Who is Jesus?

The Creed now focuses on the person and work of Jesus. It is obvious that the compilers wanted Christians to understand those two essential aspects. After all, he is a divine person and he has accomplished the most amazing work that has ever taken place in our world. We noticed in previous studies that, although the Creed does not mention it, Jesus as the Son of God was involved in the work of creation. Obviously, such capability is mind-stretching for us, yet the Creed is indicating that he did greater accomplishments that even the work of creation.

If we want to know details about a person, we will ask them their name. At one time, a name said quite a lot about an individual because it was common to call a person after his or her relatives. Or a name could reveal that the parents so admired an individual that his or her name was given to their child. Or a name might show that its bearer is a well-known or a wealthy person.

For example, we live in Inverness. Do we know who the Earl of Inverness is? He is also the Duke of York and Baron Killyleagh. In addition to his first name, Prince Andrew also has the names of Albert Christian Edward. So we could learn a lot about him from his names. They may tell us about roles he has to perform and privileges that he enjoys.

One of the best ways to discover who Jesus is and what he does is to think about the names that are given to him in the Bible. Perhaps we can remember the royal titles that are given to him in Isaiah 9:6: ‘For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’ Or we may choose to think about such titles as the Word, or the good Shepherd, or the Son of Man (this last name seems to have been one that Jesus used often when referring to himself).

The importance of names is recognised here in the Creed because it mentions four names or titles of Jesus. He is (1) Jesus (2) Christ, (3) his only begotten Son, and (4) our Lord.  These four names tell us a great deal about Jesus and we can think about each of them briefly.

The name Jesus

The first detail about this name is that it is one that identifies him as a human. Of course, he was not called Jesus when he lived in Israel. The name ‘Jesus’ is a transliterated form of the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew name Joshua. There have been many people called Joshua, and perhaps we know some. Maybe there were other children in Nazareth with the same name. If that was the case, then Jesus would have been distinguished from them by the name of his father – he would have been called Joshua ben Joseph (Joshua son of Joseph). So his name Jesus reminds us that he was at some levels an ordinary human.

The name Jesus also points to a difference between him and all other humans, and that is that he was born a holy man. Remember when the angel Gabriel was sent to Nazareth to inform the virgin Mary about the child she would bear. She was told that he was to be called Jesus. When she asked how this could happen, she was told by the angel that ‘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’ (Luke 2:35). Every other child is born a sinner, with a human nature that will wander away from God. Jesus would be different from all of them because he would be sinless.

A third detail that the name Jesus brings to mind is that there was a great deal of heavenly interest in him. We can see that from the way Gabriel came down from heaven to speak to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist who would be the forerunner of Jesus, and to Mary, who would be the mother of Jesus. Heaven’s interest in Jesus would be revealed also at his baptism when God the Father spoke from heaven and gave his opinion of the so-called thirty silent years. Listen to what he said: ‘And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased”’ (Matt. 3:16-17).

The name Jesus reminds us of the real humanity of Jesus, of the holy humanity of Jesus, and of the interest of heaven in his life. We should keep those details in mind as we think about the other names given to him in this sentence of the Creed. The next title it mentions is that he is called Christ.

Christ

I suspect that many uninformed people think that the word Christ is the surname of Jesus. They are so used to hearing him called Jesus Christ. Yet as we mentioned above, his surname was ‘ben Joseph’. The name of Christ points to certain roles that he would fulfil.

The word ‘Christ’ comes from the Greek word christos, which is the equivalent of the Hebrew word translated as Messiah. So right away we can see that the Creed affirms that Jesus is the One promised throughout the Old Testament as the Deliverer of his people. Moreover, the word also points to the fact that he would be anointed with the Holy Spirit. We know that Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit at the baptism in the Jordan, as detailed in verses from Matthew 3 cited above.

When we say that Jesus was anointed with the Spirit on that occasion we do not mean that he did not have the Spirit already. Jesus always had the Spirit to instruct him from the Old Testament, to produce the fruit of the Spirit in his life, and to guide him day by day. We can imagine Jesus discovering his role from the Old Testament as his understanding was increased by the Holy Spirit. Eventually Jesus knew it was the time for him to make his way to his relative John and ask him for baptism, for a public indication that he was about to function in a different way as the Messiah sent from God. We could go through the Gospels and note the many ways that the Spirit helped Jesus in his three years of public ministry.

Yet what I want us to do is to think about three roles that Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit to perform. We refer to those roles as prophet, priest and king. What do they mean and what relevance to they have to us? The answers to those questions can be seen in the statements concerning those roles as defined in the Shorter Catechism.

Question 24: How doth Christ execute the office of a prophet?
Answer: Christ executeth the office of a prophet, in revealing to us, by his word and Spirit, the will of God for our salvation.

Question 25. How doth Christ execute the office of a priest?
Answer: Christ executeth the office of a priest, in his once offering up of himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice, and reconcile us to God, and in making continual intercession for us.

Question 26. How doth Christ execute the office of a king?
Answer: Christ executeth the office of a king, in subduing us to himself, in ruling and defending us, and in restraining and conquering all his and our enemies.

