Monthly Archives: December 2020

J. I. Packer on the Incarnation

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“But in fact the real difficulty, the supreme mystery with which the gospel confronts us, does not lie here at all. It lies not in the Good Friday message of atonement, nor in the Easter message of the resurrection, but in the Christmas message of Incarnation. The really staggering Christmas claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man–that second person of the Godhead became the “second man” (1 Cor 15:47), determining human destiny, the second representative head of the race, and that he took humanity without loss of deity, so that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully divine as he was human.

Here are two mysteries for the price of one–the plurality of persons within the unity of God, and the union of Godhead and manhood in the person of Jesus. It is here, in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie. “The Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14); God became man; the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. And there was no illusion or deception in this: the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation.”

(Knowing God)

Accountability To Old Words

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“The Apostles’ Creed was not written by the apostles, but it does reflect the early church’s effort to express and summarize the faith given by Christ to the apostles. Early Christians called the creed “the rule of faith” and turned to it as they worshipped and taught the faithful. But the question arises: Why today, do we need a book on the Apostles’ Creed? What relevance could it have and what benefit can come from examining it? Some object to the very idea of accountability to old words. Still others claim that Christians are to hold no creed but the Bible and to have “no creed but Christ.” The problem is, of course, that we all need a summary of what the Bible teaches, and the church needs a strong standard for recognizing true Christianity and rejecting false doctrines.

What is more, behind some objections to the Apostles’ Creed is something exceedingly dangerous: a desire for a doctrineless faith. Some argue for a Christianity that requires no formal doctrines or doctrinal mandates. The history of Christianity, however, is littered with the debris of many such movements, each of which left behind shattered lives of people whose faith dissolved without the structure of doctrine.

The idea of a doctrineless Christianity stands at odds with the words of Christ, who revealed himself to the apostles in explicitly doctrinal terms. Jesus revealed himself in truth claims. He identified himself as the Son of Man and demonstrated his deity, even referring to himself as “I am” repeatedly in the gospel of John—bearing the name God had given himself from the burning bush as he spoke to Moses (Ex. 3:13–16). A doctrineless Christianity also stands in contradiction with what Christ commissioned his apostles to do—to make disciples of all nations and to teach them to obey all that Christ commanded (Matt. 28:18–20). This command requires doctrine.

Here we have to remember simply that doctrine, as a great historian of Christianity explained it, is “what the church believes, teaches, and confesses on the basis of the word of God.” Any church that believes, teaches, and worships has some doctrine. The question is: Are they the right doctrines, the right teachings?”

—Albert Mohler, The Apostles’ Creed (Crossway, 2019), xviii–xvix