We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ

The Text

The opening of the second article, and the heart of the creed. Three words bear the weight: Lord, Jesus, Christ. Lord is the divine name, the Septuagint’s rendering of the unutterable Tetragrammaton, now applied to the risen Galilean. Jesus is the historical name of the man born of Mary in the days of Herod, who walked the dusty roads of Galilee and was crucified outside Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate. Christ is the title, the Greek for Messiah, the long-awaited Anointed One promised through the prophets. The single phrase — one Lord, Jesus Christ — is the earliest and most compact apostolic confession (1 Cor. 12:3; Rom. 10:9; Phil. 2:11), and the second article of the creed unfolds what is already contained in this short confession.

The one matters as much here as in clause 1. One Lord, against the many lords of Greco-Roman religion and politics. One Christ, against every spiritualizing alternative that would multiply intermediaries between God and the world. One Jesus, against every docetic suggestion that the Galilean was a phantom or a temporary appearance. The Christian confession is not that Jesus is one of many divine figures, one of many anointed ones, one of many lords. The confession is that this Jesus — this particular man, born of this particular mother, in this particular place, under this particular Roman governor — is the one Lord, the one Christ, the one through whom the one God of clause 1 is fully and finally known.

Translation Notes

Kyrios / Dominus — Lord. The most theologically loaded word in the clause. The Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures used by the early church) regularly renders the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) with Kyrios — not because the two are linguistically equivalent (they are not) but because the Greek-speaking Jewish community had developed the practice of substituting Lord (Hebrew Adonai, Greek Kyrios) wherever the divine name appeared, in order not to pronounce the holy name. When the apostolic writings apply Kyrios to Jesus — Jesus is Lord (Kyrios Iēsous; Rom. 10:9; 1 Cor. 12:3; Phil. 2:11) — the move is not metaphorical or honorific. It is the deliberate application of the divine name. Kyrios is the theos-name made speakable; to call Jesus Kyrios is to confess that the risen Galilean is the one God of Israel.

The Roman political register adds a second force. Kyrios Kaisar — Lord Caesar — was the regular formula of the imperial cult. The Christian confession of Jesus is Lord was therefore, from the beginning, a confession that Caesar is not Lord. The two confessions cannot both be made; the early martyrs went to their deaths over the refusal to say the imperial formula. The political dimension of the one Lord clause has occasionally been muted by later Christendom-era pieties that found ways to live comfortably with the imperial-political authorities; the New Testament texts do not.

The personal-allegiance register is the third. Kyrios is, in the everyday Greek of the period, the head of a household or the master of a slave. To confess Jesus is Lord is to confess that the believer’s life is given over to him, that his word is the household’s law, that his Spirit is the household’s Spirit. The creedal Kyrios is the same word the slave used of her master and the citizen of the emperor; the Christian confession appropriates it for the risen Jesus, and the apostolic writings will press the implications (the church as the household of God, the believers as Christ’s douloi — slaves; the freedom that is the believer’s only in being bound to this Lord).

Iēsoun / Jesum — Jesus. The Hellenized form of the Hebrew Yeshua / Yehoshua. The Hebrew name is itself a compound: Yeho (a shortened form of YHWH) and yasha (to save) — YHWH saves. The angel’s word to Joseph in Matthew 1:21 is therefore a kind of etymological proclamation of the gospel: you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. The Greek Iēsous preserves the substance of the Hebrew but loses some of the etymological force in transliteration; the church has supplied this through preaching ever since. Jesus is the historical, particular name of the man from Nazareth, not a symbol or a title.

