Dear Michael,
When I was a young Christian in the early 70s sporting regulation Jesus-person bib overalls and hair down to my shoulders, I wore a hip necklace identifying me as a Christian. It was called an ichthus, the Greek word for “fish.”
The pendant consisted of two intersecting arcs with lines on one side extending past the junction point as tails, forming the simple silhouette of a fish. You can still see it on bumper stickers or in ads for businesses run by Christians.
The Greek word itself (ΙΧΘΥΣ) rested inside the body of the symbol, completing the icon. The ichthus formed an acrostic, with each letter
representing Greek words identifying four vital pieces of the Christian message about the 1st century Jewish carpenter: Iesous (“Jesus”), Christos (“Christ”), Theou (“God’s”), uios (“Son”), and sōtēr (“Savior”).
The adornment was de rigueur—the current fashion—for hippies who got religion during the Jesus Movement. It was also a convenient novelty piece, sparking conversations with inquisitive strangers. The fish acronym summed up the Christian message: Jesus was the Messiah (“Christ”), God’s only Son, the Savior.
The acrostic also serves as a handy summary of the basic theology essential to the Christian understanding of
Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was a true human being who came to Earth as God’s promised “anointed one,” the Christ. He was no mere mortal, though. He was God’s own Son (God in human flesh, that is), God come down, “Immanuel”—God with us—the chosen Savior of the world.
In this, our 25th anniversary year for Stand to Reason, we are revisiting the essentials, firming up the foundation for you as Christ’s ambassador. In the first two issues of Solid Ground this year, I focused on four reasons we’re convinced God is real. In these next two issues, I focus on God’s Rescuer—who He was and what He came to do—and answer the question, “Why Jesus?”
No comments:
Post a Comment