Evangelical Movement of Wales (EMW) Statement of Faith
- The Infallible Word Of God (1)
- The Holy Trinity (2)
- God And Father Of Our Lord Jesus Christ (3)
- The Lord Jesus Christ (4)
- The Holy Spirit (5)
- Rescued From Sin (6)
We believe….
In the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, whose true humanity and full deity were mysteriously and really joined in the unity of His divine person. We believe in His virgin birth, in His perfect life and teaching, in His substitutionary, atoning death on the cross, where He triumphed over Satan, sin and death; in His bodily resurrection and His ascension into heaven, where now He sits in glory at the right hand of God.
The Lord Jesus Christ is at the very heart of our faith. He is the only Saviour, for ‘salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved’ (Acts 4:12). Eternal life is all about knowing him. Jesus himself said, ‘Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent’ (John 17:3). As a consequence, he is the one whom Christians love and long to get to know better. Paul writes, ‘I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my lord… I want to know Christ’ (Phil. 3:8,10).
Fully God and fully man
There is no one else like him. He is fully God and fully man. How one person can be both God and man is clearly beyond our complete understanding, so Christians throughout history have been careful to say that the truth lies within this framework rather than to think they can precisely explain the mystery of who he is. That he is fully God is very clear in the Bible. Paul speaks of ‘the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ’ (Tit. 2:13). That he is fully human, yet without sin, is equally clear. John warns his readers, in his first letter, that those who deny ‘that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh’ are not from God (1 John 4:3).
In the early centuries of the church, Christians battled to protect the truth about the Lord Jesus Christ against error.
They rejected the view that the one person of Jesus Christ had a human body but not a human mind or spirit, and that the mind and spirit of Christ were only from the divine nature of the Son of God. It’s not just the human body that needs salvation, but our human minds and spirits (or souls) as well. Therefore, the whole of us had to be represented by Christ if he were to be our substitute. Christ had to be fully and truly man if he was to save us.
They rejected the view that there were two separate persons in Christ, a human person and a divine person, as though Jesus was a kind of ‘pantomime horse’ (which is, of course, two people). Nowhere in the Bible do we have any indication of the human and divine natures talking to each other or struggling within Christ. Rather, we have a consistent picture of a single person acting in wholeness and unity. Jesus always speaks as ‘I’, not as ‘we’.
They rejected the view that the human nature of Christ was taken up and absorbed into the divine nature, so that both natures were changed somewhat and a third kind of nature resulted, because this would mean that Christ was neither truly God nor truly man. If that were so, he could not truly represent us as a man, nor could he be the true God and able to earn our salvation.
At the famous Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, church leaders came up with a detailed statement to express the view that Christ was one person with two natures. This has been accepted as orthodox ever since, and is reflected (much more briefly!) in the EMW Statement of Faith: ‘We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, whose true humanity and full deity were mysteriously and really joined in the unity of His divine person.’
Hallelujah! What a Saviour!
The Bible clearly teaches that the virgin Mary conceived Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit (Luke 2:34-35). Through the Old Testament sacrificial system, God taught us that the only way a sinner could be forgiven was through the sacrifice of a perfect substitute in their place. In the Old Testament, those sacrifices were of unblemished animals, but the writer to the Hebrews points out that this is only an illustration; such sacrifices cannot truly save us (Heb. 10:1-4). The Old Testament sacrifices were all pointing to Jesus, who lived a perfect life in everything he thought, said and did. This enabled him to be the perfect sacrifice for the sins of all his people. He died in their place on the cross, bearing their sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, so that we might be brought to God. Hebrews 10 verses 5-18 wonderfully proclaims this truth.
This is the most precious truth for all Christians. It is at the heart of why we love Jesus so much. Paul writes, ‘I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal. 2:20). There, on the cross, our Lord Jesus Christ triumphed over all our enemies: Satan, sin and death. All those who trust in him alone for salvation are forgiven, clothed in his righteousness, and are being transformed to become more and more like their glorious Lord, until, in heaven, we will be perfectly like him. Hallelujah! What a Saviour!
We are not only saved by him, one day we will see him. For his death was not the end. On the third day, he rose physically from the dead. The disciples who had witnessed his ministry on earth were also witnesses to this. They saw him on multiple occasions; they touched him; they ate food with him. The Lord Jesus Christ is alive today!
Alive, but no longer here on earth. After forty days, ‘he left them and was taken up into heaven’ (Luke 24:51). This is wonderful news for us because he is reigning in glory. We serve one who has ‘all authority in heaven and on earth’ (Matt. 28:18). This is wonderful news for us because it means we can come to God through him who always lives to intercede for us (Heb. 7:24-25).
