Applying the Gospel

“God has made [Jesus] both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). “The LORD said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand'” (Ps. 110:1; cf. Mt. 22:44; Mk. 12:36; Lk. 20:42; Acts 2:34). “There is… one Lord” (Eph. 4:4-5). “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). “Jesus is Lord” is probably the most controversial statement in the history of the world. It is the oldest creed of the church. The title, “Lord,” is used of God hundreds of times in the Old Testament, and is used of Jesus throughout the New Testament. Jesus is Lord, divinely and humanly. It seemed that his followers instinctively called him “Lord” (which implies that other rulers are not Lord). He is the Lord: absolutely, uniquely, and exclusively. And he is our Lord: personally, heroically, and vicariously. Jesus is Lord on our behalf and for our sake.

Consider what kind of man the Lord Jesus is. He loves his Father—he has no “daddy issues.” He is whole. He is “the Prince of Shalom” (Isa. 9:6), the Prince of Wholeness and Peace. He delights in God’s Law, always loving God with his whole being and loving his neighbor as himself, putting the needs of others before his own. He stands fast against the deceptions and temptations of the devil; through his faithfulness he has crushed the serpent’s strength. His good intentions are seen in his miraculous provisions, healings, and exorcisms. His power is seen in his sacrificial service. He calls his people his friends; he prays for us and pours out his life for us. He has besieged and overwhelmed even death itself on our behalf. “His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (Dan. 7:14). And now he prepares a place for us to join him in his everlasting kingdom, because the Lord wants us to be with him where he is. This One is our Lord! One day, one way or another, “every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10-11). That sounds like Good News worth sharing!

Why is the statement, “Jesus is Lord,” so controversial? Why are we instinctively threatened by this statement? What kinds of resistance do various people offer to this statement, and how can the Gospel subvert such resistance? What does Jesus’ Lordship mean to you, personally? Do you ever think of evangelism as the joyful proclamation of the Good News of his Lordship? Do you ever think of service done in the Lord’s name as princely?

“I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment… He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine.” (John 16:7-8, 14-15)

Forty days after his Resurrection, Jesus ascended bodily into heaven. Jesus had known his disciples would have a hard time with his departure. He spent a lot of time preparing them for it on the night of his betrayal, as recorded in the Upper Room Discourse (John 13-16) and his High Priestly Prayer (John 17). His disciples were confused, to say the least. Why did Jesus have to leave? We easily share their confusion. Wouldn’t it be easier for us to be Christians if he were still here? Contrary to our instincts, Jesus insisted that his Ascension was for our good. “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away.” Jesus wasn’t saying, “Look, the Ascension is beyond my control, it’s just the way it has to be.” He knew the Ascension would mean wonderful things for his people in the world. He wanted to go, and he wanted his disciples to share his enthusiasm.

In the Person of Jesus Christ, the divine Son of God—who was eternally begotten of the Father—became also human. He’s unique, and it’s strange for us. It’s easy for us to imagine him in his divinity, because he has been in heaven for so long. But his humanity isn’t just the stuff of high legend; his humanity continues. The Incarnation is irreversible. So it’s not “just” the Son of God who returned to heaven. It’s the Son of Man, the Messiah, the descendant of David, the Last Adam, the True Human who ascended into heaven and is seated at God’s right hand in glory. Jesus Christ is the God-Man, the King of Glory (Psalm 24), and his Ascension means that we have a Man on the throne of Reality. The crucified and risen Lord rules the cosmos as our Representative, our Champion, our Vicar. He has fulfilled the destiny for which humanity was originally created: to rest and rule with God over all creation (Gen. 1-2).

But there’s more. Not only has the Man Jesus Christ ascended far above all created powers, but he has received the Spirit without measure, and now he sends forth his Spirit into the world. The Spirit of God is now the Spirit of Christ—the Spirit of the God-man. “All that the Father has is mine.” A Man owns and commands the divine Spirit, God himself, the third Person of the Trinity. A Man determines where the Father’s Spirit goes. This is the extent to which God has shared his rule with humanity; he has given himself to humanity in the Person of his Spirit.

