Descent from heaven

Albert Mohler turns to the Creed's words on the incarnation: for us and for our salvation he came down from heaven. This breakout session asks what it means that the eternal Son came down, and what the church confesses about him.

Albert Mohler, “Descent from heaven,” breakout session, Nicea Conference 2025, Istanbul.

Opening

Good afternoon. It is wonderful to see you all. We have had a very full time since we have been here and we’re very grateful for that which is to come. It is my privilege at this breakout session to speak on the phrase from the creed. When we speak of the descent from heaven, he came down.

John 1

So let’s open with the word of God. The gospel of John chapter 1.

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him. Yet the world did not know him. He came to his own and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory. Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. [John 1:1–14]

Let’s pray together. Father, we come before you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and we confess that we would not be here nor would we have hope apart from the fact that Jesus Christ is Lord. Apart from the fact that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Father, we pray even as we consider what it means for the Son to take on human flesh.

Father, may we behold his glory. Glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. It is in his name that we pray. Amen. All right. So we think about the Christian year and it is scheduled primarily even for evangelicals around what have been recognized for millennia, two millennia as the two festivals of the Christian year. And that means the festival of the incarnation and the festival of the resurrection. And so even low-church evangelicals who don’t call anything a festival and don’t recognize any holy days, the fact is that we actually do in some sense keep at least some attention to the Christian calendar by acknowledging that if it’s not central to our understanding of the calendar, it is central to the larger understanding of the Christian church that there are these two great festivals and both of them represent what is to the world a scandal.

Rethinking the incarnation

And I want to suggest to you that we need to rethink how we think about these two festivals and these two scandals. I think in the modern age, the most immediate scandal people would go to is the scandal of the resurrection.

the very clear biblical revelation that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. The resurrection breaks all the rules of the modern scientific worldview. The resurrection along with the virgin birth and other miraculous events, even the very idea of direct revelation, all of this became suspect under the conditions of theological liberalism. The post-enlightenment skepticism. And so I it’s easy to see the scandal when it comes to Easter. And you can see the diversion, right? You in the larger culture when they use the word Easter and I don’t prefer to use that word at all, but when they use the word Easter, they’re thinking of bunnies and eggs. And I would suggest to you not only is that kind of the evidence of an ancient paganism in terms of fertility rites has always been back there. I’m going to suggest that it’s a very successful marketing plat strategy just to avoid the scandal of the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay. But I want to argue to you that the larger scandal is the incarnation.

And this is where we have to be very careful that in our familiarity with these things, we don’t recognize the scandal that the incarnation represents. And so much so that it is the primary scandal of Christianity.

And by that I mean to draw attention to the fact that the natural man is not going to be attracted to God in human flesh. And furthermore, religious people aren’t particularly attracted to it either. I want us to think about the incarnation and that’s what we’re talking about when we speak of Christ descending from heaven. He came down. Now, there’s so much to the creedal background here.

From 325 to 381

I want to share with you a part of creedal history and see how it sounds to you. This creed reads, “And God being the cause of all things is unbegun and altogether sole. But the Son being begotten apart from time by the Father, and being created and founded before ages, was not before his generation, but being apart begotten apart from time before all things, alone was made to subsist by the Father. For he is not eternal, nor co-eternal, nor co-ounorate with the Father, nor has he his being together with the Father, as some speak of relations, introducing two ingenerate beginnings. But God is before all things as being monad and beginning of all. Okay? And you’re wondering what in the world is that? That is the creed of Arius.

And we know this because Arius wrote it. His defense to Bishop Alexander of Alexandria came in the form of his own assertion of a creed. Now this is the very statement, the very theology, the very conception that was anathematized at the council of Nicea.

But I think it’s important for us to note at least a part of what Arius was trying to do was to remove some of the scandal of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. All right, let’s turn to the creed of Nicea. I’m just going to look for the sake of time at the statements about the descent from heaven.

The summary of 325 said, speaking of Christ, who for us men and for our salvation came down and was incarnate and was made man. Very short. Who for us men and for our salvation came down and was incarnate and was made man.

