Grace Evangelical-Lutheran: 1. Timothy 1,12-17. 3. Sunday after Trinity

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

se cwide þæs béaggiefan ábireþ ferhþ

1. Timothy 1,12-17 3416

3. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 048

The Council of Nicaea, 325

Onuphrius, hermit in the Thebais 404.
Basilides and companions, Martyrs at Rome 303

12. Juni 2016

1. О Lord God, Heavenly Father, we all like sheep have gone astray, having suffered ourselves to be led away from the right path by Satan and our own sinful flesh: We beseech You graciously to forgive us all our sins for the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ; and quicken our hearts by Your Holy Spirit, so that we may abide in Your Word, and in true repentance and a steadfast faith continue in Your Church unto the end, and obtain eternal salvation. Amen. (Veit Dietrich for the 3. Sn. n. Trinitatis)

2. I thank Him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because He judged me faithful, appointing me to His service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor and violent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus arrived into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display His perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in Him for eternal life. To God alone, the Eternal King, who is immortal and invisible, be honor and glory forever and ever.Amen.

3. We don’t comprehend it like we should, but the confession of the Nicene Creed is a big deal in the Church. On 12. June 325 the Council of Nicea wrote and confessed this Creed for the first time. The 3. Article ends with the sentence: I believe in the Holy Spirit. The rest of that 3. Article was adopted and confessed for the first time at the Council of Constantinople in 381. The Nicene Creed is the first and only truly ecumenical creed that is confessed through the the world.

4. But why write and confess this Creed? The Creed was written to decide once and for all what the Scriptures taught about Jesus. For decades prior to 325, the Church had been grappling with this question: what exactly does it mean that Jesus is God? A pastor in Alexandria spread this question beyond a few localities and brought it to the attention of the entire Church. This pastor was named Arius, and his teaching about Jesus was this: There was a time when the Son was not. Arius and others believed that only God the Father was truly God. Jesus, the Son of God, was the first being created by the Father, and thus the Son cannot have the same Divine substance and nature of the Father.

5. The Trinitarian historian Socrates of Constantinople reports that Arius sparked the controversy that bears his name when St. Alexander of Alexandria, who had succeeded Achillas as the Bishop of Alexandria, gave a sermon stating the similarity of the Son to the Father. Arius interpreted Alexander’s speech as being a revival of Sabellianism, condemned it, and then argued that „if the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence: and from this it is evident, that there was a time when the Son was not. It therefore necessarily follows, that he [the Son] had his substance from nothing.“ [Socrates. The Dispute of Arius with Alexander, his Bishop. The Ecclesiastical Histories of Socrates Scholasticus. Retrieved 2 May 2012] This quote describes the essence of Arius’ doctrine.

6. This minority position was obviously contrary to the majority position in the Church. At Nicea, 23 bishops supported Arius, while 295 bishops moderately or strongly supported the Alexander who articulated that Jesus is co-eternal and of one substance (con-substantial) with the Father. Arius and his followers preferred to say Jesus is of similar, but not identical, substance of the Father (ὁμοιούσιον), while Alexander and his supporters preferred to say Jesus is the same and one substance of the Father (ὁμοούσιον). After months of Scriptural debate, the bishops at Nicea composed the Nicene Creed to confess the catholic and orthodox faith of the Church. The Creed made it clear that Arius and his teaching about Jesus was rejected. They professed that the Holy Scriptures proclaim that Jesus is:

The Son of God, begotten of the Father, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.

The confessional line had been drawn by the bishops as to what is and what is not the orthodox confession of the Church. 1691 years later we still confess this Creed as the orthodox faith of the Church.

7. Just to make sure Arius and the few bishops who supported him got the point, the Council of Nicea added this final paragraph to the Creed: „But those who say: ‘There was a time when he was not;’ and ‘He was not before he was made;’ and ‘He was made out of nothing,’ or ‘He is of another substance’ or ‘essence,’ or ‘The Son of God is created,’ or ‘changeable,’ or ‘alterable’— they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.“

8. The Nicene Creed we use today is different from the one the 318 bishops wrote at Nicea in 325. The Nicene Creed we confess today comes from the Council of Constantinople in 381. The 150 bishops at this council reworded the Creed by adding a few phrases and expanding the 3. Article to flesh out what we believe about the Holy Spirit, as the decades between Nicea and Constantinople had been fraught with false teachings regarding the Holy Spirit.

9. The history of the Church reveals that false doctrine and heresy can easily worm its way in among pastors and congregations. The Nicene Creed established the definitive confession of the Church draw from Holy Scripture. The Creed teaches that God is Triune: One God comprised of Three Persons. The Creed also proclaims that Jesus is the only way of salvation, and that He is both God and man in one person. The Creed merely echoes the words written by the Apostle Paul in his 1. Epistle to Timothy: »The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus arrived into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display His perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in Him for eternal life. To God alone, the Eternal King, who is immortal and invisible, be honor and glory forever and ever.«

10. The Nicene Creed is concerned chiefly with Christ. It sets forth that salvation is through Christ alone. It proclaims that Jesus is fully God and fully man, one person with two natures, Divine and human, and that His Divine nature is equal to God the Father, so that what can be said of God the Father can be said of Jesus in regards to His Divinity. This is why the Church preaches Christ crucified, for He is the Lamb of God who has taken away the sin of the world.

11. The Apostle Paul writes in his Epistle to the Galatians: »There is not a different gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. For this is the gospel: God the Father gave the Lord Jesus Christ for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age. Thus we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but is justified through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified« (Galatians 1,6-8.3-4; 2,16). The Nicene Creed proclaims this Christ and confesses this gospel; thus we confess it in the Church 1700 years later after it was first confessed in Nicea. And the 3. Ecumenical Council, the Council of Ephesus of 431, reaffirmed the original 325 version of the Nicene Creed and declared that: „it is unlawful for any man to bring forward, to write or to compose a different faith as a rival to that established by the holy Fathers assembled with the Holy Spirit in Nicaea“. This is most certainly true. Amen.

12. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving-kindness, send forth the Holy Spirit so that we daily trust in Your mercy and seek Your grace for the redemption and salvation of our lives. Amen.

To God alone be the Glory

Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm

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All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.

Grace Evangelical-Lutheran

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church

Monday, June 13, 2016

1. Timothy 1,12-17. 3. Sunday after Trinity

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