Workshop: Apostles' Creed

The Apostles’ Creed appeared in texts for the first time in the early 3rd century.

Symbole des Apôtres

Je crois en Dieu, le Père tout-puissant,

créateur du ciel et de la terre.

Je crois en Jésus-Christ, son Fils unique, notre Seigneur,

qui a été conçu du Saint-Esprit

et qui est né de la Vierge Marie;

il a souffert sous Ponce Pilate,

il a été crucifié, il est mort, il a été enseveli,

il est descendu aux enfers ;

le troisième jour, il est ressuscité des morts ;

Il est monté au ciel ;

il siège à la droite de Dieu, le Père tout-puissant ;

il viendra de là pour juger les vivants et les morts.

Je crois en l'Esprit Saint.

Je crois la sainte Église universelle,

la communion des saints, la rémission des péchés,

la résurrection de la chair et la vie éternelle.

Amen.

I believe in God, the Father almighty,

      creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,

      who was conceived by the Holy Spirit

      and born of the virgin Mary.

      He suffered under Pontius Pilate,

      was crucified, died, and was buried;

      he descended to hell.

      The third day he rose again from the dead.

      He ascended to heaven

      and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.

      From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

      the holy universal church,

      the communion of saints,

      the forgiveness of sins,

      the resurrection of the body,

      and the life everlasting. Amen.

The Apostles’ Creed appeared in texts for the first time in the early 3rd century.

It’s ironic that in many Baptist churches today, the Apostles’ Creed is practically unknown, because the Creed was used initially (and is still used today in many traditions) as a confession for baptism.

We find it for the first time in a documant called The Apostolic Tradition, which describes baptism at the time, and the Apostles’ Creed was recited during the baptism of a new believer. The person being baptized would cite line after line, with several immersions— “I believe…”, dunk, “I believe...”, dunk.

After this very early tradition, the Creed became a part of the practiced life of the church. It was a discipleship tool—basically a curriculum—for the early church. And it has been used in practically every denomination, in every branch of Christianity, ever since.

(And just in case anyone gets a slightly too “Catholic” vibe from all of this, here’s a quote from John Calvin concerning the Creed: « Je nomme le symbole des apôtres, mais je ne me soucie pas beaucoup de savoir qui en a été l’auteur… Quoi qu’il en soit, je ne doute nullement, de quelque part qu’il soit procédé, qu’il n’ait été dès le premier commencement de l’Église et même dès le temps des apôtres reçu comme une confession publique et certaine de la foi. »)

Now, a lot of people today—especially modern evangelicals—will wonder, What use is there in learning and repeating early creeds like the Apostles’ Creed?

So here’s what we’re going to do—it’s very simple.

We’re going to talk for a few minutes about why we should know more about, and affirm, and even memorize and repeat, the Apostles’ Creed, and then we’re going to look at the Creed itself.

Why the Apostles’ Creed?

The first reason is that the Creed is ecumenical—meaning it’s affirmed by practically all Christian denominations and all Christian traditions, including Catholicism.

After, part of the practiced life of the church (a discipleship tool, the curriculum of the early church)

That fact can bother a lot of us, because a lot of Christian traditions—especially Catholicism—believe things that are radically different from what we believe. One Christian said to me, “Affirming the Apostles’ Creed scares me a little, because it could give the impression that we believe the same things, when we don’t.”

And that is absolutely true. But the fact that Catholicism accepts the Creed is, I think, actually a good reason why we should affirm it.

Evangelicals often ask the question, Are Catholics really Christians, in the biblical sense? Or to put it another way, Is it possible for a Catholic to have true, saving faith in Christ?

If you grew up Catholic, that can sound like a really offensive question, but it’s important to know that Protestants and Catholics do indeed believe things about salvation—about what Jesus Christ did and how he saved us—that are so different as to be incompatible.

According to the Bible, it is impossible to truly hold to the full doctrine of the Catholic church and come to saving faith, because full Catholic doctrine actually adds things we have to do to be saved. The Bible says we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone; but in Catholicism you have to do all kinds of other things on top of that in order to be saved.

That is exactly the kind of “gospel” which Paul calls “accursed” in his letter to the Galatians ().

