(An audio recording of the sermon will be uploaded here after the Sunday service.)
Last month, we celebrated Christmas. In Malaysia, where I am from, the country is majority Muslim, yet Christmas is a public holiday—because Christians make up about ten percent of the population.
In spite of that, some extremist Islamic politicians stir up controversy by telling Muslims not to wish Christians “Merry Christmas.” For them, saying “Merry Christmas” is to acknowledge the claims of Christianity. Islam honors Jesus as a great prophet, but it does not agree he is the Son of God or Savior. In Islam, Jesus is a great human teacher and definitely not a savior. Salvation, instead, comes through obedience to God and good deeds. This is one of the key differences between Islam and Christianity.
For the past few months, I have been preaching about the 4th century Nicene Creed and its description of the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Last month, we started looking at God the Son, more specifically the pre-incarnate Son. The word “incarnate” means to embody in human form. God the Son was pre-incarnate before he took on human form. He existed before all creation, fully divine and fully equal with the Father. Today’s message is about the Incarnate Son: that is, God the Son when he took on human form.
There are three main ideas we will look at today from the Nicene Creed: the Son’s incarnation, his suffering, and his judgment. Lastly, I’d like to spend time talking about why these beliefs about God matter and how that should impact our daily life.
First, let’s pray and recite the Creed together.
Incarnation
Firstly, let’s talk about the Son’s incarnation. Let’s return to the line in the Creed that says, “For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven… and became truly human.”
This statement—that he “became truly human”—was a response to a belief known as Docetism in the third century. Docetists claimed that Jesus was only divine and not truly human, and therefore did not truly suffer or truly die. That is why the Nicene Creed emphasizes so clearly that Jesus is “truly human,” fully God and fully man.
This is why St. Gregory of Nazianzus, a defender of the Nicene faith, famously said, “What is not assumed is not healed.” In simple terms, if Jesus did not truly take on our humanity, then our humanity remains broken. If he took a body but not a human mind, then the human mind is not redeemed. If he did not experience weakness and pain, then those parts of human life remain untouched by salvation. But because the Son truly became man, every part of human life can be healed.
Scripture confirms both Jesus’ humanity and divinity. In the Gospels, when Jesus told people, “Your sins are forgiven,” the religious leaders were offended and asked, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mark 2:7). They were right—if Jesus is not God, then he has no authority to forgive sins.
Before this, Israel’s sins were forgiven through animal sacrifices in the temple. These animals acted as representatives, dying in the place of the sinner. But this atonement was temporary and had to be repeated. God allowed this system to teach the seriousness of sin—that justice requires the shedding of blood.
Then Jesus came as the final representative. When he died on the cross, he stood in the place of sinners. But even before the cross, salvation was already underway, because in the incarnation the Son united human nature to himself, restoring it from within. As God, his sacrifice has infinite value and atones for sin once and for all. As man, he truly represents us. The God-man lived the life we could not live and died the death we deserved.
Suffering
Next, the Son not only became human but went through human suffering. As the Creed proclaims, “For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures . . .”
His suffering fulfilled Scripture, especially the prophecy of the suffering servant in Isaiah chapter 53. The prophet Isaiah says that the servant was “despised and rejected” (Isaiah 53:3), that he carried our sorrows (v4) and was “pierced for our transgressions” (v5). Isaiah says “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (v6), and that he “poured out his soul to death” and “bore the sin of many” (v12).
The Creed emphasizes that Jesus truly suffered death and was buried. He did not merely appear to die, as Islam claims, but he entered fully into death. By entering death and returning to life, he conquered death. And because the Son himself went through pain, injustice, and death, we are not alone in our suffering. God himself has experienced it and he knows what we feel.
Furthermore, the story doesn’t end with suffering. Jesus doesn’t stay dead or return to ordinary life. He rises from the dead with a new, transformed body. Then he ascends to heaven, not leaving his humanity behind but taking his new body with him. I’m reminded of Daniel’s prophecy about the Son of Man, found in Daniel 7:13–14. In Daniel’s vision a person described as “like a son of man” comes before the Ancient of Days and is given dominion, glory, and an everlasting kingdom.
This will be our story also. We will suffer and die, but we will receive new life and be with God in an everlasting kingdom.
Judgment
Lastly, let’s go to the line in the Creed, “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.”
