What Did Jesus Actually Do for Our Salvation? | Nicene Creed Explained

Scripture Reading: 1 Peter 1:13-19

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

LENTEN SERMON SERIES: THE NICENE CREED

The Work of Christ: Lord and Redeemer

Sermon by James Huenink

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

THE NICENE CREED SERIES SO FAR

So far in our Lenten series on the Nicene Creed, we have talked about the overall purpose of the Nicene Creed — to guard us against the various heresies it was written to protect us from. We talked about the Father, our Creator, and the way he provides for us through the vocations that we do. Last week, we talked about the person and nature of the Son — how Jesus is God and man, and how those things work together to bring us salvation.

TODAY'S FOCUS: WHAT JESUS HAS DONE FOR US

Today, we're going to talk about the work of Jesus — Christ as God and man, what he has come to do for us. This is the task that most of us know better than perhaps we did all of the things I talked about with all the Latin from last week: the story of Jesus.

It's the thing that we confess when we say — and I'm going to read it, because I'm in front of you all:

…who for us, men and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man and was crucified, also for us. Under Pontius Pilate, he suffered and was buried, and the third day, he rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father, and He will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end.— The Nicene Creed

And today we are discussing the work that Jesus did: that he became a human being, was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, became man, suffered and died for us under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, was buried, descended into hell, and on the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and is now seated at the right hand of the Father.

THE MANY DIMENSIONS OF CHRIST'S SALVATION

This is the work of salvation that Jesus accomplished for us, and there's a lot going on in that. In fact, the Scriptures describe this in various different ways that approach the aspects of Christ's salvation from different angles. There's a whole bunch of them — I've listed a few:

There's the adoption as sons that we have by being one in Christ — we are adopted into his family and gain the inheritance of Jesus. This is one of the things that our hymn mentions when it talks about Jesus being our elder brother. There's being made to be like him — St. Paul talks about our unity with Christ as being remade. We die and rise with him in our baptism. As Lutherans, of course, we have to talk about justification — that we have been declared righteous because of his sake. Jesus is the propitiation for our sins, which is a big, fancy word that says his sacrifice smelled good and made God happy. There's the atonement — that there is a cosmic imbalance on the scales of justice that must be made balanced, and Christ has done that. There's the victory — Christ is an invader who rides into death on a white horse and destroys it by tricking it into trying to fight him.

LUTHER ON THE WORD "LORD"

But that's not what Luther points out in the Small Catechism when he explains this portion of the Creed. Luther keys on the word Lord.

Last week, we used the word "Lord" to point out that it was a word that referred to Jesus' divinity, making him equal with the Father — he would have a name above every name, and that would bring glory to the Father. Luther uses the word to think of the feudal lord. He describes Jesus as:

…our Lord who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious blood and his innocent suffering and death, that I may be his own and live under him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness.— Martin Luther, Small Catechism

RANSOM IN THE FEUDAL WORLD

The word "Lord" here keys into a cultural thing that everyone would have understood during Luther's day, because there were a lot of feudal lords, and they were all fighting battles. For many centuries, the Ottomans and the Turks and all those guys were invading into Europe, and they did a lot of fighting. And what happened over and over and over again in these battles is that feudal lords would get captured. European lords would get captured by the Muslims; Muslim nobles would get captured by the Europeans. They didn't kill them, because there was a lot of money in capturing a feudal lord in battle.

In fact, this became so normal — ransoming a lord — that there were all sorts of systems set up to do that: courts, obligations, all sorts of money changing sides. When you captured a big wig in the enemy army, it was so common that there was actually an order of lay Catholics dedicated to raising money to ransom soldiers captured in the Crusades. It was called the Order of Mercedarians. According to records, the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the Ransom of Captives accomplished approximately 70,000 rescues. That's a lot.

But you'll notice these ransoms were always the common people sending their money up to ransom their lords. Money came from the bottom to the top to save the guys who were in charge.

TWO KINGDOMS: SATAN AND CHRIST

In that feudal world, there were two kingdoms — the kingdom of Islam and the kingdom of Christianity, and the kingdom of Christianity had to always go about saving their leaders. We have two kingdoms as well. In Luther's conception — not Islam and Christianity, but Satan and Christ.

Each of us is born in Satan's kingdom, serving him, trapped in our sin. And when Saint Peter begins to speak to the people in our reading, he is telling them not to live in the old kingdom — but that they have been ransomed by something far more precious than gold or silver: by the precious blood of Christ.

That is what Jesus does. He, on the cross, paid the ransom so that you could be taken from Satan's kingdom and transferred into the kingdom of Christ. So much better a kingdom, isn't it? One is a kingdom filled with sin and death and the devil, that leads to damnation. One is a kingdom filled with righteousness and purity and goodness, that leads to everlasting life.

THE LORD WHO LAID DOWN HIS LIFE FOR YOU

Jesus paid the price for you. And it would have been mind-blowing for all of those serfs to look around at a world where money only flowed up — out of their pockets and into the hands of the rich — to think that a lord would lay down his life for them. That he would spend not just his treasury or his soldiers or his goods, but his holy, precious blood and his innocent suffering and death, to save the people that nobody cared about.

That's the image that Luther gives us when he explains the work of Jesus Christ — the Lord who spends his blood to save you.

LIVING IN THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST

And what does it mean to live and serve in this kingdom? We are no longer under the kingdom of Satan, no longer bound to his works and his sins. We get to live in the kingdom of Christ. We have to live that way.

Being ransomed from sin, death, and the devil means that we also have to live under the orders of our new King, because there's no middle ground. You don't have, like, a tightrope walk between the two. You're either with Satan or Jesus — either following Satan's orders or Jesus's orders. And I know which one I would want: goodness, righteousness, purity and peace.

And the best part is we serve a Lord who sacrificed himself — who doesn't call on other people to do the work for him, but led the way. Jesus, our Savior — we serve with joy and thanksgiving. Not because it's this great burden, not because he tells us we have to check off boxes or work hard to make sure we stay — but because he led the way. Led the way through the cross to give us life everlasting.

In Jesus' name. Amen.