Jesus Christ, His Only Son, Our Lord
Our service will be streamed live on Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. Join our worship which will include dedicated times of reflection and prayer together. Download the Home Worship Guide below, and click here on Sunday morning to tune in.
For Meditation
In our series on the Apostles’ Creed, we’ve been asking two basic questions: 1/ How do our beliefs need to change?, and 2/ How should our beliefs be changing us? This Sunday, we come to the epicenter of the creed, the hub around which everything else in the creed proceeds: “I believe in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord.” At the very center of the Christian faith is not a set of ideas or a religious theory of reality or even a way of life. At the very center of our faith is a Person. This is what makes Christianity distinct from every other religious and philosophical belief system. Marxism is a set of ideas that issued from a particular person, but the ideology of Marxism is detached from the specific person of Karl Marx, now dead in the grave. Christianity, on the other hand, is not an “ism,” but is entirely about our relationship to a specific person who Christians claim is the living Lord.
The earliest Christian creed that we know of was just a few simple words: “Jesus is Lord” (Romans 10:9, 1 Cor 12:3). That simple statement sums up what the entire Apostles’ Creed is about. Our faith is about personal attachment to Jesus Christ, pure and simple.
But who is Jesus? This little line of the creed contains enormous claims about Jesus. First, that he is the Christ. That means that he is the fulfillment of the ancient promise of God to Israel that a Messiah would come to set the world right. Second, that he is the Son of God. This is a statement of his divinity, clarified by his unique relationship to God the Father. Finally, that is the Lord. This is to give Jesus the “name above every name” (Phil 2:9), the Lord above all lords, and to recognize his supremacy and authority over all things.
What does Jesus’ Lordship mean for us? So many things! But in this moment of global crisis, we’ll seek to apply the Lordship of Jesus to our current situation. Specifically, his Lordship is a comfort and a challenge. A comfort, because Jesus is Lord over all history, and holds the keys of life and death. Our lives are safe in his hands. A challenge, because he calls us to full allegiance to his way, which always means putting others before ourselves, taking up our cross, and going the way of service and death.
Philippians 2:5-11
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.