This section is a pivotal part of the creed and our understanding of everything as Christians. Up till now we’ve affirmed that there is a God who is the object of our worship and the objective basis of all knowledge and values. Further, we’ve affirmed the Christian concept of this God as including Jesus, a historical person who is also a part of the Godhead. But all of this simply undergirds the message of Jesus with its appropriate power and authority. We have to ask, so what Jesus say to us powerfully and authoritatively? His message was simple: “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” (Matthew 4:17).
John the Baptist has the same message as Jesus. They both pointed toward something significant that Jesus would do: deal with human sin. When John saw Jesus, he cried out, “Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world!” This is important because it ties Jesus’ message and ministry to the sacrificial system of the Old Testament and says the purpose is take away sin. How does Jesus do this? How is Jesus like a sacrificial Lamb?
Passages: Exodus 12:1-30, Isaiah 53, John 1:29-34, Hebrews 9, Colossians 2:9-15
Colossians 2:9-15 says, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self, ruled by the flesh, was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”
The death of Jesus is the victory of the Christian. Our hope that repentance and faith could ever lead to sins forgiven and sin’s consequences defeated is firmly rooted in the death of Jesus. Only Jesus can forgive sin because only Jesus, as God, can claim the offense of all sin and only Jesus, in His innocent death, can pay for all sin. This is the triumph of the Gospel. The seeming loss of our savior is actually His and our greatest victory. This line of the creed may sound like a sad affirmation – we believe that Jesus was crucified, died, was buried and descended into hell – but what those lines mean is that we believe that the totality of sin and death was laid on Him and He bore it all and took it to hell itself so that His victory banner can fly over it all. There is no happier line in the whole creed. In expressing the totality of Jesus’ sacrifice, we express the totality of His offered forgiveness.
