MIF 6:5 (Sept-Oct 1974)
Editorial
“Ichthus”
Concerning the early Christians we read, “Of the rest durst no man join himself to them” (Acts 5:13). It was a costly matter to be a Christian in early Church history. There was a danger of not only being censured but imprisoned and martyred. Later, during the reigns of the pagan Caesars, many of God’s people were martyred for fidelity to Christ.
One is not surprised that under those severe circumstances, God’s children used secret symbols to indicate their presence and faith. The picture of a fish or the Greek word for it was often used. The word “fish” signified, ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, the Saviour.’ The I stood for the name Jesus; X (ch), for Christ; Th, for God; U, for Son; and S for Saviour.
Today fear does not force us to use secret symbols. We may be bold; in fact, we should be. With such distorted concepts of the divine sonship of Christ, we need to declare again, ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, the Saviour.’
Various shades of the old “Kenosis Theory” have infiltrated Christian contemporaneous thinking to an alarming degree. How can God, being who He is, cease temporarily to know that He is God, and then through a natural circumstance discover His Deity?
In order to accomplish the work of redemption each person in the Divine Trinity assumed voluntarily and temporarily a specific position. The Father assumed the role of Sovereign; the Son, the role of submission to His sovereignty; the Holy Spirit, submission to both the Father and the Son. Yet all remained what eternally they are—God. Any apparent limitation in the early life of Christ must therefore have been self-assumed. An old Puritan writer stated: “The Father is not superior to the Son; the Son is not inferior to the Father, and the Spirit is equal to each.”
Let us make bold our confession of faith as did many of the early Christians—‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, the Saviour.’ We must realize that a comparable analysis of the personality of the Lord is impossible. The greatest theologian of all time wrote, “Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh.” How great is that mystery to us!