Essentials: Jesus Christ

Introduction

Here at Friendship Church...We believe in Jesus Christ.

I know that this is not news to any of you, but in our summer series we are tackling our Declaration of Faith and so this morning we are going to look at “What we believe about Jesus Christ. Obviously one message would not suffice to unpack everything we believe, we actually spent all last year in a series called “Christos” where we looked deeply at the life, ministry and mission of Jesus and even that felt like we had just scratched the surface.

(Short Version Stop)

Still we will attempt to unpack at least the “Essentials” of what we believe about Jesus Christ this morning.

Tension

As we get started I think it is important to remember that “Christ” is not Jesus’ last name. In fact, if you were to read some other ancient Greek manuscript and you came across the word “Christos”, it would probably be found in reference to the rubbing on a healing salve, or to pour oil or ointment on someone in some way.

The reason that the New Testament authors chose this word for their Greek reading audience was because it was the closest in meaning to the ancient Hebrew word for “Anointed one”. That Hebrew word is a word that is probably familiar to you, it is the word that we pronounce as “Messiah” but was originally “Mashiach” in Hebrew.

In the Old Testament to be “annointed” was to go through a ceremonial ritual where they poured oil on someone’s head in order to set them apart for a role or task that God had for them. There are many references in the Old Testament where prophets, priests and Kings were all referred to as a “Mashiach” or “anointed one”. Even “Cyrus the great”, the pagan King of Persia was specially chosen by God for a specific task and so God refers to him as His “Mashiach” or the Lord’s anointed (Isaiah 45:1). So the journey to get to Jesus being called “Christ” was not as simple as we might think.

That being said…for generations before the arrival of Jesus, the Jewish people had longed been hoping and praying for the arrival of the one they called “The Messiah”. And while they often argued over the details, they believed that this “Mashiach” would be set apart from all the others as the perfect “Prophet, Priest and King” who would come to accomplish all that the Lord had promised for His people.

We see evidence of this long suffering hope of the Jewish people in many places in Scripture. One prominent place is when Jesus was first calling His disciples and Andrew went to get his brother Simon.

John 1:40–41 ESV

40 One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41 He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ).

Andrew believes that they have found who their people had long waited for in Jesus. And then in parenthesis we see how the Gospel writer John clarifies for his Greek speaking audience that this “strange to them” word “Messiah” is what in Greek is know as “Christ” or anointed one. Another prominent place brings us back to the story of the Samaritan Woman at the Well from last week. After Jesus said:

John 4:24–26 ESV

24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

Not only do we hear of the hope of this woman for the coming “Messiah”, but we see how Jesus plainly tells her that He is the Messiah. This is the first time that the Bible records Jesus specifically telling anyone that He is the Messiah. And then the woman forgets her water jar and leaves off to tell everyone she could:

John 4:29 ESV

29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”

This is the key question for us today. Is Jesus the Christ and if He is…what does that mean for us?

The idea that Jesus was the Christ is one of the major themes of John’s Gospel. We can see this throughout the book, including the verses that we have looked at so far, and we can know this because he directly tells us that this is his purpose for writing the book:

John 20:30–31 ESV

30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

You see we don’t just believe that a man called “Jesus of Nazareth” existed. Historically it is impossible to argue otherwise. No, it is much more than that. When we say that we believe in Jesus Christ we are saying that we believe that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” and that the only way to have eternal life is by believing in Him.

So we are going to unpack our statement of what “We believe...” about Jesus Christ this morning, but first...let’s pray and then we will dive into this “Essential believe” together.

Truth

So we spent all last year looking deeply at the life, ministry and mission of Jesus, and I still feel like we just scratched the surface.

(Short Version)

The Apostle John wrote an entire Gospel and he seemed to feel the same way. Along with the earlier verse he said in John 21:25

John 21:25 ESV

25 Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

There is so much to the mystery and magnificence of Jesus than none of us will ever know it all, so in our time this morning we are simply going to do our best to understand what we as a Church agree on when it comes to the doctrine of Jesus Christ. So as we have in weeks past, I will start by introducing our statement and then we will unpack it a little at a time.

We believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, conceived by the Holy Spirit. He is true God and true man. We believe in His virgin birth, sinless life, miracles and teachings. We believe in His substitutionary atoning death, bodily resurrection, and ascension into heaven, perpetual intercession for His people, and personal visible return to earth.

As we already handled Jesus as the Christ, let’s move on to say that...

“We believe...

1. Jesus Christ is God’s only begotten Son, conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Most of the time when we are looking for doctrinal clarity we look in the writings of the early church, the epistles and such...but that doesn’t mean that we can’t find rich doctrinal positions directly from the story of Jesus. From Matthew chapter 1...

Matthew 1:18–19 ESV

18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

Joseph was caught in this difficult tension. As a just man he loved God’s law but as Mary’s betrothed he also loved Mary and so he was looking for a way to reconcile these two things because he assumed that Mary was pregnant in a way that she was not. So God sent His messenger to correct Joseph’s understandable but wrong conclusion.

Matthew 1:20 ESV

20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit, who we will get to next week, conceived the Christ child in Mary. It wasn’t anything that Joseph did, they had not yet “come together” and that is why Joseph was understandably concerned, but now He knows better. And the messenger continued...

Matthew 1:21–23 ESV

21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).

It almost sounds like Joseph is like many new parents who have to decide between more than one name, but that is not really the case here. The name Jesus means “God saves” and the name Immanuel - as the text says - means God with us. The first is the name that the child will be recognized by and the second is really the “nature” that the child will be recognized by. As the adoptive father Joseph will give Jesus his name, but his nature is not from Joseph. He is the Son of God.

This is what God’s messenger told Mary when she was asking her own understandable set of questions, like how can this be?

Luke 1:35 ESV

35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.

So according to what we hear from the messengers of God, “We believe that Jesus Christ is God’s only begotten Son, conceived by the Holy Spirit.”

Now you might be wondering about that word “begotten” because we don’t see that word in these texts and in truth most you won’t find that word in your Bible either. It is an archaic English word used in some of the older translations.

This is a good place to remind us that some of what we are after this summer is to consider if our “Declaration of Faith” still says things in a way that we think it should. I did not have any part in writing our “Declaration of Faith” and so I can’t say for sure but my guess is that word is included to make a distinction between how uniquely Jesus is the Son of God compared to how the Bible says that we are “Sons of God”. Like in Gal 3:26

Galatians 3:26 ESV

26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.

We are adopted into “Sonship” through faith, Jesus has always had it.

So is it a helpful word? Well if it serves to make that distinction then it may be, but some people have wrongly asserted that to be “begotten” means that you had a “beginning” and that would undermine our belief in the Trinity. So as a point of distinction it may have been helpful, but with the prominence of this misunderstanding we might be better off using a different word.

What do you think? If you have some thoughts on that, then let me encourage you to share them with one of us Overseers as one of our goals this summer is to bring clarity to the wording and message of our Declaration of Faith.

2. Jesus Christ is true God and true man.

Or as you have heard me say many times, Jesus Christ is the God-man. We saw this in Jesus’ birth story, but it is significant enough for us to break it out on it’s own. Especially since this aspect of Jesus is probably the most tricky to understand. Or maybe an even better way to say that is that this aspect of Jesus takes the most faith to accept.

You see sometimes when people begin to get serious about things like doctrine and theology one of errors that is often made is to forget that the “God-ness of God” is not limited to the boundaries of our level of comprehension. In our excitement over all the new things that we now know we forget that there are things about God that we can never know because we don’t have the capacity to know.

And sometimes we create something like a “theological box” out of the boundaries of our understanding and we try and stuff God inside this box. But even if (and it’s a big “if”) even if everything in our theological box is completely true, we have to remember it is still only a small picture of His endless nature.

