The Warrant & Importance of Creeds and Confessions

Introduction

English Standard Version Chapter 1

13 Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 14 By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

English Standard Version Chapter 10

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.

English Standard Version Chapter 3

16 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.

English Standard Version Chapter 4

4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

This week we’re going to take a break from our series through the Book of Acts, and consider the subject of creeds and confessions. Now, you might ask, why I’ve decided to take a short detour to do so. Well, the immediate reason is because I thought it would be appropriate and helpful considering the curriculum of our Bible study this fall which is based upon the content of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.

Furthermore, I think it’s particularly important considering that we live in a very anti-credal age, an age when creeds and confessions are usually looked at with suspicion and even despised. We live in a day when churches do everything they can to hide what they believe, or at least do what they can not to draw attention to what they believe.

For example, many churches have substituted their names which had previously communicated their doctrinal distinctives or denominations, such as First Baptist Church, Saint Andrews Presbyterian Church, St. John’s Lutheran Church, or First Methodist Church with more generic or ambiguous names like Life Church, Journey Church, City Church, Refuge Church, or The Gathering. One church, for instance, that I attended while visiting family in Montana was called Faith, but upon further investigation it was previously called the Billings Foursquare Church, which had been a reference to it’s denomination. And when you entered the church or participated in its worship you would have never known that they church was still associated with the Foursquare denomination.

In fact, it’s largely do to this anti-credal mentality in our day that so many churches have purposefully sought to become non-denominational, as if to pretend that they didn’t have any doctrinal distinctives at all, which they wear as sort of a badge of honor. In fact, this trend has led many churches to profess as little doctrine as possible, with many of them either burying their statement of faith in some obscure place on their website or not posting one at all.

For example, I remember a time when I was younger, while attending a particular church, when I received an email related to our church from someone I had never met before. They told me that while they were looking on our church website that they couldn’t find our statement of faith, and asked whether we had one or not. And I remember in that moment being so offended that they would ask us for a statement faith, implying that they would use it to determine whether they would attend our church or not. How dare they! What does it matter what we believe, I naively thought to myself. To my shame, I remember writing him back scolding him for his question.

Now, again, my point here is simply this, we live in a very anti-credal age, an age when creeds and confessions are usually looked at with suspicion and even despised. We’ve become prone to view creeds and confessions as antithetical to our relationship with Jesus, as if they only get in the way of it. Sadly, we’ve become prone to view creeds and confessions as antithetical to genuine love and devotion to God.

We’re also prone to be anti-credal because we live in an age of anti-authoritarianism. In other words, we don’t like other people telling us what to do. We also live in an age of historical isolationism, or what C.S. called chronological snobbery, that is, whatever is new is better, and that there’s little to no value in what has come before us. So, when you put all these sentiments together, anti-authoritarianism, historical isolationism, and a belief that creeds and confessions only get in the way of our relationship with Jesus, then you end up with an anti-credal age, a time period that is very opposed to creeds and confessions that have come before us. This is why you often here phrases like, “I have no creed but the Bible!” or “I have no creed but Christ!”

No creed but Christ!

And while, on the surface, these statements might sound pius or noble, as though we were taking the high ground, instead, statements like these are very naive, and are often rooted in ignorance and pride. While we think we’re swearing supreme loyalty to Jesus by doing so, we’re actually being very naive.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. The moment you say that you have no creed but Christ, and someone asks you, “Who’s Jesus?” whatever answer you choose to give is your creed. The moment you explain to them who you understand Jesus to be you’re providing them with a credal statement. Now, you might not have written it down anywhere, but it’s what you believe the Bible teaches. Charles Spurgeon once wrote, “Every man who believes anything, must have a creed, whether he write it down and print it, or not.”

You see, a creed is simply what you believe. It comes from the Latin word credo which means “I believe”. Church historian, Philip Schaff, defines a creed like this, “A Creed, or Rule of Faith, or Symbol, is a confession of faith for public use, or a form of words setting forth with authority certain articles of belief, which are regarded by the framers as necessary for salvation, or at least for the well-being of the Christian church.” (History of the Creeds)

You see, every Christian and every church has a confession, it’s just that most of the time they’re an unwritten or unspoken set of beliefs that are frequently inconsistent with one another. This is why the concept of a non-denominational church is somewhat naive, because on one hand they do have certain beliefs, but on the other hand they don’t want to advertise them, they’d rather pretend like they don’t have any at all, or at least like they have as few as possible. One of the reasons churches advertise themselves as non-denominational is because they want to remove the doctrinal hindrances they believe are hindering people from attending. They want to remove anything that might offend someone who might attend.