In 381, the fuller statement adopted here at Constantinople states this. Who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven and was made incarnate by the Holy Spirit by the Virgin Mary and was made man. Okay. Common to both of these statements is the phrase came down. Came down from heaven in 381 just came down in 325.

And so this central part of the Nicene tradition and of the Nicene Creed takes us right to the coming down of Jesus and the simple statements he came down. We speak of the descent from heaven. Now, at least a part of what we need to recognize is that this is making very clear that Christ was sent by the Father and he came down from heaven, which is the heavenly abode of God himself.

He was sent this will become very clear in John’s gospel. The Johannine tradition is very helpful to us here just in terms of following this through with some very specific language. And you’ll notice a lot of the Johannine language is what ends up in the creeds, not by accident. It’s formal theological language that helps us a great deal. The most famous verse, the most often translated verse, John 3:16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life.

over and over again the Scripture, the New Testament, specifically in the Gospel of John, you have the Father’s initiative to send the Son. When he sends the Son, how does the Son come to us? Now, of course, you immediately say as a baby in Bethlehem, yes, absolutely. And this is why the creed in 381 says by the Holy Spirit by the Virgin Mary.

But the initiative was not Mary’s. The initiative was the Father’s. It was the Father’s predetermined will from eternity that he should redeem a people through the blood of his own son. He sent his Son in order that we might be saved.

The Word became flesh

All right. We know that the incarnation is absolutely central to the Christian faith. I began reading from the Gospel of John chapter 1. And as you know, among the four gospels, we have the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And they all begin in different places, but they all tell the story of Jesus. And they’re synoptic because there’s a parallelism in particular between Matthew and Mark and Luke. But John has a different structure and it begins in the beginning echoing Genesis chapter 1.

The word became flesh and dwelt among us. Again, I come back to the scandal. The idea that God would come in human flesh and of course we have to be careful in the language. The Father would send the Son to assume human flesh.

That comes quite naturally to us. We sing it. Veiled in flesh, the godhead see. We declare it. We speak of it because it’s the very essence of Christianity. It’s the very first truth claim concerning Christianity. But it is scandalous. And we need to recognize this. It’s scandalous because it doesn’t fit the expectation of those who for instance are grounded in Old Testament monotheism and the transcendence of God.

To speak of the incarnation is not only to speak of God among us, the Son among us, Emmanuel, God with us, making a claim that’s just far more radical than I think most Christians recognize when we speak of it, when we testify to it, when we sing of it. And if nothing else, we need to recognize that the fathers there at Nicea in constructing the summary statement of 325 and eventually as the church adopted the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed of 381, the language becomes really clear. He came down and 381 came down from heaven and was made incarnate by the Holy Spirit by the Virgin Mary.

Why doctrine develops

Now, one of the things you note is that the statement of 381 is longer than the statement of 325. Let me put it another way. Those of you who are preachers, are your sermons getting shorter or longer as you get older? I think you know the answer. And why is that so? I think it’s because you have more to say. It’s also because you probably have more that you need to counter. You need to clarify the situation is becoming more and more complex. Some things that in a previous generation we could have said and that might have been understood quite clearly. Now we have to be extremely careful to explain.

Many evangelicals are embarrassed by the development of Christian doctrine. And I need to suggest to you we need to be very aware of what’s taking place. We need of course to norm doctrine by the Scripture but we shouldn’t be embarrassed at the fact that doctrine becomes more elaborate more complex and doctrinal statements get longer and more technical and that’s just the way it is. The history of the Christian church indicates that the development of doctrine comes not by theologians sitting in a room somewhere saying what new doctrine can we come up with? What new formula might we adopt? But rather the fact that you have Arius show up teaching something and immediately there’s the recognition that’s wrong. Okay, so to correct that, we have to adopt this statement, but the next thing you know there are seven errors where that one was.

And so the next time you have a meeting, they’re new things. It’s one of the reasons why in the addresses thus far, especially in the plenaries, you have people say, “We’re not actually sure that this heresy was clearly understood yet.” But in retrospect, it appears that those ideas were there and already are being corrected. At this point, it has to be clarified even further.

