For Us and for Our Salvation

In the last post in this series exploring the history, theology, and spirituality of the Nicene Creed, we turned our attention to Jesus. We saw how, in numerous ways, the Creed reiterates our faith that the man Jesus is fully God, that is to say fully expressing the wholeness of divinity just as the Father does. Today I’d like to focus on just the next few words, for they govern the rest of what the Creed has to say about Jesus: “Who, for us humans and for our salvation…”

These words don’t say much about what Jesus did, but they say everything about who Jesus was and is, and about the character of the God Jesus reveals: Whatever Jesus does, he does it for us and for our salvation. The first half of this reminds us that the God revealed in Jesus is on our side and acts for our benefit. And, as Paul wrote, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8.31). The world may be a scary, disappointing, frustrating, heart-breaking place, but no matter what we are experiencing, as Christians, we trust that God is for us, “working all things for good” (Romans 8.28).

The second half tells us that whatever Jesus did, he did for our salvation. There are a couple of things worth mentioning about this. First, we need to remember that salvation is a broad concept. In English, we tend to think of it as a one-time event, like a firefighter saving someone from a burning building, or a bystander jumping in front of a car to save a toddler who’s wandered onto the road. And this is certainly part of the New Testament picture. But it isn’t all. ‘Salvation’ in the Greek sense also included ideas of preservation, security, and healing. This bigger range of meanings is why the New Testament can speak of people being ‘saved’ as past event, but also as an ongoing one (e.g., ‘those who were being saved’ (Acts 2.47), and a future one (e.g., “For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers” (Romans 13.11)). It’s also why it can speak of it as a one-time thing, but also as a process that must be “worked out with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2.12). Salvation is something we receive as a gift but then have to grow into. I like to understand this by using the analogy of a baby growing up: I was every bit ‘Matt’ when I was born, and yet I had to grow into my identity and personality as I grew up; and in fact, I am still exploring the possibilities and limits of what that identity might be. Salvation is exactly like that. We are ‘saved’ through coming to trust in Jesus, through our baptism, and so on, and yet we continue to work that salvation out in the difficult, rough-and-tumble life of faith.

The second thing about salvation that is worth discussing here is that everything Jesus does is for our salvation. Throughout history, Western Christianity has had a strange bent towards trying to understand the minimal conditions for things. It’s had debates, largely unheard of in the East, about what are the precise words that turn the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, about what made a baptism valid or invalid, and about what it was specifically that Jesus did that ‘saved’ us. Most Christians today in the West have inherited something of this sensibility and have a minimalist approach to how they think about salvation, generally something specific to do with his death on the Cross. But, that is far from the ancient teaching of Christianity that his reflected in the Creed. As we will see in the next couple posts, it takes a more maximalist approach to salvation. Everything that Jesus did was ‘for our salvation’. He was incarnate ‘for us and for our salvation.’ He taught and healed ‘for us and for our salvation.’ His humble way of life was ‘for us and for our salvation.’ He was crucified ‘for us and for our salvation.’ He was raised from the dead ‘for us and for our salvation.’ He ascended to the right hand of the Father ‘for us and for our salvation’. And he will come again ‘for us and for our salvation.’

All this has quite a bit to say about Christian spirituality:

First, again, we believe that God is on our side. God will stop at nothing to adopt us as children and bring us home. We don’t need to beg or try to convince God to love us. We don’t need to wallow in shame about what we’ve done and do wrong. We don’t need to try to earn our place in God’s family. So there is no room for anxious striving in the life of faith. Rather, our posture before God should be one of gratitude, acceptance of God’s love and grace, for all that God has done on our behalf.

Second, while we receive God’s grace and salvation as gifts, they are gifts to be lived out and grown into. This process is what Christian spirituality looks like. If we aren’t growing in faith — if our prayers and practices don’t lead us to become more loving and gracious, less reactive and grasping, then we need to repent and go back to basics.

Third, one of the many ways that Jesus has acted for us and for our salvation is through the example of his earthly life. If we don’t know where to start or what a faithful life should look like, we only need to look at his life and live by his example. As he himself claimed as his manifesto or modus operandi:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ (Luke 4.18-19)

Living by his example means that these concerns should be the focus of our life and faith.

Of all the words of the Creed, the ones we’ve looked at today are probably my favorite. They don’t say much about what Jesus did (that’s still to come), but they tell us everything we need to know about who God is and how God is oriented towards us and the whole world.

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-Begotten, Who was begotten of the Father before all ages, light from light, true God from true God, Begotten not made, Who is of the same essence as the Father, Through whom all things exist. Who, for us humans and for our salvation….