Know Jesus

Eve of the Name of Jesus
31 December 2009

"Know Jesus, Know Salvation." "No Jesus, No Salvation." Theology makes a difference. Recently, I heard an interview of an American mega church pastor in which the interviewer observed that his particular mega church never confessed the ecumenical creeds: the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds. "No, of course not." But when the interviewer then asked, hopefully, "But you do confess the content of those creeds, even if you don't recite them, right?" The pastor very decisively answered that he did not believe what the creeds actually said. The creeds confess the most basic teachings of Christianity: who Christ is and what He has done for us and our salvation. What's not to believe? This tragic and self-willed unbelief has enormous consequences for our salvation.

What we believe is the difference between heaven and hell, the difference between comfort from God and the wrath of God, and the difference between the gospel of the true Life in Christ and the myths of human invention. This life and death distinction between the truth and lies is at the root of the Christian preaching of the incarnation of Christ born of the Virgin Mary. Christianity stands or falls on the clear confession that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself (2Cor 5:19). If God was not in Christ then the enmity between God and ourselves has not been taken away and we still live under the wrath of God.

Teaching clearly about things theological affects our salvation. If we do not confess clearly that our Lord Jesus Christ was made man, our salvation would likewise become unclear or uncertain. A clear confession of the two natures in Christ is not esoteric theological nit picking, but the very pivot upon which salvation depends. Insisting on clear creedal formulations on the part of the church is nothing other than defending the very means of salvation. Christ came among us for the express purpose of seeking and saving the lost. Who He is, is perfectly suited to what He does. There is no possibility of "being saved" without confessing faithfully that Jesus Christ is true God and true Man, born of the Virgin Mary. A counterfeit Christ that is our own mythological construction will not do. A mythical Christ grants a mythical salvation, that is none at all. "No Jesus, No Salvation." "Know Jesus, Know Salvation."

Leo the Great

"He who in the form of God made man, in the form of a slave was made man. For both [the divine and human] natures retain their own proper character without loss: and as the form of God did not do away with the form of a slave, so the form of a slave did not impair the form of God. The mystery of power united to weakness, in respect of the same human nature, allows the Son to be called inferior to the Father: but the Godhead, which is One in the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, excludes all notion of inequality. For the eternity of the Trinity has nothing temporal, nothing dissimilar in nature. Its will is one. Its substance is identical. Its power is equal.

"Yet there are not three Gods, but one God; because it is a true and inseparable unity, where there can be no diversity. Thus in the whole and perfect nature of true man was true God born, complete in what was His own, complete in what was ours. By 'ours' we mean what the Creator formed in us from the beginning, and what He undertook to repair. For what the deceiver brought in, and man deceived committed, had no trace in the Savior; nor because He partook of man's weaknesses, did He therefore share our faults. He took the form of a slave without stain of sin, increasing the human and not diminishing the divine. For that 'emptying of Himself,' whereby the Invisible made Himself visible, was the bending down of pity, not the failing of power."

Leo the Great, Sermon XXIII, on the Nativity, II