So there are going to be times when God reveals one thing about Himself (left hand) in a way that we can comprehend and then He reveals another thing about Himself in a way that we can comprehend but when we try to comprehend how those two things fit together it becomes incomprehensible.

So the question we then have to ask ourselves is:

Is this “incomprehensible” because it isn’t true and God is lying to me about these two things? or

Is this “incomprehensible” because it is true and God is just that much bigger than what I can comprehend?

As I was personally grappling with these two questions this week I couldn’t help but be drawn to the wisdom of Prov 3:5-6 again.

Proverbs 3:5–6 ESV

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. 6 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

And you know that I am not trying to sell you some new idea about Jesus, this has been the teaching of the Christian Church for hundreds of years. In 451 AD more than a hundred renown theologians from differing Christian traditions gathered together at something called “The Council of Chalcedon” and through their shared knowledge of God’s Word they affirmed this very idea in something they called “The Hypostatic Union”.

I know it sounds complicated, technical and a little “Star-Wars” ish, but the word “Hypostatic” simply means “personal” - so the idea expressed was that “In Jesus there is a union of two natures in one person”. They chose this wording from the Greek word “ὑπόστασις (hpyostasis) as it is found in Hebrews 1 verse 3 where it says:

Hebrews 1:3 ESV

3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

The word translated “nature” speaking of the nature of God, is the word “ὑπόστασις (hpyostasis). The “Hypostatic Union”. The God-Man. Fully God and Fully Man. They are all descriptions of this same mysterious attribute of Jesus.

The Apostle John tried to move us all into this thinking in his use of the term “Word” to describe Jesus. Remember he starts out his Gospel with the words...

John 1:1–2 ESV

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God.

We looked at this verse when we talked on the Trinity, showing that Jesus, “the Word” was God. Later in verse 14 he continues to say...

John 1:14 ESV

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The concept of Jesus being ‘the God-Man” will spin you mind, but that is the lengths that our God will go for us to be able to know Him. He graciously allows us to know Him truly, we will never know Him fully.

So We believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, conceived by the Holy Spirit. He is true God and true man.

3. We believe in His virgin birth, sinless life, miracles and teachings.

This would be a great synopsis for everything that we covered last year in our Christos series. In short, we believe that Jesus said and did what the Bible says that Jesus said and did. But there was on thing that the Bible says Jesus never did that everyone of us does.

Hebrews 4:15 ESV

15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Jesus did every miracle, every teaching, every confrontation without ever being anything less than what God designed us to be. This is so important for us, as it says in 2 Corinthians 5:21

2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV

21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Lastly, and this is big chuck I know, but

4. We believe in His substitutionary atoning death, bodily resurrection, and ascension into heaven, perpetual intercession for His people, and personal visible return to earth.

That is quite a mouthful, but mostly because of all the qualifiers and adjectives. Without those we have something that we say all the time here. We believe in the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. He intercedes for us until the day of blessed return to bring us back to be with Him forever.

These are some of the most significant truths of the Christian faith…so you might be wondering how are we going to unpack these with the short time that we have left. The answer is…we won’t.

None of these categories in our Declaration of Faith are stand alone items. They are all intimately intertwined and none of them more so than what we believe about Jesus Christ. The Christ is the centerpiece of all that we “Christ-ians” believe and so each one of these aspects Jesus will be major players in the weeks to come.

For now, let me just leave you with 2 verses that sum these up fairly well...

Romans 8:34b “Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”

And the very words of Jesus from John 14 where He encourages us with the words…

John 14:1–3 ESV

1 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

Gospel Application

As I said when we began this morning, “We believe in Jesus Christ” and while that probably doesn’t surprise any of us it should still captivate us. That the “Anointed One”, the “Meshaich” who was promised thousands of years ago has come and perfectly fulfilled everything that He said He would even preparing a place for us so that we can be with Him for all eternity.

Landing

Let me close with this picture of Jesus Christ the “God Man” from Phil 2:

Philippians 2:5–10 ESV

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,