Christon / Christum — Christ. Christos is the Greek rendering of mashiach (Messiah), the Hebrew title for the Anointed One promised through the prophets. Anointing with oil was the ritual that consecrated a person for divine office in Israel — priests (Lev. 8:12), kings (1 Sam. 16:13), and prophets (1 Kings 19:16). The Anointed One in Jewish messianic expectation was the long-awaited Davidic king who would gather the scattered tribes, restore the kingdom, defeat the enemies of God’s people, and inaugurate the age of righteousness. The Christian confession is that Jesus is this Anointed One, though the manner of his fulfillment of the messianic role (crucified rather than militarily victorious, a king whose kingdom is not of this world, a Messiah for the nations and not only for Israel) was largely unexpected.

The common modern English-speaking habit of treating Christ as a kind of surname (Jesus Christ heard as Mr. Christ) is a degradation of the original sense. Christ is the title; Jesus is the name. The proper English order is Jesus, the Christ — Jesus, the Anointed One, Jesus the Messiah. The pastoral teacher should restore this on every occasion possible. The creed says one Lord, Jesus Christ: one Lord is the predicate; Jesus the Messiah is the subject.

Historical Context

Three horizons frame the creedal confession of one Lord, Jesus Christ.

The Old Testament messianic expectation. The Hebrew scriptures contain a long and developing expectation of God’s anointed one. The early Davidic promise (2 Sam. 7:12–16) names a king whose throne will be established forever. Isaiah 9, 11, and 53 give the prophetic articulations of the Anointed One who will be both royal and suffering, who will bear the sins of the people, who will be both Davidic and the gathering-point of the nations. Daniel 7 names the one like a son of man who comes on the clouds and receives an everlasting kingdom. The intertestamental Jewish literature (the Psalms of Solomon, parts of the Qumran corpus, the Similitudes of Enoch) developed the expectation further, with various inflections. By the first century AD, Messiah was a living category with multiple competing articulations: a Davidic king who would defeat the Romans, a priestly figure who would purify the temple, a heavenly Son of Man who would come on the clouds. The Christian confession is that all these threads are gathered in the one Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, though the gathering involves a re-ordering of the messianic categories around the cross and resurrection.

The earliest Christian confession. The phrase Jesus is Lord (Greek Kyrios Iēsous) is, on most scholarly reconstructions, the earliest distinctive Christian confession — older than any of the New Testament books in which it appears. Paul cites it as a settled formula in 1 Corinthians 12:3 (no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit) and Romans 10:9 (if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved). The hymnic confession of Philippians 2:5–11 — which Paul is citing rather than composing — culminates in every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The Pauline correspondence treats the phrase as the baseline Christian confession that defines who is and is not a member of the church.

The fourth-century conciliar elaboration. The Nicene Creed (325) and its Constantinopolitan expansion (381) take the apostolic confession and unfold it in dogmatic detail to refute the Arian alternative. The phrases that follow — the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, of one Being with the Father, through whom all things were made — are the conciliar elaboration of what one Lord, Jesus Christ already contains. The early Christian confession had always meant that this Jesus is the one God of Israel; the Arian challenge forced the church to say, with conciliar precision, how this is the case. The opening phrase of the article remains the kernel; the phrases that follow protect its meaning from misreading.

Lines of Interpretation

Patristic

Tradition: Justin Martyr, First Apology and Dialogue with Trypho; Ignatius of Antioch, letters; Irenaeus, Against Heresies III; Athanasius, On the Incarnation; Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ

The patristic settlement on the one Lord, Jesus Christ clause holds two convictions in tension. First, the one Lord is fully divine — the same one God of Israel, not a lower divine being and not a created intermediary. This is the substance of the homoousios clause (#8) and the Athanasian-Cappadocian achievement against Arianism. Second, the one Lord is fully human — really born of a woman, really lived a human life, really suffered, really died, really rose. This is the substance of the anti-docetic and anti-Apollinarian polemic. The early Christological controversies are the church’s working-out of what it means to hold fully divine and fully human together in the one Christ.

Ignatius of Antioch’s letters (c. 110) are among the earliest sustained articulations of the one Lord confession. Ignatius writes against docetism (the view that Jesus only appeared to be human): He was truly born, truly ate and drank, truly was persecuted in the days of Pontius Pilate, truly was crucified and died (Trallians 9). The repetition of truly is doctrinal: the one Lord of the church’s confession is the real Jesus, not a phantom.

