Imagine standing on a plank wide enough to position yourself but only slightly wider than your stance. Then envision ropes securely tied to each end of the plank, with each strand at a length easily grasped‚ one for your right hand and one for your left. Picture your muscles as disproportionately strong—biceps buff enough to curl over 150 pounds. Now visualize (and this image may stretch your imagination beyond Gumby’s reach!) your own weight at only 100 pounds.
The math is simple: 150 – 100 = 50. With such favorable numbers, surely you could lift your entire body and the two-pound board on which you stand off the ground. Grab the ropes and elevate. Nothing should thwart your self-lift.
Ludicrous? Well, yes . . . but consider the hearts and habits of humanity since the Genesis 3 forbidden fruit festival. Across all generations and societies, men and women have doggedly attempted to defy spiritual gravity and to hoist themselves to heaven. Those who discern the childish delusion of lifting themselves off the ground by ropes on a plank simultaneously devote their entire lives to lifting themselves to God—self-made religion, self-promotion, self-indulgence, self-mutilation, self-this, and self-that. Self. Self. Self. The weight of sin and spiritual death make all attempts damnable, fools’ errands, but like dogs returning to vomit (Prov. 26:11), sinners stubbornly rush headlong into their dead souls and vainly attempt to draw life from their own rot to fuel their ascent up the holy hill.
Into this self-absorbed world of denial, delusion, and death comes the living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In glaring contrast to every other major religion, philosophy, or cult, whose advocates religiously attempt to appease their own gods with spiritually dead hearts and seared consciences, the triune God intrudes savingly and blessedly. While we stubbornly bend in defiance against him, he graciously bends in mercy toward us. And so he wins his people.
Thus, according to the Christian faith expressed and preserved in holy Scripture, the only life-giving salvation blessedly begins and ends with God. He descends to us, forgives us, cleanses us, and raises us from the dead. Only because of and in response to his life-giving actions of grace and mercy do we ever turn toward him and ascend to him.
As with other early creeds of the church, the Nicene Creed shines the beacon of light upon this brilliant redemption of the triune God. Launching from succinct expressions of trinitarian orthodoxy, in order to identify who this one true God is and who he is not—combating errors which have plagued corners of the church throughout the centuries—the Nicene statements differentiate the God of Scripture from all other imposter deities, and the biblical faith from all other pretender religions.
He alone saves sinners; he alone lifts the listless.
The Nicene Creed, like the Scriptures, does not terminate on questions of divine identity. It refuses to settle for metaphysical or ontological assertions and rejects a passive, distant, motionless deity. Instead, it presents the Creator of Scripture, the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who carries out saving activity on planet
earth. The living God is the acting God. Only this one true God in three Persons delivers the one true hope. He alone saves sinners; he alone lifts the listless.
Accordingly, bracketed by succinct expressions of the co-eternality and co-equality of the Father, Son, and Spirit, the Nicene Creed spotlights the “one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God… who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven” (emphasis added).
The God-Man, for Us and for Our Salvation
The Nicene Creed first affirms that Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God. Starting here is no arbitrary decision. Before he was man, Jesus was and is eternally God. The Son is no creation and no second-rate demigod or want-to-be deity. He is forever the Almighty Creator God, even as is the Father.
At the same time, as the Creed affirms, Jesus is truly and completely human. By the Spirit’s work in the womb of Mary, the Son of God took on a real human nature. And when he assumed this nature, he forfeited nothing of his deity. His Self-emptying (Phil. 2:7) came by addition, not by subtraction. Accordingly, when the Father sent his Son “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3), the Son of God forever became the God-man.
The death of Christ is the death of death for the people of God because Christ is raised from the dead.
This God-man requires careful clarification. The Son’s assumption of humanity does not make him two persons (contra Nestorianism), nor does it fuse his two natures, mixing the divine and human (contra Eutychianism). Instead, Christ ever remains one Person, but now with two natures: divine and human. Commenting on the brilliant expression of Christology in the Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 8, John Murray summarizes, “The divine is not changed into the human, nor accommodated to the human, nor is the human transmuted into the divine—no conversion! The divine and human do not coalesce so as to form a third—no composition! Neither are the natures mixed—no confusion!” He goes on, “The Son of God did not become personal by incarnation. He became incarnate but there was no suspension of his divine self-identity. In these terms his self must always be defined. Jesus was God-man, not strictly speaking, God and man.”
