One Lord Jesus Christ

Introduction

We’re working our way through the Nicene Creed and we’ve finished the first part where we confess our faith in one God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.

When we say the Creed, we’re confessing and proclaiming that there’s only one God and not many gods. And the one God we believe in is the Father. But since the word ‘Father’ is a relational word and always implies another person, then to confess our faith in God the Father leads us to confess our faith in God the Son who comes from the Father. And we also believe in God the Holy Spirit who comes from the Father and the Son.

And the Father is almighty, because he can do all things and he rules over all things. But he doesn’t rule over the Son or the Spirit, because they too are almighty since all three persons have one and the same divine being.

And the Father Almighty made heaven and earth and all that they contain, including invisible things like angels as well as all visible things. He also created time. That’s what we’ve been thinking about so far.

Today we’ll begin to look at the second part of the Creed which is about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And this second part of the Creed is divided into two sections, because the Creed focuses firstly on who he is; and then it focuses secondly on what he did when he came to earth as one of us. So, it’s about his person and his work. This is what it says about who he is:

And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only-begotten Son of God,
begotten of the Father before all ages;
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God;
begotten, not made,
having the same being as the Father,
through whom all things came to be.

And this is what it says about his work on earth:

Who, for us and for our salvation,
came down from heaven
and was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,
and was made man;
and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered and was buried;
and rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures;
and ascended into heaven,
and sits at the right hand of the Father;
and he shall come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead;
of whose kingdom there shall be no end.

Today we’ll focus on the first line, which says ‘And [we believe] in one Lord Jesus Christ’.

Biblical witness

In 1 Corinthians 8 the Apostle Paul begins to deal with the topic of food sacrificed to idols. And near the beginning of what he writes, he says that we know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and there is no God but one. He then continues by saying that even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. So, there’s one God, the Father. That’s the first line of the first part in the Creed. And there’s one Lord, Jesus Christ. That’s the first line of the second part in the Creed.

And at the beginning of 1 Corinthians, Paul greets his readers and says to them: ‘Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.’ And that’s how Paul usually begins his letters. He usually refers to God the Father and to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And Peter, in his first letter, praises the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so, there you have both persons named again: there’s God the Father and there’s the Lord Jesus Christ. And in his second letter, he says: ‘Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. So, there’s God and there’s Jesus our Lord.

And in Philippians 2, we have that wonderful passage about Jesus Christ, who, being in very nature God, made himself nothing by coming to earth as one of us. And after he died, in obedience to God the Father, 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. So, once again we have a reference to God the Father and we have a reference to Jesus Christ who is Lord.

When we say the Creed to confess and proclaim our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we’re confessing and proclaiming what the Bible says about him. And we’re only able to confess these things because of God’s kindness to us in Christ Jesus, because it is God himself who enables us to believe these things and to confess in the face of an unbelieving world that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Lord

The title ‘Lord’ could be used in biblical times as a term of respect. For instance, when the Lord was talking to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, she addressed him as ‘Lord’. But many English versions of the Bible translate what she said to him as ‘Sir’. ‘Sir’, she said, ‘you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep.’ And so, it was a polite term of respect. It also meant ‘master’. If someone was your lord, then he was your master and you had to do show him respect and do what he said. However, often something more than that is meant when the Bible refers to Jesus Christ as Lord. Often it means that Jesus Christ is God. And that’s how the Creed uses the title ‘Lord’ to refer to him.

When we were going through the Psalms recently, I pointed out many times how the psalmist addressed God as LORD in capital letters. And I explained that when we see LORD in capital letters in the Old Testament, it’s God’s special covenant name, which speaks to us of his commitment to his people and how he has bound himself to us with a promise to be our God and to care for us.