Cyril of Alexandria’s articulation in the early fifth century — one Lord, one Christ, the same who is both true God and true man — was decisive for the Council of Ephesus (431) and shaped the language of Chalcedon (451). The Christological dogmas of the next two centuries are the further unfolding of the one Lord, Jesus Christ of the creed.

Strengths

• Holds fully divine and fully human together as a single doctrinal substance
• Ignatius’s anti-docetic insistence on the reality of Jesus’ humanity is permanently valuable
• Cyril’s one Lord, one Christ framing remains the basis of catholic Christology

Weaknesses

• The technical Christological vocabulary required for the conciliar precision is hard to translate for contemporary use
• Some patristic articulations leaned toward speculative refinements the New Testament does not warrant

Scholastic

Tradition: Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.1–26 (on the Incarnation); Bonaventure, Tree of Life; Dante, Paradiso

The scholastic tradition received the patristic-conciliar Christology and gave it metaphysical articulation under the heading of the hypostatic union — the union of divine and human natures in the one person (hypostasis) of the Son. Aquinas’s treatment in Summa Theologiae III is the great Western Christological synthesis. The argument: the one of the creed is the one person of the eternal Son, who has assumed the human nature in such a way that the one Lord is both fully divine (by the divine nature he eternally has from the Father) and fully human (by the human nature he assumed in time from the Virgin Mary). The vocabulary of person and nature — already used at Chalcedon — receives its medieval philosophical articulation here.

Bonaventure’s Tree of Life gives the Franciscan devotional articulation of the same doctrine: the one Lord meditated upon at every stage of his life from conception through ascension, with each stage offering a fruit of contemplation for the believer’s union with Christ.

Strengths

• The hypostatic union framework gives the conciliar Christology its mature metaphysical articulation
• Aquinas’s careful integration of the doctrine with the doctrine of God preserves the trinitarian context
• Bonaventure’s devotional register reconnects the doctrine to the prayer of the church

Weaknesses

• The metaphysical vocabulary requires careful translation for contemporary use
• Some scholastic discussions of the hypostatic union have reached refinements the New Testament does not warrant

Lutheran

Tradition: Luther, On the Councils and the Church (1539); Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration VIII; Luther’s hymns, esp. Vom Himmel hoch

The Lutheran tradition has held the one Lord, Jesus Christ confession with two distinctive accents. First, the Lutheran doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum (the communication of attributes between the divine and human natures of the one Christ) has been articulated more strongly than in any other Western tradition. The Lutheran insistence — against Reformed objections — that the human nature of Christ truly partakes of the divine attributes (including ubiquity, in the eucharistic discussion) is the working implication of the one Lord confession in Lutheran sacramental theology. Second, Luther’s theology of the cross puts the one Lord clause in a particular pastoral register: the Lord the church confesses is the crucified Lord; the kingship of Jesus is the kingship of the cross.

Strengths

• The communicatio idiomatum preserves the unity of the one Lord with full vigor
• The theology of the cross keeps the doctrine pastoral and gospel-centered
• The Lutheran hymnody on the one Lord is among the richest in the church

Weaknesses

• The strong communicatio doctrine has occasionally been heard, in Reformed objection, as risking a Eutychian mixing of the natures
• The cross-centered register has sometimes been less attentive to the cosmic dimensions of the one Lord’s rule

Reformed

Tradition: Calvin, Institutes II.12–17 (on Christ the Mediator); Heidelberg Catechism QQ. 29–34; Westminster Confession Ch. 8

The Reformed tradition has articulated the one Lord, Jesus Christ under the heading of the threefold office (munus triplex): Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King. The framework — drawn from the threefold anointed offices of the Old Testament — gives the Reformed tradition its distinctive way of unfolding what Jesus Christ (the Anointed One) means. The Heidelberg Catechism QQ. 31–34 give the catechetical articulation: Why is he called Christ, that is, Anointed? Because he is ordained of God the Father, and anointed with the Holy Spirit, to be our chief Prophet and Teacher… our only High Priest… and our eternal King… The framework has shaped Reformed and broader Protestant Christology ever since.

