All posts tagged Creed

In the Holy Spirit

-Looking at the Nicene Creed in celebration of it’s 1,701^st birthday. But each week, we’re also looking at a different creed to see why we need to have creeds. I’m guessing you’ve seen this one before, there’s a house in my neighborhood that has it up:

Let’s think about what this is saying:

-Black lives matters. I agree! As the nursery rhyme that I still sing to my kids says: Jesus loves the little children of the world, red and yellow, black and white. But, we have to differentiate between this statement the organization Black Lives Matter. BLM as an organization has some major disagreements with Christian faith, but we as Christians can affirm that black lives do indeed matter!

-Science is real: science is merely observation, this is as helpful as saying “science says…” science doesn’t “say” anything, scienTISTS can say things as they interpret data and observations.

-Love is love: we talked about that one last week.

-Kindness is everything: have you looked at gas prices? I can’t use kindness to fill up my tank! It’s a ridiculous platitude that’s meant to give warm fuzzies but doesn’t mean anything!

-And Christians can be guilty of doing the same thing: I’m “pan” millennial, we’ll see how it all “pans” out, I’m as Calvinist as the Bible says and as Arminian as the Bible says. Study these issues! Those are an excuse to be lazy, and God doesn’t call people to laziness! Friends, this is why we need creeds in our lives to help protect us from laziness or theological drift. A friend sent me this yard sign that if anyone wants to buy for me I will gladly stick in my front yard:

-I’m going to ask you to stand for the reading of God’s Word, but we’re going to do something a little bit different, I’m just going to read them to you and ask you to listen and not follow along in your Bibles quite yet because I want to read the primary texts that get to what we’re studying today.

–Gen. 1:1-2; Luke 1:26-35, 4:1, 14-15, John 14:15-26, 16:12-15

The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed

-Technically, the creed we’ve been studying is referred to this way instead of just the Nicene Creed, because there are 2 editions of this. I shared at the beginning of this series that we’re celebrating 1700 years since this was written, but that’s only partially true. The conversation continued over the next decades, so in 381 they landed on the finalized version of the Nicene Creed that continues to be used through today.

-Now before we look at the biggest difference, I want to remind us where we’re starting and the reason this Creed even exists. God is the creator of everything, but there’s a hard line between God and creation, you’ve seen this each week. Arius worked hard to emphasize the one-ness of God and thus argued that Jesus has to go below the line. He argued that since Jesus was “begotten” then there had to have been a time when He was not. But the council, tracing what the Bible said, disagreed with that argument and said that Jesus Himself claimed to be one with the Father, therefore Jesus is above the line.

-The next question they had to work through gets us back to the beginning of last week’s section, where it said that Jesus’s work was “for us and for our salvation.” How do we bridge this divide? History traces humanity’s attempts at building a ladder to try to get up there, most specifically seen at Babel where humans did their best to reach the realm of the gods (in the heavens above), but despite humanity’s attempts, there is nothing that can bridge this gap. God exists completely outside of His creation, we can’t do anything to get up to Him, which means He has to come down to us, which just so happens to be the story we see in the Bible! Out of the overflow of God’s inner love comes the physical created world that is created to love God and love each other. But how can we be brought into that Trinitarian love? That’s where we need the Holy Spirit living in us, which the 325 edition of this creed didn’t articulate very much, here’s the comparison:

-The first edition made a basic statement that didn’t give much clarity, which meant guess which debate came next? Yeah, people trying to argue that the Holy Spirit was less than God. There was a group that called themselves the Pneumatomachi (side note, but if you’re going to create a heretical cult, this is a great name to use) which is Greek for “Spirit-fighters.” Just as Arius denied that Jesus was fully God, this group denied that the Holy Spirit was fully God, proposed by a guy name Macedonius. So how did the church respond? They convened another council to re-articulate and defend what the Bible says by fleshing out what they meant when they said “and in the Holy Spirit” previously.

-This takes place all the time, like you know how policies and laws always get created in response to something happening? That’s exactly what’s taking place here. At a previous church I was at, there was a policy in the wedding manual (but nowhere else) that banned Dungeons and Dragons, which means it could be played anytime EXCEPT when a wedding is going on! I would have LOVED to have known what happened that led to the banning of a board game because you know it was in response to some funny story!

-1 other big difference between these 2 editions is what is included after the section on the Holy Spirit:

-This was removed in the 381 version because they wanted to use it as devotional and liturgical statement to be used in the church and by Christians.