But there are a great number of people who have grown up in the Catholic Church, and who are Catholics today, because that’s all they’ve ever known. And they haven’t delved deep into Catholic theology for their idea of salvation. What they know is what they hear the most often and the most easily, and what they hear the most easily is the kind of thing we see in the Apostles’ Creed.

So affirming the Creed is one way to see how even someone who belongs to a church which teaches heretical doctrine can still come to saving faith in Christ—if they believe and accept and confess these things, they are, by every common measure, Christians.

By that token, the Apostles’ Creed can be an extremely useful tool in speaking to our Catholic friends about the gospel, because it’s something they have definitely heard, and that they more than likely know by heart. The hardest thing about sharing the gospel with someone is finding common ground, a place for both of us to start walking toward Christ together. And the Creed gives us that.

The second reason we should affirm the Apostles’ Creed is that it is a summary of the Christian faith.

These are the things that all Christians have believed, at all times, in all places, since the beginning.

In other words, the truths we find in the Creed should be a part of every Christian’s DNA—believing these things is what it means to be a Christian.

Thirdly: the Apostles’ Creed is a discipleship tool.

In other words, this is not an academic document; it is a profoundly pastoral document. It’s a tool for the health of the Christian.

The Creed is short (twelve lines); it is easy to understand; it is easy to memorize and easy to repeat. Imagine how helpful this would have been in the early church, when people didn’t have easy access to a Bible like we do today, when often they would only hear the Bible read out loud once a week.

We all know that repetition is the mother of learning;

The Creed was their crutch during the week, a tool they had to help keep them on track regarding what they believed.

Fourthly: the Apostles’ Creed helps us read the Bible rightly.

We often forget that heresy almost never comes from outside the church, but from inside the church. People read the Bible, but they read it through the lens of what they want to see, so they read it wrong. (Remember when we talked about the religious leaders, and why Christ criticized their reading of the Bible? This is what they were doing.)

And the historic creeds were developed to help refute heresies inside the church—to help people stay on track when they read the Bible.

Which brings us to our fifth point: the Apostles’ Creed keeps us anchored in the historic community of believers.

We say this very often in our church: you cannot learn the truth of the Bible rightly without your brothers and sisters. We are all extremely myopic—we look at the world, and the Bible, and our faith, through very reduced lenses. So we need our brothers and sisters to help us see around our own blind spots.

But we so often forget that the community of believers isn’t just this community of these believers. We cannot learn rightly without the community of believers…including the historic community of those believers who have gone before us.

Let me put it another way: we cannot learn rightly without a healthy view of the church tradition.

Now this too can make us uncomfortable, because we are very suspicious of Catholicism and the way they view tradition.

I cannot for the life of me remember who put it this way, but it stuck with me. One church historian described the different ways of viewing church tradition as Tradition 0, Tradition 1, and Tradition 2.

Those who hold to Tradition 0 would completely reject all church tradition. These are the guys who will say, “We have the Bible, and we need nothing else.”

That’s initially appealing to us, because we are Reformed Christians—we believe in “the Five Solas,” including “Sola Scriptura”: the Bible alone.

But that in itself is a church tradition.

Sola Scriptura doesn’t mean that the Bible is the only thing we need. Loads of people read the Bible all the time, and know the Bible well, to no effect. Sola Scriptura means the Bible is our primary rule for faith and practice.

The Holy Spirit’s main tool to shape us is the Bible; but it is not his only tool. Have you ever had a conversation with another believer, where he or she says something incredibly simple, and the Spirit uses that statement to show you sin in your own life, or a misunderstanding about God?

And that assumption is a tradition we have received.

You cannot escape tradition. As Jaroslav Pelikan said, “The only alternative to tradition is bad tradition.” You will affirm something that sounds good to you, and you’ll repeat it over and over, and eventually you’ll teach it to your kids. And they will find some problem with it and want to tweak it. And thus, a new tradition will be born, new creeds will spring up.

So Tradition 0 is fundamentally impossible.

Tradition 2 is where the Catholic church lands: they hold the tradition of the church as having the same level of authority as the Bible itself. In other words, if you want to be saved, the Bible isn’t enough—you need to have church tradition tell you what else you need to do, all the things the Bible doesn’t say.

Tradition 1 is where we would land, and this way of viewing tradition would hold to one main body of sacred writings—the Bible—and will view church tradition as a helpful tool to help us come to the Bible in the right way.

The Apostles’ Creed is one of these incredibly useful tools that have been handed down to us from our past brothers and sisters, which help us read and interpret the Bible rightly.

Lastly, the Apostles’ Creed reminds us of what is specifically true about the Christian faith.

Creed: ecumenical, part of the Christian’s DNA

Creeds most commonly used to refute heresy, to keep Christians on track concerning essential doctrine.

Pastoral (not academic) in nature—a tool for the health of the Christian.

I quoted Jaroslav Pelikan before. He died in 2006, but until then he was probably the utmost authority on historical church traditions, creeds and confessions. He had an uncanny gift of taking academic findings and explaining why these findings are relevant in very simple, relatable terms.

Creed helps us develop a ‘rule of faith’ to help us read the Bible rightly

Dr. Pelikan appeared on a podcast called “On Belief,” hosted by Krista Tippett, a few years before his death. In that interview, Tippett asked him why the Christian faith needs creeds like the Apostles’ Creed.

‘A snapshot recitation’: repetition is the mother of learning.

In that interview, Tippett asked him why the Christian faith needs creeds like the Apostles’ Creed. And his answer was perfect.

His answer, in my opinion, was absolutely perfect.

You can’t learn rightly without community...including the historic community.

“Well, what it is about religious faith that needs creed is that religious faith in general, prayer addressed “To Whom It May Concern,” sentiment about some transcendent dimension otherwise undefined, does not have any staying power. It’s OK to have that at 10:00 on a Sunday morning when you’re out with your friends somewhere, but in the darkest hours of life, you’ve got to believe something specific. And that specification is the task of the creed, because, much as some people may not like it, to believe one thing is also to disbelieve another. To say yes is also to say no.”

In other words, creeds like the Apostles’ Creed allow us to answer the question, “What do you believe?” in a very specific, very all-encompassing way. It’s not, “What do you believe today?” but rather, “What do I, along with my brothers and sisters, believe at all times—past, present and future—regardless of the situation, or the questions I may have, or the doubts I may be feeling. They help us remember in what we have placed our trust.

Religious faith in general does not have any staying power. It may be okay to have that at 10:00 on Sunday morning when you’re out with friends somewhere, but in the darkest hours of life, you have to believe something specific. That specification is the task of the creed, because as much as some people don’t like it, to believe one thing is to disbelieve another. To say yes is also to say no. And that specification is the task of the Creed. »

So there we have just a few reasons why we should learn and affirm the Apostles’ Creed.

Calvin, On Faith: « Je nomme le symbole des apôtres, mais je ne me soucie pas beaucoup de savoir qui en a été l’auteur… Quoi qu’il en soit, je ne doute nullement, de quelque part qu’il soit procédé, qu’il n’ait été dès le premier commencement de l’Église et même dès le temps des apôtres reçu comme une confession publique et certaine de la foi. »

But what does it say?

Pélican: « The only alternative to tradition is bad tradition. » You will affirm something that sounds good to you, and you’ll repeat it over and over, and eventually you’ll teach it to your kids. And they will find some problem with it and want to tweak it. And thus, a new creed will be born.

Not « what do I believe today? » but rather, « What do I (and we) believe at all times, past, present and future? »

We’re going to take it line by line, bit by bit.

The Apostles’ Creed

I believe in God, the Father almighty,

      creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,

      who was conceived by the Holy Spirit

      and born of the virgin Mary.

      He suffered under Pontius Pilate,

      was crucified, died, and was buried;

      he descended to hell.

      The third day he rose again from the dead.

      He ascended to heaven

      and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.

      From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

      the holy universal church,

      the communion of saints,

      the forgiveness of sins,

      the resurrection of the body,

      and the life everlasting. Amen.

“I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.”

What do we mean when we say “I believe”?

The nature of belief is a particularly sticky subject in our day and age.