When Old Testament verses containing God’s special covenant name appear in the New Testament and when they are therefore translated into Greek, God’s special covenant name is translated ‘Lord’. And whenever the Creed refers to Jesus Christ as Lord, it’s applying God’s special covenant name from the Old Testament to Jesus Christ. It’s saying that everything the Old Testament tells us about the LORD, the God of Israel, applies to Jesus Christ. And that means that when we say that we believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, we’re confessing and proclaiming that Jesus Christ is God.

In fact, the Creed is doing what Paul does in Romans 10. In that chapter, he quotes from Joel 2 where it says that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD in capital letters will be saved. And Paul applies what Joel said about the LORD to Jesus Christ. So, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved. When we say that Jesus Christ is Lord, we’re saying that he is God.

Jesus

Let’s now think briefly about name Jesus, which is the name Mary and Jospeh were commanded to give him by the angel who appeared to them before his birth. And the name Jesus is the Greek version of the Hebrew name Joshua. And in Hebrew it means ‘Yahweh saves’ or ‘the LORD saves’. And it’s an entirely fitting name for Mary’s child, because Mary’s child, born in that stable in Bethlehem, is the Lord God Almighty who came to earth as one of us to save his people from our sin and misery and to give us eternal life in his presence.

Every time we hear the name Jesus we should think about how the Lord God Almighty came to save us from the power and penalty of sin; and he came to save us from the tyranny of the devil; and he came to save us from death and hell. He came to be our Saviour.

Christ

And Jesus is also the Christ. I say he’s the Christ, because it’s a title and not a name. And it means ‘Anointed’. In Old Testament times, kings were anointed with oil to signify that they had been set apart and appointed by God to rule over his people on his behalf. And when ‘the Christ’ is applied to the Lord Jesus, it means that he is God’s Spirit-Anointed King. Instead of being anointed with oil, he was anointed with the Holy Spirit, who was given to him without limit to help him to be and to do everything he needed to be and to do in order to be our king.

In various places in the Old Testament, God announced that one day he would send his people a new king to rule over them, who would be descended from David. And so, when the Lord Jesus was on the earth, many of the people saw the things he did and wondered whether he might possibly be the Promised King. Was he the Christ who was to come?

However, what they were expecting was a king who would do for them what David did for the people in his day. That is to say, they were expecting a king who would raise an army and lead it into battle against the Romans who were occupying the Promised Land. They wanted a king who would fight for them and who would kill their enemies. But the Lord Jesus did not come to kill, but to be killed. He came, not to save his people from the Romans, but to save them from their sin and misery. He came, not to establish an earthly kingdom in Judea, but a spiritual kingdom throughout the world.

He is indeed the Promised King, but he was not what they were expecting, because he came gently and riding on a donkey and not on a war horse. He came to give up his life on the cross to pay for our sins and to make peace for us with God.

When we say the Creed, we are confessing and proclaiming that Jesus is the Christ. He is God’s Spirit-Anointed King. And he came to save us from our sin and misery and to give us eternal life. And we’re also confessing and proclaiming that Jesus Christ is Lord. That is to say, we’re confessing and proclaiming that Jesus Christ is God.

One

Finally, when we say the Creed, we are confessing and proclaiming that the Lord Jesus Christ is one. We’ll get into this in future weeks, but we believe he is one person in two natures. So, he is one person: he is God the Son, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity. That’s who he is. And God the Son came to earth as one of us, taking to himself a human nature like ours in every respect apart from sin. And so, from the time of the incarnation, he is now God and man in one person.

Again, we’ll get into this in future weeks, but some people taught false views about him. For instance, that God the Son in a sense took over the body of a man named Jesus. They were saying therefore that the Lord Jesus is not one person, but two persons mixed together: one person is divine and the other person is human.

However, we believe that he is not two persons, but one person only. He is God the Son, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity. And for us and for our salvation, he took to himself a human nature like ours without ceasing to be what he eternally is, which is God the Son. And God the Son came to earth as one of us to save us from our sin and misery and to give us eternal life and eternal happiness in the presence of our God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.