Doctrine Divides

The driving idea here is that doctrine divides, therefore we should strip away as much doctrine as we can to achieve unity. Now, it’s absolutely true that doctrine divides, but it’s intended to divide truth from error, not to become a reason to forsake doctrine. Jesus famously said in Matthew 10:34-39,

English Standard Version Chapter 10

34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth.

In other words, we should not be surprised when doctrine divides, nor assume that in order to pursue biblical unity that we must therefore dispel with doctrine altogether. The Apostle Paul famous wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:10,

English Standard Version Chapter 1

10 I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. 11 For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. 12 What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” 13 Is Christ divided?

It’s absolutely true and right that we must seek unity, but that unity isn’t achieved by forsaking doctrine (like we might think), because to forsake doctrine would be to forsake seeking after the truth.

Shallow unity and error flourish

You see, when a church deemphasizes doctrine and seeks to find the lowest possible doctrinal denominator, that this both waters down a church’s unity and invites error into the church. For example, in the church I mentioned earlier, many years later, I came to realize that as I grew in my knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures that the depth of unity I shared with everyone else was extremely shallow, and that without a strong commitment to sound doctrine by the church and its elders, that error and even heresy had found a place to flourish. Ultimately, I had to leave that church due to the danger it posed to me and my family.

I realized that the lower the doctrinal standards, the more likely you would hear strange doctrine coming from the pulpit and during bible studies. There was a direct correlation between degree of doctrinal standards and the amount of unhealthy or dangerous doctrine that came from the pulpit. Lowering doctrinal standards, which we initially thought was a pius pursuit, under the guise of unity, became a high stakes game where wolves in sheep’s clothing could come in among us unchecked. What most people don’t realize that as you lower doctrinal standards, false teaching is increasingly able to run unchecked.

You see, this is the other problem with claiming that your only creed is the Bible, heretics and cults make the same claim. They too will tell you that they believe the Bible. Jehovah’s Witnesses will tell you they believe the Bible, Mormons will tell you that they believe the Bible, even other religions like Islam and Bahai believe in the Bible as scripture containing divine revelation. Therefore, “No creed but the Bible!” or “No creed but Christ!” will never suffice. It’s insufficient to guard against heresy and error. In fact, the church has a long history of producing creeds and confessions precisely for this reason.

United by truth

So, when we seek biblical unity we cannot not do so by forsaking doctrine, we must seek unity by seeking after the truth, because it’s the truth that unites us. Therefore, sound doctrine is essential to biblical unity. Doctrine unites the right people together, and it excludes those who do not belong. You see, the division that’s most dangerous to the church is the division caused by false teaching. In fact, what the mantra, “doctrine divides” often reveals is that we’re willing to tolerate false teaching.

An analogy that comes to mind is how a husband and a wife experience the greatest depth of unity and intimacy when they agree upon fundamental issues. This is why it’s essential that both parties are Christians and share a fundamentally biblical worldview that shapes what they believe and how they behave (the Bible describes this as being equally yoked), which is far more important than whether their personalities are perceived to be compatible or not.

For example, my wife and I have extremely different personalities (we’re about as different as they come), we have very different interests and preferences, yet we work really well together and are very close, and this a testimony to our shared biblical convictions (of which there is very little we disagree on), and as a result we share a great depth of unity and intimacy.

This is also the reason that our nation is increasingly divided, because our nation no longer possesses a shared worldview. Our problem isn’t merely policy disagreements, rather those policy disagreement are symptomatic of a much deeper issue. We have disagreements at the most fundamental levels, which has resulted in a fracturing of our nation. A growing population within our country does not share a biblical worldview any longer, therefore the only hope for our nation, long-term, is revival.

Therefore, ignoring or running away from doctrine isn’t how we achieve unity. The attempt to create unity by ignoring doctrine inevitably creates a false sense of unity or a false peace, because in order to maintain such unity you have to keep your mouth shut. This is often the case at family reunions or with coworkers, with people we have very little in common with, we quickly run out of things to say, because to bring up anything consequential would be to disrupt the peace and to reveal that we don’t have anything fundamentally in common with one another, this is why we joking talk about never bringing up religion or politics in these type of situations, because it would reveal our fundamental disagreements. Therefore, it’s foolish to claim that we can have meaningful relationships without doctrine, because without shared doctrine our relationships will be deceivingly shallow. This is why creeds and confessions don’t inherently pose a risk to our relationship with Jesus, but instead promote and deepen it.