People believe in all kinds of crazy things, but what they mean when they say they believe in those things can vary wildly. To use Packer’s example, if someone says, “I believe in UFOs,” they mean, “I think UFOs are real.” If they say, “I believe in democracy,” they mean they consider the principles of democracy to be valuable and beneficial.

But when Christians say they believe in God, it goes much further than that. When the Creed says “I believe,” it does not mean, “I feel” or “I think.”

The text of the Creed, in its original Greek, begins by saying (literally), “I am believing in God.” It is an active verb. Beyond a simple intellectual assent, the Christian’s belief actually compels him into a cooperative relationship with God in which God promises something and the Christian responds to those promises by trusting and obeying him.

This is what we mean when we talk about faith.

famously begins by saying,

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Although we can’t see God, we are convinced that he exists and we hope in him. But that intellectual assent isn’t enough: after this, the author lists example after example of men and women in Scripture who believed God, and whose belief actually drove them to action.

Abraham's faith caused him to tell his wife that they were moving to a place they didn’t know, just because God had told him to. Noah’s faith caused him to build a boat in the desert, even though he’d never seen the ocean.

Faith, the belief of the Christian, is a cooperative relationship with God, in which we believe in his promises and respond in trust and obedience.

What about people who doubt? Can we say that they don’t have faith?

It is absolutely possible to have faith and still have doubts—in fact, I find it suspicious if someone who claims to have faith also claims to never have doubts. The question isn’t, Do you ever doubt? but rather, What do you do with those doubts?

J. I. Packer wrote,

In our doubts, we think we are honest, and certainly try to be; but perfect honesty is beyond us in this world, and an unacknowledged unwillingness to take God’s word about things, whether from deference to supposed scholarship or fear of ridicule or of deep involvement or some other motive, often underlies a person’s doubt about this or that item of faith. Repeatedly this becomes clear in retrospect, though we could not see it at the time.

To put it another way: at some point we all have to decide to take God’s word for it that what he says is true and what he commands is right. When we refuse to take God’s word for it, and hold out for proof before we obey, usually it is not merely a problem of intellect or proof; most of the time, there is a deeper issue going on in our hearts, which is simply that we don’t want to accept what he says, and we don’t want to do what he says.

The opposite of faith isn’t doubt; it’s hard-heartedness.

And this is a huge push back against the way most of us think about faith and doubt. How many people are hesitant to say they believe until they have answers to their questions? That is not how faith works. If you believe because you’ve gotten answers to all of your questions, you do not have faith, you have intellect.

We don’t believe because we understand; we believe in order to understand. Augustine said that “the Christian life is faith seeking understanding.”

« I believe » ≠ I feel

Doubt: We believe not BECAUSE we understand, but belief IN ORDER TO understand. Augustine: « The Christian life is faith seeking understanding. »

In which God do we believe?

The Creed actually answers that question:

I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

The God in whom we believe is the God of the Bible, Creator of all things, who has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ.

And this is not a secondary issue. We talked about belief earlier. We tend to think that the opposite of faith is atheism. But it’s not.

J. I. Packer wrote:

“Atheism is seen as an enemy, paganism is not, and it is assumed that the difference between one faith and another is quite secondary. But in the Bible the great divide is between those who believe in the Christian God and those who serve idols—’gods,’ that is, whose images, whether metal or mental, do not square with the self-disclosure of the Creator. One wishes that some who recite ‘I believe in God’ in church each Sunday would see that what they actually mean is ‘I do not believe in God—not this God, anyhow!’”

Why does the Creed start with God (and not, say, Jesus)?

The simple answer is that the Bible begins there. The Creed purposefully begins with (In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth) and ends with words which summarize the final chapters of the book of Revelation. It broadly follows the arc of the biblical narrative.

But that is not the only reason.

Often we have a tendency to overemphasize Jesus when we talk about the gospel. I know that sounds heretical, but here’s what I mean. We’ll say things like, “The Bible is all about Jesus.” And that is not a wrong thing to say—we just need to know what we mean when we say it.

Jen Wilkin put it this way: “We sense that our obligation to God begins at the point [at which] we are saved by Jesus. But…your obligation to God actually [exists] because he is your origin.” If we think that of sin as mainly a character flaw, rather than rebellion against the One who created you and rebellion against what you were created to be, we gravely misunderstand just how serious sin is.

