HIS ONLY SON, OUR LORD
A couple of years ago in a Maundy Thursday service a group of people presented a drama that I wrote over 20 years ago called “This is Your Life, Jesus”. It featured monologues by the people who knew Jesus, like Peter and Pilate and Judas and Mary. The section of the Apostles’ Creed that describes Jesus is something like that play. Here is Jesus’ life laid out in six statements, the longest part of the creed. It reads almost like an obituary – a very different sort of obituary from what we are used to, but it does encapsulate His whole life.
It tells us how He was born and to whom, and how He died and through whom. That’s not exactly all that is sufficient for us to know Him. What do we really know about Jesus? This creed captures some of it, but Scripture fills in the details. We know whose son He is, we know what His relationship is to us, we know the tremendous truth that He rose from the dead, and we know that He ascended into heaven and is there now with His Father, and we know that one day He will come to judge the living and the dead.
When I was a child we still said “the quick and the dead” and I always thought it was quite obvious that those who were dead would not be very quick anymore. Imagine if all we had to go on was the creed? Would that create faith in Christ within us? It doesn’t mention forgiveness of sins or eternal life or even belief in Him. Why did the authors of this creed choose these things as most significant? You cannot be a Christian without a complete understanding of Christ.
These points of identification are important, in fact, they are vital to the Christian faith. These are the things on which we must agree. The Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Descent, Ascension, and Return of Christ are all covered in this document.
Only two people from Christ’s life are mentioned; His mother Mary and Pontius Pilate, His persecutor. Why does it not say “denied by Simon Peter, betrayed by Judas Iscariot, harassed by Pharisees, or pursued by King Herod as a child”? Why is there no mention of the significant places in His life, like Bethlehem or Nazareth or Jerusalem? Where is the prophetic description of His suffering that Isaiah provides us with each Lenten season?
If we were to rewrite this creed we might do it differently, but as such it has stood for over 1500 years and so its value to us is immeasurable. Just look at the relationship between Jesus and God. They are Father and Son, and yet Jesus has existed since before the beginning of the world, and in fact the world was created through Him. That can be very confusing given that the first statement says that God is the creator of heaven and earth. How can Christ also take credit for creation?
The answer has to do not with identity or credit, but in role and responsibility. Jesus and God, being one and the same as members of the Trinity, both had a hand in creation. This is not meant to distinguish Jesus as being above God, but to declare His full divinity, His preexistent presence in the world, and His power to do all things. Remember, creeds such as this were written to fight against heresy and false teachings. Jesus must be understood to be equal to God, not merely a human being.
The term Lord is probably what causes us to become the most disengaged with this creed. Jesus Christ our Lord means that He is supreme in our lives; He is the ruler of our lives. Our obedience should be to Him and to His teachings and commandments. He is the relational part of the Trinity, and He wants to be in relationship with us.
Since the Incarnation is the first event mentioned in Jesus’ story, let’s reflect on perhaps the best description of it from Charles Wesley: “Christ, by highest heaven adored; Christ the everlasting Lord! Late in time behold Him come, offspring of the virgin’s womb. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; hail the incarnate deity; pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel.” Fully God and fully man, not half of each. He was the fullness of God contained in a human body.
Emmanuel is the word found in Isaiah 7:14 to describe the child to be born of a virgin. Paul called Him the image of the invisible God. In Him we see God. In London’s Trafalgar Square there is a monument to Admiral Horatio Nelson, hero of the British navy. His statue rests atop a 169-foot column. Visitors to the square cannot actually see the statue close up. Visitors have no idea what he looks like. So the British have an exact replica, a duplicate of Nelson’s image, at the ground level so that visitors can look him in the eye and see him face to face. This is the picture of the Incarnation. We can’t see God high above us, but we can see His Son.
The two monumental events of everyone’s life – birth and death – are highlighted in the creed like bookends. But before Christ died, He suffered, in particular, at the hands of or “under” Pontius Pilate. This is a historical reference that places the death of Christ in a particular time in Israel. This is another statement of verifiable indication. Jesus was put to death at the hands of a corrupt foreign government and the crowd of His own people who rejected Him.