Calvin’s treatment in Institutes II.12–17 is the great Reformation Christological synthesis. The conviction: the one Lord is the Mediator between God and humanity, and his mediation requires both his full divinity (to bear the weight of God’s holiness) and his full humanity (to bear the human nature he came to save). Calvin’s careful integration of the patristic-conciliar Christology with the Reformation gospel of justification remains a major theological achievement.

Strengths

• The munus triplex framework gives the Christ of the creed its full Old Testament resonance
• Calvin’s Mediator Christology integrates the doctrine with the gospel of justification
• The Heidelberg’s catechetical form is permanently usable

Weaknesses

• The threefold office framework, while biblically grounded, has sometimes been deployed in ways that flatten the historical-narrative texture of the gospels
• The Reformed concern with the distinctness of the divine and human natures has occasionally been heard as understating their unity

Eastern Orthodox

Tradition: Athanasius, On the Incarnation; Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ; Maximus the Confessor, Opuscula and Ambigua; John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith III–IV

The Eastern tradition has been the consistent defender of the strong unity of the one Lord. The Cyrilline-Chalcedonian formula — one and the same Christ, in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation — is the Eastern Christological settlement, and the Eastern tradition has been particularly vigilant against any Nestorian tendency to make the two natures into two persons or two Christs. Maximus the Confessor’s articulation in the seventh century (against monothelitism, the heresy that Christ had only one will) preserved the genuinely two-natured Christology while affirming the strong unity of the one Christ.

The Eastern liturgical tradition centers the one Lord, Jesus Christ confession in the Paschal-eucharistic cycle. The Trisagion (Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal, have mercy on us) addresses the one Lord; the Cherubikon names him as the King of all; the Paschal liturgy proclaims him as the risen Lord whose kingship is the substance of the new creation.

Strengths

• The Cyrilline-Chalcedonian framework preserves both unity and distinction with great care
• The liturgical-iconographic embedding has kept the doctrine present as a living confession
• The Eastern tradition’s vigilance against Nestorianism is permanently valuable

Weaknesses

• The detailed conciliar vocabulary requires translation for contemporary use
• The strong sacramental-mystical register can be hard to communicate to cultures unfamiliar with the patristic-monastic tradition

Wesleyan

(See Wesleyan Voice below.)

Modern Ecumenical

Tradition: Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1–3; Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus — God and Man (1968); N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (1996); Sarah Coakley, Christ Without Absolutes (1988); Brian Daley, God Visible (2018)

The 20th- and 21st-century Christological discussion has produced one of the great periods of theological work on the one Lord, Jesus Christ clause. Barth’s Church Dogmatics IV/1–3 — the doctrine of reconciliation — is the foundational modern Protestant articulation: the one Lord is the eternal Son of God whose human history is the actual substance of the world’s reconciliation with the Father. Pannenberg’s Jesus — God and Man (1968) reopens the question of how the historical Jesus of Nazareth is the one Lord of the church’s confession, with sustained attention to the relation between historical-critical study and the dogmatic Christology of the creed. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God (1996) gives the great late-20th-century historical-Christological work, locating Jesus within Second Temple Jewish messianic expectation while preserving the dogmatic substance of the creed.

Daley’s God Visible: Patristic Christology Reconsidered (2018) is a recent recovery of the patristic Christological tradition for contemporary use.

