Apostles' Creed: Jesus Christ is only Son... Born of the Virgin Mary // Rev. Matt Kennedy // June 22 2025

In the centuries that followed the New Testament, the Christian church grew like wildfire across the Mediterranean world. The good new of Jesus transformed lives and communities in profound ways, but as the church grew, there was a persistent point of contention and debate in Christian theology: who exactly is Jesus of Nazareth and how do we describewho he is?What does it mean to call him "the Son of God"? How do we understand a Jesus who the gospels present as very human, yet also does things profoundly divine? After many centuries of controversy, a council of hundreds of theologians and pastors ultimately summed up the nature of Christ this way: "God from God, Light from Light... begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father.... incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, and was made truly human." (The Nicene Creed, Covenant Hymnal #883).The human and divine nature of Christ is not just archaic discourse, it has great implications for understanding our faith! A savior that is both fully God and fully man defies all our natural categories of material and spirit. God in Christ fuses these things so that we see that grace and faith is not just a part of life, it is life. Historic Christian faith says there is no great divide between religious and secular, spiritual or material, because Jesus himself is undivided God and Man! This week our summer sermon series in the Apostles' Creed turns to the opening lines of the second article to shine brighter light into more wondrous mysteries, "I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord; conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary."