Let’s turn to our Bibles to 1st Timothy chapter 3. 1st Timothy chapter 3, verse 16. Let us listen attentively to the word of God. Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness.
God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory. Let us pray. Lord God almighty, may these words ring true into our hearts, that none of us here, God, would deny such a confession.
We would gladly say such things publicly if the opportunity arises. Our Lord and Savior, as we go through this text more carefully, may it reinforce the truth of who you are in this very brief summary of the greatness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our Lord and Savior, help us, we pray, to be encouraged to stand firm as Timothy was urged and encouraged to stand firm upon such biblical truths.
And may we be blessed according to your name we pray. Amen. Confessions, what I mean is a public declaration of what one believes are a part of life.
It may be done implicitly, without so many words, it may be done overt and more obvious as opportunity arises. But it is a necessary part of life if only because we must communicate at times and explain to people what we believe so that we are all on the same page. The early church was no different.
The question of who Christ was and was upon him and who followed him became a public matter from the beginning of our Lord’s ministry as you know. The Jewish leaders asked questions about him and his disciples. This continued after the Savior’s ascension into heaven in the book of Acts with more leaders, in particular the Roman leaders, asking more public questions about a public institution and a public message known as the gospel.
Such confessions must be according to the word of God, of course, and used for important matters and not in a frivolous way. Although we don’t know the full background of the text here, exactly what was going on in the ministry of Timothy and his church, we know that Paul asserted something that was a common belief here that Timothy should affirm himself and defend. So let’s look more carefully here as I broke this sermon down into these three parts here.
We have the first part, confessing the incarnation, which is the very first section of this verse. God was manifested in the flesh. Now, just before then we have without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness.
The question to some people to remind us again, what is this mystery of godliness? A mystery is that which is unknown, especially outside a special revelation and is now therefore made known by the revelation here of the Holy Spirit through the pen of Paul. And the mystery of godliness is the godliness of the gospel of Christ, who’s the center of that good news. The idea of without controversy means to have one common consent or judgment, very much like a confession.
That Paul, in other words, didn’t bring something new. Timothy probably knows this already. He’s just reiterating the importance and the commonality of this confession across all the different churches, not just in Jerusalem, but there in Cyprus and elsewhere as it grows through Turkey and Antioch and other places into Corinth, there in the Grecian islands and the like.
It’s already spreading within the lifetime of the apostles so quickly, how far they have traveled. And it reads as perhaps your translations have set it up, like a recitation, little sections here at a time. God was manifested in the flesh, one line.
Justified in the Spirit, another line. Seen by the angels. Now, in the Greek, it’s just one long, continuous line, but you can tell even without that division that Paul is asserting something very much like a confession.
And the first idea here in the confession is God. God was manifested in the flesh. And it’s an obvious thing to his audience, who this God is.
What is God, our confession asks, our catechism in particular, I mean. God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable, and is being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. Now, the kids are taught this in our churches as soon as we can.
Start teaching them the Bible, the Bible text and the stories, as well as the catechism, which is a convenient tool to summarize and condense and put together biblical truths for kids to digest really easily. What you have in our study of God, which is an important thing, and I’ll go over briefly here because it is before our text, is what God is. The attributes of God we talk about in systematic theology.
The characteristics, in other words, of the Creator of Heaven and Earth. And there are two categories of these characteristics or attributes of God. One is called the communicable attributes of God, and the other is known as the incommunicable attributes of God.
This is all built into this word, God. They know all these various ways of describing Him, what He is and what He is not. He is not a wicked ruler, but a just ruler.
He is not finite and wimpy like the pagan gods, but infinite in His power and His majesty and the like. The communicable is what we have in common with our Lord and Savior, with God above. He is a God of justice.
We believe in justice and know of justice and even practice it, although in a limited fashion. He has truth, we have truth. Love, mercy, we have the same thing.
But, of course, at a creaturely level, in a limited fashion. We don’t have all truth. There are lots of things we don’t know about, but the truth that we have is truth nevertheless.