The statement of 381, the creed, is longer than the statement of 325, even in just the words assigned to us. In 325 the statement was simply he came down in 381 came down from heaven. Why did that become necessary? Well, it has to do with the threats to Christian orthodoxy represented not only by Arius but a host of others.

What kinds of errors called forth that kind of clarity? Well, for one thing, even something like an adoptionist Christology in which people said Christ was God adopted a son and designated him. No, this is quite different. The Christian gospel, the entire New Testament, the Christian truth claim is predicated upon the fact that God sent the Son who didn’t subtract but added human flesh incarnation.

It also makes very clear the deity of Christ. Now it is challenges to how that came about and how that is to be understood that led the fathers to hold the council in Nicea in 325 in the first place and then of course the further elaboration through successive councils and creeds of the classic era.

But the fact is that the Father’s initiative in sending the Son from heaven that becomes very important. He came down from heaven. He came and assumed human flesh. This happened because the Father sent the Son and the coming was the Son’s obedience to the Father.

The bread from heaven

Now, there’s an unusual testimony to this in the gospel of John that isn’t often recognized. I want you to think with me about John chapter 6. In John chapter 6, we have this, of course, in the beginning of the chapter, we have just after the well, let’s just say in the unfolding of the Gospel of John, the beginning of chapter 6 is the feeding of the 5,000. And we need to remind ourselves that’s 5,000 men. Larger number of women and children were there. Massive crowd and a massive miracle. And of course you’ll recall that the next day there were those who went to find Jesus who was on the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

And so they confronted Jesus and that they wanted another like that. They wanted another sign. They wanted another miracle. And Jesus makes very clear that’s because they missed the point of the feeding of the 5000. They saw bread.

What he was revealing is the bread of life. They were hungry for bread. Jesus wanted them to be hungry for eternal life and to understand that provision in himself and in himself alone. So in chapter 6 verse 25, when they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Truly I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, miracles but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal. Okay. Shortly thereafter when those who had tracked him down found him and act surprised when they saw him after they tracked him down. Jesus knowing of course the whole game that’s being played in verse 34 they said to him when he speaks of the bread that leads to eternal life they said to sir give us this bread always.

You’ll recall that in verse 35 Jesus responds I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. In verse 37, all the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. Okay, that that much is often remembered. Here’s the next verse.

Verse 38. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me that I should lose nothing of all he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

Okay. So, the creedal language, he came down from heaven is actually found in the words of Jesus himself about himself. And so, it’s important that we recognize that when we ask, well, where did they get this language? How do they choose these words? Well, the most powerful of the words are the words drawn from Scripture itself. And central to that are the words from Jesus about himself. And John chapter 6 indicates the fact that Jesus speaks of himself in just this way. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. All right. As I said, this is a scandal. Did you hear that as a scandal?

You should have heard that as a scandal. In other words, or at least recognized that those who heard Jesus say this for the first time were scandalized by hearing it. And we know this in verse 41. So the Jews grumbled about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is this not Jesus, the Son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, I have come down from heaven?” All right. So how will Jesus answer them?

Jesus answered them,”Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day.” Okay, remember Jesus has said in verse 38, “For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” And then the Jews are grumbling according to John chapter 6. And then they say, “How does he now say I have come down from heaven?” Okay. Do you notice they heard it? They quote him exactly right. They don’t misquote Jesus. They throw the words right back at him. How in the world would they come down from heaven, his father and mother, we know? Okay. So, as you know, the way John, inspired by the Holy Spirit, lays out the fourth gospel, there are these explosive moments, explosive revelations, and sometimes you have to go back and in after the flash see exactly what happened.

And in John chapter 6, it begins with the feeding of the 5000, which is of course about bread, but it’s not the bread that leads to everlasting life. The bread that leads to everlasting life is not that which was collected in baskets.

