John 3: 12-20 Philippians 2:5-11
And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.
As Christians we should spend a lot of time on the Word and learning about who Jesus is, in the world, in history, and of course to us.
Because this series is about the Apostles Creed the focus will be on the Jesus of history and then what it means to us a Christians today who proclaim this belief over and over again.
Who is Jesus to the early Christians and the world around them?
As we see from the creed the statements about Jesus were about Jesus as God’s Son, Jesus born of Mary, and then Jesus who was crucified, dead, and buried.
God’s Son-
Jesus being called the Son of God and being conceived by the Holy Ghost is to affirm that Jesus is fully divine.
This puts Jesus as not only part of God but also fully God as well. The language of the Trinity has been a topic of conversation throughout all Christianity as thinking of God in three persons, separate, but the same. There are great illustrations to try to make sense of this in our worldly terms like St. Patrick uses the clover to show three clover leafs all stemmed together but it falls a little short of the nature of Jesus being fully human and fully divine.
One of the crucial terms of the ancient church was the Greek word homoousios which is to affirm that Jesus Christ the Son of God is “of one substance” with God the Father which was in direct contradiction to a conflicting understanding that Jesus was created.
If you think any fight of theology in the church is new it was always there as people tried their best to make sense of the God and moved into different camps of theology. Denominations are not a new thing. There was the Arian church and then the split of the Roman and Eastern Orthodox and then the Reformation. The good news in all this, is no matter the amount of fighting there is room to understand God and make sense of God in your life and community.
Back to Jesus. There was his name that was an important factor to how others understood him to be.
The name Jesus in Greek Iésous (ee-ay-sooce') and Hebrew Yeshua was a name of God, the Messiah, the one to deliver. You may recognize Yeshua sounds a lot like Joshua which was the same.
As I study for this series I’m using a great book, which you will probably hear from a lot, written by Justo Gonzalez Apostles Creed for Today and he state:
And Christ which was not a surname “Christ“ is the name of Jesus and his heavenly function. Thus, some people speak of “the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.“ However, “Jesus“ is a name, and “Christ“ is an adjective or a past participle meaning “anointed.“ In fact, Christos is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Messiah which means “anointed.”(29)
So Jesus (the one that is, the one that is God, the Messiah) is the Christ who is anointed. It is not a last name as we know it but more of a title.
God is Jesus, and Jesus is God. Jesus took on flesh and was humbled by being born of Mary.
Now we get to Jesus, who is fully human.
We have just stepped out of Christmas where our focus has been on the birth narrative of Jesus, coming from humbled circumstances. God could have chosen anyone and at any time to be the one to carry Jesus and raise him and God chose this young woman and her fiance in the Middle East in the first century.
What we take from scripture is that Mary was visited by an Angel of the Lord and told she would bear a son. There has been lots of debate about the historical and scientific factors especially as biology and modern medicine takes a deep dive into the mechanics of conception.
What is important here is that the factor that Jesus was born of flesh, was brought into the world. That God intervened in this family that was being formed and put new life into the world through. Gozalez puts it “The purpose of these words is not to explain Jesus' biological origin. It is rather to make central affirmations about him: first, that his birth was something special; second, that his birth was real.”
In the Creed there is no mention about the importance of the life of Jesus and what he did in his teaching, healing, and miracles. The creed moves from his birth to the reality that he suffered, died, and was buried.
This too points to the realness of Jesus.
Those who put together the creed wanted to make sure the people of the time and of all time knew that this was a historical event in a certain time, that only happened once as the mentioned Jesus’ suffering under Pontuis Pilate. A figure of history, a figure that would put Jesus’ death in a particular time and place.
Back to Paul’s letter to the Phiippians in verse 8
“he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”
The creed got to the point. Jesus was real, Jesus really suffered a death that was set apart and final and was buried. To the writers of this creed it was about the heart of the gospel message that the Messiah came into the world and God intervened and is intervening as we will get to in weeks to come.
To John’s point in chapter 3: God so loved the world, loved creation, loved us, that he gave up himself, gave up his son so that we might be redeemed not by anything we have done but by the pure grace of God.
The cross was a scandal as much as any death but then it was a tool for humiliation, it was there for all to see, it was not hidden it was a tool of the state. And Jesus suffered through this humiliation to unite with all suffering.
That the God who rules the universe would die like a common criminal taking on the pain of this kind of death.
We proclaim ourselves as believers of an Almighty God and of a God that took on suffering and death. We use this instrument of death as a symbol of our faith in the crosses that stand in our churches, hang on our necks in pendants, adorn clothing and bodies alike.
So what does this mean for us today?
Friends, who do you say Jesus is in your life?
What does it mean for you to understand God as fully human and fully divine in the person of Jesus?
One of the things I appreciate about knowing the other creeds that we follow in the church is that our statements of beliefs in our tradition open up for us to think broader about the person of Jesus.
The Brief statement of faith speaks of Jesus in this way:
We trust in Jesus Christ,
Fully human, fully God.
There is beautiful language about what Jesus did in life and then,
Unjustly condemned for blasphemy and sedition,
Jesus was crucified,
suffering the depths of human pain
and giving his life for the sins of the world.
This gives more words to the nature of who Jesus is in our tradition of faith.
Like Jesus said to the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” We are supposed to know as believers who others say Jesus is and then in turn who do we say Jesus is for us?
There are many views to glean from and scripture has a lot of references to get glimpses of the picture of Jesus but we are to take this and understand who Jesus is in our lives and how that affects our daily living.
I hope that as much as I gave you a lot to think about and for some of you this is new information and for some of you a time to reflect upon these words a little deeper.
The heart of the matter is Jesus was real, set in time and not only was he really born but he really died. That means we proclaim a God that took on flesh and decided to live out the product of hate and sin in the world by his suffering and death on the cross. The burial would have been the final step but as the creed and scripture points out this is not the end of the story.
What matters to you in faith and how does what matters shape how you treat yourself and treat others. Does the fact that Jesus suffered help you relate better to God?
John 3:16 is part of a larger text of who Jesus is and who we are called to be as ones who proclaim Jesus.
Today, in the church calendar, is the celebration of the Baptism of Jesus and John 3 starts with a reminder that though we are born of flesh we are born again in the act of baptism and each time we reclaim and remember our baptism as one that connects us to Jesus.
God sent Jesus, sent Godself to be saved through Jesus, to be redeemed, reclaimed, and reconciled to God. We are called to have the opportunity to claim Jesus in our lives. To see the divine and the human-ness of Jesus as we are part of the story of God.
I hope that you take some time this week to think about Jesus and what it means to you that Jesus lived and that Jesus suffered and died. I hope that in your time of prayer and reflection you let God, maker of heaven and earth and Jesus the Son of God, the Word made flesh be part of your life in the little moments as well as the big moments of life.
When you understand who Jesus is to you, the Jesus of history, the Jesus of scripture, the Jesus of your life you will better be able to understand and speak that to others who ask that same question.
As disciples of Jesus it is important to know who it is that we serve, who it is that we worship, who it is that we are in Christ, because of Christ.
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