The Creedal Question

Introduction

A. Preliminaries

Welcome to the start of our new sermon series on The Apostles’ Creed. We will be going line-by-line through one of the earliest Christian Confessions of Faith, and understanding why each line is so important for our understanding of Christianity itself and the work of the Lord Jesus in our own lives. We are trying something new with this series and that is that I will be sort of “team preaching” it with Neil Barham, so Neil will be taking about half of the sermons in the series and I’ll be taking about half, and we will explore together the Creed that has shaped us as a people for centuries.

But before we get to any of that, I thought it might be good for us to reflect on what I am calling The Creedal Question—and by that I mean this:

Why should we have Creeds?

What are they good for? Do we need them? Are they important?

Because there has been for the last 40 or so years, a movement within Evangelical Christianity that has gone without creeds, and in fact, might even be described as “anti-Creedal.”

The way this is most often expressed is by the banner slogan: No Creed but Christ.

And the effort and intention behind this rejection of Creedal Statements is rooted in something that we do believe and that is the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. That is, that Scripture Alone or The Bible Alone is our supreme and infallible source of authority. Now, to this, Presbyterians and others in the Reformed Tradition would say “Yes and Amen.”

But if that’s true, then why do we confess creeds frequently as part of our worship service? Why are there creeds and confessions and catechisms at the back of our hymnal? If we believe in Scripture Alone, why do we root ourselves in Creedal Statements and Confessions and Catechisms that—however good they might be—are decidedly not Scripture?

Those are the very questions I hope to answer this morning.

The sermon this morning has two foundational texts, one from the Old Testament and one from the New, which we will read now.

The first is in Exodus.

Exodus 12:26–27 (ESV)

And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’ ” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped.

And the second is in 2 Timothy

2 Timothy 1:13 (ESV)

Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

B. Sermon Prayer

Let’s Pray

Blessed Lord, you have caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning—grant us that we may in such a way hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them; that by patience and comfort of your holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

From The Book of Common Prayer

C. Transition to Sermon

So this series will be a thematic series, which is a bit different from our usual practice of preaching verse by verse and book by book. But as we examine the Creedal Question this morning—the question of whether to have creeds—there are at least three things I want you to see.

That there is:

Sermon Points 1. A Creed to Speak 2. A Story to be Told 3. A Pattern to Follow

I. A Creed to Speak

A. Defining Terms

The Word Creed comes from that Latin term credo meaning “I believe.”

A Creed is a formal statement that articulates fundamental points of doctrine, refutes heresies, and grants to confessors a common language for expressing their faith together.

That’s my definition. I also very much like Carl Trueman’s definition. Trueman says Creeds are “…human attempts to summarize and express the basic elements of the Christian faith.” (The Creedal Imperative, page 65)

In this Church, we use three creeds at different points in the year. Ordinarily, we confess them just before we come to the Lord’s Table together.

We confess the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and then once a year on Trinity Sunday we confess the Athanasian Creed. We also use Heidelberg 1, which is a Catechism Question & Answer, and not a creed, but still an excellent articulation of the comforts of the Gospel. We will actually be confessing that one today before we share the Lord’s Supper together.

We will also occasionally use statements of faith drawn directly from the Scriptures like the kenosis passage in Philippians 2 or the “No Condemnation” passage in Romans 8.

We also have Confessions and Catechisms which are not the same as Creeds, but are similar in their purpose. Confessions are larger and more detailed statements and summaries of belief, and catechisms arrange that content in a Question-and-Answer format.

B. Building the Case

Creeds, while they are not quotations from the Bible, are coherent summaries of core biblical teachings.

Now as I said earlier, for many Christians in our cultural and historical moment, the very idea of Creeds requires a defense—why not just stick to the Bible?

And what I find interesting about the whole Creedal Question is not so much that Creeds are important or necessary, but rather that they are unavoidable.