It is Jesus Christ himself, the bread of life. And he describes himself with the words, “For I’ve come down from heaven.” And you’ll notice that missing just about everything else. That’s what they focus on. They heard that. They ignore everything else Jesus was talking about. They’re not talking anymore about the miracle that took place yesterday. They’re not talking about the feeding of the 5000. Now they’re talking about his statement that he came down from heaven. So even if we missed the point, they didn’t.

And this is where with the familiarity of the text, we need to go back and say, “What made them so mad?” if they’re so angry, what made them so mad? Well, it was the claim Jesus made that he came down from heaven. And they’re saying, “Well, that’s ridiculous. We know his mother and his father.” Well they also just saw a miracle. They just saw it the day before. They were eyewitnesses. We know that because the Scripture says they were there. That’s why they found Jesus the next day after tracking him down.

Let me also remind you in thinking about this scandal that in verse 60 we are told when many of his disciples heard it they said this is a hard saying who can listen to it. So the larger group not this is not the 12 but a larger group of those who had been following Jesus they claimed to be followers of Jesus once they heard Jesus talk this way. So in other words the bread of life is a part of this one of the I am statements of course within the gospel of John but it’s the I came down from heaven that seems to be the real sticking point here the real scandal here. Some of his disciples say this is a hard saying. Jesus came back to the bread of life and said, “Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

Some of them said, “This is just too much.” Jesus responds to them, “Do you take offense at this?” You see the scandal. Then Jesus in verse 62 asked, “Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh is of no avail. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.

In verse 65, Jesus said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” One of the precious texts of Scripture is found in verses 66 and following.

After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the 12, “Do you also want to go away? Do you want to go away as well?” And Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and come to know that you are the holy one of God.”

Okay. So right here in John chapter 6, the scandal of the incarnation, and of course it also leads to the scandal of substitutionary atonement. Jesus the bread of life. We come to salvation by feeding on him. But it all comes back to Jesus saying I came down from heaven for I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And you see the scandal when they respond and say how can he come down from heaven? How can he say I came down from heaven? His father and mother.

We know the reality of the incarnation the totality of it. And remember that as you look at the creed, it’s not separable from the statement that comes before it. For us and for our salvation. Kevin DeYoung did a wonderful job of tying that together in the plenary address earlier. It is proper that even as we look at a verse of Scripture and we will take it apart or a passage of Scripture verse by verse pericope by pericope that that’s that’s quite natural. We have to put it back together in the composition of the whole.

The same thing is true when we think of the operation of a creed. Remember one of the factors that it is part of our credal history is that it is often a set of propositions which is often also accompanied by narrative and so we often miss that looking at the Nicene Creed. It’s not just a series of propositional statements. It is also in a certain narrative flow for us and for our salvation.

He came down from heaven. Christianity has as its central truth claim the coming of Jesus down from heaven to save. The fact that the Father has sent the Son and that the Son obeyed the Father’s determined will in order to save his people from their sins for us and for our salvation.

Questions and answers

All right, just a couple of kind of questions and answers to think about this. Jesus came down very simply. He came down from where? From heaven. And that is to indicate the fact that he is very clearly we’ll just say adoptionistic Christology that’s just out.

He comes from heaven. And of course as we know in the totality and this is why there’s a Nicene Creed in the total structure of the creed a very clear statement of what it means for the Son to be truly human first of all truly divine.

Every once in a while you know you sit in a place and you’ll never forget sitting there. One of the places I’ll never forget sitting was in a chair between John MacArthur and RC Sproul and they were two of the closest friends in my experience of just watching two men together and I got to be with both of them a very great deal and sometimes both of them together which was just a lot of fun and but it could also get tense at moments and so in a particular conference where there was a panel discussion I was seated between the two of them and that all of a sudden be became a dangerous place to be and so someone asked a question or the issue was raised and John MacArthur Dr. MacArthur said that that the importance to Christian orthodoxy and even pointing to Nicaea is that Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man.

Right? Fully God and fully man. I’ve heard that. Of course, you’ve heard that fully God and fully man. We know what is meant to be communicated there. But you know, RC responded, “John, that’s not right. That’s not the right way to put it. This isn’t math. He’s not a cup that’s been filled all the way up. It’s not quantity.

