“At every turn in the New Testament, the entire content of the confession of faith goes hand in hand with the little phrase that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God” [Matt. 16:16]. Whoever confesses him as such before others, Christ will also one day confess him before his Father who is in heaven [Matt. 10:32].
In a sincere moment when many of Jesus’ disciples went back and no longer desired to walk with him, he asked the Twelve: “Do you want to go away as well?” But Simon Peter answered for them all: Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God Christ, the Son of the living God” [Matt 16:16; John 6:66–69].
Likewise, as soon as the eunuch made this good confession, he was immediately baptized by Philip [Acts 8:26–40]. It is by the confession that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh that the spirits are known [1 John 4:2]. Therefore, “whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God” [1 John 4:15].
Jesus is the promised Messiah, the divinely anointed prophet, priest, and king— that is the brief contents of the whole Christian faith. It is the heart of revelation, the heart of Holy Scripture, the bone and marrow of all confession, the central dogma of all the truths of salvation, the center from which all the rays of knowledge of God expand to the periphery. The person of Christ determines the essence of Christianity.
With this confession, the church of Christ took its own independent place in the midst of Jews and Gentiles. By it, she was distinguished from them both. For from her confession, she came to an ever- richer development of her faith and life. At first, everyone was baptized who made confession of the Lord Jesus.
Before long, this confession was enhanced to that of the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the twelve articles of our indubitably catholic Christian faith, this baptismal confession receives an even greater development.
Finally, in the various confessions of the Christian church, all of these articles have been more closely studied and further explained. The confessions are like branches and leaves proceeding from a single root—that in the beginning, planted in the soil of the church, was the belief that Jesus is the Christ.
To be sure, creation and the Fall, sin and misery are assumed in this short confession of faith. The whole person of Christ, with his names and natures, with his offices and states, lies as if it were in seed form. The whole order of salvation— for the individual, for humanity, for the world— is intricately included in it.
In the cross of Christ, which is an offense to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks, sin and grace, law and gospel, justice and mercy, guilt and forgiveness are united and reconciled [1 Cor. 1:23]. God and the world, heaven and earth, angels and humanity, peoples and nations extend to one another the hand of peace by that cross.
For by the cross of Christ, God has reconciled the world to himself—not imputing her trespasses against her—and God has triumphed over all authority and powers [2 Cor. 5:19]. In the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we participate in the love of the Father and enjoy the fellowship of the Holy Spirit [2 Cor. 13:14].”
–Herman Bavinck, The Sacrifice of Praise: Meditations Before and After Admission to the Lord’s Supper, Trans. and Ed. Cameron Clausing and Gregory Parker Jr (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2019), 42-43.
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