Jesus Christ sends his/God’s Spirit to us in order to share all this with us. The Spirit does this by holding Christ forth to us in all his beautiful mercy. “He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine.” As a Man, Jesus has inherited God himself, and wields all his power, and his purpose is to share that with us. So he pours out his/God’s Spirit, the Christ-centered Spirit, the Spirit of Truth (as Jesus is the Truth; John 14:6). The Spirit gets Jesus in front of us. As the Spirit introduces us to Jesus, we are provoked to the same response anyone ever had when meeting Jesus in the flesh. When Jesus walked into a room, he had a polarizing effect on people. Now he doesn’t walk into rooms, but his Spirit introduces him around the world as the Gospel is proclaimed.

The first effect this has on sinners is one of conviction. “When [the Spirit] comes, he will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment.” Good news! The Spirit will convince you of your guilt, and bring you to a point of confession! Maybe that sounds odd, but it’s true. When he presents us with the True and Good Humanity of Jesus Christ we sense the great contrast with your own corruption. We’re a poor excuse for the image of God, compared to Jesus, who is “the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb. 1:3). If you sense your spiritual bankruptcy when the Spirit gets Jesus in front of you, it is well! If not, he probably needs to convict you of your “righteousness,” which is like filthy rags (Isa. 64:6). Our righteousness is a self-glorification project where we try to manage others’ estimation of ourselves by doing good things. Whenever Jesus walked into the room with self-righteous people like that, they wanted to kill him because he exposed what was really going on in their hearts. When the Spirit gets Jesus in front of self-righteous people, it makes us able to say out loud, “I have hated God. I have despised him, and that’s a problem. I need true righteousness, and only Jesus Christ the Righteous can provide that.” And when the Spirit convicts us of judgment, he shows us that Jesus has already condemned the devil, “the ruler of this world.” You’ve only got two options: remain under the devil’s authority and suffer his judgment with him, or submit to the authority of Jesus Christ and find forgiveness.

God is throwing everything he’s got at you to convince you of your need for his mercy, so that you would confess your sins and give up your own “righteousness” as a means of self-justification, self-salvation. Jesus sent his/God’s Spirit to assure you of God’s merciful intentions with all of this. It’s only when you know that God is on your side, that he sent the God-man to be for you, that the God-man sent the Spirit for your advantage that you will be able to admit your rebellion. God’s word to you in Christ is forgiveness, so it really is safe to admit that you’d deeply (and unreasonably!) hated God. This is what the Spirit’s work looks like in your life as he glorifies Christ, as he takes all that belongs to Christ and shares it with you! Jesus wants you with him where he is, resting and ruling at God’s side, and that’s why he sent the Spirit to bring you to a place of confession.

“Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High… The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.” (Luke 1:31-32, 35)

The experience and understanding of the Holy Spirit is elusive. The Hebrew ruach and Greek pneuma, the biblical words for “spirit,” are also translated “breath” and “wind.” “The pneuma blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Pneuma” (John 3:8-9). “As you do not know the way the ruach comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything” (Ecclesiastes 11:5).

It’s understandable that the Holy Spirit is difficult to understand. The Trinity is not easy for us to conceptualize. One God in three Persons? Each Person irreducibly distinct from the Others as a way of being a Person (the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father) yet each Person fully divine and the whole God (the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, consubstantial and coeternal)? Mutual indwelling, the Father in the Son, and the Son in the Father? It’s no wonder that we wonder at the Holy Spirit! (We call him “Holy,” partly because he is so Other, and it’s a way to express what is inexpressible.) “Should not the contemplation of the mysteries of our faith be a delight, especially if the contemplation is that of the immeasurable and unsurpassable font of all the mysteries—the most holy Trinity?” (Thomas Weinandy, The Father’s Spirit of Sonship).

In Luke’s Gospel, when the angel Gabriel visits young Mary, we hear of the Holy Spirit as “the power of the Most High” who will “overshadow” Mary as the cloud of the glory of God’s presence overshadowed God’s people, Israel, in the wilderness, and descended upon the tabernacle and, later, the temple. The Spirit is God come to the meeting place between God and his people. In Ezekiel’s vision, he saw this Spirit-glory-cloud depart the temple, only to return later in the New Temple. Now, the Spirit-glory-cloud comes upon Mary as the New Temple, the new meeting place between God and his people, is conceived in her womb.