It’s truly God and truly man.” Okay? You know, at that point, I’m just thinking this is a dangerous seat just between those two figures. And of course, they were such dear friends and they had fun with this. Dr. MacArthur came back and they had a good time. But what a great teaching moment. For those who were gathered there, just to understand in the precision of language, it’s very tempting to say fully God and fully man, but it’s really truly God and truly man.

Secondly, why did he come down? Why the descent from heaven? Well, the simplest answer is for us and for our salvation as is declared in John chapter 3. So that whosoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life. The descent from heaven. The fact that Jesus came down indicates of course the divine initiative from the Father but it is also pointing towards the object of Christ’s saving mission and that is sinful humanity.

Third we just need to have very clearly in mind that this is an act of filial obedience. This is an act of obedience. The Son obeys the will of the Father. The Son will make very clear and you see this in the new testament. He has not come to accomplish his own will but to do the will of his father. His father’s will is a saving redemptive will and it’s also a sovereign will.

Fourth, he assumed human flesh incarnate by the Holy Spirit by the virgin Mary. Now again there’s elaboration there from 325 to 381 and it’s important by 381 to make very clear that this is by the Holy Spirit by the Virgin Mary and you’ll notice in English even in an English translation and English form of the creed it’s awkward to know how to punctuate that and I think in many of these creedal statements the important thing to do is perhaps say them out loud and I would really encourage that by the way as you’re thinking about creeds. If you’re even devotionally looking at creeds and you have a book of creeds or at a certain point you’ve turned maybe for instruction to a creed I would just encourage you will hear it differently if you will read it out loud.

And for one thing, the just the punctuation here, it’s incarnate by the Holy Spirit by the Virgin Mary. And then fifth and was made man. Now by the time you get to Chalcedon in 451 you have a direct repudiation of docetism. Again Kevin mentioned this very clearly the claim that Christ was made man in a sense.

No he was made man. All right. A couple very interesting things as we think about this also in the creedal history of the church and in the aftermath of Nicea you had further doctrinal developments and one of them we need to consider by looking at Philippians chapter 2 and as we look at Philippians chapter 2 some of you are already thinking we’re going to be talking about kenotic Christology kenosis the emptying and the language that’s translated in into English and indeed that’s where we will look. Philippians chapter 2 beginning in verse 5. Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but made himself nothing taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed upon him the name that is above every name. So that in the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Humbled by addition

Okay, there was confusion about this passage and debate over this passage in the ancient church and that has continued by the time you get to the 19th century and in particular the 20th century and in particular in the 20th century in some British theology you have the suggestion and the argument for a so-called kenotic Christology and this is a Christ who is emptied of his divine attributes and to some extent some even argued his divine nature in assuming human flesh and taking on humanity.

The language of humbling is clearly here. He humbled himself in obedience to the Father. And then there’s exaltation. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. So the name of Jesus again confessional language of worship. Every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Okay. The danger in this is when people take the Greek word kenosis in this passage and try to make it as if Christ emptied himself or was emptied of his divine nature. And this is where we have to push back very hard. And as a matter of fact the best way to think of this is that the incarnation is an addition doctrine, not a subtraction doctrine. Now, clearly Jesus in the incarnation has to be spoken of with great care. As we develop Christology, we have to speak with great care. And honestly, there’s more here than we can unpack than we possibly have time to consider.

But we need to be very careful that even as we have in the incarnation the obedience of the Son and the humbling of the Son, Christ is unquestionably the consummate model of humility in leaving heaven, descending from heaven and coming down to earth assuming human flesh. Again, that’s the scandal. And that scandal is referenced right here in Philippians chapter 2. But we have to be careful in how we speak of this and the kenotic christologies which basically were more indicative of course of liberal theology. This is something we have to watch. That kind of language can very quickly outside of biblical norming it can become very dangerous indeed. It can subvert the gospel itself. We also have to be careful. One of my favorite hymns is And can it be? I love that hymn. And you know, Charles Wesley, it’s just a wonderful hymn. What’s not to like? I mean, it’s recapitulation of the gospel. It’s just happy, joyful gospel songness. I just love it. I do get nervous about one line and so I tend to lower my voice every time we get to the line emptied himself of all but love. If I just go little too Wesleyan, he didn’t mean an insult, I’m sure, but that does seem to reflect that kind of kenotic impulse that you see among those who would use a passage like Philippians chapter 2.