Confessions and unity

You see, the aim of any confession or credal statement should be to deepen our unity concerning the truth. Confessional or credal statements are intended to articulate biblical truth with the intent of uniting those who love the truth. This is the unity that Christ prescribed, not a superficial unity that ignores truth, but a deep and genuine unity based upon a love for the truth.

Confessions and authority

Now, another common objection to creeds and confessions is that they usurp the authority of Scripture. On one hand this can be legitimate danger of any document crafted by men, and men can certainly abuse creeds and confessions in this way, but this is not their intended purpose. It’s important that we recognize that all creeds and confession are subject or subordinate to Scripture, that they derive their authority from Scripture, that creeds and confessions are intended to be a faithful servant to Scripture. The Bible is the standard that judges all other standards, while a confession is a standard that is judge by another standard.

One analogy that’s often employed to explain their purpose and function is that creeds and confessions are to Scripture what a map is to a territory. Confessions are only as good as their ability to accurately depict the territory they seek to depict. Just like a map helps you to navigate a particular territory and explore its terrain, confessions are intended to help you navigate the terrain of Scripture without getting lost.

Before we took our trip up through the Alaska-Canadian Highway earlier this year I poured over maps in preparation and anticipation of our trip. I learned what routes I should take, what cities I would encounter, where we might stay, how long it might take, but it wasn’t until we got into the car and hit the road did we experience all of these things. We could not have experienced the mountains and the valleys, the cities and the sights without driving the highway ourselves, but that isn’t to say the maps didn’t play an incredibly helpful role in doing so. The maps were our guide, they helped understand what we were looking at and where we were going. Similarly, this is how a creed or confession is intended to function. And just like a map a confession is only as good as it accurately depicts the Bible.

The Bible is not a small book, and I’m sure all of us recognize that it is a daunting book to read and to understand. It’s not a book you can read in an afternoon, nor is it a book most people read in less than a year. There are parts that are easy to understand and parts that are difficult. Therefore, while creeds and confessions are not a substitute for reading the Bible, they are intended to be a tool to help you read the Bible better.

Confessions versus private judgement

Furthermore, we must also avoid the radical individualism that rejects the church, creeds, confessions, and tradition, and values private judgement above all else. Imagine tackling something like the ALCAN without a map, you may eventually make it from one end to the other (you may not), but not without repeating many of the same mistakes others have made that came before you. Similarly, creeds and confessions are the result of the many faithful Christians who have come before us, who have already dealt with a whole host of errors and heresies along the way. Why not benefit from them? Why not learn from them? Are we so arrogant to think we can’t benefit from the history of the church and the wisdom imparted to our forefathers by the Holy Spirit? This isn’t to say that creeds and confessions do no err, or that we should believe them without a critical eye, but only that we should not be so foolish as to dismiss them in favor of our own private judgements alone.

Therefore, many of our suspicions with creeds and confessions are not only unwarranted, but ignorant of their importance and value.

Necessity and importance of creeds and confessions

Now, with the rest of our time I want us to consider, specifically, the necessity and importance of creeds and confessions. As I pointed out earlier, it’s not enough to say that you have no creed but the Bible or that you have no creed but Christ, because as soon as someone asks you anything about the Bible or about Christ, any answer that you give will be your own personal credal statement. The moment you tell them that there are only 66 books in the Bible, which doesn’t include the Apocrypha, you’re making a credal statement. The moment you tell them Jesus is truly God and truly man you’re making a credal statement. You’re telling someone what you believe the Bible teaches about Jesus, you’re not simply quoting it.

Therefore, creeds and confessions are immensely helpful because they articulate what we believe the Bible teaches. They’re intended to bring clarity, they’re intended to draw lines and have sharp edges, and purposefully remove any doubt as to what we believe.