This conception was a New Creation. The Son had his divine existence in the Godhead, eternally begotten of the Father through the Spirit. Now he had his human existence in an analogous way, created by the Father through the Spirit. Jesus, the Incarnate Son, had no earthly, biological father. The Spirit is not Jesus’ Father. The divine Father was the creator of his new humanity, and that through his power, through the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the Giver of Life. He is the Gift of the Father that brings forth Life. The Life that he brings forth, supremely, is the Son. The Incarnate Son is our Life (John 14:6; 1 John 1:2). The Holy Spirit gives us Jesus. He gave Jesus to the world in his conception, the beginning of the New Creation. Jesus is unique because of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit was the lavishing of the Father’s approving love upon Jesus as he pledged solidarity with sinners at his Baptism (Luke 3:22). The Spirit descended upon Jesus at the waters of his Baptism like a fluttering dove, hovering over God’s New Creation just as he had hovered over the face of the waters in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1-2).

The Spirit led Jesus, our Champion, to recapitulate our battle with the devil, this time victoriously (Luke 4:1-2). The Spirit anointed Jesus to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God (Luke 4:18). The Spirit was the one through whom Jesus rejoiced in prayer to the Father (Luke 10:21). It was by the Spirit of God that Jesus cast out demons (Matthew 12:28). It was in the Holy Spirit that Jesus offered himself to his Father as a sacrifice for our sins (Hebrews 9:14). And it was by the power of the Most High, by the Holy Spirit that Jesus was raised from the dead (Romans 1:4).

“When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior” (Titus 3:4-6). It is because of the Holy Spirit’s work upon the Incarnate Son and through the Incarnate Son that Jesus is Life to us. Jesus is Life to us by being the New Creation for us. His New Humanity is ours, as a gift of God’s grace, a gift given through the Holy Spirit.

The breath of God that made the first Adam a living being, that made the last Adam a life-giving spirit, is the Breath that Jesus breathed out upon his disciples (John 20:22), giving us his own Life so that we may live on his behalf in this world. “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life” (Job 33:4). God, at work through the Person of the Holy Spirit, says, “Jesus,” for the life of the world. A Spirit-filled church, then, will also say, “Jesus,” for the life of the world. The Life-giving Breath of Christ is in our lungs and on our lips. Amen.

The Nicene Creed (325/381 AD) elaborates on this phrase: “we believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made; who, for us and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man…” The Athanasian Creed (late 400s / early 500s AD) states that our Lord Jesus Christ is “perfect God and perfect man.” The Chalcedonian Creed (451 AD) says that in Jesus Christ the divine and human natures are together in one person (the hypostatic union) “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” The complete divinity and humanity of Jesus was the subject matter for most theological reflection and debates in the early centuries of the church. A clear statement about the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ is perhaps the most important part of our Creeds. And it remains a primary point of contention, not only for those outside the church but also within it. (He might hold his two natures together “without confusion,” but we certainly have a propensity for confusion about him!)

At Jesus’ baptism, God the Father declared publicly, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” At Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain, the Father again declared, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” God wants you to know that Jesus is his Son, that he is pleased with him, and that you should listen to him. Because, in listening to Jesus, we hear the Word of God himself, God the Son, in human flesh. Jesus reveals God to us not in his divine nature alone—apart from his humanity, or in spite of it—but in his divinity with his humanity, because he is both God and man in one person. In his incarnation, Jesus reveals God to us in his own humanity. He is God’s eternally-begotten Son, and he is God’s Son as a human being. God the Father looks at his incarnate Son and says to you, “Yes, good! He is the exact representation of my nature. Learn from him what I am truly like.” God is pleased and revealed by his unique Son, the God-man Jesus Christ.

Do you have a sense of the absolute uniqueness of Jesus Christ? Is it a sense of wonder, or are you distrustful of him and his claims? Have you listened to him as God commanded you? If Jesus really is the God-man who pleases and reveals God, when you look to Jesus, what do you learn about God? What difference would it make if he’s not both truly God and truly man? If you have a relationship with Jesus, what does that mean for your relationship with God? Do you know anyone who believes that Jesus is God’s only Son, yet who wants to have nothing to do with him? Do you know anyone who struggles to believe that Jesus is God’s only Son?

