God on the Cross
The Apostles Creed is the church’s chief confession of faith. As Lutherans, we confess with Luther, Crux Sola Est Nostra Theologia, the cross alone is our theology. That of course does not mean we only confess the second article of the creed. What it does mean is that the first article and the 3rd article, are likewise, about that cross. So when we confess “And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord,” we are not confessing – and apart from the Father I also believe in the Son. But rather we are confessing that it is through God breaking into the present reality of His creation through a true incarnation and personal union between the natures of God and man in Christ Jesus, His bearing of ours sins in His flesh and His conquering of them in His life, death, and resurrection that we know God as Father. To get to the true confession of “the Son,” we must first realize the coherence of our creed. That our creed is – the cross alone. We must realize and we must likewise confess that this creed coheres in Christ, wherein the natures of God and man come together in personal union. Because it is not only the case that in Christ the Father’s will is executed and that in Him the Spirit finds the object to sanctify us in and conform us to, but moreover and more importantly, it is only in and through Christ that we know God and in and through Christ that He is revealed. As Luther taught, we are to have nothing to do with the hidden God, we must say, we are forced to say and to confess that we have no God other than the one who was incarnate for us, lived for us, died for us, rose for us, and intercedes for us.
S. I believe in no God aside from the one who became man to suffer, die, and rise again from the dead 3 days later for us and for our salvation. I also believe that all that can be known of this God is revealed to us on the cross of Christ.
Q. How is this for you and for your salvation?
A. Nothing can be known of God except that which He reveals to us. He has chosen to reveal Himself to His creation by entering into it Himself, it is in this incarnate God that our salvation has been worked, achieved, and effected. Outside of this God there is nothing for us save the eternal damnation and suffering that we have laid up for ourselves.
God the Son
Yet we do confess that in Christ the fullness of deity dwells bodily. That is to say, by virtue of saying and in “His only Son,” we are confessing His divinity. Plain reason as well as complex philosophy tell us that a thing begets itself. I cannot beget a goat. Nor can a goat beget a man. So God begets eternal God. Thus we need not say “and in the other God, the Son.” It is more than enough to say “and in His only Son” that is, the one God, the Father. But so soon did modern society lapse back into classical paganism with fantasies of Jesus as “demigod,” that is, one who is a partial-god or lesser-god, and so we find ourselves at a spiritual war with the forces that would see a faith in Christ as God ripped from our hearts. However, beyond the worlds failure to grasp that a demigod is an oxymoron, we are also met face to face with the reality that a demigod cannot save us. After all, who but God, the true God, the full God, has authority to pardon our sin. Who can bear our sin, conquer it, defeat it, and reign over death and hell? None but God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
S. I believe that Christ is God Incarnate
Q. How is this for you and for your salvation?
A. It is only by virtue of His divinity that His righteousness could exceed our sin, that He was able to crush hell, death, and the devil, and yet still rise again on the third day bestowing life to the saints of God both living and dead
God in love
Yet in good Trinitarian fashion we will then say, “was ist das” and break that down into a Son sent by the Father, conceived by the Holy Spirit, we are neither modalists nor unitarians. This Son is distinct from His Father. We confess not “and in the other God.” But we confess one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each one of these Scriptural names given to us reveal to us an inter-trinitarian relationship. For one cannot be a father before they have a son. Nor can you be a son without a father. Nor can you be the Spirit of none, but the Spirit to is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son. Trinitarianism is not just some cold and unrelated fact on the side of our faith. It is our Faith. We are monotheists, yes. But not unitarians. A God that exists outside of relation, in loneliness is not God. For this false god would be be bent inward on itself, loving nothing, serving nothing, and if it were to love or to serve anything, it would need to create in order for its divine attributes to exist or to be expressed. This is by definition no true God, for God does not depend on His creation in order to be God. He is God in Himself. We have one God, but He is not lonely as other faiths have imagined their unitarian monotheistic false gods to be. He is in community, in love, never introspective but always looking outward to another. Father toward Son, Son toward Father, Spirit toward Father and Son. The 2nd article of the creed wastes no time in this regard, stuffing itself full with mention of this relationship, for He is not a second God but a Son of the one God and Father of all, He is conceived by God the Spirit, and it is that same Holy Spirit who applies Christ’s work to our hearts in article 3. And so article 2 is not to be reduced to a Jesus alone article, not that you could have one, as this article points out, but to speak of Christ is to speak of Trinity. To confess that we believe in the Son is to confess Trinitarian theology. In this Trinitarian theology we find God as love. It is in the inter-trinitarian relationship that we find a God “for us” and we find this above all and before all in Christ Jesus our Lord.