This essential unity of the two natures in one Person, which occurred without blending or bending his divinity or his humanity, serves as a core feature of our Christ and our Christian faith. Rather than warring with one another, his natures function in sweet communion in his single Person. This Person, the God-man, is the One who
accomplishes our salvation, and he does so by submitting to his Father from start to finish. Westminster New Testament Professor Brandon Crowe underlines the personal face of obedience: “It is always the person (the Son of God) who acts. This means that Jesus’s obedience is always the obedience of the God-man. If we neglect this important reality, we will not properly understand the obedience of Christ.”
The Nicene Creed crisply expresses the humble arrival on earth of the Son of God: “who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man.” Note again that the reason for his becoming the God-man was “for us and for our salvation.” His assumption of a human nature, in the full integrity of what that means, served the redemption of his people (Gal. 4:4–7). The source and gospel trajectory are unambiguous: He came down to us.
But why do we speak of the obedience of Christ? Precisely because our salvation required it. His identity as the God-man provides an indispensable facet of our salvation, but not a sufficient one. His arrival on earth is a requisite force for our salvation, but his birth to a woman did not save us. Only the tested and proven God-man
secured the salvation of sinners.
Salvation came by how the God-man functioned in accordance with the will of his Father. History matters; his story matters. Covenant obedience matters; his obedience to the Law of God matters. Salvation required the “personal, perfect, and perpetual obedience” (Westminster Larger Catechism, 20) of the Son of God, culminating in his sacrificial death on the cross. We should summarize: it was not enough for him to be human; to effectuate salvation, he had to be the fully sinless Son of the covenant, the tried and triumphing Son of righteousness.
Nor does the Nicene Creed miss this all-important point. With this redemptive goal in view and the suffering of the God-man as the means to that salvation, the Creed summarizes the work of the God-man with reference to two decisive events which profile his obedience: he “was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried; and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures” (emphasis added).
Let’s briefly consider his death and resurrection more fully.
“Crucified”
As the language of the Nicene Creed affirms, the death of Christ is “for us and for our salvation.” The Apostle Paul makes his saving efficacy explicit: “Christ died for us” (Rom: 5:8; cf. Rom. 8:32). The death of Christ marks the capping act of obedience to the Father, when the Son of God—following a lifetime of obedience moment by moment, day by day, step by step—yielded his own life willingly, mediatorially, and finally to his Father to redeem the people of God. That he “suffered and was buried” underscore the historical facts of his bodily death and burial. The suffering of his crucifixion led to his actual death. His descent to us on earth required his descent to “becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8).
It was not enough for him to be human; to effectuate salvation, he had to be the fully sinless Son of the covenant, the tried and triumphing Son of righteousness.
This death of the Lord Jesus on a despicable cross—by way of the “one man’s obedience” (Rom. 5:19) and his “one act of righteousness” (Rom. 5:18)—typified and consummated his full and flawless obedience. This culminating act came as no mere behavioral surrender; rather, this obedience drew upon the eager heart, mind, and will of the Son of God before his heavenly Father. As Murray says in Redemption Accomplished and Applied, “When we speak of the death of our Lord upon the cross
as the supreme act of his obedience we are thinking not merely of the overt act of dying upon the tree but also of the disposition, will, and determinate volition which lay
behind the overt act.”
And what motivated him? He delighted in his Father and delighted in his people. Jesus died willingly (John 10:17–18) and joyfully (Heb. 12:1–2), because he yielded to his Father lovingly (John 14:31). In the words of Christ himself, “Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book’” (Heb. 10:7).
Scripture speaks uniformly of the willing death of Christ as the sin-and-death-wrecker for his people. Yes, by Christ’s joyfully obedient death, we receive blessing beyond comprehension.
Hebrews 2:14–15
[14] Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, [15]and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.
Through his death he crushed sin, death, and Satan for his people. Christ’s death killed death once for all for himself and his people. In his death is final and decisive
victory, so that his crucifixion worked “for us and for our salvation.” And so on the cross Jesus declares, “It is finished” (John 19:30).
