God the Son

From a Lenten study of Thoughts on The Creed, by Alister McGrath, Chapter 3: God the Son. I was asked to sum up a small section of the Apostle's Creed, "God the Son," for our small group discussion. The following is my meditation on that portion (I reprinted it here in my blog at my mom's request). The full creed is written at the bottom of this post:

I believe in…Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary…

Out of the void, God, Son, and Holy Spirit place a time line in eternity.

God’s Word begins. “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness” (Gen. 1:3-4). Light into darkness is the beginning of all transformation. It is the starting point of the work of God—it’s the “I Believe.”

So, the big clock of our history begins to be wound by the hand of the Father—and Jesus was there. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning” (John 1:1-2).

God kept winding the clock—through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; through poetry and the prophets. All the while sending the message: “He’s coming,” “My Son is coming,” “the Light is coming.” Prophecy after prophecy gave us the hope to believe. The clock was being wound. “He’s coming.”

Then the winding stops. God’s hand has a new work to do. He places it on the shoulder of Gabriel and gives him a message to deliver “in Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.”

“Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you…You will be with child and give birth to a son.”

Then, Gabriel gets to be the first on this earth to speak the name of the promise that had been wound up in our history…

“and you will give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; His kingdom will never end.”

The virgin simply asks, “How?”

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:26-34). The triune Godhead comes to earth. “The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world” (John 1:9).

And so God’s hand devotes itself to another task, knitting His own son together in the virgin womb of a young Hebrew girl. My thoughts turned to this son of David and if perhaps God smiled as He was about His work. As He looked through history did He see the genetic characteristics that would one day appear in His begotten Son? Did God remember the heart of David? Did Jesus inherit the smile of Leah as she found the love she longed for was in God alone and gave Him praise at the birth of Judah—from whom a mighty lion was about to come? Did his hands bear a resemblance to Zerubbabel’s who lovingly rebuilt the temple? Did his feet look something like Enoch’s who walked with God to the very throne of heaven?

Matthew’s genealogy gives us Jesus’ legal right to the throne of David through his adoptive father, Joseph. Beth Moore writes, “How awesome of God to purpose that Christ’s royal lineage would come through his adoptive father. In a peculiar kind of way, God the father allowed His son to be ‘adopted’ into a family on earth so that we could be adopted into His family in heaven.” Ephesians 1:5 tells us, “In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.” Indeed, Matthew’s genealogy tells us much about God’s view of adoption as we see the names of Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba folded into the line of Christ.

From the beginning, “He came into that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who receive him, to those who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (John 1:11-13).

Luke’s gospel also identifies Jesus as a descendant of David, this time through his mother’s side—a true blood heir from the first Adam to the second. “So, the Word became flesh and lived for a while among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

His hands, now wounded, were “…lifted up…and [he] blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven” (Luke 24:50). The right hand of the Father had finished the work and welcomed Jesus back to His side.

The clock is unwinding now and the message is, “He’s coming,” “My Son is coming,” “the Light is about to return!”

The Apostle's Creed

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended into hell.

The third day He arose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy *catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.

Amen.

*The word "catholic" refers not to the Roman Catholic Church, but to the universal church of the Lord Jesus Christ.