Who Do You Say I Am?

Two men have had a tremendous influence on my ability to verbalize my faith in the form of a credo—Simon Peter and J.I. Packer. And rather than diluting their statements, with which I concur, let me quote them directly.

First, J.I. Packer, in his “Introductory Essay” to John Owen’s book, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, summarizes the object of his (and my) faith in these three words:

God saves sinners.

God—the Triune Jehovah, Father, Son, and Spirit; three Persons working together in sovereign wisdom, power, and love to achieve the salvation of a chosen people, the Father electing, the Son fulfilling the Father’s will by redeeming, the Spirit executing the purpose of Father and Son by renewing.

Saves—does everything, first to last, that is involved in bringing man from death in sin to life in glory:  plans, achieves, and communicates redemption, calls and keeps, justifies, sanctifies, glorifies.

Sinners—men as God finds them, guilty, vile, helpless, powerless, unable to lift a finger to do God’s will or better their spiritual lot.

God saves sinners—and the force of this confession may not be weakened by disrupting the unity of the work of the Trinity, or by dividing the achievement of salvation between God and man and making the decisive part man’s own, or by soft-pedaling the sinner’s inability so as to allow him to share the praise of his salvation with his Saviour…. Sinners do not save themselves in any sense at all, but that salvation, first and last, whole and entire, past, present, and future, is of the Lord, to whom be glory for ever; amen.

And second, Jesus summarized the one essential of faith, the lowest common denominator of orthodoxy, in a single, simple question to his disciples, “Who do you say I am?” Peter, by divine revelation, answered just as simply with the most important words ever to be uttered by a sinner, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” In this confession is contained and assumed all of the person and mission of Christ Jesus:  the eternally pre-existent second person of the Trinity, begotten by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, wholly God and wholly man, who came to do His Father’s will, to restore His Father’s glory, to save sinners, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to destroy Satan’s works, to pay the penalty of sin, to appease His Father’s holy and terrible wrath, to fulfill the Old Testament, to give life, to abolish ceremonialism, and to complete revelation.

So, this simple truth is the core of my faith:

God saves sinners who by God’s grace confess, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”