What does the Creed say about God?

It speaks of the first person of the Trinity first: the Father. The Creed emphasizes “the Father” before “the Creator,” because he was already the Father before he created anything.

He is almighty. This is probably shorthand for all of God’s incommunicable attributes—those things that are true of God which aren’t true of us. He is all-powerful. He is all-knowing. He is omnipresent.

And finally, he is the Creator of all things, including us. The first thing the Creed says about us, it’s actually saying about God. God is the Creator of all things, which means that we are part of that creation. We belong to him, whether we know it or not, because we are his creation.

“I believe in Jesus Christ...”

This is the subject to which the Creed dedicates the bulk of its time, because the finished work of Christ is the hinge on which the gospel turns.

Who is Jesus Christ?

He is the only Son of the Father. This doesn’t mean that the Father had the Son like I had my Son. It’s not as if at one point God was singular and then, when he “had” the Son, he became plural.

When the Bible says that Christ is the only Son of the Father, it’s referring to the nature of their relationship. The relationship between the Father and the Son in the Trinity is totally unique—even if we are the adopted sons and daughters of the Father, his relationship with us is radically different from his relationship to the Son. They have both always existed, and their relationship has always been what it is now: that of Father to Son.

He is our Lord. We’ll get into why we he is our Lord in a couple minutes, but there has never been a point in Christian history in which the Lordship of Jesus Christ has not been affirmed. Christ has the right to tell us what to do, and we are under obligation to obey him—not because we are Christians, but because we are human beings living in the world he created, under his rule.

He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. This is incredibly important, because it affirms what we talked about in last Sunday’s sermon: that Christ is both God and man.

It’s called the doctrine of the incarnation—the second person of the Trinity, God himself, took on a human form and a human nature. When he became a man, he didn’t stop being God—he didn’t give up his divinity, but rather took on something else.

He didn’t stop becoming God

And the means God used to make this happen was the Holy Spirit, working a miracle in the womb of a young virgin named Mary. The virgin birth is fundamental to our understanding of Christ, because it underlines the fact that his existence as a man was a miracle unlike any other: he is, from the moment of his conception, not part God and part man, but fully God and fully man.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate…

Now this can seem strange. The Creed doesn’t mention the people of Israel. It doesn’t mention the exile. It doesn’t mention the promises of the Messiah. It doesn’t even speak about Christ’s life and ministry (it’s implied in the mention of the virgin birth—because he would have had to live after that—but it’s never explicitly mentioned).

But the Creed does mention Pontius Pilate. Why?

Why?

For one very important reason. The Creed wants to emphasize the fact that the work of Christ on behalf of his people was a historical event. This is something that happened.

The Creed was written sometime before the third century. Pontius Pilate would still be a name people knew and recognized three hundred years later. So the Creed takes pains to speak about him because it wishes to root the massive work of Christ (which comes next) in history.

And the historicity of the work of Christ is fundamental to the gospel. As Paul said in , if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. If these things didn’t actually happen, we are not saved.

Now at this point, the Creed makes a turn and begins to speak what exactly Jesus did when he suffered under Pontius Pilate.

He was crucified, died, and was buried.

The most horrible and paradoxical truth of human history is that the Son of God was killed by sinful men he himself created.

He allowed himself to be crucified. This is another callback to history: crucifixion was of course a real method of execution practiced by the Romans at the time of Christ, and it was so horrible that respectable citizens wouldn’t even mention it in polite company.

This form of death was synonymous with absolute shame. The condemned was stripped naked, usually beaten, nailed to a cross of wood through the wrists and through the feet. The cross was lowered into a hole in the ground, and the crucified would spend the next several hours fighting for his life. He would eventually die of suffocation, when the upraised position of the arms put too much pressure on the lungs, and the exhausted and tortured legs and feet could no longer lift the body up to take a breath.

But Jesus’s suffering on the cross was not merely physical. On the cross, Christ felt the full weight of both man’s sin and God’s judgment against that sin. He felt the full force of the damage our own sin inflicts on the world; and he felt the full wrath of God against that sin. Christ died as our replacement, our sacrifice, our atonement.