Now, it is the incommunicable attributes that make God the unique Creator of Heaven and Earth that we know of Him. The incommunicable attributes is that which is unique to Him. It does not communicate, does not share with, or have common communion with, as that word suggests, even in the English.
He is infinite, immutable, independent, and indivisible. Those are the four major attributes of God. He is without limits, unlike anything else in creation.
He is without change, again, unlike the rest of us who change here and there throughout our lifetime. He is without dependency, unlike the rest of us, that we must have air and water. Even the plants depend on everything.
Everybody depends on everything else. And He is indivisible. That is, He has no parts like a body and a soul, like we do.
He is a spirit. As we said in the Shorter Catechism, God is a spirit. Infinite, eternal, and unchangeable.
And all the other communicable attributes, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth, is infinite, is indivisible, is immutable, and the like. Our understanding of truth, our goodness, our justice, is mutable, is dependent, and is finite. Those are the attributes of God.
Highlighting, especially His incommunicable attributes, being infinite, immutable, independent, and indivisible, the four I’s, is unique in the world. Unique back then, of course. Unique everywhere.
All the religions are devoted or devolutions, excuse me, devoted to lies. They are devolutions. They have fallen by the wayside as generations have become more wicked since the fall of Adam.
Adam taught his children. They had knowledge they passed on to their kids and grandkids, and it went on and on and started falling apart because of sin. And that’s why we have all these other fake religions pretending to be the true religion.
They fell away from the true religion of the Bible. Their so-called gods, as you know, many of you, I don’t know if the younger generation taught this in elementary school anymore, but the rest of us did in 5th or 6th grade. We were taught about the great gods and the Roman gods, right? And you learn some of their stories so you can go through the literature at times and understand what’s going on and the illusions, perhaps.
But they really believed these things. These gods, Zeus and the like, were petty gods, were finite gods. They were limited.
They fought amongst each other. And even humans tricked them so they weren’t all knowing and all wise either. The God of the Bible, the God of the Jews, the God of Christianity, that is the Old Testament Jews, was a much greater and infinitely better Master and Lord and Creator.
Now, therefore, I highlight this because it’s not unique among Christians here in his confession. He doesn’t have to unpack the specifics of who God is because the early church took their cue from the Old Testament. It was already a divine book for them.
They already understood who God was through the Old Testament passages and the prophets and the writings therein. Here we see unpacking the explanation to a little bit here of the ministry of Christ, that He was manifest in the flesh, that He was justified and seen by angels. So some particulars are there that are new in the New Testament era.
It wasn’t there in the Old Testament, although it was prophesied, a lot of particulars were still very unclear. But God, He doesn’t unpack that at all. God was a common confession.
Who is this Lord and Master of all things? Well, He’s the one we have in the Old Testament already. The New Testament church is not a brand new body of Christ, but the existing body or congregation since Adam that has now grown up and expanded with now the engrafted Gentiles, which is the rest of us, into that body. And so the Old Testament, in other words, is our inheritance as much as it was the early church’s inheritance.
And all the attributes of God you find in all the systematic theologies, they’ll always go to somewhere in the Old Testament. If you pile up all the verses, you’re going to find most of the texts that describe the attributes of God, both the communicable and incommunicable, that describe Him as being infinite and immutable and indivisible are especially in the Old Testament. A lot of them are in the Psalms, in fact.
But the new thing is what? The Messiah has come in the flesh. God manifested in the flesh. This is the great doctrine of the Incarnation.
And so this gives us, first of all, evidence of God taking action to save us. This very first line, God was manifested in the flesh, obviously because He was bored and had nothing better to do with Himself. That’s not why.
It’s because He came to save us. The divine judge of the universe, brothers and sisters, could have left us to our own devices and trespasses and sins, but instead He made a way that none of us could have ever imagined. That He became a man, the second Adam, to represent us while still God to satisfy His infinite justice.