S. I believe that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit dwell together in perfect love and unity, not bent inward on self, but looking outward to each other in love
Q. How is this for you and for your salvation?
A. Our God, as God, is love in Himself. He depends on no creatures in order to love, but by nature of His divinity He dwells in perfect love and unity, and there cannot be a reality in which God is not loving. That is to say, that by definition God loves me, and He is loving. It is out of this love, out of this divinity of God that He has sought me out and made me His own, that I find myself being raised to new life in Christ who the Father loves, indwelt by the Spirit who the Son loves, and am adopted by the Father whom the Spirit loves. By this I know that I cannot be but loved by God with the same love that the Father has for the Son.
God the Human Sacrifice
To speak of the Son of God is also to speak of the son of Mary. As Luther says in the small Catechism, He is true man, born of the virgin Mary. What else is this but to confess that we believe “in Jesus Christ the son of Mary.” While it is common among misguided church goers that Mary is the Son of Christ’s humanity and not His divinity, a heresy we recognize as Nestorianism, we almost never hear of the orthodox statement that Jesus Christ the Lamb of God is the Son of Mary. This is often posited in the reverse order, that Mary is the Mother of God. But there is in itself a great benefit and crucial importance to recognize that Christ Himself is the son of Mary. If Christ were not man, His death would mean nothing for us who are men. It is in His becoming a man Himself that His works, His life, His death, and His resurrection mean something for us. This is why, as the patristics taught, that fallen angels cannot be saved. Christ did not come to redeem angels. He came willingly as a man to redeem men, among men, for men, so that man might live once again in a wholly pure and undefiled union with God in Christ who holds within Himself both deity and humanity in one person, undefiled.
S. Through Christ, God and Man dwell together in unity just as they do in the very person of Christ Himself.
Q. How is this for you and for your salvation?
A. If Christ were not true man He could not pay the penalty for man, nor could His righteousness be attributed to us, for the blood of innocent rams and goats could not pardon even the smallest sin of man, for as death entered into the world through the sin of one man so all the collective sin of man has been placed on one man, the Lord Jesus Christ in whom death has died, and trough whom life is granted to all.
God for Us
Lastly, to tie all of this together in its cumulative purpose, we confess that Christ is our Lord. – we confess that this Christ, Son of God, son of Mary, God-man Jesus Christ suffered under pontius pilate, was crucified, died, was buried, descended into hell and on the third day rose against from the dead and is now seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty from thence He will come to judge the living and the dead for us and for our salvation to purpose and redeem us from our sin and slavery to death and the devil, that so being man we might die with Him through His death, yet so being God His death might mean the death of death itself. Just as we saw that we could not have the second article without the 1st or 3rd nor either 1st or 3rd without the second nor can we have anything in the second article without it finding its purpose and end in our salvation, in Christ’s redemption of us, and thereby in His Lordship over us. We hear so often from certain non Lutheran traditions that we must accept Christ as our Lord as if this were a bi-lateral treaty, it is not. We don’t make Christ the Lord of our life, He already is the Lord of our life. He purchased you through His incarnation, His life, His suffering, His righteousness, His death and His resurrection. And all of this not that we might be slaves, but that in being slaves to Christ we might be sons of the Father in and through Jesus Christ our Lord.
S. All that the church confesses of Christ; His divinity, His humanity, His suffering in life and in death, as well as His victorious resurrection unto glory is all and entirely for my benefit, that in making Himself my Lord the good news of Jesus Christ becomes a visible, audible, tangible, and personal reality wherein Christ is God for me, man for me, suffered for me, lived for me, died, for me, rose for me, ascended for me, and intercedes for me.
Q. how do you know this?
A. I know this because in the Word, the water, and the wine He has proclaimed Himself audibly, visibly, and tangibly that the New Covenant was cut for me in my His blood, and that I now eat of the living sacrifice until His final return. Through this holy promise I have “God’s Word,” that the Word of God is no longer the Lord, but indeed that He is my Lord, and that everything that He has done has been for me and for my salvation.