The oldest known Confession of Faith used by the Christian Church is this: “Jesus is Lord.” Simple, yet profound. There’s a lot going on in those words. Those words get unpacked and expounded in the longer creeds, confessions, and Christian theology in general. Here is a redux meant to display a few facets of the original gem. Please feel free to use this in your personal or public Worship.

~

CONFESSION OF FAITH
(Jn. 20:28; Rom. 10:9; 1 Cor. 12:3; Eph. 4:5; Phil. 2:6-11)

What does God the Father want you to know and trust?
Jesus Christ is Lord!

What does God the Spirit enable you to confess, celebrate, and proclaim?
Jesus Christ is Lord!

What is the grace and truth of the revelation of God?
Jesus Christ is Lord!

Who is the Lord of your life?
Jesus Christ is Lord!

Who is the Lord of the church?
Jesus Christ is Lord!

Who is the Lord of heaven and earth
whose reign endures forever?
Jesus Christ is Lord, and there is no other! Amen.

The Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed is central to our confession in more ways than one. Without a confession of faith “in Jesus Christ,” we would have no confession at all. It is through him alone that we can be sure that we know God. If you are uncertain what constitutes Christianity, here is the short answer: “Christianity is Christ” (Michael Reeves, Rejoicing in Christ). Jesus himself said in prayer to his Father, “this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Jesus Christ is the key to the Creed, the key to the Bible, the key to the whole cosmos. It’s for good reason that he is the universal answer to all the Sunday School questions!

Jesus Christ is the One who was and who is and who is to come; the Chosen One; the Promised One; the Radiant One, distinguished among multitudes; the only One who is truly good; the One who reveals; the One who seeks and saves; the One who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Jesus Christ is purely innocent, yet not naïve or impressionable; absolutely dependable, yet not predictable or controllable. In his person he holds together humility and authority, mercy and justice. By being who he is, Jesus Christ has restored humanity to right relationship with God. Hearing his words, witnessing his actions, perceiving his heart, knowing him, trusting him, delighting in him: this is the great privilege of our salvation. “To pronounce the name of Jesus Christ means to acknowledge that we are cared for, that we are not lost” (Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline).

Can you say that you “know” Jesus Christ, personally? How do you feel about him? What do you think of him? When you describe or define Christianity for your friends, is it more about your life or his? Can you talk about “the most important things in life” without relating them to Jesus Christ? What do you think about the idea that heaven is heaven precisely because it is where Jesus Christ is?

“By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God” (Heb. 11:3). “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1-3). “All things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16). The Son “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:3), so that “if he were to withdraw his creative power, so to speak, from things, they would no more exist than they did before they were created” (Augustine, City of God). God was, and is, and is to come, before everything that he has made. He is the Real One, and any created reality has its reality only derivatively from his. He is distinct from his creation, he is over his creation, he is the source of his creation, and he is the purpose of his creation.

This does not, however, imply God’s distance from his creation. The Creed talks about everything that God has made in the terms “heaven and earth.” This biblical language frames all creation in terms of an arena for a meeting of God and humanity—a cosmic temple where Creator dwells with creature. Deism is wrong; God is not a Clockmaker who made everything to function independently of himself, wound it up and walked away. The true God, the Triune God, in himself is One who moves toward the Other. This God created according to his will, according to his nature, making the universe a place of “toward-ness” and “togetherness.” This creation as the place where God is with us has existence only because God in himself has existence as One with Other. “With-ness” is the divine reality that is behind and before creation. The best that an insecure human mind can do to establish its own existence with itself as a starting point is to say, “I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.” Alternatively, to confess faith in the revealed “Maker of heaven and earth” is to say, “God loves, therefore we are.”

Why did God create? How will God’s purpose for creation be fulfilled?

How does the Bible describe the roles of the persons of the Trinity in creation?

Does the Bible require us to have a particular scientific view of the processes and duration of creation?

What value is there in trying to prove the existence of God from our observations of his creation? Should we attempt to reason our way to God with creation as a starting point? Is it possible to know a generic “Creator God” apart from the revelation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Have you thought before of heaven as a created place, or more like God’s “native habitat”? What is God’s “native habitat”? What of God’s “native habitat” is reflected in creation?