This is how he died. He died a real, human death, was buried in a real tomb. And as the Creed says next:

—in a Creed in which so many important things seem to be left aside

[He] descended to hell.

Now this is the one part of the Apostles’ Creed which has spurred a good amount of debate, so we need to talk about it a minute. What do we mean when we say that Christ descended to hell?

We have to understand that when we hear the word “hell,” there is a lot of cultural baggage we have received which colors our understanding of that word.

But that is not what the Creed means when it says it.

The word “hell” in English is used to translate several different words in the Bible. The first is Gehenna, which is the place of eternal torment, where sinners suffer the wrath of God for all eternity. Since around the seventeenth century, this is what we mean in English

But prior to that, it was used to refer to another term we find in the Bible: Hades in Greek, or Sheol in Hebrew. What these terms refer to is the place we go after we die—the place of the dead. And we need to understand that it isn’t a place—it’s not a geographical location—but rather a state of being. We talk about places and leaving and being sent to somewhere else to help us understand spiritual realities using human, physical terms.

When we die, our souls leave our bodies, and rather than winking out of existence, they are “sent to” the place of the dead.

For the righteous, those who die having faith in God, the place of the dead is a state of spiritual union with God. Paul says in that to die is to depart and be with Christ. So when we die and go to Hades, we don’t go to “hell” as we understand it, but are transferred to a state of spiritual union with Christ—and Paul says it is far better.

For the unrighteous, those who die without faith in God, the place of the dead is a state of spiritual torment and separation from God.

Jesus did not die unrighteous—when he took our sin upon himself, and suffered the wrath of God against that sin, he committed the ultimate righteous act. He was not separated from God at his death (because, as we saw last week, if one person of the Trinity is separated from the other two, God is not God, because God is the Trinity). Rather, at his death, he spent three days in the state that the righteous dead are in today.

That is why one scholar said that we could translate the meaning of the Greek text here as, “He descended to the dead”, rather than “hell”.

The reason the Creed mentions this is very important, and actually, profoundly pastoral.

In the first year of our church, one of our members, a man named Norredine, died of stomach cancer. We had a lot of discussions together before his death about what awaited him. He was afraid of death—and that is a completely normal reaction, because death is, by definition, an intruder. It is something that is not a natural part of the world God created, but an effect of our sin.

One of the truths he found most reassuring in his fear was that Jesus had gone before him in this. Jesus Christ knows what it is to die a human death. He went through it first, and emerged victorious. So even if it’s scary, we can know that Christ has paved the way for us there, and ensured that we will come out of it unscathed. It’s scary, but ultimately, it holds no threat against us.

The third day he rose again from the dead.

This is the proof of what I just said. This is how we know we will escape death unharmed. As Jesus went before us in death, he went before us in resurrection.

The Holy Spirit raised Christ from the dead—reunited his soul to his body—and actually glorified that body, so that all of its human limitations were gone.

The resurrection is our proof that through his life and death, Jesus Christ has defeated sin and death and Satan. He has obtained power over the grave.

And where he has gone, he brings us after him (as we’ll see).

He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.

After his resurrection, Christ appeared to his disciples on multiple occasions, continuing to teach them and fellowship with them. And a little over a month later, he ascended into heaven before their eyes, and was seated at the right hand of the Father.

What exactly does that mean? What does this part of the Creed remind us to affirm?

Firstly, it reminds us that Christ’s ascension wasn’t merely spiritual, but physical. Christ was resurrected in a physical body (like ours, but glorified—human 2.0), and when he ascended, he ascended in a physical body as well. Today, Jesus Christ isn’t a spiritual being floating on a cloud playing a harp—he is a physical human being living in a spiritual realm. (Which of course is mind-blowing in and of itself.

Secondly, Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father. This isn’t referring to a physical chair set to the right of a spiritual chair. This is royal language. To be seated at the right hand of the Father is to be seated in the place of ultimate power. It is the place of God’s King.

Why is it important to affirm this?