As I pointed out earlier, there are a multitude of cults who would affirm the statement that they believe in Jesus and the Bible, but that doesn’t mean they’re all Christians. Why? Because the Jesus they believe in is very different than what Christians have historically taught. Christians believe that Jesus is eternally God, the second person of the Trinity, co-eternal with the Father and Spirit, that Jesus shares the same divine essence as the Father and the Spirit. Whereas, Mormons believe that Jesus is one of three separate gods in the Godhead, that Jesus is not eternal but the firstborn spirit child of the Father, that Jesus is the spirit brother of Satan, that Jesus progressed to godhood through obedience and exaltation. Yet, Mormons would claim to believe in Jesus and to believe in the Bible, just as you and I do.

Now, one thing you’ll notice about false teachers and cults is that they’re often evasive or reticent to articulate their beliefs with clear lines, but would rather be ambiguous about what they believe and what they teach. Whereas, Christians have always been very eager to clarify their beliefs by drafting creeds and confessions. You see, by nature, Christians love the truth and do not fear clarifying the truth through creeds and confessions. We believe the truth can stand on its own two feet and that it’s best defense it making it clearer; that the clearer we make it the more it’ll cut.

This is why creeds and confessions are often necessary. They articulate what we believe the Bible teaches, in order to help draw clear distinctions between the historical Christian faith and false teaching. Creeds and confessions force clarity as to what we believe the Bible teaches, and as a result confessions build a fence around the flock to protect them from wolves.

And they not only guard the church at large from heresy, but they protect local churches, they protect the teaching ministry of the local church from doctrinal drift and heresy. They stabilize the church, so that it’s not tossed to and fro by new doctrines.

Tools for teaching

One of the other reasons creeds and confessions are important is because they’re excellent tools for teaching the Bible accurately. We must do more than merely read Scripture, Scripture must be explained, which is one of the reasons we preach sermons each week, and which is what creeds and confessions aim to do. For example, when Paul preached at the Synagogues he explained the Scriptures and reasoned from the Scriptures with them. Creeds and confessions are meant to distill and systematize every major teaching found in Scripture, they’re intended to be a tool to summarize the essential and important doctrines of the faith for the people.

Creeds and confessions are meant to answer the question, “What are the fundamentals of the faith that we ought to know?” Their aim is to fulfill what Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:13-14,

English Standard Version Chapter 1

13 Follow

Confessions seek to articulate in a comprehensive way that pattern of sound words. They’re an organized systematic curriculum for Christian doctrine. This is why, for instance, we’ve chosen to walk through the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, to, as Paul put it in Ephesian 4:12, equip the saints with sound doctrine. In other words, creeds and confessions are great discipleship tool, they facilitate our great commission to make disciples.

Often when we think of making disciples we think simply of evangelizing people, baptizing them, but Jesus went on to tell his disciples to teach them all that he had commanded them, which is no small task. When you think of discipleship you should think of what that entails when raising your children in the faith. There’s a large body of biblical doctrine they need taught, and much of that doctrine doesn’t come up in casual conversation, so we have to be deliberate about it, just as a teacher in a classroom is.

Truthfully, we need a curriculum, which is precisely what creeds, and especially larger confessions like the 1689 Baptist Confession are capable of providing. This is also why many of the larger confessions include catechism questions, which is specifically a teaching tool designed to equip believers with a clear understanding of what the Bible teaches. It’s easy to reach the end of your parenting and realize how much you didn’t teach your children, but wanted to, which is why confessions and catechisms are excellent tools to fulfilling your responsibility as a parent to train your children up in the way they should go, and in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

Furthermore, it can be a daunting task to teach your children biblical doctrine and wonder if you’ll have answers to all of their questions. You don’t feel qualified to teach them well, but confessions and catechisms are intended to be a help to this end. Read and answer one question each night around the dinner table or before bed, and read the scripture references that go with them, and as they get older read through the confession of faith one chapter at time 2-3 times per week. Dedicate yourself to this task, because not only will your children be taught, but you’ll learn and grow yourself. And in this way creeds and confessions are intended to help preserve the faith for future generations, through the preservation of essential doctrines.

Limits of creeds and confessions

Now creeds and confessions do have limits. They can’t guarantee a healthy and vibrant church. While orthodoxy is an essential element to that end, it’s not sufficient, it’s not enough. Creed and confessions are intended to facilitate and promote our knowledge and love for God. They’re intended to stir our affections for God as we meditate upon the truths of his word. Furthermore, they not intended to teach us to love theology as a formal discipline with an aim to puff us up, but to more earnestly love God himself. Creeds and confessions are not an end unto themselves, but as an aid to engender within us a strong love and devotion to God.

Prayer