Archive for October 24th, 2014

Nassau Confession:

Christ’s Majesty and Glory

Further, in regard to the majesty of the Lord Christ, our belief and confession is this: We apprehend and hold that He, according to the divine nature, is in all things equal to the Father in substance and essential properties, and is of one splendor, majesty, and glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

But in respect of the human nature, [He] is and remains a creature, and never becomes like God in substance or in properties or operation.

Notwithstanding, this human nature of Christ, in addition to its ever-enduring, essential properties, possesses a peculiarly wonderful, sublime, and great glory surpassing all rational creatures, and this is so both before and after glorification.

Inasmuch as the eternal and only-begotten Son of God has assumed and taken this human nature to Himself, indivisibly and indestructibly uniting it to His divine nature in one person, such glory occurs in no angel, nor among the saints belonging to the human race, nor will it occur in any angel or saint in eternity,

And precisely on this account alone is it properly said of this son of Mary, that the man Christ is the eternal, omnipotent, infinite, omnipresent, and omniscient Son of God; and that this person who is the Son of God and the son of Mary is to be worshiped and invoked by all rational creatures, angels, and men.

Not that this manhood of Christ in itself possesses these properties which pertain solely to eternal and actual deity; nor has the divine honor of invocation. Neither is it that only the divine nature of Christ (apart from the flesh) is now after the incarnation to be worshiped. Rather, the Son of God in the flesh (that is, in the human nature which He has assumed) is to be called upon with one and the same worship [latria], not with any divided but with one invocation, as a single person who is at the same time man and God, as the Council of Ephesus has quite excellently and well pronounced. The ancient teachers employ the likeness (however faint it be) of a king who receives homage in his purple and crown, not that such honor pertains to the purple clothing and to the crown in themselves, nor that the king shows himself to his suqjects uncovered and apart from the purple and the crown, but that the king makes himself known in purple and with the crown.

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