This statement responds to another early error. In the early days of the Church, some people believed that the Son was only a temporary emanation of the Father, and that the Son would eventually disappear. In response, the Nicene Creed emphasized that the Son’s kingdom will have no end; in other words, the Son is eternal.
As part of his role as king, the Son will judge the living and the dead. When Jesus returns, he will bring justice and renewal to the world. Judgment is bad news for those who do evil but good news for those who suffer injustice. At the same time, Scripture is clear that all of us deserve judgment. No one is innocent before God, and that is why we need Jesus.
The Creed does not explicitly mention hell, but Scripture presents only two scenarios: either eternal life with God in his kingdom, or eternal separation from him outside his kingdom. There is no neutral ground. The Christian writer C.S. Lewis wrote that “the doors of hell are locked from the inside.” It is not God who forces people away from him, but rather, people choose not to be with him.
There is judgment because God takes evil seriously. He will not allow cruelty and wrongdoing to go on forever or unanswered. If there was no judgment, then suffering would have no resolution.
Right beliefs lead to right living
My sermons on the Trinity may seem very abstract. You may find it hard to see how this matters for your daily life. Perhaps that’s because I’m not a very skilled preacher. But theology is meant to be relevant to daily life. Let me explain this through three ideas:
first, what we believe about God shapes our daily lives; second, it determines how we act;
third, it forms our character. Theology is not meant to be an abstract debate.
First, what we believe about God shapes our daily lives. Take the teaching of Arius, who claimed that Jesus was not truly God.
If Jesus is not divine, then his death on the cross does not truly save us; it can only serve as a moral example. Salvation then depends on becoming like Jesus through our own efforts. We would always be striving, never sure if we have done enough. This is similar to Islam, where there is no assurance of the future, and to Jehovah’s Witnesses, who deny the full divinity of Jesus and place the burden of salvation on human effort.
In contrast, the Christianity confessed in the Nicene Creed teaches that Jesus earned our salvation in our place. We do not obey God in order to be saved; we obey because we are saved and grateful for his love. Theology matters here because it determines whether our obedience is anxious or grounded in assurance.
At the same time, grace does not make obedience optional. If we are truly saved, we will naturally want to be with Jesus, do as Jesus did, and become like Jesus. That is why Christian obedience is shaped by spiritual disciplines such as prayer, Scripture reading, repentance, fellowship, sharing the gospel with others, and rest. We do not practice these to earn salvation, but with joy because we have already received it.
Second, theology determines how we act. God’s character and his actions toward us become the basis for our ethics and habits. We worship a God who did not remain distant. He came down, entered our weakness, and bore our burdens.
That is why Paul writes in Philippians 2:3–7, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”
We do not practice kindness, humility, or self-sacrifice simply because they are useful or make us feel good. We practice them because they reflect the character of the God we worship.
For me, this is especially clear in my season of life as a parent. There are times when I wish I could spend my time on self-improvement instead of caring for my children. Many days are tiring and frustrating. But God has called me, in this season, to be present for them. It becomes easier to serve when I remember that God has done the same for me. Because the Son of God lowered himself to serve us, even ordinary acts—washing dishes or changing diapers—can become sacred moments where we meet God and are formed into his likeness.
Again, theology shapes daily life. The incarnation teaches us humility. The cross draws God near to us in suffering. The resurrection gives us hope in a broken world. And the return of Jesus assures us that our faithfulness matters.
Finally, theology is meant to form us, not just inform us. If it only makes us more knowledgeable but not more Christlike, then we have misunderstood it. As the Church has long said, right belief leads to right living.
The Nicene Creed teaches us not only who God is, but also who we are meant to become. As a defender of the Nicene Creed St. Athanasius says, “God became man so that man may become [like] God.” When we truly know the God who became flesh for us, we are slowly formed into his image.
I am reminded of St. Basil the Great, another fourth-century defender of Nicene faith. He was a highly educated and intellectual man, but he did not spend all his time studying. Basil built what might have been one of the first hospitals. Called the Basiliad, it provided inpatient care including caring for people with leprosy—a medical condition that was considered hopeless at the time. Basil’s beliefs were a fuel for action.
To conclude, the Nicene Creed shows us not only the story of Jesus and who he is, but also a glimpse of our story—and who we are meant to become.
Let’s pray.
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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