Jesus Christ—His only Son, our Lord (2)

Welcome and Recap:

So, last week, we began our Apostles’ Creed series, focusing on essential doctrines of our faith—fundamental and uncompromising truths like “God the Father, Maker of heaven and earth.” We also explored a word, adiaphora(Greek for “things we can agree to disagree on”).  Our goal is simply to preserve what we’ve received from past generations, live it out, and pass it to our kids and spiritual kids.

Introduction:

As a quick recap, there are twelve articles, each addressing a member of the Trinity.  We discussed how, though The Apostal’s Creed is not as much a quotation from the Bible, it’s a coherent summary of core biblical teachings.  Its tradition of apostolic authorship and widespread use guard it against the logical fallacy of moving the goalpost and barrier-keeping, but make it the actual litmus test between orthodoxy and heresy. 

In his book The Creedal Imperative, Carl Trueman notes that all Christians have creeds—they’re unavoidable.  “The difference is simply whether one adheres to a public confession.” What he’s saying is actually very interesting, he makes the point “that Christians are not divided between those who have creeds and confessions and those who do not; rather, they are divided between those who have public creeds and confessions that are written down and exist as public documents, subject to public scrutiny, evaluation, and critique, and those who have private creeds and confessions that are often improvised, unwritten, and thus not open to public scrutiny, not susceptible to evaluation and, crucially and ironically, not, therefore, subject to testing by Scripture to see whether they are true.”

Your answer to “What do you believe?” is a creed.  Prosper of Aquitaine’s motto, lex orandi, lex credenda (“the law of prayer is the law of belief—and living”), it’s a formulation that states, whatever it is you pray, you do this indeed because of what you believe.  Belief shapes prayer and, therefore, life.

When I say Creeds are unavoidable, I say this not simply because we’ve got to articulate our faith coherently but because we’re also commanded to be able to articulate our faith.

1 Peter 3:15, “But in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.”

Transition:

Today, we look at the second article and the first sentence regarding the Second Person of the Trinity: “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.”

Illustration:

In the very first time I ever spoke to an army chaplain, as a junior enlisted guy, I sought insight on how to not just survive, but how to thrive in the environment I found myself in.  I had a staff sergeant who had made it his life’s purpose to make me miserable.

He would smoke me from sun up to sun down on many occasions, but he wouldn’t just punish me physically, he cut me off socially, he’s make me go get a battle buddy, someone to get smoked with.  That made me a pretty unpopular guy to be around.  Suffice to say, by this point, I had about a year of bad days, and would go to bed and dream about work and I’d wake up and go to work, and the cycle would just go on and on… Well, I was well on my way to this point of becoming a follower of Christ, probably the reason he had it out for me, I had developed an ulcer, and I go to this guy, and guess what he asks me?  “Have you prayed for him?”

I get it…  Matthew 5:44, “pray for those who persecute you.”  But to be honest, that’s the last thing I wanted to do.  But I begrudgingly, at first, began to do it, and guess what happened?  He still smoked the bejesus out of me.  The chaplain said, “When you pray for someone, one, or both of two things happens; God changes your, or their heart.”  And I can’t speak for him, but as I would get smoked by this guy, my heart softened from anger, to sympathy.

His life was a wreck, he was unfaithful to his wife, she had left him, he was miserable at work, he had been demoted, but it changed from me doing pushups for him because he said so, for something I didn’t do, and became, for me, ‘hey, if me doing pushups makes you feel better, ok.’ God changed my heart, by praying for him.  The law of prayer is the law of belief—and living; belief shapes prayer and, therefore, life.

If this is true, what response does it call for? What are you—or perhaps more importantly, what are you not praying for—and therefore, your life and walk, not conforming to?

There are, unfortunately, in our Gospels accounts of people who were invited by Jesus to follow Him but, for various reasons, chose not to do so.

The Rich Young Ruler, an account in all three of our synoptic Gospels, walked away sad, our accounts say, “because of his great wealth.” His attachment to material possessions prevents him from committing to discipleship.

Jesus invites another man to follow Him, who asks to bury his father first; this is found in Luke 9 [vv59–60].  In the very next verse [Luke 9:61-62], a man expresses a desire to follow Jesus but asks to first say goodbye to his family.  And after a hard teaching on eating His flesh in John chapter 6 [vv60-66], we see many disciples deserting Jesus, unwilling to accept His challenging message.  Each story shows attachments—wealth, comfort—requiring reprioritizing, and each time we see examples of these things that kept people from full commitment.  They were not men of conviction.

Even in death, the rich man utters, [Luke 16]

27“‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers.  Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

What a prophetic statement from Jesus Christ himself.

It’s about being men and women of conviction; if this is true, what response does it call for?

What a prophetic statement from Jesus Christ, himself.