If someone asks you the question “What do you Believe?” your answer will be some kind of Creedal Statement. If you answer “I believe the Bible” that just kicks the can down the road a bit. Because when the person replies “And what does the Bible teach?” your answer will be some sort of Creedal Statement.

As theologian Carl Trueman has observed, there is not a divide between Christians who have creeds or confessions and those who do not. Rather, there is a divide between thsoe who have public creeds and confessions that are written down, and therefore subject to public scrutiny, and those who have private creeds and confessions that are improvised, unwritten, not open to pubic scrutiny, and therefore, somewhat ironically, not subject to testing by Scripture to see whether they are true.

C. The Power of Words

But when I say Creeds are unavoidable, they’re not unavoidable only because you must be able to articulate your faith in a coherent manner. They are also unavoidable because we are commanded to be able to verbally articulate our faith.

Romans 10:8–9 (ESV)

But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Now notice we are here given two fundamental requirements for our salvation. Confession with the mouth and belief in the heart. So from that I want to argue that the way you talk about the Lord Jesus and His Gospel is at least as important as what you believe in your heart about the same.

Paul does not say “If you have a warm, inexpressible feeling in your heart, and then just make some sounds with your mouth, you will be saved.”

No. There is real content here to the expression that matters for eternity. It is impossible to separate your Christian identity from your words.

So that means that the words you speak about the Lord Jesus Christ affect your eternity. I want us to sit with that reality just for a moment. That the what we say about God, not just what we believe internally about God, but the words we use externally about God are connected to our very salvation. This causes serious problems for any who would say “Well, it doesn’t matter how I talk about my faith, God knows my heart.” Yes, God does know your heart, but from the overflow of the heart…the mouth speaks.

So for the rest of our time this morning, I want to show you why it is that having Creeds as part of our identity is actually an imitation of Scriptural patterns.

II. A Story to Be Told

A. The God Who Tells Stories

I don’t think it will surprise any of you to hear me say that God loves to tell stories. Most of the Bible is story, it is narrative. And human beings are a people formed by stories. We have all heard in the news this week about the terrible flooding in Asheville and that whole region on the east coast. And you might have seen numbers.

It killed more than 220, and there are another several hundred still missing, setting it up to be one of the deadliest hurricanes in history (by death toll and destruction)

Areas with the most rainfall experienced anywhere from 13 to 30 inches of rain across 400 miles, some areas in North Carolina getting more than 30 inches of rain.

There were 20 tornadoes reported across 5 states, and over 4 million people lost power.

Now those figures have a certain power in our hearts because we have all been through hurricanes. But numbers by themselves don’t usually move people to action. Stories do. You were probably troubled by those numbers I just read aloud, but what has moved your heart are the stories you’ve heard since, both of the destruction and death, and of the recovery efforts, and the courage of neighbors.

Stories are what move us. For good or for evil, right? If you want to reach someone’s heart, tell a story. Whether you’re trying to reach them with the truth or sell a lie, the story is where the power is at. A good story can strengthen our reasons for believing something, and, negatively, it can bypass our reasoning abilities in order to access our emotions.

This happens often in the abortion debate, where defenders of abortion would much rather frame a story so that a pregnant woman sounds far more like a victim of circumstance or policy rather than a mother of an unborn child.

And our world is full of stories that tell the truth and stories that lie. When I say stories that lie, I don’t just mean stories with incorrect data or untrue information. I mean stories that have a lesson inside them, and the lesson itself is a lie, clothed in a story. You have watched movies that tell lying stories. Commercials that tell lying stories. You’ve heard songs that tell lying stories.

B. The Exodus Story

And thousands of years ago, there was an event in the history of God’s people—a story—so pivotal, so important, it was probably the most important and formative moment for the people of God in the entire Old Testament, and that was the Passover in Egypt and the deliverance from Pharoah at the Red Sea.

And in this moment, Israel was given not only salvation and rescue and deliverance, but they were given a story to tell.

