christian tradition, I’ve heard them say things like: “We don’t want all of this theology, these creeds and confessions, this doctrine! We just want Jesus Christ!”
I understand the sentiment, but the irony of that statement is that in order to say, I just want Jesus Christ,” is to make a very theological and doctrinal statement.
It was trendy for a while for churches to have slogans like, “No doctrine but the Bible,” but that is, in fact, a doctrinal statement.Or, “No creed but Christ,” which of course, is a creedal statement itself.
We cannot talk about our faith without making theological and doctrinal statements. Which is why it’s so important for us to not forget and to actually use these historic confessions of the faith like the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed and the 2nd London Baptist Confession to have guide rails for our belief.
In one way, the creeds and confession serve as like, you know those little bumper things you can put down at the bowling alley? There’s plenty of space within the lane for your ball to roll, but the bumpers keep you from going into the gutter. The creeds and confessions are more than that, but they are no less than that. As good summaries of the teaching of the Bible, they make sure our personal and public understandings of the Bible stay within the boundaries of truth. The Creeds are important and good for us.
Side note over.
That Jesus is the Christ, God’s anointed one, is a central Christian belief. It is through his role as the Christ that all of the promises come together. In the Old Testament, both kings and priests were anointed to do the work of God. And in many places across the Old Testament, there were promises of a future anointed leader who would be both king and priest for God’s people.
“Look, the days are coming”—this is the Lord’s declaration—
“when I will raise up a Righteous Branch for David.
He will reign wisely as king
and administer justice and righteousness in the land.
In his days Judah will be saved,
and Israel will dwell securely.
This is the name he will be called:
The Lord Is Our Righteousness.
Kings rule and administer justice for the downtrodden, priests administer righteousness through sacrifice and God promised that One would come, that He would come in fact, to be both king and priest.
Do you remember the first public teaching that Jesus did? It’s recorded in Luke 4, right after his baptism and 40 days in the wilderness, Jesus goes back home to Nazareth and reads in the synagogue.
Here’s how Luke records it:
He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. As usual, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him, and unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me
to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him. He began by saying to them, “Today as you listen, this Scripture has been fulfilled.”
The first real public ministry Jesus did was to say that He was God’s anointed one, the one promised in the prophet Isaiah, and that He has arrived to administer God’s justice.
When we use the word justice, we often think of it solely as criminals being punished. But that’s only a tiny sliver of God’s justice. More often, when the Bible speaks of God's justice, it speaks of making sure the powerful don’t exploit the weak, that the rich don’t cheat the poor, that immigrants aren’t cast out, that the marginalized are welcomed openly into the inner court, that those whose voices have been silenced are given a place to speak and be heard, that the oppressed are set free from their oppressors, and that the Lord’s favor is bestowed upon humanity through Jesus.
Earlier this week, Jordan Peterson responded to something the pope said about justice. Here’s what Peterson said:
“There is nothing Christian about #SocialJustice. Redemptive salvation is a matter of the individual soul.”
Jordan Peterson is a fool. To confess Jesus as the Christ is to join him in his work of bringing justice. Everything that we just saw Jesus say he came to do is also our mission as those who confess him as the Christ, to promote human flourishing, to dismantle systems of injustice, and to seek the good of our neighbor.
Redemptive salvation is not merely a matter of the individual soul: it is personal, communal, and cosmic. Through Jesus the Christ, God is reconciling all things to himself and we can come along. If your faith is just you and Jesus, you are robbing the world of the good works that God has prepared ahead of time for you. Individualism is antithetical to Christianity.
Confessing that Jesus is the Christ is essential for salvation, but that confession comes with the calling to enter into the campaign of social justice that Jesus began as God’s eternal king of righteousness.
Jesus, Our Lord
Jesus, Our Lord
Jesus, who is the Christ is God’s only-begotten Son. He is the second person of the eternal Trinity, the Word who was the Father’s agent in making the world and who upholds it even now. This is the heart of Christianity.
And the last piece of Jesus’ identity we will look at this morning flows right from that truth. If Jesus is God the Son, our co-creator, and is also Christ, the anointed savior-king, now risen from death and ruling over all things at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, then he has a right to rule us, and we have no right to resist his claim.
Because Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God, He was able to take on flesh and become the Christ. Through his person and work as the Christ, He is highly exalted as Lord of all.
For weeks, we sang Psalm 110 together. It is far and away the favorite text of the New Testament authors and the Church Fathers for declaring the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
This is the declaration of the Lord to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies your footstool.”
By his triumph over sin on the cross and his victory over death by his resurrection, God has made this Jesus the Christ Lord over all things. Jesus rules and reigns from his throne right now. His enemies are being made his footstool one-by-one, as hearts are awakened to the glory of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit through our testimony of His lordship over us. The Kingdom of God is extended through the Gospel, not through legislature, not through force, not through voting the right guy into office, but through the sacrificial love of Jesus’ people which displays his compassion for sinners to a world full of them.
The words of confession for the earliest Christians was simple: κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς — Jesus Christ is Lord, a deeply theological statement.
And there is a question that you must answer today: is that your confession, that Jesus Christ is Lord?
Humanity needs a Savior because we have rehected the goodness and truth of God the Father, Almighty. Abd God has provided that Savior in His only-begotten Son, Jesus the Christ, who is exalted as Lord above all things. He is making all things new, redeeming them by the blood of His cross.
If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation.
Publicly declaring faith in Jesus, acknowledging his divinity and his lordship over all, including you, is the sole means to eternal salvation. Being baptized does not save, attending church does not save, you cannot be saved by someone else’s confession: the call is to bow yourself before Jesus the Lord and receive His grace.
That’s what it means to say, “I believe in Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Son, our Lord.”
Is that your confession today?