And that’s in a very summary, brief way of explaining why the Incarnation had to happen if we want to be saved. To represent us, to be identified with us, and to satisfy infinite justice, because finite man cannot satisfy the infinite. Secondly, it applies to Trinity.
It doesn’t apply merely and only to the graciousness and the great love of God for His people, but it applies to Trinity. How many persons are there in the Godhead, our Shorter Catechism asks? There are three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power, and glory.
Specifically, it is Jesus, that is, God the Son, who came in the flesh. Not God the Father, and not God the Holy Spirit. Remember, what is Jesus’ other name there in the Nativity, early chapters of the Gospels? Emmanuel, God with us.
Specifically, the person of Jesus is one divine person with two natures, God and man. Question 21 of the Shorter Catechism. Who is the Redeemer of God’s elect? The only Redeemer of God’s elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, became man and so was and continues to be God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever.
And that’s a great mystery indeed. Great is the mystery of godliness. You would never have figured that out without the Gospel message, without the Bible, without the ministers, without the apostles explaining these things to us.
You can know about God. The pagans know about God. The heathens and unbelievers know there is a God, and as we know in Romans 1, but they hide from that truth and make up whole entire religions to flee from that reality.
But you can never figure out from general revelation, that is, things outside the Bible, that He came in the flesh and was both God and man, two natures and one person. He lived like a man. You can see that in the Gospel.
Messages here, He was born, raised, and worked. He slept, He walked, He ate, and was tired. We finish the Gospel of Mark, and you can see that over and over again.
He seems such like an ordinary man in so many ways that many people have stumbled on the doctrine of Him not just being merely and only a man, but also God divine. But not with a confusion of the natures, as though He is a half God, half man. That is not what we are teaching.
That is what the pagans taught. We call them demigods. Their kings and pharaohs and the like were considered demigods.
Somehow a marriage between the human and the divine. This is not what that is. But one person and two distinct natures.
Yet He never stopped being God. Even as He was hungry, He knew the hearts of men. We have so many texts mentioning that.
He had the power to call 10,000 angels. He did not lose His attributes. There is a confusion in teaching sometimes in Christian circles.
The kenosis theory, they talk about how God somehow set aside who He was and became a man. That is not what that text means. That is not what that means at all.
It is just that He hid His glory. It was not obvious to the world at all times who He was, but He was never any less God. Never any less God at all.
A divine mystery, yet wonderfully true, brothers and sisters. If He was not a man, He could not save us. If He was not God, He could not save us.
God would never ignore His law. That would be the other way He would do it. He could, in people’s mind, apparently just say, well, you know, I just forgive you.
His divine justice must be satisfied. Someone must be punished. The guilty party must be punished.
And that brings us to justification. It brings us to Christ being man, so that He can identify and take the punishment in our stead. To do what Adam did not do and refused to do.
That is just the first line. God was manifested in the flesh. And so then I take the next few sections and break them up, confessing God’s redemption.
So more particulars here of this redemption. He was justified in the Spirit. Justified in the Spirit.
Not justified in the way we use that word that we are justified by faith alone and Christ alone to the glory of God alone. That’s not what He’s talking about. A doctrine of imputation in which Christ’s perfection and righteousness and holiness to the law is imputed or judicially declared ours on the record books and heaven above.
And on the flip side, His being declared guilty in our stead. That’s not what this is about. It is about His ministry being vindicated and justified before the world that He lived and died for them and accomplished their salvation.
It was not a lie. And He was vindicated as well from the lies thrown against Him. Where they say He was not the true Messiah and He was shown by the power of the Spirit specifically in His resurrection.
Justified that is declared, look I’ve accomplished it. I’ve told you who I was. You lied about me.
No one believed me. This is true. And the Spirit of God as we know was upon Him as the Gospels say explicitly.
He was justified throughout the entire ministry. There at the beginning of course where John the Baptist or John the baptizer sometimes. He who came before Jesus baptized Him in the Jordan and the dove came down.