In Exodus 12, we read of God telling Moses to instruct the children of Israel concerning the Passover Moment. That the Destroyer is coming through the land, and will “pass over” houses that bear the mark of the blood of the lamb.

And we find out that what’s happening to them is prescribed by God as a remembrance forever.

Exodus 12:25–27 (ESV)

And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’ ” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped.

So Moses is looking forward to a time in the future when the Passover will be reenacted in front of a generation that has no firsthand recollection of the Exodus.

So if we had any illusions that learning our history is not important, let those be dispelled here. Again, a significant portion of our Bible is historical narrative. God not only knows that stories are powerful, he loves telling them and he wants us to know them. But what this moment in Exodus also tells us is that the ritual of retelling a story is not, by itself, enough. What we learn from this text is that telling the story provokes the next generation to ask questions. So they must be catechized. The story needs to be explained.

The prophets often engaged in dramatic theatrics before God’s people, then later explained the meaning of their actions. Jesus himself has a pattern of acting first and explaining later. And in fact the Lord’s Supper itself is a reenactment. It’s the weekly retelling of an immortal story. Which is always accompanied with an explanation before we eat and drink together.

C. The Purpose of Story

I borrow again from Carl Trueman, who said of this moment in Exodus 12,

God’s saving actions are historical, but they need to be interpreted, to be explained by words, in order for the audience to grasp them. The meaning of God’s salvation in the Passover is not to be found in some mystical experience of the individual or the community performing the action; rather it is that to which the action refers or that which it signifies, and that can only be explained using words.

Carl Trueman From The Creedal Imperative, page 60.

And surely you can see how this is true of the story we tell in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, ascended and reigning today?

Paul summarizes Christ’s work on the cross when he says

1 Corinthians 1:21–24 (ESV)

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Now look at that, that’s a story, is it not? The world was like this, God did this thing with Christ and His Cross, and today that has an impact on both Jews and Gentiles.

And yet the focus here is not some mystical experience. Paul is not talking about staring at a crucifix until you are moved. He is telling a story about a man on a cross in the context of humanity’s fall and redemption, and that story needs explaining and even, dare I say, preaching. The realities of God require clear and consistent verbal communication, not only in the facts of the story but in their meaning as well.

Pictures will not suffice here, nor will interpretive dance. Only the clear verbal statement of the message can provoke a response of either faith or rejection.

One of the great lies of the modern world is that we are so advance and enlightened, that the our fathers and ancestors (either by blood or by faith) have little to teach us. Such arrogance is, frankly, a unique aspect of our culture that most of human history would not dare to consider.

But the reality is we are bound together with those same children of Israel, not only by faith in the same God, but by a share in their very same human nature. They needed a Savoir, just as we do. They needed the story re-told, and so do we.

So we must use words, we must tell the story, and we must explain the story. And this is precisely what the Apostles’ Creed does, right? It re-tells the story of the central moment of our Salvation, which was not at the shores of the Red Sea, but on a hill outside Jerusalem. So how should we tell that story? That question takes us to our Third Point.

There is a Creed to Speak, a Story to be Told, and Third, there is

III. A Pattern to Follow

A. The Apostolic Creeds

In 2 Timothy, Paul says the following to Timothy, his son in the faith and protege...

2 Timothy 1:13 (ESV)

Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

Paul tells Timothy that he is not licensed to preach whatever he wants, but that there is a pattern in place that he is to follow. We have a word for this: tradition.

That word has fallen on hard times today, because there are lots of traditions that are mere inventions of man, with no resemblance to the apostolic pattern of sound words. But godly tradition is an inheritance, not a hindrance.

As we saw in Exodus, the children of Israel were not given liberty to explain the Passover in any old way they chose. They must connect their actions very specifically to the things that happened to their ancestors in Egypt. They must tell the story, and they must correctly interpret the story. We see a similar idea here in 2 Timothy. In fact, the King James renders the passage

2 Timothy 1:13 (KJV)

Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.