Strengths

• The modern Christological recovery has restored the doctrine to its proper centrality
• The dialogue with historical-critical study has matured significantly
• Barth’s covenantal-Christological framing is foundational for modern Protestant theology

Weaknesses

• Some modern Christologies have so qualified the divinity of the one Lord that the dogmatic substance is lost
• The popular reception of historical-Jesus research has occasionally produced a fragmented picture in which the one Lord of the creed is hard to recognize

Wesleyan Voice

Wesley’s Christology is unambiguous, traditional, and integrated with the entire Methodist ordo salutis. The Methodist Articles of Religion (1784), Article II — Of the Word, or Son of God, who was made very Man — is essentially the Anglican Article II preserved unchanged: The Son, who is the Word of the Father, the very and eternal God, of one substance with the Father, took man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin; so that two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man. The Wesleyan reception of the conciliar-Reformation Christology is therefore the catholic doctrine without modification.

What is distinctively Wesleyan is the experiential-relational register the one Lord confession acquires in Methodist theology. Wesley’s strong emphasis on the witness of the Spirit (the doctrine that the Holy Spirit testifies in the believer’s heart that Jesus is Lord — 1 Cor. 12:3) is closely tied to this clause. No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit: the Methodist confession is that the one Lord of the creed is the same Lord the Spirit is even now naming in the believer’s prayer, the believer’s experience, the believer’s life. The class meeting, the small society, the love feast — these were the practical sites at which the Methodist learned to confess and to receive the one Lord in personal communion.

Wesley’s most sustained pastoral statements on the one Lord are scattered across the Standard Sermons — Sermon 1 (Salvation by Faith) names Jesus as the object of saving faith; Sermon 5 (Justification by Faith) names him as the believer’s righteousness; Sermon 17 (The Circumcision of the Heart) names him as the substance of sanctification; Sermon 43 (The Scripture Way of Salvation) integrates the one Lord with the whole ordo salutis. The pattern is consistent: the one Lord of the creed is the one Lord of the believer’s actual salvation, in all its dimensions.

The hymnody of Charles Wesley is the great Methodist witness to the one Lord. Charles’s hymns are saturated with the Jesus of Methodist devotion — and the Methodist Jesus is not a generic religious figure but the one Lord of the creed: Jesus, lover of my soul; O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise; Jesus the name high over all; Jesus, thy boundless love to me; Hail, thou once despisèd Jesus. The repeated naming is liturgically and pastorally significant: the Methodist sings the name of Jesus until the name is the natural breath of her devotion.

The Methodist pastoral posture: confess Jesus as Lord by the Spirit’s witness; receive him as the one Lord of clause 4 — the Anointed One, the YHWH-name made personal in him, the only Lord of the believer’s life; refuse every competing lordship (the cultural, political, economic, familial ones that compete for the heart’s allegiance); live the present life as the one Lord’s servant in the works of mercy and the works of piety.

Hymnody

The Wesleyan hymnody on the one Lord, Jesus Christ is the richest hymnic corpus in the English language. The hymns operate across every register the doctrine names — historical, kerygmatic, doxological, eschatological, devotional, political.

“O for a thousand tongues to sing” (Charles Wesley, 1739) — the great Methodist opening hymn, written on the anniversary of Wesley’s evangelical conversion — names the one Lord as the object of every faculty of praise: Jesus, the name that charms our fears, / that bids our sorrows cease; / ‘tis music in the sinner’s ears, / ‘tis life and health and peace.

“Jesus, lover of my soul” (Charles Wesley, 1740) is the great Methodist devotional hymn, addressed directly to the one Lord: other refuge have I none; / hangs my helpless soul on thee.

“Hail, thou once despisèd Jesus” (anon., 1757; sometimes attributed to John Bakewell or Martin Madan) names the one Lord’s exaltation: Hail, thou Galilean King! / Thou didst suffer to release us; / thou didst free salvation bring.

“Crown him with many crowns” (Matthew Bridges 1851; Godfrey Thring 1874) is the great 19th-century Christological hymn: Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne. / Hark! how the heavenly anthem drowns / all music but its own.