His death was no ordinary one. Through His suffering and death we found atonement for our sin and a hope for our future. His suffering was a sacrifice. His death was an offering. In the C.S. Lewis novel The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Aslan the lion is symbolic of Christ. He is executed by the evil White Witch on the Stone Table, and yet he returns to life. The significance of this story for the Christian life is found in the explanation of Aslan’s resurrection. “When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”
Before Christ rose again, He spent time in death. That’s understandable since He did not rise for three days. We tend to skip over the length of time He spent in the grave as we move from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. The phrase “He descended to the dead” has been removed from the creed in our hymnals, though the alternative version still appears. Originally the phrase said “He descended into hell.” I suspect this is a bit of a deal breaker for some, the thought of Christ going to hell when He died.
Among some members of the Word-Faith movement this statement becomes twisted into false teaching. A man who calls himself Apostle Frederick K.C. Price, heavily influenced by Kenneth Hagin, wrote, "Do you think that the punishment of our sins was to die on the cross? If that was the case, the two thieves could have paid our price. No, the punishment was to go into hell itself and to serve time in hell separated from God." Such teaching goes against what Scripture clarifies, which is that Jesus declared from the cross that His work was finished and He gave His soul over to God.
So what did Jesus do while He was among the dead? In 1 Peter 3 we find the answer, “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom He also went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built.” We should not think of Jesus going to hell, but rather understand that the word refers to Sheol or Hades, which is a temporary place of waiting, not one of punishment.
After three days in the grave, Jesus rose again. This week I discovered that I have been misusing the term resurrection. We see many examples in Scripture of Jesus bringing people back from the dead, but that was resuscitation, not resurrection. To be resurrected implies a new and glorious body. All the people Jesus brought back to life eventually died again. Jesus was the firstborn from the dead, the first to receive a resurrected body. This is what makes Christianity stand apart from other religions. Buddha is dead, Mohammed is dead, and Joseph Smith is dead. Only Christ lives on after death.
Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15 is much like the Apostles’ Creed. “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he also appeared to me.”
I want to share with you an interesting analogy about the completed work of Christ that includes His ascension into heaven. We focus so much on Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection; why do we neglect His ascension? Think of it as a baseball game. His birth is first base, His death is second base, and His resurrection is third base. Why don’t we celebrate the complete trip which brings Him all the way home? At the very point when Satan was so certain of his victory, Jesus hit a grand slam.
Jesus is right now in heaven, sitting beside God in His place of rightful honor, and He is waiting as a prophet, He is interceding as a priest, and He is reigning as a king. His next mission is to return and judge the living and the dead. This second coming is understood to be the one and only. Scripture does not support a pre-millennial tribulation or “left behind” concept. When Christ comes, His work of judgment begins, and no one escapes judgment, not even the dead.
On Judgment Day, all sins will be revealed, all those who remained faithful will be vindicated, and righteous rewards will be given to those who belong to God. Paul wrote, “For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.” But we are not without hope. James 5:17 says, “Love has been perfected among us in this; that we may have boldness on the Day of Judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.” He was speaking of our being like Christ in our expression of love for one another. A great deal of judgment has to do with how we treat our fellow Christians. The world watches how Christians behave and forms its opinion of Christ on that basis.
How then should we live as we proclaim this creed and wait for the inevitable? Peter quoted Psalm 34, saying, “Those who desire life and desire to see good days, let them keep their tongues from evil and their lips from speaking deceit; let them turn away from evil and do good; let them seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
We can revel in the fact that God has provided us with a Savior who claimed victory over sin and death and lives now to intercede for us and to come again and live with us forever in His kingdom. History calls Him the suffering servant. Every word of Isaiah’s majestic account of what was to happen some seven hundred years later on Calvary reminds us that God has not left us to suffer alone. God has stepped into history. We have sinned. But it is God who suffers with us – and for us. This is what we must believe about Jesus.
