God the Son: His identity and Birth
Notes
Transcript
What do you believe?
Perhaps we don’t ask that enough.
Perhaps we don’t ask that of ourselves enough. What is it I believe?
Then to ask the questions: If I say I believe X, what does that mean to my life?
G.K. Chesterton in his book What’s Wrong With The World said, “The Christian ideal has not be tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”
What you believe is important. It is important because what we believe is the bedrock of what we do. You act upon what you believe.
We’re in the midst of a series on the Apostles Creed, and we’re learning it together.
Thus far we’ve learned the opening statement about God:
“I believe in God the Father, Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.”
God is the Father.
God is all powerful.
God is the maker of heaven.
God is the maker of earth
And we learned that much in ASL. It gets a little bit more complicated as we go, but if you’re game, I’m in.
The statement about Jesus are the most developed. The full section on Jesus reads:
“I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius PIlate, was cru cified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day He rose from the dead, ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.”
Obviously there’s a lot there, and if you’re squirming thinking we’re going to do it all this morning, take a deep breath, we’re not. We’re going to focus here.
“I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,”
Let’s break this down. in our ASL
“I believe…” we already know these signs. in Jesus - we make the nails with our middle finger in the opposite hand. Christ - think of a sash with a “C” hand shape across your body.
His - open palm towards the Father.
Only - hold up number 1 little circle
Son - Boy + Baby
Our -
Lord - L-shaped hand and that sash again.
The Apostles Creed likely represents and expansion of the very simple confession of faith, “Jesus is Lord.” Since the very early church, Christians have been clear that there is something qualitatively different about Jesus that set him apart from all other religious teachers and thinkers.
So if you say this creed as a statement of your faith, what are you professing?
The first thing we say is: I believe in Jesus Christ. We could spend a whole lot of time unpacking just that phrase. What is meant by the term Christ?
In the Hebrew it is the anointed one, or the Messiah. You are saying that Jesus is the Messiah, the one who fulfills all the prophecies of the Old Testament, the One the Hebrew people had been waiting for, the promised one.
In essence we are saying, I believe Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed One who comes from God to save and fulfills all the prophecies and promises of God.
But its more than that isn’t it? Jesus, the Messiah is God’s Son! Think about what it is that we’re saying here. Jesus is part of the God family. God has a son! God has a son he sent into the world.
Paul wrote to the Philippians, Phil 2:6
who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
Yes, Jesus is the Son of God, but there is something more here - a self reigning in of power and a glorifying of God the Father.
We read on in the next statement in verse seven: Phil 2:7
but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
This is stunning when we back up and think about it. God became human? How is that possible. That would mean that God was both God and human!
“I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,”
The idea that Jesus is both God and human in my view was best explained by my mentor and friend, the Rev. Dr. Paul Smith. In his book Enjoying God Forever reflecting on the Westminster Confession. He asks the question, “Do you remember the Prince and the Frog?”
In this childrens story, the prince was turned into a frog by a witch. As a frog he enjoyed the taste of flies, sat on his lilly pad, hopped around and swam in the pond all while at the same time being the prince. At once he was fully the prince and fully a frog. Paul then quips, “See you understood this better than you thought, didn’t you.”
“I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,”
If Jesus is just a man, like the rest of us, then he would also need redemption. He cannot redeem himself much less any of us. He is as we are part of the problem. In contrast, if Jesus is God and God alone though he has the power to redeem he has no real point of contact with us. So we come to the point that Jesus must be both God and Man if he is to redeem us.
If you owe a debt, you can’t pay another’s debt or you will go further in debt. Therefore, if Jesus was simply human like the rest of us he too would have inherited sin and even if he had lived a sinless life here on earth would already be in debt. In other words, even if he had incurred no additional debt it doesn’t release him from the debt he already had.
In reality that is a moot point though, because we know that all of us incur debt to God after we’re born in the form of sin. Sin that is as one confessional prayer puts it, “in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and what we have left undone.” So a mere human would not be able to fulfill the salvation all of us are in need.
We need God to intervene - and so God does, not out of our need but out of the Great Love for us. We read in John 3:16
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
and I want to add that following verse just to remind us of the purpose for which Jesus came: John 3:17
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Why is it so important that we profess a faith in Jesus as the Son of God and the Virgin Mary?
We’ve already discussed why Jesus coming from the Father is important. As for the Virgin Mary it shows several things:
She was innocent, having never been with a man.
She was obedient to God. When faced with the idea of having a child through the Holy Spirit her response is, “May it be as you have said.”
It demonstrates that Jesus is not only fully God, He is fully man as well.
“I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,”
This statement is only the beginning of what we learn of who it is that Jesus is. We’ll be learning more in the coming weeks.
As we continue this week I want to encourage you to think about the immense love God has for us in sending his Son Jesus. What an amazing gift Jesus is to us. It’s not just a happy thought, it is real.
Believing that God is the Father, Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth. And believing that Jesus is the Christ, the only son of God - so he is fully God, and born of Mary - so he is fully man - it changes us.
As Rich Mullins put it,
I believe what I believe is what makes me what I am
I did not make it, no it is making me
It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man
Out of what we believe flow our lives. To God be the glory
God the Son: His identity and Birth
God the Son: His identity and Birth
