The coming of Jesus of Nazareth changed the course of history. The temples of the Roman Empire have been replaced by houses of worship of the Christian church. As Boston’s famous preacher, Phillips Brooks, the author of the Christmas Carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” put it:

“I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, and all the navies that ever were built, and all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as that one solitary life – the life of Christ.”

When Phillips Brooks came to Boston in 1869 he found that the New England Transcendentalists were asking the question, What is truth, and what are the canons for determining its authority? The answer uniformly given was that the authority was within the soul, and faith was the direct vision of the truth. No special unique authority was accorded to the books of Scripture or to the person of Jesus Christ. Christ was spoken of with respect and even reverence as a great teacher, but he was associated on the same level with Socrates, Plato and Mohammed. The Transcendentalists like Emerson and Theodore Parker argued that the truths of Christianity were true apart from the personal authority or personality of Jesus. Phillips Brooks countered by saying that Christianity was not a system of doctrine but a personal force which is:

“the nature of Jesus, full of humanity, full of divinity, and powerful with a love for man which combines in itself every element that enters into love of the completest kind. The message entrusted to the Son of God when he came to be the Savior of mankind was not only something which He knew and taught; it was something which He was. The idea and the person are so mingled that we cannot separate them. He is the truth.” (Life of Phillip Brooks, A.V.G. Allen, ii.p.340-342)

When we affirm our faith in the Creed we do not say that we merely believe in the truth of Christianity, or that we believe in the teaching of Jesus, we say that we believe in Jesus Christ, the person, and all that he stands for and accomplished. That has been the faith of the church from the very beginning. We see it in what happened outside the Temple when Peter said to the man crippled from birth: “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” (Acts 3:6) He did not begin to tell the man about the teaching of Jesus. He commanded him to get up and walk in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

When people gathered around the healed man Peter then began to reveal to them the significance of what had happened. He directed attention to Jesus, whom God had glorified. He called him the Holy and Righteous One, and the Author of Life. “By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see.”

When Jesus was to be born the angel told Joseph to give him the name Jesus, because he would save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). Healing was the outward sign that he could and would forgive their sins, and relieve them from a life of guilt and judgment. The man crippled from birth, forced to beg for a living, is representative of all of us, crippled by our sins, our weaknesses, our rebellious willfulness, our handicaps, our hurts, our inability to live in the fullness of life as God meant us. It is not silver or gold, science or religion, that is able to heal us. Government legislation, lectures on morality, or sermons on doctrine will not liberate us from what paralyzes us. It takes the name of Jesus to free us, and strengthen us to become fully human.

As Malcolm Muggeridge put it,

“For it is precisely when every earthly hope has been explored and found wanting, when every possibility of help from earthly sources has been sought and is not forthcoming, when every recourse which this world offers, moral as well as material, has been explored to no effect, when in the shivering cold the last faggot has been thrown on the fire and in the gathering darkness every glimmer of light has finally flickered out, it’s then that Christ’s hand reaches out sure and firm. Then Christ’s words bring their inexpressible comfort, then his light shines brightest, abolishing darkness forever.” (The End of Christendom, p.56)

Peter told the crowd that God fulfilled what he had foretold through the prophets, that he would send the Christ, even Jesus, and they must listen to everything he told them. Jesus is the carpenter from Nazareth, and he is also the Christ of God, the Messiah, foretold in the Scriptures. The title, Christ or Messiah, simply means the anointed one. Just as the prophets, priests and kings in Israel were anointed with oil as they entered into their vocation, Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit from conception, and in his Baptism. He was anointed the Prophet, revealing the whole will of God for our salvation. Jesus was anointed the High Priest, and has given himself a sacrifice for sin, and has made an atonement for us, so that we might be no longer estranged from God’s love, and exiled from our heavenly inheritance. He was anointed King, to defeat our enemies and to guide, protect and strengthen us.

Who Jesus was, what he did, and how he is alive and active in the world today to heal and to save, to raise people from being beggars to leaping and praising God, released from captivity to the past, singles him out from other men. Socrates taught for 40 years, Plato for 50, Aristotle for 40, and Jesus only 3; yet those 3 years infinitely transcend in influence the combined 130 years of these 3 of the greatest men of all antiquity.

Jesus painted no pictures; yet the paintings of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo de Vinci received their inspiration from him. Jesus wrote no poetry; but Dante, Milton, and scores of the world’s greatest poets were inspired by him. Jesus composed no music; still Haydn, Handel, Beethoven, Schubert, and Bach reached their highest perfection of melody in the hymns, symphonies, and oratorios written in his praise. Every sphere of human greatness has been incomparably enriched by the humble carpenter of Nazareth. But his unique contribution is salvation – he came to save us from our sins. Jesus means “God saves.” Philosophy could not accomplish that – nor art – nor literature – nor music. Only Jesus Christ can break the crippling power of sin and give us the glorious freedom of the children of God.

Jesus Christ is alive today, and holds out his hand to us, to lift us up to walk with him. We believe that the good news is the person of Jesus Christ, who comes to live in us and through us. He wants to anoint us with his Spirit, and make us little Christ’s, that’s what it means by Christian. We believe in him as our Messiah, our Savior, our Prophet, Priest and King. That is why we say, “I Believe in Jesus Christ.”