We will come back to aspects of those roles in later studies. Yet the one detail I would mention is that they make his work as Christ very personal for us as individuals. If we trust in Jesus, we can see what he does for those who do, because they summarise his role as the Saviour, and we believe that about him.

His only-begotten Son

It is a great dignity to have the title of Messiah or Christ. After all, there is a real sense in which this role is the message of the Bible – we can say that God’s Word is mainly about the preparation for the Messiah’s coming (described in the Old Testament), his activities while here on earth (the four Gospels), and the consequences of his exaltation in heaven after his ascension (explained in the Acts of the Apostles and in the epistles of the New Testament). Thinking about him as the dignified Messiah can lead to another question, which is ‘Can we say anything greater about Jesus?’

The answer is that we can, and it is expressed in this description of him as the only-begotten Son of the Father. Perhaps we can see the point if we phrase it this way: his name of Messiah tells us what he does whereas his name of only-begotten Son tells us who he is in essence. Something was happening to him and from him long before he became the Messiah or Saviour. That ‘something’ was his eternal relationship with the Father.

Describing him as ‘only-begotten’ is not meant to suggest that he had a beginning, that the Father existed before the Son, or that he was brought into existence by the Father. Each of the three Persons in the Trinity is eternal, without beginning. Yet we can ask what was taking place in the mystery of their beginning-less existence, before anything created was made by them. One answer to that question is that there was a Father/Son relationship in place from eternity.

As we think about this eternal relationship, we are reminded that God was not solitary, alone. Instead we see that each of the divine Persons – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – had eternal company within the Trinity. Moreover, this relationship was satisfying because each mirrored exactly the limitless glories of the others – they were never bored with what they saw in the Godhead. Yet they always possessed the intention to share something of their divine capabilities and pleasures with suitable creatures that they would bring into existence and then maintain in existence for ever.  And what they would share would be a revealing of their particular roles in the Trinity – and it will take eternity to reveal it all (which is another way of saying that they are infinite).

How will it all be shown? It will be revealed through the Son as by the Spirit he brings us to his Father. In the process we will discover as much about the Son and the Spirit as we do of the Father. Through divine grace we become members of the family of God, and while it is not the same family as is the eternal Trinity, yet it is a family in which the Trinity is involved for ever.

The description of him as ‘only-begotten’ stresses the uniqueness of the Son of God. In saying that he is unique we are obviously saying that he cannot be compared with other persons. He is unique in that he always possesses the attributes, abilities and aims of God. The only response that should be given to Jesus is one of worship, which will increase in awe the more we come to know who he is. Perhaps the Creed is telling us how we come to know him, that we begin with him as Jesus, then continue to understand him as the Christ, and then discover that he is the eternal Son of God.

This process is repetitive, because we don’t leave one stage behind us and move on to a higher. We never forget that he is now Jesus forever, that he has already done some activities as the Christ and will continue to do more, and that he has always been the second Person of the Trinity. So we keep going through each stage, but the repetition only reveals to us the incredible riches to be found in knowing him. The more we discover, the more we appreciate the desire of the experienced apostle, who after three decades of amazing spiritual discoveries summarised his future as knowing Christ and what he could do: ‘Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith – that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead (Phil. 3:8-11).

Our Lord

In calling Jesus by this title, the Creed is reminding us that we are the subjects and he is the sovereign. But as we think about it, we can see several ways by which we can understand what it means to say that Jesus is our Lord. I want to mention briefly four aspects of his Lordship.

The first is that our submission to his authority must be comprehensive. In other words, we cannot pick and choose which of his commandments we intend to obey. Instead we accept that he has complete authority and we endeavour to obey him in every area of life.

Secondly, submission to his authority may be costly. It was so in the early days of the church when this Creed was developing. Many Christians lost their lives because of their determination to confess that Jesus is Lord. By making this assertion they were making a revolutionary statement, one that the authorities regarded as very threatening. So they attempted to crush the church, but clearly did not recognise the impossibility of defeating its Lord. Yet although victory for Christ’s cause is assured, we cannot ignore the fact that for many Christians today confessing the Lordship of Jesus is costly.

Thirdly, recognition of his Lordship is an expression of celebration. It is something to sing about, to rejoice in. When we do so, we share in a heavenly experience and join the ranks of the assembled crowd around the throne in heaven, composed of angels and redeemed humans, who praise the Saviour for his ongoing activities as Lord of all. He now has the name that is above every name (Phil. 2:9-11). Scholars have speculated about what the name is, but it looks to me that the verses themselves say it the title Lord. Of course, when saying it, we are affirming that he is the only Lord.

Fourthly, this celebration of and comprehensive submission to his Lordship is done as part of a community. The Creed stresses this when it says that we believe in ‘Jesus Christ…our Lord.’  We recognise that we belong to the fellowship of those who are aware of the sovereignty of Jesus, who delight in knowing that is Lord of all, who worship him for what he is and for what he has done, and whose ambition is to serve him more devotedly.

What’s in a name? When we are referring to names of Jesus, everything we need and everything we can anticipate is in them. It is wonderful to say from the heart, ‘I believe … in Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, our Lord.’