Reflections on the Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. 23 Aug 14 began a perhaps unbroken, orderly, and personal journey through my favorite written confession of faith. This will be my personal reflections on this beloved written codification of the Christian Faith which is according to a Baptist flavor.
NEXT-
Chapter 8, paragraph 3a: “The Lord Jesus, in his human nature thus united to the divine, in the person of the Son, was sanctified and anointed with the Holy Spirit above measure…”
I wrote last week about the importance of Jesus being fully human. This week, the confession speaks of that human nature being “united to the divine”. In Philippians 2:5-8, we have the great statement that’s always read like a song to the church that says, “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Jesus never stopped being God. He added a body to himself in the incarnation.
That body. The one Jesus still has today that’s been glorified, was united to the divine second person of the Trinity. Jesus thus is rightly maintained in history as the Godman.
In his life he was submitted to the Father in all things. There are passages in the New Covenant, explicitly in relation to the incarnation, about the Father anointing Son of God. Consider Hebrews 1:9: “You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You With the oil of gladness above Your companions.” Or Acts 10:38: You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.” Jesus became a man to in many ways model what a life of devotion to God in heaven would look like for the elect. He looked up as the Godman as we should now look up as the people of God.
Jesus was anointed. In fact, he was called the Messiah or the anointed one. While that term has been highjacked by charismatic excessives to explain even chairs where if one sits upon them they’ll receive greater gifts of grace, it’s actually a beautiful term. In Luke 4:18-19, in Jesus’ hometown sermon, he quotes Isaiah 61 saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel…”
Filled with God the Holy Spirit, Jesus proclaimed the gospel to us all.
Leave a Reply