He humbled himself. But he humbled himself most importantly by addition not by subtraction. But what was subtracted then? First of all, the glory that he had with the Father where in heaven. The intimacy he had with the Father in heaven. And this is where some of our hymns get this exactly right. When he came down and he came down as an act of obedience and also as an act of humility but he did not empty himself of his divine nature.

Christmas and the creeds

Thinking about this it also reminds me we’re headed into the festival of the incarnation and we’re going to be singing songs and we need to hear the right theology in these songs. I think one of the sweet songs about this very phrase in the creed is the Christmas song or the Christmas carol once in royal David’s city and some of you know it’s very it’s a very anglicized hymn but in one stanza he came down to earth from heaven who is God and Lord of all and his shelter was a stable and his cradle was a stall all with the poor and mean and lowly lived on earth our savior holy. Okay, that’s just about right. In other words, I can’t make it better. And it just gets to it. He came down to earth from heaven. Who? Who is God and Lord of all?

And here’s the humility. And his shelter was a stable and his cradle was a stall. Here is his humility with the poor and mean and lowly lived on earth our savior holy. When we think of the New Testament in particular and we think about the challenge of making certain that we are perpetuating the faith once for all delivered to the saints, it reminds us that we do not read Scripture. Scripture is the norming norm.

The normed norm

The creeds are the normed norm. We stand on the authority of Scripture. We reformation conviction. We stand on the sole final authority of Scripture. But we do need to remember that that’s the way the reformers meant it. That’s the way Luther meant it. It’s the sole final authority of Scripture.

Luther didn’t try to wipe out the christological consensus of the early creeds. Instead, he made very clear, the reformers made very clear they were standing on this orthodox christological tradition. Luther didn’t question the fundamental trinitarian consensus of the church among the faithful as reflected in the creeds. Instead, he made very clear there was continuity with those ancient creeds and on the issues of Christology and Trinity. He was not claiming to start a new church but rather to reform the church by the word of God. Now structurally it became something quite different but the impulse needs to be recognized. And thus as we see the development of doctrine as we see the development of doctrine even in what has taken place between the first statement of Nicea and the more complete statement between 325 and 381.

We see not only a doctrinal development but a very helpful doctrinal development. And we have to confront issues. A as we think of those who will be hearing us preach and I think of every single Lord’s day and every day in which the Lord is through his church instructing. I also think in particular of festivals such as Christmas and the festival the incarnation which will have so much attention coming up in these weeks.

Let me just suggest to you that your attention at this conference and your attention in your life to the achievement and the importance of what took place at Nicea and your understanding even of the creedal statements and I don’t mean to limit this just to two but to the 325 statement and the 381 statement.

This will help you in thinking through your understanding of Christmas and your preaching of the texts that point to the incarnation of the Son. How to make certain that you use the biblical language. Don’t rip it out of its context. Don’t contort it. And you use language that is consistent with the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Your ultimate norm is Scripture alone. But you don’t come to Scripture, thanks be to God, alone. We’re in a conversation with saints of old.

The authority is not the saints of old, but we are in a con continuity in a conversation that just happens to be focused on a place very close to where we sit and stand right now. So, we feel it very close to us. But it’s not just the proximity of all this that’s close to us. It’s the urgency of the theological challenge that’s very close to us.

He came down from heaven. Fast forward and thus we are saved. It’s been a privilege to consider these things with you this afternoon. And I pray that the Lord will center our minds on these truths and center these truths in our hearts not only for our edification as believers but for the strengthening and the encouragement of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen. God bless you all. Thank you.