Advent Midweek II: The Nicene
Creed
“One Lord, Jesus For Us,
Our Everlasting King”[1]
December 10, 2025
Text: Second
Article of the Nicene Creed
As we meditate on the Second Article
of the Nicene Creed, it may be helpful to the divide it into two parts. The first part, high and exalted words
concerning the full divinity of the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son,
and His unity with God the Father. The second part, words that show His
condescension to us in becoming one of us, bearing our sin, and
accomplishing our salvation; then dragging our flesh out of death and the
grave, and exalting it to the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Needless to say, the first part of
this article has Arius in the crosshairs.
We hear, already, in the words, “one Lord Jesus Christ,” an echo
of the First Article, “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty.” (In fact, if you’re reading the Advent
Scripture readings with us, today you read, “for us there is one God, the
Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus
Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” [1 Cor. 8:6;
ESV].) As we said last week, it is a
confession of the mystery of God’s unity in plurality. Father and Son are one God, with the
Holy Spirit. And the Son, not created
by the Father (there was never a time when the Son was not), but begotten. And that from eternity, for as we said, if
God is Father, as He is from all eternity, that necessarily requires the
Son from all eternity. And this Son is
the only One so begotten. God has many
children by adoption, through Baptism into His Son. But God the Son is the only One begotten
in this way. Begotten, incidentally, is
just an old word for a father’s part in the procreative act. You know this from the Bible, when you get
hung up on the “begats” (so-and-so begat so-and-so, and so on, and so
forth). What sets the Son’s
begottenness apart from all those other begats, is not only that this
Son is begotten by the Almighty Father, but also that there is no
mother, no pregnancy, no birth… until Christmas.
So, the only-begotten Son… begotten,
in fact, before all worlds, which is to say, before creation,
eternally. The Son is not the first
creature, as Arius maintained, the first thing to be created. In fact, if we jump a few phrases to the end
of this first part, what do we find, but that all things were made through
this very Son. And that is
right. We read it all over the place in
Holy Scripture. In the Christmas Gospel
from John 1, we read, “All things were made through him, and without him was
not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). And Paul says, “by him all things were
created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible” (Col. 1:16). “And he is before all things, and in him
all things hold together” (v. 17). Creator. Sustainer. That is the definition of God. And the Scriptures apply this definition to
the Son.
And then this cascade of sublime
descriptors indicating the full divinity of the Son: “God of God, Light of
Light”… like the light radiating from the Sun in the sky… “very God of very
God,” again, “begotten, not made.”
And then the big one… “being of
one substance with the Father.” One
substance. Homoousia, in Greek,
of the same being. Not Homoiousia,
of like substance, of like being, but one substance, one
being. This is to say, Father and Son
are not two Gods (and the Holy Spirit is not a third). (Nor, incidentally, are they each parts
of God, another heresy for another day, called partialism. This one is particularly addressed in the
Athanasian Creed.) They are one God. It is THE profound mystery of the
Christian faith. We can’t comprehend
it. But we live in it. We live in this reality. We are baptized into it. And we wonder at it, worship,
and adore it. We worship and
adore Him.
The second part of this article then
turns to the second profound mystery of the Christian faith: This
God, the eternal Son of the Father, unites Himself to our flesh and blood. To save us.
You could almost weep at the
words, “for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven.” For us men… I hope you aren’t so
infected by the spirit of the times (an evil spirit, that one) that you
can’t understand that “men” here means “men and women,” mankind, humanity,
and so, for you, whoever you are.
He came down from heaven…
That is not a theological statement about the location of heaven
in the physical universe, as though heaven is somewhere up there, and we
are down here. That totally
misses the point. This is about God’s condescension
for us. He leaves behind His glory, His
majesty. The Son does not consider His
equality with God a thing to be grasped, to be clung to, but empties
Himself, pours Himself out, and takes on the form of a servant… our
form, our flesh (Phil. 2:6-7).
How does He do it? “(I)ncarnate by the Holy Spirit of the
virgin Mary.” Incarnate,
enfleshed (carne… meat). By the
Holy Spirit, who comes upon the virgin Mary in the preaching of the Angel, so
that the Word of the Father passes through Mary’s ear and takes up residence in
her womb (see, by the way, how this is a Trinitarian act, as is all of God’s
work for us). And then, the virgin
Mary. No human father. But, a human mother. God comes down to be made man of
her. So far down does God come, that…
here is a mystery to which every knee should bow, and every tongue confess… God
is a Zygote. A Blastocyst. An Embryo.
A Baby. A Man. For us. (Some of us quite literally bow as we confess
this mystery in the Creed.)
By the way, the Creed combats another
heresy, here. Docetism, it is
called, from the Greek word for to seem.
Unlike Arius, the Docetists had no problem believing that Jesus is fully
God. They just didn’t believe He is
really a man. That would get God’s hands
dirty, they thought, with our yucky flesh.
So, they maintained, Jesus was not a man. He just seemed to be a man. It looked like He took on our flesh,
but He didn’t really.
Of course, if the Son of God didn’t
take on our flesh, neither did He redeem our flesh. And we are flesh and blood creatures… flesh
and blood sinners… so we need a flesh and blood redemption from a flesh and
blood Redeemer. A Redeemer who is also
fully God, so that His redemption may be for all the sins of all people, for
all of my sins, and all of yours. So,
thank God, that is just the Redeemer we get in Jesus Christ. And that is the Redeemer we confess in the
Nicene Creed.
But He isn’t done
condescending. He is not afraid to get
yucky with our yuckiness. Not only does
He get down on our level by taking on our flesh. He goes all the way down into the depths
of us. He has no sin of His own, but He
takes on ours in His Baptism in the Jordan.
And what does He do with it? Crucified
under Pontius Pilate, suffered, buried.
He puts our sin to death in His flesh.
He goes all the way down to our damnation and death. He pays for our sins. He wipes out our debt. He dies our death.
And then what? The third day He rose again. As the Scriptures said He would. God highly exalted Him. Raised Him up out of the grave. Ascended into heaven… in our flesh. Blazing the trail for us. Taking us with Him, so to speak. Sitting at the right hand of the Father. That is the place of honor and
authority. He now enjoys the glory and
majesty He has always had with His Father in terms of His divinity, but
now in the flesh. And He rules
all things for us, seated there on the heavenly throne. And He intercedes for us. That is, He prays for us (that is an
amazing thing: God prays to God for us). And He loves us and cares for
us, provides for us and protects us. With all His divine omniscience and omnipotence
(His all-knowingness and all-powerfulness).
And He is coming back for us. To judge. The Last Day.
To set all things right. Your
mother probably taught you that all things come out in the wash. The reality is that all things come out in
the Resurrection. All will be very
good once again, as it was before sin.
And even better. Because Jesus
reigns. And His Kingdom will have no
end.
And, again, beloved, this is our
story. The Scriptures are all
about this. The Spirit delivers
this in His gifts. God made man
for us. Us, redeemed for God. God and sinners reconciled in the One
Mediator between God and men, the Man, Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5). Every time we confess this Creed, we are immersed
once again in the reality of it.
God keep us in it. God keep us
ever in this faith. In the Name of the
Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] Advent Series loosely
based on Timothy J. Winterstein, Worshiped and Glorified: A Study of the
Nicene Creed (St. Louis: Concordia, 2025).
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