Why are we called Christians?

1. 0:00Why is he called Christ, meaning the Anointed?
2. 0:15Because he has been ordained by God the Father and has been anointed with the Holy Spirit, to be our chief prophet and teacher who fully reveals to us the secret counsel and will of God
3. 0:25concerning our deliverance, our only high priest who has delivered us by the one sacrifice of his body and who continually intercedes for us before the Father,
4. 0:35and our eternal King who governs us by his word and spirit and who guards us and keeps us in the deliverance he has won for us. But why are you called a
5. 0:44Christian? Because by faith I am a member of Christ and so I share in his anointing. I'm anointed to confess his name, to present myself to him as a living
6. 0:55sacrifice of thanks, to strive with a free conscience against sin and the devil in this life and afterward to reign with Christ over all creation for eternity.
7. 1:05In Lord’s Day 12, the Heidelberg Catechism speaks to us about an important aspect of what we confess in the Apostles' Creed. We confess concerning the Son of God that he is Jesus Christ, the only
8. 1:20begotten Son of God our Lord.
9. 1:21Jesus is his name, Christ is his title.
10. 1:25It means anointed as the catechism says, and it reminds us that Jesus Christ was baptized, that he in the Jordan River was anointed by the Holy Spirit as scripture says.
11. 1:38In the Old Testament, the word for anointed is Messiah and so Jesus is the Messiah that is he's the Christ and the reason for that has something to do with the Old Testament scriptures when we study the
12. 1:49Old Testament we discover that there are three important offices in the Old Testament church the offices of prophet priest and king and each of those offices had a vital role for the
13. 1:59life and the blessing of the Old Testament church. We of course can think of the names of great prophets priests and kings like David the great king of
14. 2:09Israel or Isaiah the great prophet of Israel. We can think of Aaron the great priest of Israel and each of these individuals and those that succeeded them served the church in a very
15. 2:19vital way. The reason there were prophet priests and kings in the Old Testament has everything to do with the creation of man in the beginning. Man was made in
16. 2:29the image of God. And we know from the rest of Scripture that that image means that man was a prophet priest and king. He was a prophet to know God. He was a priest to
17. 2:39worship God and he was a king to serve God to exercise dominion. So already in Genesis 1 and 2 we meet a creation, we meet a world that glorifies God but that is to
18. 2:53be ruled over by man who is to tend and keep it, who is to guard it, and who is to proclaim the truth of God's Word in it. But of course we know what happened with man in
19. 3:05the beginning. He refused to fulfill the task that he was called to do. He did not submit to God's Word or will, and so he fell into sin. And as a result, though he
20. 3:15remains an image-bearer, though every human being is an image-bearer of God, regardless of their abilities, regardless of their creed or confession, they are all image bearers of God.
21. 3:25Yet we are empty image bearers. We are image bearers without the righteousness and holiness and knowledge of God.
22. 3:32But we're talking about Christ and we're talking about his being anointed when he came in the flesh as man then he was anointed by the Holy Spirit to fulfill the tasks that man rejected in the beginning.
23. 3:46The image bearer of God in the beginning refused to fulfill his work.
24. 3:51The second man, Jesus, committed to fulfilling the work and was equipped by the Holy Spirit for that task.
25. 3:59Some people wonder why the Son of God would need to be equipped by the Holy Spirit, but it was precisely in his work as man, as the second Adam, as the representative of humanity
26. 4:11on this earth, that he came to fulfill these tasks.
27. 4:15And equipped by the Holy Spirit in his humanity, he is perfectly able to tell us who God is, to lead us in worship to God, for he's not only the one who brings the sacrifice
28. 4:26into the presence of God as priest, he is also the very sacrifice itself.
29. 4:31And as he reminds us in Matthew 28, he's the one who has received all authority in heaven and on earth.
30. 4:37He's the King of kings and Lord of lords.
31. 4:39makes that so very clear, that he is worthy to receive all our praise and adoration.
32. 4:45So Jesus came. He was anointed for the purpose of fulfilling these tasks. And we rejoice in that because by his fulfillment of that, we have salvation because we know God, because God has redeemed us, and because
33. 4:59Jesus Christ rules over us. We are drawn out of the pit of sin, we are made to worship God, we are made to be priests in the kingdom of God, and we are secured
34. 5:10for all eternity. Every believer will arrive at their eternal destination. But the title of Christ has more than just a future focus.
35. 5:19has more than just an eternal significance, it also has a very current, present, and right now reality.
36. 5:27Because as believers, as the catechism goes on to say, we are united to Christ.
37. 5:32The language of scriptures is sometimes that of branches to a vine.
38. 5:36And as branches share the life force of the vine as the sap of the vine flows to the branches to produce fruit so to the spirit of Christ flows through the head into the body flows through the vine into
39. 5:50the branches and being united this way to Christ by faith we are anointed by the Holy Spirit and now our identity as human beings is being restored. We were made to know God, to worship God, and to serve God. We
40. 6:05rejected that in the fall into sin, but in Christ we've been made again, remade, reborn, regenerated to be prophets, priests, and kings. That's our identity in Christ. And that identity
41. 6:19Identity has more to do than just on a Sunday morning when we go to church.
42. 6:24That identity has everything to do with how we live our lives at work, at school, at home.
43. 6:31Everywhere we go we are a prophet, we are a priest, and we are a king in Christ.
44. 6:36That is, we are royalty, and we are called to worship.
45. 6:39we are called to know God.
46. 6:41That means we are called to know him within his creation.
47. 6:44We're called to know him in all the various and sundry ways in which this world has been made and revealed to us in Christ and in his word.
48. 6:51Knowing these things, we are to worship the God who has made all things so very good and glorious.
49. 6:56We are to offer our lives as living sacrifices of praise, as Paul says.
50. 6:59And we are to serve Christ as kings.
51. 7:02We are to exercise his dominion in this earth, in the way that we proclaim the good news of the gospel and in the way that we walk and talk as employers and as employees, as family members and friends.
52. 7:16In everything we do, we are to show that Christ is our Lord.
53. 7:19So the catechism teaches us in Lord’s Day 12 a profound truth about our world.
54. 7:26It tells us about who we were, it tells us about who we are, and it tells us that all of that is related to Jesus Christ.
55. 7:33And in a world like ours, in Western civilization that is so concerned with human flourishing, with what it means to be human, what it means to be who I am.
56. 7:44We as Christians have a profound and powerful answer.
57. 7:47We don't need to chase after all of the happiness that the world seeks to find.
58. 7:52We don't have to worry about expressing our individuality.
59. 7:56All we need to do is work at revealing the truth of Christ in us. We need to testify to the world that we are not sinners anymore. We are not broken.
60. 8:06We are being made whole. We are being healed. We are being restored and renewed in Christ.
61. 8:11And we are being made to be the people that God created us to be. And it's all because of what Jesus Christ has done. So, Lord, say, 12 is a vital thing.
62. 8:19vital part of our witness to the world. When we say that we believe in Jesus Christ, we're saying a great deal.

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