Jesus Christ, His Son. Our Lord

  Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord

Eighteenth after Trinity

Collect: Lord, we beseech thee, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil; and with pure hearts and minds to follow thee, the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Text: I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

The Apostles’ Creed consists of 112 words in English. Of those 112 words 12 are devoted to God the Father, 6 to God the Holy Spirit, and 73 to God the Son? Why is that? It is not because the Son is more important than the Father or the Holy Spirit.

More words are devoted to the Son for two reasons. The first reason is that Christianity focuses on a person - the Son of God, Jesus Christ. He is final revelation of God. The writer of Hebrews tells us that in former times God spoke in different ways through the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken through his Son. The second reason is that Jesus Christ accomplished the salvation that was planned by the Father and is applied by the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Peter proclaimed that salvation is found in no one else but Jesus Christ.

That is why the Creed, following the Bible, focuses on Christ.

1. Jesus Christ

A great many people believe “Jesus” is the first name and “Christ” the last name of Jesus Christ.

1.1 Jesus

His given name is Jesus. It is not uncommon for people to think that no one has ever had the name “Jesus” except our Lord Jesus Christ. But the name Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua. The best known Joshua of the Old Testament was the man who assisted Moses and then succeeded Moses when Moses died. He led the children of Israel across the Jordan River to the Promised Land and then led them as they conquered and took possession of the land.

The story of the Joshua we call Jesus is set first century Palestine. He was a man born to Mary in Bethlehem and who lived during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberias Caesar. He grew up in Nazareth and was trained to be a carpenter. Then at the age of 30 he began a three year ministry as a traveling rabbi. He was put to death by the the Roman governor, Pilate, around A.D. 30. He is not a legend or mythical figure. He is man whose life is set in history.

The reason he was named Jesus is that the Angel Gabriel told his mother, “You will...bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.” Later an angel told Joseph, Mary’s fiancee, “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.” The angel gave the reason Mary’s son should be called Jesus: “for he will save his people from their sins.” The name Joshua or Jesus means, “The Lord saves” or “The Lord delivers.” Jesus in the One who will accomplish the deliverance the human race needs - salvation from condemning power of sins.

1.2. Christ

Christ is not the second name of Jesus. People of Jesus’s time did not have second names. Sometimes they were distinguished by the town they lived in or by their father. The Apostle Philip called our Lord, “Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

The word “Christ” is not a name but a title. The man who may eventually be the King of England is Charles Prince of Wales. His name is Charles; his title is Prince of Wales. Jesus is the Christ, which is the Greek form of the Old Testament title Messiah. Christ or Messiah means “Anointed One.” When the Lord revealed to the prophet Samuel that David would be the next King of Israel, the Lord said, “Arise, anoint him” and “Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him.” The Lord chose David, and his choice of David was symbolized by the pouring of oil over his head.

Our Lord Jesus is the Christ, the Lord’s anointed One, the One the Lord chose and appointed to the the Messiah, the One who would save his people from their enemies and rule over them as their King. The Jewish expectation was that the Messiah would defeat the Romans, drive them out of the land, sit on a throne in Jerusalem, and restore to Israel its military, national, and economic prosperity. That they did not understand is that Jesus the Christ came to do something much bigger than that - to defeat Satan, sin, and death, to gather people of every ethnic and national group into his kingdom, and to reign forever over his kingdom of salvation.

2. Only Son

Sometimes we hear that there are three monotheistic religions - Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. People say that despite their differences all three religions have the same God.

However, Christianity is set apart from both Islam and Judaism because Christians worship Jesus as God. In the Old Testament the phrase to “call on the name of the Lord” means to worship the Lord. The Old Testament insists time and again that there is only one true and living God. God himself forbids the worship of anyone else: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” But then St. Paul writing to the Corinthian church greeted them along “with all those in every place who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Christians call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. They worship him. Why?

The reason Christians worship Christ is because he is the Son of God. In one of his conflicts with the Jews, Jesus said to them, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). He did not say, “I and the Father are one person,” but “I and and the Father are one thing.” He meant, “I and the Father have one nature - the nature of God.” The Father is God and possesses all the qualities, powers, and prerogatives of God. The Son, also, is God and has all the qualities, powers, and pregrogratives of God. The Jews understood what Jesus was claiming. They took his words as blasphemy and picked up stones to stone him to death. When Jesus asked if they were stoning him for one of the many good works he had done, they responded, “It is not for a good work we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, since you being a man, make yourself God” (10:30).

When we confess that Jesus Christ is God’s only Son, we say with St. Paul that he is “our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

3. Our Lord

St. Paul wrote, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” It is likely that “Jesus is Lord” is an early Christian confession of faith.

What does it mean to call Jesus Lord?

If you read the Old Testament in English you cannot miss how often God is called Lord. The Hebrew word for Lord is “adonai”  means, of course, a master or ruler which could refer to a human ruler or to God.  God is Lord for he is the ruler of the universe and everything in it. He is the Lord of his people, and they are called to submit to him and obey him.

But that Hebrew word Adonai or Lord was used in another way also. The most personal and intimate word for God in the Old Testament was Yahweh or Jehovah. Yahweh and Jehovah are just two different pronunciations of the same letters. God himself proclaimed the meaning of his special name: “ ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty…’ “ (Exodus 34:6.7). This name was so special and holy that the Jewish people hesitated to say it. So, for instance, when a reader came to this special name instead of saying “Yahweh” he would say “Adonai.”

So the word “Lord” had two meanings. It could mean Ruler which could also refer to a human or it could mean Yahweh which referred only to the one true living God. When the writers of the New Testament called Jesus “Lord” they were deliberately giving him the most personal and holy name of God.

On the Day of Pentecost, when St. Peter preached to the Jewish crowd he said,  “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” God himself declared that Jesus is both God and Messiah. The Apostle Paul wrote of Jesus Christ, “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,  so 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” (Philippians 2:9-11). Jesus has the name above all other names - Lord - and eventually all will confess that he is Lord.

He is our Lord, the Lord of the church. We acknowledge him as God the Son. He is our Savior and Lord. We willingly and happily bow the knee to him.

There is only one question. Is Jesus your Savior and Lord?