Because from the very beginning up to today, it is very easy to imagine that Satan is the one in charge of this world. This isn’t a new development. At every stage of human history, it is possible to look at the state of the world and say, “Well clearly Satan has authority here.”

The Creed reminds us of the teaching of the Bible that because of Christ’s finished work,

God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father ().

Christ, not Satan, is the ruler of this world—and at some point or another, every human being, every angel, every demon, will recognize and confess his rule.

Anon, 2016. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,

      who was conceived by the Holy Spirit

      and born of the virgin Mary.

      He suffered under Pontius Pilate,

      was crucified, died, and was buried;

      he descended to hell.

      The third day he rose again from the dead.

      He ascended to heaven

      and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.

From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

Now the Creed skips ahead a bit—it will come back to life on this earth prior to the final judgment, but for now it wants to remind us that it is not angels, or demons, or anyone else who will return to earth, but Christ. Christ will return to judge the living and the dead.

Those living at the time of his return will be judged for their life—will they be judged for their sin and rejection of Christ, or for the faith they have placed in his finished work for them?

Those who are dead at the time of his return will also be judged for their lives. When they died, did they die in rebellion against God, or in union with God through faith in Christ?

Christ will return to judge the living and the dead.

“I believe in the Holy Spirit...”

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

Why does the third paragraph of the Creed begin like this?

Because the third paragraph of the Creed concerns our lives between Christ’s ascension and his return. And in that time, Christ’s presence in us is manifested through his Holy Spirit, whom he sent to his people.

To put it another way, Christ is on the throne, reigning over this world today through the Spirit he has sent into the world to live in his people.

It’s important to note a this point the Trinitarian thrust of the Apostles’ Creed: paragraph 1 speaks of the Father, paragraph 2 speaks of the Son, and paragraph 3 speaks of the Spirit. All three are equally God, equally divine; what we can say about God, we can say about all three of them.

So what does the Holy Spirit do?

A lot of things, but mainly, his purpose is the same as the Father’s—to point to and glorify the Son.

He opens our eyes to the Son’s glory in the gospel. He takes the dead people we were, and makes us alive in Christ (). He brings the gospel to bear on our lives, making us see that it is not folly, but the power of God for salvation ().

He unites us to the Son by faith. This is why we talked earlier about the difference between faith (biblical belief) and mere intellectual assent. The Spirit actually gives us the faith that unites us to Christ—it is the gift of God (). We cannot understand God until we have faith in him.

The Spirit lives in us, to change us into the image of the Son, by causing his fruit—his own character—to grow in us ().

And the Spirit equips us to fulfill the ministry of the gospel. People often get derailed with talk of the spiritual gifts (especially the supernatural ones—tongues and prophecy and healing). And they get derailed because they spend so much time thinking about what gifts the Spirit gives us that we forget why he gives us gifts—to give us what we to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth through the church.

To put it another way, Christ is on the throne, reigning over this world today through the Spirit he has sent into the world to live in his people.

“[I believe in] the holy universal church, the communion of saints...”

This line contains the major difference between the Catholic version of the Apostles’ Creed and the Protestant version. In the Catholic version, this line reads “I believe in the holy Catholic church.” And obviously we don’t want to say that, because we don’t want to be misunderstood as saying that Catholicism is, in essence, the “true version” of the Christian church.

In fact, the word “catholic”, when used as an adjective instead of a proper name, simply means universal.

There’s a lot we could say here, but this is the main point the Creed is getting at. By the power of the Holy Spirit, through faith in Christ, believers are united both to God, and to every other believer who has ever lived or will ever live.

This is what we mean when we talk about the “universal church”. The church is not a building, or a denomination, or a specific group of people at a specific time—but rather, it is all believers, at all times.

This is why we so often say that our salvation is not a private affair. God does not merely save individuals, he saves a people. He saves a family. He saves his church. And he never intended us to live our Christian lives without the church.

So you can see why we spoke so long before about tradition, and the desire to affirm important aspects of church tradition. We are united in Christ to our past brothers and sisters. We are united to Abraham. We are united to Moses. And to David. And to the disciples of Christ. And to Paul. And to Timothy. And to Augustine. And to John Calvin. And to my grandfather, who died in Christ ten years ago.

