Read:John 1:1-141 Corinthians 8:5-6We believe in:One Lord Jesus ChristThe Nicene Creed follows a Trinitarian structure. Having confessed God the Father, we move on to God the Son. This Christological section of the Creed is by far the longest portion of the Creed. Today, we consider God the Son as divine. In previous weeks, the Creed will take us through God great works of redemption – the incarnation, Passion, Cross, Resurrection and Ascension. The beginning phrase of this Christological section hints at what unfolds. We begin by confessing that we believe in ONE Lord Jesus Christ. The logic of this beginning is that this is the One who is the Savior. He is the God-man. Jesus – he is Yeshua/Joshua who saves. The angel tells Joseph, “You shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins.” Matt 1:18-25And he is the Christ, the anointed one – the promised Messiah. In the Old Testament, King David is anointed as king of Israel. Jesus is great David’s Greater Son, who as Peter confesses, is the Christ. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God’s anointed who now comes in the flesh.And he is Lord. Echoing Scripture, here we confess that Jesus is divine. The Lord in Isaiah 45:18 is the one to whom “every knee will bow, and every tongue confess.” In Phil 2, Paul proclaims that “At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” The title Lord belongs to God alone. When confronted by the risen Christ, Thomas calls out, “My Lord and my God.”And the Lord Jesus Christ is ONE. This phrase echoes our reading from 1 Corinthians 8:6 where Paul gives us the Trinitarian interpretation of the Shema. The one God confessed in Deuteronomy 6:4 is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Therefore, Paul is saying that the Son is God, he is divine.All of this is wrapped into the opening phrase. Jesus is the God who saves and he is so as Lord and Christ, who is worthy of our adoration.But as the Creed proceeds, ONE also signals to us that the Savior is the God-man. He is one person who takes to himself a human nature. Two natures but ONE person.And he is also One person Jesus Christ assuming a human nature in his incarnation. He is the Lord but he is also Jesus – the One who saves and the Christ, the anointed of God, the promised Messiah.Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. And he is begotten not made.If Jesus the Son is God, what does it mean if he is begotten of the Father? In the context of Nicene theology, the concept of begotten not made is saying that the Son of God exists eternally. There was not “when he was not.” Contra Arius, he always was. Yet, the Son is born of the Father, or begotten, before all ages. To be from the Father is not to say that the Son is subordinate to the Father or a lesser deity. There is no hierarchy in God, but there is an order or a Divine Taxis. To be begotten means that the Son is eternally generated from the Father.This concept is what our WLC calls relations of origin. The Father alone is without generation or procession. The Son is generated by the Father and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Holy Spirit. In John 1:14, we read: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” More literally, the only Son is the monogenes, the only begotten Son of God. This is the eternal generation of the Son and it was at the heart of the first Nicene Council. Both Arius, who denied the Son’s eternal generation, and Athanasius appealed to Proverbs 8:25 to support their position. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth, OR I was begotten…The church Fathers understand this Divine Wisdom to be the eternal Wisdom of God who became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. They thought this to be the case because we read in 1 Corinthians 1:24 that Christ is the power and wisdom of God.However, Arius appealed to Prov 8:22, which in the LXX says that Wisdom was ektisen, created. The Hebrew is not bara but qana which can mean created but can also mean something like possess, in the ESV, or even fathered, as some commentators suggest.Nevertheless, Arius appealed to this verse to argue that the Son was less than the Father. He was divine, just not as divine as God the Father. He was somewhere between God and us. And importantly, Arius thought that Christ was created.This is why the Nicene Creed is so clear. The Son of God is begotten not made. He is eternally generated from the Father and whatever this means, it means that he is not created.He is from the Father eternally—before all worlds. He is not made contra Arius. Jesus is from the Father eternally. By this, though, we must not think that Jesus is created. He is begotten not made. And just to make sure we get the point, the Creed confesses that Jesus Christ is the Creator. He is the one by whom, or through whom, all things are made – echoing John 1. In the context, he is not adopted – not a created being who God adopts, or chooses and elevates to a divine status…The Son of God is unique. He is born of the Father from eternity past. There is no beginning to this birth. Yet, we must understand “birth” or “begotten” analogically. We know something of what birth means. Yet in God, to be begotten is not to be derived or to come into existence. It speaks of the eternal relation between the Father and the Son. We find the same concept in John 3:16. God the Father so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son (English translations are bad!) so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life. The Son is sent because he is from the Father. The sending – what we call the Son’s divine mission – is patterned and principled by his divine procession, which is another way of speaking of his eternal generation. It is fitting that the Son is sent because he is eternally from the Father.God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God…This phrase, part of the original creed of 325, clearly affirms that, though the Son is begotten, he is truly God. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. The Son is from the Father as light is from light. He is from God but he is very God. He is true God.Yet, we confess that the Son is from the Father. He is from the Father as light from light. Jesus speaks of himself this way often – John 5:26 for example.And it might not be obvious but this section of the Creed affirms the divinity of the Son but also gives us insights into his distinct subsistence or divine person. Being of One Substance with the FatherHomoousios – not really sure – at the end of the day, Christ is either God, and therefore of the one divine essence/substance or he is not.So what?Jesus is God in the flesh = he really can save you! Salvation is of the Lord (Jonah)He is the natural Son of God = foundation for our adoption by grace (Gal 4)Is coming into the world is patterned after his eternal relation with the Father – John 3:16. The Creeds assure us that Christ is a true revelation of God.