-hypostasis and ousia are used as synonyms here (untranslated to be able to see what exactly is being said) and ensuring that Arius couldn’t use his preferred word and get away with it. Hypostatis refers to personhood or being, and ousia is the same thing (at this time). Eventually, hypostatis is the preferred term in referring to the persons of the Trinity, so what we looked at last week is what theologians call “the hypostatic union,” Jesus having 2 natures but 1 Being or essence. And if you’re already confused, then use that confusion to marvel at our God whose ways and thoughts are above anything we can ever imagine!

-So now let’s all recite the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed together again (and I hope some of you are taking the time to memorize it throughout the week! There are papers at the tables on your way out if you haven’t gotten one yet!)

-This last phrase I’m breaking up into 2 weeks, this week we’ll just look at the Holy Spirit, next week we’ll look at where He’s at work: in the church.

The Life-Giver

-I intentionally pulled this word out even though it’s not the first word used to describe him because I love this summary of the Spirit’s work, and the Greek is 1 compound word “life-giver.” Have you ever thought of the Sprit as the one who gives life? We read Gen. 1 earlier which explicitly mentions the Spirit being involved in creation. We know from other passages in the NT that the Son is also involved in creation, so we see from the beginning the Trinitarian nature of God.

-This is intentionally mean to contrast with the dead. Think of what Rom. 8:11 says: the Holy Spirit’s role in salvation is literally to bring us from death to life spiritually.

-And we also see the role of the Spirit in the act of creation twice. First in the verses we read earlier where the Spirit is involved in bringing life to the primordial chaos, but then we see His work implied when the text focuses on the creation of humans in Gen. 2: notice that it’s not until the man is giving breath that he becomes a living being, so the Spirit’s role is to give life.

-We read these verses earlier, too, but that theme comes up again in the new creation of Jesus inside Mary’s womb. Look at how both Luke and Matthew describe what happened.

-Back to the creed: the Lord, the same as Jesus, pointing to unity between Son & Spirit

-The ordering is both biblical & logical. We started with the Father, then talked about the Son, and now we’re getting to the Holy Spirit, and that’s the reason we refer to them as the first, second, and third persons of the Godhead. It’s not significance, it’s the way God reveals Himself to us.

-What is “proceeds”? Another word theologians will use in reference to the Spirit is the word “spiration” which just means breath.

-They’re trying to answer the question: how do we talk about the distinctions within the godhead? How do we determine the difference between the Son & the Spirit? Last week we looked at the word “begotten” in relation to Son seen from John 3:16, proceeds is the word chosen to refer to the Spirit’s relation because of John 15:26 (remember, they’re working to define how the Bible reveals God to us) so we see that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, while the Son is begotten from the Father.

-we’ll talk about the part in brackets as the third point, so hold onto that

-The theme in this next section is the Greek word syn being used repeatedly in this section, it means “with” or “together.”

-a literal way of trying to translate this idea would make zero sense in English in most cases, but it appears 3 times: “with”, “co-worshipped” and “co-glorified” attempting to signify that we worship God as Father, Son, and Spirit.

-Something I’ve been mulling over for a few years that comes out of this: do we pray to the Spirit? And I at times struggle to land on some of this discussion because there’s so many excesses of conversation that we need to avoid, but that doesn’t mean we should stop thinking, studying, or learning about the HS, but if the HS is God, then shouldn’t we also pray to Him?

-I also think emphasis matters, because the primary focus throughout Scripture is on the Father (think of the Lord’s Prayer, how does it begin?), the second emphasis is on the Son, and the third emphasis is on the Spirit, which means if we’re following the Bible our addressing of God should follow a similar pattern where we direct our prayers to our Father, addressing him through the Son, and we do so in the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. And even the work of the HS is meant to focus our minds in a specific direction: towards Jesus.

-I love what Charles Spurgeon said about this idea in one of his devotionals: Friends, part of the reason we struggle with sin is because we’re too busy looking at our sin or at ourselves instead of looking to Christ! Ask the Holy Spirit to focus your eyes on Jesus instead of yourself!
-As always, because we’re in the realm of God, there’s more that could be said, but we don’t have time to dig into it today! I have plenty of books for you if you want to borrow them!

-The last phrase on the Holy Spirit gets to the realm of speaking. Have you ever considered the reality that our God speaks? And not just that God speaks, but sometimes God speaks through people! Where it says the prophets here, just replace it with “the Bible.” Anytime we see the Spirit speaking it’s going to drive us back to the Bible, and we see examples of that throughout Scripture:

-Look at what David says in 2 Sam. 23:2. Who is that spoke through David? The Spirit!

-Look how the author of Hebrews refers to the OT in 3:7. He’s quoting Psalm 95 there, but who does it say was speaking in Psalm 95? The HS!