Note the use of the word “Form” which is probably the better translation. The idea here is a model or a standard that is meant to function as a guide.

So Paul is saying to Timothy “Make sure you are teaching by the standard I set.” Notice that Paul does not say “Stay true to the broad conception content of what I said.” He goes so far as to say “use the form of my words.” And, interestingly, he also does not say “Memorize my letters.” And this is why it is at best problematic to say “No Creed but the Bible.” The Bible itself seems to demand that we have forms of sound words. That is exactly what Creeds are.

And we have examples of (what seem to be) Creedal Statements in Paul’s own work. Philippians 2 has already been mentioned. Romans 8 doesn’t really fit the pattern of a Creed, but we have proven that it works well as one.

1 Timothy 3:16 is another example:

1 Timothy 3:16 (ESV)

Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.

This seems to be a creedal formulation of the supremacy of Christ.

1 Timothy 1:15 is also another good example, and one that often features in our worship services as a text for the Assurance of Pardon.

1 Timothy 1:15 (ESV)

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

The set up for that passage sounds like Paul is using a previously established phraseology to express the Gospel—a form of sound words to capture the essence of the Gospel.

What this gives us is both a bit of good news and a clear command.

First, the bit of Good News

B. The Bit of Good News

The good news of these creedal formulations is that we see here an assumption from Paul that correct teaching can be passed on from generation to generation.

This is really good news. Our world is one where we feel the enormous pressure to reinvent ourselves in every generation. To be different from our family. To exist contrary to our upbringing. What we are told here is that there is a way in which others have walked that we are called to walk as well.

Our walk will have different challenges perhaps, different kinds of affliction. Different opposition. Different enemies or sources of temptation. But the good news of Jesus Christ being the same yesterday, today, and forever means that the rock that poured out water in the desert will sustain us too.

That’s the bit of good news, so what’s the clear command?

C. The Clear Command

If the good news is that the faith can be passed on, the command is that it must be passed on.

We are called not to reinvent our faith, but to hold firm to what has been given to us. Indeed, Paul says to the Thessalonian Christians,

2 Thessalonians 2:15 (ESV)

So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.

Paul is not afraid of tradition, because tradition—the word does not by itself mean suspicious invention of man. It means stable content that can be passed on from generation to generation. Indeed, you get the sense from Paul that if something had not been taught in the past, that was probably a good reason to discard it.

The Gospel of Christ—along with its meaning and significance—must be passed on from generation to generation. God’s saving work requires proclamation and interpretation in every generation. That is what tradition means. That is why we have liturgy where we speak these truths to each other. That is why we put them into songs and echo the songs of God in the Psalms. Because this immortal story of what God has done is transmitted from generation to generation by words, sermons, hymns, and prayers.

Conclusion

So as I wrap up this sermon this morning, you might have noticed that I have made a brief and broad appeal for Creeds, and by extension confessions and catechisms. But I have not made the argument for The Apostles’ Creed in particular.

I hope that this case will be made for you as Neil and I preach through the content of the Apostles’ Creed. And at the end of the series I will return again to this same topic, and offer a defense of the Apostles’ Creed in particular. The goal of this sermon was to show you why we should have Creeds. The goal of the concluding sermon will be to demonstrate why we must continue to confess the Apostles’ Creed.

But what I hope you have heard this morning is how weighty our words are. God cares so deeply about our words. We tend to think of our words as being good enough if they are merely a true expression of ourselves. But your Creator is far more concerned that your words truly reflect Him. The command before us is that all of our words would reflect all of His Words. And that our good confession of the life of Christ, the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the ascension of Christ, the seating and ruling and reign of Christ would forever be on our lips until we have no breath left for words.

In this posture let me live, And Hosannas daily give. In this temper let me die, And Hosannas ever cry!

In the name of Jesus, Amen.