Week of June 27, 2010
Affirming the Essentials-Sermon Series on the Apostle’s Creed
“AND IN JESUS CHRIST HIS ONLY SON OUR LORD”
MONDAY, JUNE 28 <Read Acts 2:22-36>
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Matthew 16:16
“Christ” is the Greek word for Messiah (literally, “the anointed one”). It is not a surname (as many seem to think today); it is an “office-title,” identifying Jesus as God’s appointed savior-king for whom the Jews had long been waiting. The Messiah was expected to set up God’s reign and be hailed as the Lord and King throughout the world. To call Jesus the Christ is to claim for Him a decisive place in history and a universal dominion, which all human beings everywhere must acknowledge. Also, “to call Jesus the Christ expresses Jesus’ fulfillment of all three ministries for which men were anointed in Old Testament times, prophet, priest and king and at the same time shows God’s provision for our need. First, as sinners we are ignorant of God and need instruction—a prophet who not only tells us about God and His will through words, but in Himself. Second, we are estranged from him and need reconciliation—otherwise we shall end up unaccepted, unforgiven, and unblessed. We need a priest to provide forgiveness, which Jesus did once for all through His own sacrifice. Third, we are weak, blind, and foolish when it comes to the business of living for God, and we need someone to guide, protect, and strengthen us—which is what Jesus as King does for us. . In declaring that Jesus is the Christ, we declare that in the person and ministry of this one man, Jesus Christ, this threefold need is perfectly met!”[1]
Prayer: Thank you Lord for meeting my needs; providing Your word that I may know how to live; the sacrifice that I may be forgiven once for all and your rule, that I may be comforted in always knowing Who is in charge. Amen.
TUESDAY, JUNE 29 <Read Hebrews 1>
…that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son, does not honor the Father who sent him. John 5:23
The terminology of Sonship can be difficult for us because being a “son” means simply being another human being with a human father. However, when Jesus referred to himself as God’s Son, He was claiming deity. The people of His time understood this and at times took up stones to kill him because he was “making himself equal with God” (John 5:18). When we affirm that Jesus is the Son of God, we first affirm the wonderful truth that He was God in the Flesh, God born into the world as a human being (“Joy to the World! The Lord has come!”). We affirm that in Jesus we see and know God Himself, and we affirm that Jesus accomplished things only God could accomplish. At the same time, when we confess Jesus is God’s Son we are standing against the denials of Jesus’ deity that one finds throughout history; from the ancient Arians, to the modern Unitarians, various cults and much of theological liberalism. Jesus was not just a God-inspired good man, more aware of God than the rest of us (liberalism), nor was he a super-angel, first and finest of all creatures (Jehovah’s Witnesses).
Prayer: Lord, help me to recognize the various falsehoods about you when I hear them. Protect me from these things and help me to stand firm in the truth of Who You are and what You have done for me. Amen.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30 <Read Colossians 1: 11-23>
…and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Matthew 3:17
One of the great mysteries of our faith is that Jesus is not only God’s Son historically, that is, He was born a child of Mary through the power of the Holy Spirit, but somehow there is also a Father-Son relationship between the First and Second Person of the Trinity. Jesus himself talked this way. He called God “my Father,” and himself “the Son.” He spoke of an eternal Father-Son relation, into which he had come to bring others. “No one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him” (Matthew 11:27). All of this does not mean that the Son originated after the Father, or is in Himself less than the Father. He is in Himself divine and eternal, and is not a created being. At the same time, Jesus says that He, the Son, lives His life in dependence on the Father, because that is His nature (John 6:57) and He loves the Father. On the other side, the Father loves the Son. When you hear a young man introduced as “my only son” you know he is the apple of his father’s eye. When the Creed calls Jesus God’s “only Son” the idea is the same. Jesus enjoys his Father’s dearest love, and through Him, we do too.
Prayer: Though I do not fully comprehend it Lord, I thank you for the love between the Father and the Son and most of all for the invitation to become a part of the family and take part in that love. Amen.
THURSDAY, JULY 1 <Read John 1-16>
The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:14
When it comes to Jesus, the mysteries just keep coming. God the Son in relation to God the Father (or how the First Person of the Trinity relates to the Second), not to mentions things we will discuss in the next weeks—the Virgin Birth, His resurrection, ascension and return. We also affirm one of the greatest mysteries, that Jesus was both “fully God and fully human,” one person in two natures. This is the formula for the incarnation, and in a sense, sounds simple. But, J.I. Packer points out: “the thing itself is unfathomable.” He goes on to say, “It is easy to shoot down the ancient heresies that the Son took a human body without a human soul, or that he was always two persons under one skin, and with them the modern heresy that the ‘enfleshing’ of the Son was merely a special case of the indwelling of the Spirit, so that Jesus was not God, but merely a God-filled man—but to grasp what the incarnation was in positive terms is beyond us. Don’t worry, though; you do not need to know how God became man in order to know Christ! Understand it or not, the fact remains that “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14); it was the supreme, mind–blowing miracle; love prompted it; and our part is not to speculate about it and scale it down, but to wonder and adore and love and exalt “’Jesus Christ … the same yesterday and today and forever’” (Hebrews 13:8).[2]
Prayer: May the mysteries about You that I do not fully comprehend draw me to You and not away. May I see them in terms of Your love for me and not my own doubts and fears. Amen.
FRIDAY, JULY 2 <Read Romans 10:9-10; Colossians 2:6-23>
Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:9-11
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who was executed by Hitler during World War II. Years later, one of his students recalled the last classroom session he had with his teacher. Bonhoeffer, knowing his arrest was imminent, asked his students a question that took them by surprise: He asked them if they loved Jesus. This is not the typical question one hears in a seminary classroom. Usually the classroom is reserved for more academic questions. But Bonhoeffer knew this was the heart of life. This is the question that stands above all others. Do you love Jesus? Jesus turned to his disciples and asked them, “Who do people say that I am?” It was Simon Peter who gave the answer that has resonated through the ages: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Is that the answer you would have given? Does it make a difference? Do you love Jesus? All of heaven and earth depend on how each of us answers that question.
Prayer: Thank you Lord for loving me long before I ever knew you. May I truly believe and confess all that the Creed says about you, but I never forget that the greatest confession is love. Help me to love you most of all. Amen.
[1]Packer, J. I.: Growing in Christ. Wheaton, Ill. : Crossway Books, 1996, c1994, S. 40
[2]Packer, J. I.: Growing in Christ. Wheaton, Ill. : Crossway Books, 1996, c1994, S. 44