And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord

** If you need something to listen to while you read this, check out Andrew Peterson’s song “The Good Confession.” You can find various versions on Youtube or on his album, Resurrection Songs: Volume II. 

When we put the Apostles’ Creed in our Sunday worship service bulletin, I often break it up into three paragraphs like this:

I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the virgin Mary; Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven; And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen.

Spacing the Creed in this way gives a visual sense of its Trinitarian nature. Paragraph One is only one line, but it describes God, the Father. Paragraph Two moves on to cover God, the Son. And Paragraph Three begins with God, the Holy Spirit.  

As you can see, the paragraph about Jesus is at the center of the Creed and is the longest. It also completely skips over the entire life of Jesus. It gets from his birth to his death in the span of seven words. He’s born; he suffers; he’s killed. It reminds me of those uplifting t-shirts from the 90’s that said, “Life Sucks and then you die.”

Obviously, there is more to Jesus’ life than the Creed describes. He did more than just die and rise again. This is why the Creed isn’t intended to be a substitute for the Bible but merely a quick summary. It is a shorthand reminder of the faith given once for all.  

Jesus Christ is God’s Son

After proclaiming our belief in God the Father, Maker of all things we declare, “I believe Jesus is God’s Son.” 

I don’t pretend to understand how the three persons of the Trinity interacted with one another before time began or creation existed or how they interact with one another now for that matter. Tim Keller would often talk about the relationship of the Trinity as mutual, self-giving love. This sounds wonderful, but it is hard to wrap my mind around what it might actually look like.

Theologians often use a fancy Greek word, perichoresis, to describe the Trinity. The three members of the Trinity are always with each other in an inseparable communion, the “dance of God” (perichoresis means dance). The idea being you can’t have one without the other two. I’ve never been really sure how this “dance” analogy works or if it helps. If you’re one of the seven people in the world that has ever seen me dance, you would understand why. 

But just because it is hard to understand the Trinity doesn’t mean it isn’t important. Jesus tells his disciples to baptize future disciples in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). Time and again, he refers to God as his “Father” (12 times in Matthew 6 alone, for example). Jesus also promises a helper, the Holy Spirit, to his disciples for when he is no longer able to physically be with them (see John 14:16; 15:26; 16:7 etc.). The Trinity isn’t something the church just made up; it is clearly in the consciousness of Jesus. 

In John 14, Philip asks Jesus to show the Father to the disciples, Jesus famously replies:

“Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.

There is plenty to unpack here. But the gist of it seems to be, as Eugene Peterson says, if there is anything you want to know about God, look to Jesus. Peterson says it this way, “Everything we need to know of God comes by way of Jesus.” God is beyond our understanding. Jesus brings him close. 

This, it seems to me, is the essence of what it means for Jesus to be God’s Son. Jesus brings God close. 

Jesus makes major claims about himself. He says he was there when Satan fell from heaven (Luke 10:18). He plays fast and loose with subject-verb agreement when he says, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). He does things that only God can do. “Even the wind and the waves obey him” (Matthew 8:27).

As you read the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life, you get the overwhelming sense that there is not one moment he is not in complete control. He breaks down and weeps for his friend Lazarus. On the eve of his crucifixion, he asks his Father if it is possible to accomplish his mission any other way. He gets enraged at the hard-heartedness of the Pharisees. He is not a robot. He is fully human. And yet fully in control. Even during his own trial, he is calling the shots.   

“The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.” (John 10:17-18)

Jesus as God’s Son is a reminder that Jesus is not plan B. He was in it from the beginning. This means God is, from the beginning, the God revealed to us in Jesus. 

This is so important because it gets to the heart of what we think about God. And what we think about God determines everything else about us. 

Do we believe God is ultimately for us or against us? 

I mentioned Sinclair Ferguson’s book, The Whole Christ, a couple weeks ago. In it, Ferguson suggests that the reason why churches, and the people in them, are so often judgmental, angry, anxious, and insecure is because of a misrepresentation of the Bible’s most central character - God. Ferguson writes,  

The root of legalism is almost as old as Eden, which explains why it is a primary, if not the ultimate, pastoral problem. In seeking to bring freedom from legalism, we are engaged in undoing the ancient work of Satan. In Eden the Serpent persuaded Eve and Adam that God was possessed of a narrow and restrictive spirit bordering on the malign. After all, the Serpent whispered, “Isn’t it true that he placed you in this garden full of delights and has now denied them all to you?”

When God is seen, in Ferguson words, as a “narrow and restrictive” killjoy, the church follows in his footsteps. 

Ferguson offers a simple case study as a litmus test of what we believe to be the overarching story of the Bible. He asks his readers to consider the claim, “God loves me because Christ died for me?’” At first glance it appears to have the elements (in summary of course) of the gospel – God’s love and Jesus’ sacrificial death. But Ferguson notes this statement implies that God’s love for me hinges on what Jesus has done for me. In other words, God doesn’t want to love me, but because of Jesus, somehow God now must love me. As if God holds his nose as he welcomes us into the family. 

Ferguson suggests that once that vision of God takes root in our hearts and in our churches, it is difficult to overcome. But that is not the story of the Gospel. Perhaps the best-known passage in all of Scripture, John 3:16, tells us just the opposite, “for God so loved the world that he sent his only Son.” Jesus’ life and death and resurrection is the out-working from God’s love not the cosmic bribe for God’s love.

And Our Lord

We will spend more time in future reflections on what it means for Jesus to be our Lord. For now, if we understand Jesus as God’s Son - as God with us - if we can come to see that Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in Jesus, then it follows that he must become the most important person in our life.

Jesus as God’s Son means simply: To whom else would we go? What other way of life would we want to be apprentices of? Who else would we want to learn from? What other way is there?

Darrell Johnson, in speaking of the Sermon on the Mount, once noted that when we first read Jesus’ teaching it feels like this way of life, the way of Jesus, is impossible. But the more you read it and begin to comprehend it, you begin to realize there actually is no other way of life that is possible. Only this way will work. 

This is why we repeat the Creed. To remind ourselves, and those around us, he is the way. 

As Andrew Peterson says in the final verse of his song “The Good Confession,” 

All I know is that I was blind

But now I see

That though I kick and scream,

Love is leading me.

And every step of the way

His grace is making me;

With every breath I breathe,

He is saving me.

And I believe.

So when my body's weak and the day is long,

When I feel my faith is all but gone,

I'll remember when I sing this song

That I believe.

And I believe

He is the Christ,

Son of the living God.