The Spirit of God is set upon Jesus the Messiah, the God-man. What? To show to the world who He was to justify and declare and vindicate His ministry publicly. That’s the idea.
Seen by angels this is further evidence, again public evidence, to highlight the honor of Jesus by God the Father in particular. There of course there the angels were there at the incarnation. We know often of that of nativity there, of His temptation.
We forget that perhaps sometimes that they ministered to Him when He was fasting for 40 days and 40 nights in the desert. And the resurrection and His ascension where the angels talked to His disciples. What are you doing gaping up in heaven? Get to work.
But what’s the significance of that? Of having angels in this confession? I believe it’s because it’s a public testimony of Jesus’ divine mission. Since the angels are always what? Sent by God to represent and explain things from Him God the Father showed a special interest in Jesus in His ministry at the beginning, the middle, and at the end that others would see and know there’s something special about this prophet. He’s not just an ordinary prophet.
He’s got angels at His birth. He’s got angels at His resurrection. He’s got angels at His ascension.
No one else had that. And thus our Lord has been vindicated and the vindication is partially also through the angels showing that He is special. Now I want to make a note here.
Something you may not have realized and could be easily skipped over while I kept preaching. You might just completely miss that until you come home and read the text again. Where in this confession of sorts do we read about His death? Even His resurrection isn’t explicit here, is it? The word resurrection isn’t here.
The word death is not here. It’s just He’s manifested. He’s justified.
He’s seen. He’s preached. He’s believed and He’s received up into glory.
But they are assumed and implied, aren’t they? Otherwise it would make no sense. What I’m saying is not every doctrine needs to be covered in everything we ever say, do, or preach or even confess at times, is my point. It was enough for Paul for what he wrote for his purposes to say what he said.
Thirdly, confessing God’s gospel. So I put this under the last three lines there depending on how they arranged it in your text. We have preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, and received up into glory.
Preaching, of course, is a form of confession in one sense. That is you’re saying what you believe as a pastor to the world, the gospel of Jesus and His good news. He came in the flesh for us.
The preaching in particular, preached among the Gentiles. The preaching ministry, of course, has always been there in the church from the beginning, although in different forms and different officers. In the Old Testament you had the prophets who were in many ways, of course, more than just a preacher, but they at least preached and taught, and even the priests taught and instructed.
But we have, especially in the New Testament, this emphasis on this public ministry, this public institution for the public gospel. 1 Corinthians 1, as you recall, where Paul hammers home to the immature Christians at the churches, plural of Corinth, the importance of preaching. But we preach, verse 23, Christ crucified to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness.
But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. They were obsessed with baptism. They were obsessed with pastors’ personalities.
Paul baptized me, Peter baptized me, and the super holy Christ baptized me. Paul’s like, no, no, it’s about preaching, and specifically the message of the preached gospel of our Lord and Savior. Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, the wisdom of the great mystery of godliness that he was manifested in the flesh and he lived and died for his people.
The confession is important here that it be preached. This is how the church, as a reminder again, is the pillar and ground of the truth, not in a Roman Catholic sense, but in the declarative public sense. God uses the human institution of the church, insofar as it’s comprised of humans, to exalt his message before the world.
Believers, and it’s believed by believers, of course, but not just any kind of believers, that is, particularly Jews, what the big battle was in Acts, can Gentiles be saved? Of course, preached among the Gentiles. That’s a special blessing. For 1,800 years, Abraham’s about 1,800 B.C., the gospel message by God’s divine wisdom and determination was limited to primarily where? One little sliver about the size of New Jersey.
I think it was a little longer than New Jersey. That’s it. The Gentiles were lost in darkness, brothers and sisters, but now the great news, the good news, is preached among them, which means they can be saved, and indeed, believed on in the world.
Not just amongst the Jews, in other words. The followers of Jesus were more than Jews. It grew and expanded to the four corners of the earth, and now we are fulfillment of that prophecy.
