THE APOSTLES' CREED (Part 4)
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Introduction
Introduction
-I don’t know if you have been following along in the news about all the drama in the royal family in Great Britain. Harry and Megan are out there telling all sorts of stories about the royal family. The royal family, maybe a credit on their part, really aren’t acknowledging it much. But with King Charles coronation coming up, there’s a big hoopla about royal titles. Harry and Megan think their kids ought to get certain royal titles, and I guess the king can give whatever title to whomever he wants. He could even strip people of their titles if he so desires. But I thought it funny all these people wanting these titles, but it makes me wonder if their actions are in line with the title that they want. From my perspective, if you want to be called Prince then you better act like one. If you want to be called King, then you better act like one.
-I bring this up because last week I looked at titles that Jesus is given in Scripture and listed for us in the Apostles’ Creed. But, maybe unlike some of the earthly royals, Jesus more than adequately earned these titles by His nature and essence as well as by His work and actions on the earth. The Apostles’ Creed goes on to tell us certain points of Jesus’ earthly life that demonstrate to us that He is the One who alone holds the titles that are given to Him. What it does is highlight events that prove to us that Jesus is who we claim Him to be. Let’s reread the first two sections of the Apostle’s Creed:
I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, our Lord;
Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
Born of the Virgin Mary;
Suffered under Pontius Pilate;
Was crucified, dead, and buried;
He descended into hell;
The third day he rose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven,
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
From there he shall come to judge the living and the dead.
-Last week I talked about the significance of Jesus’ names and titles. The name Jesus means Yahweh saves, which is exactly what Jesus accomplished. Christ is the title Messiah which means Anointed One—Jesus is the heavenly prophet, priest and King. He is the only-begotten, unique Son of God. He shares in the nature and essence of the Father. And He is Lord and Master, meaning He is God and He is in charge. But, how do we know He is this? The creed highlights His life.
-First, it speaks about the historical fact of His birth. JESUS WAS CONCEIVED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT, BORN OF THE VIRGIN MARY. In the interchange between the angel Gabriel and Mary, when it was announced to her what God had planned for her, this was laid out.
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth,
27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary.
28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”
29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.
30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,
33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
35 And the angel answered her, “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.
-Is there a basis for this? Was this always God’s plan and did He reveal it? Was the virgin birth a necessity? The answer is yes on all accounts. In fact, the virgin birth, in a sense, was foretold from the very beginning of humanity. After Adam and Eve sinned, God handed down curses to all the parties involved. But there is an interesting prophecy given by God that declares the ultimate defeat of the serpent at the hand of a human offspring. In what is often referred to as the PROTOEVANGELIUM. That term literally means FIRST GOSPEL. This is God first revealing His plan of redemption. Listen to what God tells the serpent:
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
-The seed of the woman would bruise or crush the head of the serpent. It is interesting that God describes it as a battle between the woman and her seed versus the serpent and his seed. It doesn’t call them the offspring of Adam or the man. It would be a special offspring of the woman that would conquer the serpent and those under his sway.
-This supernatural birth was prophesied elsewhere. We are all familiar with:
14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
-And then in the Gospels we are told that this prophecy was fulfilled in Christ:
22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:
23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).
-This is a most essential doctrine. We don’t normally think of it this way (maybe), but this is a gospel issue. Without the conception of the Holy Spirit and birth from the Virgin Mary, there is no gospel for us to speak of. Paul thought it was important to the whole message. He shared:
4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,
5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
-Without the virgin birth, there is no gospel. Without the gospel, there is no salvation. Without salvation, we are not children of God, but rather we are enemies of God.
