We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ

 Hello and welcome back!

We now come to the longest section of the Nicene Creed. If you recall, the main questions addressed by the Council of Nicaea were around who Jesus Christ is and what is his relation to God. We'll take our time going through this section in several posts, but I think it is worth seeing all in one piece:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
    the only Son of God,
    eternally begotten of the Father,
    God from God, Light from Light,
    true God from true God,
    begotten, not made,
    of one Being with the Father.
    Through him all things were made.
    For us and for our salvation
        he came down from heaven:
    by the power of the Holy Spirit
        he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
        and was made man.
    For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
        he suffered death and was buried.
        On the third day he rose again
            in accordance with the Scriptures;
        he ascended into heaven
            and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
    He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
        and his kingdom will have no end.

One way to approach this is to outline it and see what the different parts are. The overall idea is to try to answer the question, "Who is Jesus Christ?" If we begin with this, we can see that for those holding to the Nicene Creed, Jesus Christ is:

  • The only Son of God who is "of one being with the father".
  • He had a part in creation.
  • He had a part in our salvation. In order to do this he became incarnate, that is, he had to have a human body. It experienced death and was make alive again. He is now in heaven with the Father.
  • He will be a judge and will have a kingdom that lasts forever 

 Next time we will begin going through these points, digging a little deeper into what each of them mean and how they impact us as Christians. 

In Christ,

Michael 

Some questions:

1. If you are a Christian and someone mentions Jesus to you, what springs to mind? 

2.  Just looking at the first sentence of this section from the creed, what do you think it is trying to say about who Jesus is? 

3. Keeping in mind your response to question 2, read carefully through the third sentence. The word incarnate comes from the Latin  meaning "in flesh" or "become flesh". What does that say about who Jesus Christ is? 

4. The Nicene Creed declares that Jesus is in heaven with the Father, but is that the end of his story? What does the last sentence of this section from the creed say will eventually happen? It mentions "his kingdom". What does this say about who Jesus is? 

 

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