, which on first view speaks about the husband’s role in marriage, actually teaches us deeper truths about the union of Christ with his church:

How foolish would it be of us to imagine that we can no longer learn anything from those brothers and sisters to whom we are united, and from who will continue to teach us of the grace of God for all eternity!

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

This is also why we so often say that our salvation is not a private affair.

Christ gave himself up for his church in order to make her (and every one of her members) holy and pure, that he might present us to himself as his bride, made beautiful for her wedding.

This is the endgame; this is the final goal of our union with Christ.

“[I believe in] the forgiveness of sins...”

Isn’t it interesting that the Creed makes no mention of sin until three lines before the end? Why do you think that is?

Sin is introduced at this point because this document is meant to be used by the church, to encourage the church. Obviously, if you’re sharing the gospel with an unbeliever, you’ll want to mention sin before mentioning the work of Christ.

But as Christians, we must always think of our own sin in the context of the finished work of Christ. For if we have faith in Christ, sin is no longer a threat. Jesus Christ already defeated sin on the cross; he already paid the penalty for that sin. It is done.

So now, when we think of sin, we do not see it as a threat to be evaded, but as an enemy who has already been defeated.

And that is why we can actually count on the forgiveness of sin.

You see, for the Christian, forgiveness of sin is not “the thing that needs to happen for us to be saved.” Rather, it is the thing that needs to happen for us to enjoy our union with Christ. It is a relational reality. When we sin against God as Christians, our union with him is not broken in the least; but our own ability to realize that union, and to feel the weight of our salvation, is wounded. When we sin, we have a hard time praying. We have a hard time believing that God really loves us. We have a hard time encouraging others.

So we pray for God’s forgiveness—not so that we can be saved, but so that we can remember our unbroken union with him, and start walking with him again.

“[I believe in] the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”

      the holy universal church,

      the communion of saints,

It’s amazing to me how many misconceptions about heaven we could clear up in our own minds if we would simply learn the Apostles’ Creed. Our view of heaven comes with just as much baggage as our view of hell.

      the forgiveness of sins,

When we think of heaven, we think of Tom and Jerry sitting on clouds, wearing wings and playing harps. We think of the spirits of our ancestors looking down on us. I myself think of a painting I saw as a child, which shows a golden city, with beautiful shining gates. And the ground of this city isn’t a ground, but clouds under the feet of celestial beings.

      the resurrection of the body,

The Bible does not speak of heaven in those terms.

      and the life everlasting. Amen.

The Bible says that just as Christ was raised from the dead, so will we all be raised from the dead. That is, at Christ’s return, we will not be raised to a spiritual eternal life, but a physical eternal life. We will be raised in our bodies. In THESE bodies. They will be made new, made perfect, glorified—but they will be these bodies.

In , Paul uses the metaphor of plants to explain the relationship between our present bodies and our bodies as they will be. He says that plants are connected to, but still different from, the seeds from which they grew; in the same way, our future bodies will be continuations of our current bodies, but much improved.

J. I. Packer wrote,

“[It] is good to know that God’s aim in giving us second-rate physical frames here is to prepare us for managing better bodies hereafter. As C. S. Lewis said somewhere, they give you unimpressive horses to learn to ride on, and only when you are ready for it are you allowed an animal that will gallop and jump.”

At some point, our bodies will get old. They will start to break down. They will get sick.

When that happens, where will our hope lie? In the idea that this body will be thrown away and that we’ll become something unimaginable? That’s nearly as frightening as the idea that there is nothing after death.

Our hope lies in the reality that one day, everything wrong with our bodies will be made right. Everything broken in the world will be restored to its proper working order.

And here again, we see the grace of God that we’ve seen all throughout the Apostles’ Creed.

God gives us his Word, and tools like the Creed, to remind us that he knows what we need, and what is good for us. He understands that what he creates is good, and that it is more beautiful to take something which started good, and make it good again. He understands that we need not mysterious, undefined, vague hope in something we can’t understand, but solid, specific hope to anchor our hearts in suffering.

The Apostles’ Creed gives us a short, succinct, easy-to-memorize way of recalling the foundations of our hope a any time, and to find rest and reassurance for our souls.