It is now an international era in terms of the church. All nations, tribes, and tongues, who hear and believe, can and shall be saved. That’s a greater news than the Old Testament in so many ways.
The confession, in other words, is not just for then, but even today for anyone who would confess and believe and receive Jesus Christ. Believing is important here. It’s not simply sufficient enough to preach the truth, and I’m happy I’m out of here by, but the preaching must include the call of repentance.
Again, not explicitly here, but implied, but especially trusting in our Lord and Savior. Put your reliance not upon your good works, not upon your baptism, not upon your church attendance, although you must do these things if you love the Lord, but upon Him and Him alone. This is why you will go to heaven.
This is why and how you are justified by believing and trusting in Jesus and His person and His work. He’s received up in glory. The last line there, Christ’s mission was not finished until He entered heaven.
We forget this at times. He sits at the right hand of God in the position of favor and power, ruling over the world as the God-man or His mediatorial role, as I preached there in 1 Corinthians 15-16, for your good and His glory, in a special way that wasn’t the same as the Old Testament, because He didn’t have a human body then. Things had changed.
There was no incarnation yet. This is significant. As He’s in heaven right now, He is completing His work for us, His rule in particular in this nation, in this world, and in the church especially, brothers and sisters, in your life.
If He would not and did not get received up in the glory, you wouldn’t be here now. His redemption wouldn’t be finished the way it’s supposed to be finished. Now what I want to note here is that the public ascension was to finish His public ministry, at least particularly here on earth.
We read of that incident there in Acts 1-70. He said to them, It is not for you to know the time or the season which the Father has put in His own authority. This is after the resurrection.
It’s the first chapter of Acts. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem. There’s that emphasis there of a public ministry.
They’re witnesses, obviously public witnesses. And all Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth. You’re going to have to spread out.
You can’t just sit there in Jerusalem and hang out with the Jews. Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. That’s the ascension of Christ.
And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven, as He went up, as you can imagine all of us just gaping, behold two men by them in white apparel. What do they call them? Angels. Who also said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing into heaven? The same Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will so come in like manner as you see Him go into heaven.
As you see Him depart, you will see Him return. In the flesh, and in great glory and power and majesty. He continues His ministry there, and while on earth He uses the church as the instrument, as what? The pillar and foundation of the truth to declare Jesus and Him crucified.
And He will return in what manner? A public way as He left in a public way. It wasn’t a private event. And that leads us to a public confession today.
The theme of the work here in this very brief confession in verse 16, of course, is Jesus. Jesus manifests in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed in the world, and received up in glory. But there’s also another theme common to all these things.
That’s why I highlighted here the confession. It’s public. Everything He did was public.
It was not done in a corner. Our religion is not, well, you’ve got to have special knowledge to figure out who Jesus is. And if you do the special handshake and pay us enough money, we’ll give you a better understanding of the Word of God.
It’s public. You can read the Bible yourself. We want people to read the Bible.
We especially want them to hear it preached and explained. The other theme, it’s public. A public confession, a public belief, a public ministry.
And this is important for the spread of the Gospel. As a member, you may confess Christ before others as opportunity arises, to be sure. But you don’t have a special ministry as such.
You can point to the Bible. You can even read it with them. And, of course, you want to point them to the preacher and the preaching of the Word of God.
And you can always pray, brothers and sisters, that the Spirit would preserve the churches of His Lord and Savior to maintain, what? A common, universal confession of who? Jesus, who was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, and received up into glory. Amen and amen. Let us pray.
Our God, may our hearts sing with praise of the redemption that we have. And as we read these words, may it echo into our hearts into eternity that this is what we believe and confess and even more, Lord. We are grateful, God, for this short summary to concentrate upon the work of Christ and what He has done and how He’s proclaimed before the world.
Be with your churches, God, that we will continue to grow and have a common confession that the world may see who Jesus is and believe in Him, we pray. Amen.