Romans 5:6–11
[6] For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. [7] For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—[8] but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. [9] Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. [10] For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more,
now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. [11] More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Note that the death of Christ hits sin and its effects head on. The obedient death of Christ attacked and conquered the force of sin and death. Christ’s death paid the penalty for our sin and secured a permanently blessed relationship between the forgiven sinner and the Almighty God of the universe. Having died for the “ungodly” and absorbed the wrath of God in our place, Christ’s reconciling death was blessedly “for us and for our salvation."
“Rose Again”
The death of Christ, however, does not conclude the work of Christ. “It is finished” is followed by “He has risen, as he said” (Matt. 28:6). The resurrection of Christ is, too, “for us and our salvation.” Without the historical fact and force of the resurrection of Christ, Paul will insist, “we are the most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19). As the crucified Christ secured forgiveness and reconciliation with God, the resurrected Christ gave us his promised and needed life! The death of Christ is the death of death for the people of God because Christ is raised from the dead.
By the power of the Spirit (Rom. 8:11; Phil. 3:20–21), the Father gloriously raised his Son from the dead (Acts 2:24; Rom. 6:4). The God-man’s resurrection vindicated
him, marked him the Righteous One, and triggered the Father’s open affirmation of his successful triumph over sin, death, and Satan: he was “declared the Son of God in power” (Rom. 1:4). Richard B. Gaffin Jr. writes in By Faith and Not by Sight that the resurrection of Christ elicited “God’s de facto declarative recognition, on the ground of … [Christ’s full] obedience, of his righteousness (cf. 1 Cor. 1:30).”
Just like the death of Christ bore effect, the resurrection delivers its own all-important potency. Relish these selected jewels from the New Testament:
Romans 4:25
[Jesus our Lord] … was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
The vindication of Christ at his resurrection secures our justification. The Father declares the Son righteous in fact; the justified people of God are declared righteous by faith. “Justification is analytic concerning Christ, and synthetic concerning the redeemed” (Garner, Sons in the Son, 244). That is, Jesus was declared righteous because of his actual personal, perpetual, and perfect righteousness with respect to the Law of God. We are declared righteous by grace through faith, and receive his historic righteousness because we are united to him by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:9–11). Christ’s resurrection-vindicated righteousness is “for us and for our salvation.”
1 Corinthians 15:16, 20–22
[16] For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised…. [20] But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. [21] For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. [22] For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
The resurrection of Christ is not only a historical fact; it actually generates our own resurrection. Christians participate in Christ’s resurrection, the one harvest of the people of God, in which Christ Jesus is the Firstfruits. In Christ Jesus we are raised! When at his resurrection, he became “life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45), he overturned
the previously victorious and previously irrevocable force of sin and death and filled every believer with his own resurrection life. Yes, Christ’s resurrection is “for us and
for our salvation.”
Romans 6:9–11
9] We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. [10] For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. [11] So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
The resurrection of Christ conquered the power of sin. By his Spirit, he outfitted us with his complete panoply of resources for standing in the Lord’s strength (Eph. 6:10–20), and walking in obedience; indeed, by his resurrection power, we are enabled to “walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). Christ’s resurrection surges with holy dynamism “for us and for our salvation.”
Conclusion
After expressing the deity and humanity of the Son of God, the Nicene Creed profiles the key markers of Christ’s obedience, which the Apostle Paul labels of “first importance” (1 Cor. 15:1). These are matters of first importance because they graciously pour upon us what is of lasting importance. They are first because they truly last.
So, when we express the summary words of this great creed concerning Christ crucified, let us remember the loving obedience which this self-sacrificial suffering displays: the Son of God died “for us and for our salvation,” for “he loved [us] to the end” (John 13:1).
When we express the summary words of this great creed concerning Christ raised, let us rejoice that Christ rose from the dead “for us and for our salvation”—delivering us from death to life and granting us the fruit of his obedience—including our justification, sanctification, and glorification.
“And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Cor. 1:30–31).
Make no mistake, only God in the “one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God,” and by his Spirit, lifts us up.