“All hail the power of Jesus’ name” (Edward Perronet, 1779; alt. John Rippon, 1787) is the great hymnic acclamation of the one Lord’s sovereignty: all hail the power of Jesus’ name! / let angels prostrate fall; / bring forth the royal diadem, / and crown him Lord of all. The hymn’s final stanza names what the creed names: let every kindred, every tribe, / on this terrestrial ball, / to him all majesty ascribe, / and crown him Lord of all.

“At the name of Jesus” (Caroline Maria Noel, 1870) puts Philippians 2:5–11 — the apostolic confession of the one Lord — into singable form: at the name of Jesus / every knee shall bow, / every tongue confess him / King of glory now.

“Lift high the cross” (George W. Kitchin, 1887; rev. Michael R. Newbolt, 1916) names the cross as the throne of the one Lord: lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim, / till all the world adore his sacred name.

“Jesus shall reign where’er the sun” (Isaac Watts, 1719) — among the great missionary hymns of the 18th century — names the cosmic scope of the one Lord’s reign: Jesus shall reign where’er the sun / does his successive journeys run; / his kingdom stretch from shore to shore, / till moons shall wax and wane no more.

For the Christological year: the entire Methodist hymnody from Advent through Easter participates in this clause — O come, O come, Emmanuel; Hark! the herald angels sing; Christ the Lord is risen today; Lord of the dance. The whole liturgical year is the unfolding of one Lord, Jesus Christ.

Pastoral and Liturgical Use

Three pastoral tasks attach to this clause, and the modern Methodist pastor faces each.

The first is restoring the proper force of “Lord.” In a culture in which lord is an archaic title (associated with British peerage, perhaps, or with the dialogue of fantasy novels), the creedal Lord has lost its weight for many contemporary hearers. The pastoral correction is not the abandonment of the word (the New Testament use of Kyrios is too theologically dense to be replaced) but the restoration of its three-fold force. Lord is the divine name made speakable: when the creed says one Lord, Jesus Christ, it is naming Jesus with the unutterable name of the God of Israel. Lord is the counter-imperial title: when the creed says one Lord, it is denying that any other claimed sovereignty — political, economic, ideological, cultural — has final authority over the believer’s life. Lord is the personal-allegiance confession: when the creed says one Lord, Jesus Christ, the believer is confessing that her life is given to him.

The teaching device that has carried this for generations is the Pauline confession: if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Rom. 10:9). The two pieces are inseparable: the Lord-confession and the resurrection-faith. To say Jesus is Lord is to say that the crucified Galilean is the risen Lord of heaven and earth, the one to whom all authority has been given (Matt. 28:18), the one before whose name every knee will eventually bow (Phil. 2:10–11). The Methodist parish needs this confession restored, not as a slogan but as a working conviction.

The second is restoring the historicity of “Jesus.” In contrast, the cultural pressure on Jesus has been to make him a kind of religious archetype — the historical Jesus of academic reconstruction, or the spiritual Christ of religious-pluralist accommodation, or the personal Jesus of private religious feeling. The creed names a different person: Jesus, the historical man born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth, who walked the dusty roads of Galilee with his disciples, who taught and healed and prayed and ate and slept, who was crucified outside Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate, who rose from the dead on the third day, who ascended to the right hand of the Father, and who is even now the one Lord of his church. The historical particularity of Jesus is the foundation of the confession, not an embarrassment to it. The God of the gospel is the God who came to this particular place at this particular time, and the one Lord of the creed is the same Jesus the apostles handled and heard and saw with their eyes (1 John 1:1).

The teaching device is the careful recitation of the gospel narrative. The Methodist parish that knows the story of Jesus in detail — the birth and the baptism, the temptations and the teaching, the miracles and the table-fellowship, the entry into Jerusalem and the betrayal in the garden, the trial and the cross, the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances — will hear Jesus Christ in the creed with the right weight. The Methodist parish that knows only generalized religious-Jesus language will hear Jesus Christ in the creed as a slogan.