When you think of Eternity, do you think of it in terms of your departure from creation, or God dwelling in and with his renewed creation? Why is this significant?

“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God… Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’ The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.” (Mark 1:1, 12-13)

Jesus had no need to repent and be forgiven, so why was he baptized? To enter into complete solidarity with us, to live on behalf of sinners (in order “to fulfill all righteousness,” Matthew records). He will confess our sins for us, secure forgiveness for us. Through baptismal union with his people, as our representative, he can restore our humanity. He can fix what we broke, do right what we’ve always done wrong, and he will do it for us. His Father approves, and declares his love upon his Son’s baptism, as if to say, “Yes, that’s the Son I know and love! Well done!” The Spirit poured out confirms the Son’s relationship with the Father as the New Adam, as the representative of the new humanity in solidarity with him.

And, without delay, the Spirit drives Jesus out into the wilderness. This is no cruelty. God is setting the stage for the great recapitulation. The first Adam had been naming the living creatures in the idyllic garden; the second Adam was cast out among the wild beasts in the chaotic wilderness. The first man abdicated his responsibility and let his wife face the temptation; the second Man went out to rescue his Bride. The first temptation was about icing on the cake, a pleasant fruit in the midst of the fullness of all good provision; the second temptation was about survival, bread for the starving. The first humans caved in the blink of an eye; the New Human went toe-to-toe with the devil for 40 days… and emerged victorious as our Champion. Angels posed the threat of death to Adam for his rebellion against God, preventing his entrance into the garden and glory; angels ministered to Jesus for his allegiance to God, and ultimately praised him in the garden of his resurrection glory (Mark 16:5-7). Where our first parents—and every single one of us since—failed, Jesus Christ succeeded, on our behalf. He is the true King that Adam was meant to be, and he is our King. The kingdom of God has come in the person of the King, and this is the great reality that wins our faith and fuels our repentance (Mark 1:15).

And this is just “the beginning of the good news.”

“You must unlearn what you have learned.” Yoda’s teaching is helpful when it comes to our understanding of God. Our presuppositions about God are often wrong. We automatically imagine him after our own likeness, projecting ourselves on to him, rather than letting him define himself for us by his own revelation. This is almost always problematic, because God is unlike us. “I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst” (Hosea 11:9), so, he points out, he doesn’t act according to our expectations. We can’t anticipate him and we need him to make himself known to us, not just because we possess limited faculties, but because we are warped and wrong in our unholy (sin) nature which is antithetically opposed to him.

So, when we hear that God is “almighty,” we suspect that it means one thing, when really it means quite the opposite. We think God’s almightiness is what we would possess if we were all-powerful, if we could always accomplish whatever we liked. This is, basically, the power to get, to manipulate reality for the sake of ourselves. But this is the devil’s version of power. In absolute opposition, God’s true almightiness, his holy power, is the power to give. His power is the administration of the kingdom of love, where he defines reality in accordance with his own being, the being of love. His almightiness is the freedom to give himself away in love.

Jesus said, “I lay down my life… No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority [the Greek word exousia is also translated power] to lay it down” (John 10:17-18). This is what it means that God is almighty. In the Person of his Son, he didn’t shut off his power in order to die for our sins; it was the great exercise of his kind of power. His power is seen most clearly in his utter self-gift, in his complete self-sacrifice, in the pouring out of his life unto death, in the greatest act of love the world has ever seen. This is characteristic of God’s very being as the One who exists in three Persons in perfect, mutual self-gift. His almightiness is the freedom to give himself away in love, even to those who have spurned his love.

Think of the power wielded by historical rulers and masters in this world; how is that power different from God’s kind of power as we’ve defined it? Are you aware of any particular non-Christian philosophies or religions that would portray God’s almightiness (or power in general) in an unbiblical way? What could be some results of believing a wrong version of power? Why is it so easy for us to have a wrong conception of God’s almightiness? Can we trust the biblical definition of God’s power? What could be some of the results of believing in the biblical definition of power? Is it possible for us to imitate God in his kind of power? If so, what would that look like?