The irony in God calling Gideon a “mighty warrior” (Judges 6:12).  He was hiding in fear when the angel of the Lord greeted Gideon with this title; he was threshing wheat in a winepress to hide it from the Midianites, who were oppressing Israel.  This is not an act of a “mighty warrior” but one of someone afraid and trying to avoid confrontation.  We have some insight into how Gideon sees himself—as insignificant and ill-suited for the task (Judges 6:15), responding to God’s call by saying, “My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family;” yet he was a man of conviction.

If you aren’t familiar with the rest of the story, he led the Israelites to victory by defeating a massive army with just 300 men.

If this is true, then what?

Proposition

If we “believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,” if we indeed are to be men and women of conviction, what else does it mean?  What are we called to do; how must we live?  What is the implied task?  What’s lost if we get this wrong?

Matthew Henry put it this way, “To be a Christian indeed, is, sincerely to believe that Jesus is the Christ, and to act accordingly.”

Transition:

In Exodus 12, we see God’s instruction to Moses, not just to teach the Israelites about what’s happening to them—right there in that instance, but what’s happening corporately, as a people.  He’s saying, ‘See what I’m doing, this is significant.’  He’s not just saying that they’re going to do something, but that He is going to do something.

In Exodus 12:25–27, we read Moses’ command from God:

25 When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, you are to observe this ceremony.  26 When your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ 27 you are to reply, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when he struck the Egyptians, and he spared our homes.’” So, the people knelt low and worshiped.

God is setting the stage.  He’s looking forward to a time in the future when there is a generation with no personal memory of the Exodus but will witness a reenactment of the Passover.  They will not have a firsthand recollection of the Exodus.  If you do what I’m telling you, He’s saying, if, in the faith and love found in my Word, you adhere to the pattern of the sound doctrine that I am giving to you, they will know then what they will see when in fact they see it.

Why?:

In the same pattern God prescribes for the people of Israel, Paul informs Timothy that there is a pattern he must adhere to and that he is not authorized to teach anything he pleases.  Tradition is the term we use to describe this.

Because there are so many traditions that are man-made and have nothing to do with the apostolic pattern of sound doctrine, because we’ve done a poor job at explaining the ‘why,’ that word has fallen out of favor today.  Godly tradition, however, should be regarded as a gift, not a barrier.

In the same way as demonstrated in Exodus, where the Israelites weren’t permitted to celebrate Passover however they saw fit.  They were given explicit instructions, clearly connecting their acts of worship to their lived experience of God with them so that their children and children’s children would recall and proclaim what happened to their ancestors in Egypt.  Telling both the story and appropriately interpreting it are their responsibilities.

We don’t see a similar idea in 2nd Timothy; we see the same thing.  We see Paul traditioning, passing down, conveying instructions, and instituting a practice not of worship but of sound doctrine.  In 2nd Timothy 1:13, he says, “Hold on to the pattern of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”

There is a generation coming with no personal memory of the incarnation but will witness His coming.  They will not have a firsthand recollection of His miraculous workings and Earthly ministry, but if you do what I’m telling you, in the faithfulness and love found in Jesus, adhere to the pattern of the sound doctrine that I am giving to you, they will know then what they will see when, in fact, they see it.

Transition:

If this is true, then what?

Because Jesus was not the name of the Second Person of the Trinity prior to the incarnation, when Word became flesh, he was called Jesus.  When God’s Son became a man and was born as a baby in Bethlehem, fulfilling Isaiah 7:14 and becoming Emmanuel, which means “God with us,” it was truly the birth of “Jesus.”

What:

Because of this, we confess Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rather than Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit.  That isn’t entirely incorrect.  However, by referring to the Son, we recognize that the Father and the Son were in perfect fellowship long before the incarnation and given the name Jesus, which is Hebrew for “Yahweh saves.”

When we proclaim, “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.” We are actually saying quite a bit.

An early heretic, Arius, claimed there was a time when the Son did not exist—hence ‘There was a time when He was not.’ Christians answered with the doxology: ‘Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.  As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be...’

Proposition:

The point I wanted to drive home is, if this is true, then what?  So, what I want you to take away from today, if nothing else, is—how does knowing this inform our belief?

What (part 2):

When we confess Jesus, we acknowledge our need.  Our need for a Messiah or Christ, both words meaning “anointed one.” When we confess Him as Lord, meaning “master” or “king,” we acknowledge His authority.  When we say “Savior,” we recognize our need for Him as our “redeemer of sin” and “saver of souls.” We read in Romans 6:23 that “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Therefore, we proclaim “the gift of God [as an] eternal life in Christ Jesus.” If we confess this, we acknowledge our need for a Savior.  When we accept Jesus as Messiah and Christ, we recognize our need for a mediator when we acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God.  “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,” says Romans 10:9.  This is a formula called ‘Romans Road.’  As Luther’s friend Philip Melanchthon said, “You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that makes it necessary.”