The third is restoring the messianic significance of “Christ.” The most easily lost word of the three. Christ is the title — the Anointed One — and the title carries the Old Testament’s long messianic expectation. The pastor’s task is to refuse the contemporary tendency to hear Christ as Jesus’ surname. Christ is what Jesus is: he is the Anointed One, the long-awaited Messiah of Israel, in whom the Davidic promise is finally fulfilled. The Methodist parish that hears Christ with this force will read the Old Testament differently — as the long preparation of the people from whom the Messiah came; will receive the gospel narratives differently — as the unfolding of the messianic identity of Jesus; will think about Christian-Jewish relations differently — as the church’s confession that Israel’s Messiah has come, with all the seriousness and the humility that confession requires.

The connection to the previous article matters here. One Lord, Jesus Christ — the one of clause 4 is the same one as the one God of clause 1. The God of Israel, who is the Father of clause 2, is fully and finally known in this one Lord. The creed binds the articles together in a single confession: there is one God; this one God is the Father of one Lord; this one Lord is Jesus, the Anointed One of Israel.

For the preacher: do not let Jesus Christ become a phrase the congregation hears without weight. The creed gives three words — Lord, Jesus, Christ — and each carries an entire theological tradition. Restore the Lord against every competing sovereignty. Restore the Jesus against every dissolving spiritualization. Restore the Christ against every loss of the messianic horizon. The one Lord of the creed is the one Lord the church confesses, and the pastor’s task is to keep showing the people what those three words mean.

Further Reading

• 2 Samuel 7:12–16 — the Davidic covenant
• Psalm 2, Psalm 110 — royal-messianic psalms
• Isaiah 9:6–7; 11:1–10; 53 — the prophetic articulation of the Anointed One
• Daniel 7:13–14 — one like a son of man
• Matthew 1:1, 16–23; 16:13–20 — Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of David
• Mark 1:1; 8:27–30 — the Markan opening and Caesarea Philippi
• Luke 1:31–33; 4:16–21 — Jesus as the fulfillment of Isaiah 61
• John 1:1–18, 41; 20:30–31 — Johannine Christology
• Acts 2:36 — God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified
• Romans 10:9–13 — if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord
• 1 Corinthians 8:6; 12:3 — for us there is one Lord, Jesus Christ; no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit
• Philippians 2:5–11 — the Christ-hymn, every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord
• Colossians 1:15–20 — the cosmic Christology
• Revelation 19:11–16; 22:13 — the one Lord in the new creation
• Ignatius of Antioch, Letters (esp. to the Trallians, Smyrnaeans, Ephesians)
• Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho; First Apology
• Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies Book III
• Athanasius, On the Incarnation (the great patristic-Greek Christological text)
• Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ
• Maximus the Confessor, Opuscula; Ambigua
• John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith Book III
• Council of Chalcedon (451): the Definition and Tome of Leo
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.1–26
• Bonaventure, Tree of Life (Lignum Vitae)
• Martin Luther, On the Councils and the Church (1539)
• Formula of Concord (1577), Solid Declaration VIII
• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion II.12–17
• Heidelberg Catechism, QQ. 29–34
• Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 8
• Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church (1784), Article II
• John Wesley, Standard Sermons, esp. Sermons 1, 5, 17, 43
• John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament on Philippians 2 and Romans 10
• Charles Wesley, “O for a thousand tongues to sing” (1739); “Jesus, lover of my soul” (1740); “Crown him with many crowns” (Bridges/Thring)
• Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1, IV/2, IV/3 (the doctrine of reconciliation)
• Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus — God and Man (Westminster, 1968)
• N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Fortress, 1996); The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress, 2003)
• Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Eerdmans, 2003)
• Brian E. Daley, God Visible: Patristic Christology Reconsidered (Oxford, 2018)
• Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel (Eerdmans, 2008)