-Those who desire to undercut the Christian faith often attack at this very point. They do so, first, to undermine any idea of God doing that which is supernatural—which leads to the denial of miracles, etc. And second, if you undermine the virgin birth you undermine Christ’s identity and thereby undermine the entire gospel. It is not hyperbole to say that if you undermine the Virgin Birth, all the rest of the critical doctrines to the Christian faith tumble right alone with it. Al Mohler put it this way; he said:
Without the virgin birth, Christ is not God. If Christ was not conceived by the Holy Spirit, then he must have a human father, and thus he is not divine. Also, without the virgin birth, the gospel does not provide salvation. If the virgin birth is a lie, then Jesus could never reverse the curse and save sinners. Moreover, if Christian deny the virgin birth, and treat the conception of the Holy Spirit as a myth, then they threaten a whole range of other Christian doctrines: the truthfulness of Scripture, the humanity of Christ, the sinlessness of Christ, and the nature of grace. Christians today must affirm the virgin birth of Christ—indeed, the Christian faith and the Bible on which that faith stands demand it.
-So, here’s the thing: in order for the death of Jesus to fully atone for sin, He had to be both God and man. This has great significance in several ways. First, if Jesus was conceived in the natural way, then He could not be both God and man. God had to be a part of the conception for Jesus to carry the divine nature that He has had from eternity. Theologian Wayne Grudem summarized the importance of this when he wrote:
God, in his wisdom, ordained a combination of human and divine influence in the birth of Christ, so that his full humanity would be evident to us from the fact of his ordinary human birth from a human mother, and his full deity would be evident from the fact of his conception in Mary’s womb by the powerful work of the Holy Spirit.
But then, second, in order for Jesus to be sinless He could not have the sinful human nature passed down to Him from a human father. You see, according to Scripture, those who descend from Adam receive that nature along with the guilt of sin. We see this:
18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.
19 For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
-The one trespass in Adam is passed down to mankind through men. But since Jesus does not descend from Adam in that way, He does not participate in the common condition to all of humanity. Therefore, He had to have been conceived by the Holy Spirit. But to prove and ensure that there would be no human father, He had to be born of a virgin. If she were not a virgin, His birth would have been dismissed as just another human birth like everybody else. The virgin birth by conception of the Holy Spirit ensured that the child would be God and human without the guilty sin nature of humanity.
-But another consideration is that the virgin birth, being a miraculous event, then highlights the supernatural nature of the redemption that God brought through Jesus. Because of the nature of His birth, and by the nature that He carries as the God-man, He was able to both satisfy God’s justice and extend God’s love. Humanity needed a perfect Savior, but would not have been able to produce one on their own. God alone had to act. Therefore, God sent His Son in this way; and because of His dual nature Jesus was able to mediate salvation between God and man. We can believe the supernatural elements of His provided salvation: He took on our sin, He died, and He rose again. Because of the virgin birth, we can also believe the substitutionary atonement and the resurrection.
-We understand that this doctrine is mentioned first about Christ because it is the first part of His earthly life. But we can also say that the virgin birth is the first stated belief about Christ because if you are not able to agree with it, then anything else we say about Christ would not hold up. If you do not believe in the virgin birth, then you cannot rightly believe anything else. As Donald McLeod wrote:
The virgin birth is posed on guard at the door of the mystery of Christmas; and none of us must think of hurrying past it. It stands on the threshold of the New Testament, blatantly supernatural, defying our rationalism, informing us that all that follows belongs to the same order as itself and that if we find it offensive there is no point in proceeding further.
-There are consequences to this:
Building a Firm Foundation: A 12-Week Study on the Apostles’ Creed Practical Consequences
Clayton Bell lists the following “practical consequences” of the virgin birth:
• The fully human and fully divine natures of Christ make Christ the “perfect revealer of God in terms that human beings can understand.” See 2 Cor. 4:6
• The fully human and fully divine natures of Christ make him the perfect mediator between God and Men. He redeemed us, he paid for us, he speaks for us before the Father. See Heb. 4:15–16; 2:14–18.
• If God can bring life into the womb of a young virgin; God can bring life into our dead, sinful human nature and produce new lives that also make us children of God. See John 1:17; 3:16–17.
-If you get this wrong, everything else is wrong. But thankfully, this is historically true and accurate. We have a supernatural Savior. For those of us who have believed, we can rest in this doctrine because we are secured in the hands of a supernatural Savior. And if anyone has not yet believed, you can know the lengths to which God went to reach you to save you unto Himself. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we want to pray that the world would come to such belief...