It informs our theology of how we see God through the Trinity and, in particular, the Second Person of the Trinity.  We acknowledge that He’s not merely a man, but the God-Man. Completely human and completely divine. “Inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion,” as it’s worded in the Westminster Confession [Ch 8.2].  Our sin could only be assumed by one like us.  And the mission could only be completed by God Himself.

When we say, “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,” we acknowledge that only one like us could have taken on our sin.  Only God Himself could accomplish this.

Transition:

This was foretold in the Old Testament by Moses and the prophets, as alluded to by Jesus in his parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man.  Israel was given prophets, priests, and kings, three offices that served as a reminder to the people of Israel of their distance from God.  This distance required continuous bridging by God.

But the prophet Amos spoke these words from God, “I hate your religious festivals, I despise your assemblies; they are a stench to me [5:21].

Application:

God sent prophets because they needed His Word.  He gave them priests because they needed forgiveness of sins.  And he gave them Kings because they needed to be ruled and defended from all God’s enemies and their enemies.

In Christ, the Son of the Father, the fulfillment of all three offices comes to us.

As the Word of God, he revealed to us during His ministry on Earth, and now by His Spirit, the will of God for our salvation.  As a priest, he offers himself as a perfect sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God, and he continues to pray for us.  As our King, he brings us to Himself, and He rules and defends us from all His and our enemies.

Summary:

Carl Trueman said, “Creeds and confessions are, in fact, necessary for the well-being of the church, and that churches that claim not to have them place themselves at a permanent disadvantage when it comes to holding fast to that form of sound words which was so precious to the aging Paul as he advised his young protégé, Timothy. . . The need for creeds and confessions is not just a practical imperative for the church but is also a biblical imperative.”

Transition:

We have the most accurate, transparent, and historically robust account of the most important figure to have lived in the history of the world.  The fact that Jesus rose from the dead, not to mention if you were going to fake a story, you wouldn’t use female witnesses in the ancient world; they have hormones, their testimony didn’t matter in those days—in our scriptures, it says that a woman was the first one to see Jesus resurrected.  The point is that they can be trusted as authentic because if they were fabricated, they wouldn’t have used a flawed argument!  Moreover, the fact that so many people willingly died a brutal death, claiming that this happened; each of the Disciples, minus Judas and John, from Stephen to Cyprian, who was perhaps the last Christian martyred before Constantine converted to Christianity, claiming the half-brother of James, Jesus is Lord.

When the early martyrs were led to their final moments, accounts from even non-Christian Roman writers tell us they went singing and reciting their creeds.  This is why we sing together and why this series focuses on what we confess together.  If they were ready to die protecting authentic theology, the least we can do is live it out.

Challenge:

So, if all this is true, what shall we do?

If your actions reflect your prayer life, how would you assess your prayer life?  Does your conduct communicate your need for a Messiah?  As if you have made Jesus your master and king; does the way you live your life acknowledge His authority?

Romans 10:9 says, “If you believe in your heart… you will be saved,” if it is true that what is prayed is derived from what you believe and informs the way we live, if we pray as if we require a redeemer of sin and saver of souls, it will have observable characteristics, Jesus says, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” [John 13:35].

Even in the midst of Peter’s adamant denial of Christ, the people recognized him; we read in Matthew 26:71, 73b“Surely you are one of them,” recognizing him, it says, by the way he spoke!  They wouldn’t believe him until he began to curse (Matt 26:74)!  Who is it that you sound like?  Like the crowd or like a follower of Jesus?

How you live reveals how you believe.  If you don’t like what you see, the good news is that it doesn’t have to stay that way.  Your heart can be cultivated!  It starts with your prayer life.

Close:

Whatever challenges come, John 12:25 reminds us, “Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternity.”

George Beasley describes this as an “exposition of the law of the kingdom of God: life is given through death.  The principle enshrined in v 23 is illustrated by the short parable in v 24.  No explanation of it is given, but its meaning is transparent: so surely as a grain of wheat must be buried if it is to yield fruit for man, so the Son of Man must give himself in death if he is to produce a harvest of life for the world.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it starkly: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Yet in that death to self, we find true life—eternal fellowship with Jesus.

If we overlay this truth with “the law of what is prayed [is] the law of what is believed; [and therefore lived],” we have then a construct of another saying present in the synoptic tradition, the call to take up the cross.  If, “where I am, there also my servant will be” [v26], we will be in fellowship with Jesus, in suffering and in the presence of God alike.

I will close with one final illustration for you to consider how it applies in your life:

In 2006, a judge, right here in New York allowed a man to legally change his name to Jesus Christ. He said that he was moved to seek the name change because he realized, “I am the person that is that name.”

We’re all a little like Jose—we’re just more subtle. We grab at the title of “Lord” every time we reclaim the management of our life.

The question is, if I profess “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,” how do we become men and women of action? What have you been called to? If that statement is true, what then, shall we do?