-But it’s not just the OT the whole Bible is inspired by the same Spirit! 2 Tim. 3:16-17 tells us that ALL Scripture is “inspired by God” is trying to translate another compound Greek word made up of God + breath/Spirit, some translations have “God-breathed”, again inspired by the Spirit, and notice the goal of this inspiration: for us to be complete and ready for every good work (which comes about through the Spirit working in us)

-The last example of the Spirit speaking through Scripture: 2 Peter 1:21. I love the picture Peter paints here! “carried along” God working in them, but not leaving them off the hook, all this comes because the third person of the Trinity lives within us in some mysterious way through faith.

-Not let’s get into the most debated phrase of this whole thing:

Filioque

-If you don’t know Latin, this word is Latin for “and the Son.”

-Let’s go back to the verse for the wording of this creed “proceeds” in John 15:26

-It sure looks like the Son is somehow involved in this process, right? And there’s other passages like John 14:16, once again Jesus is involved in the sending of the Spirit, even if the Spirit doesn’t “proceed” from the Son.

-The biggest debate about this whole creed is whether or not to include “and the Son” of for the procession of the HS. This is pointed to as the reason for the split of the church between the east and the west. The phrase wasn’t added to the creed until 589 (200 years later), at a Western council in Toledo, Spain

-And this wasn’t a trivial matter! One of the eastern bishops named Photius wrote in 866 (pardon the French): do you see how strongly he’s condemning the phrase?

-And he has a point! Notice the word ecumenical, we tend to view that word with at least skepticism today, if not outright dismissal as someone who pursues just the lowest common denominator in theology instead of taking a stance, in this case view it positively as something the whole church together affirms.

-We’re Western Christians, we’re products of affirming that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, but is that the best way to describe their relationship?

-Some terms theologians use to help us understand are in Latin: one refers to the mysterious inner workings of the Trinity that we can’t fully understand, the other refers to the external workings of the Trinity (and if you go digging into this further you’ll find that theologians will also refer to this distinction as the economic or the immanent Trinity, economic as the external workings, immanent as the internal)

-And if you just got more confused: we need a way of distinguishing between the work of God Himself versus the way we experience him in the history of salvation. For example, we can say that God lives in us from the moment we’re saved, but we can’t say the Son lives in us. Similarly we can say that Mary is the mother of God (another early church debate!), but we can’t say that Mary is the mother of the Father. Or one more example, we can say that God died, but we can’t say that the Father died.

-The phrase “and the Son” wasn’t in the original, so it shouldn’t be considered a marker of orthodoxy, but we do have to acknowledge some kind of relationship between the Son and the Spirit. Maximus the Confessor (another great name) said it should be proceeds from the Father through the Son.

-Words matter, definitions of words matter, and God’s revelation matters above all of them! And one of the joys of being a Protestant (that’s another church history issue for another time) is we can look at some of these debates as outside observers who continually go back to the Bible and try to defend what the Bible says. So a couple passages that I think help us get some more glimpses into the Trinity:

–John 16 shows the Spirit obeying Jesus, and says that everything the Father has is also Jesus’s, which you could argue that if the Spirit proceeds from the Father, then He must also proceed from the Son.

-In contrast to that, Mark 1 tells the account of Jesus’s baptism where all 3 persons of the Trinity are glimpsed together, Jesus in the water, the Spirit like a dove, and the Father affirming His Son. But then what happens to Jesus? He obeys the Spirit. And once again, we’re left with a mystery as to how the Godhead works “ad intra” or internally. We experience the Trinity “ad extra” and the Spirit (through the Son) brings us into this loving relationship within the Trinity, but we will never completely understand how this relationship works. And each time we bring up this mystery, we need to fall on our face in worship of this God.

-I want to end our study on the HS today in John 20. Because of what God has done for us through His Son and in the Spirit living in us, we have peace with God. But the Spirit living in us is also the reason we’re still here in the world. The Spirit living in us is the reason Jesus sends us out into the world to both show the world the love God has for them, and to live holy lives in the world as a picture of what it means to follow Jesus.

-There’s also a note in here about sins, which leads us into the Lord’s Table. The church is the place where we gather each week to remember what’s truly true: that we have been adopted into this family of God that comes from the Father, through the Son, and in the Spirit. This family allows you to have your sins forgiven and together works towards ensuring the purity of Christ’s bride.

In One Lord – Sermon Manuscript

-We’re spending 4 weeks looking at the Nicene Creed because it helps provide a foundation for what we as Christians need to affirm. It’s the 1 extra-biblical document affirmed by all branches of the church and helps us learn how we should talk about the God of the Bible. Today we have a special treat, though, because there’s 1 word in here that’s not found in the Bible, which we’ll get to in a little bit.
-Also, remember that this wasn’t written to determine the books of the Bible (I don’t like that terminology anyway, humans didn’t determine the books that God inspired, they affirmed them, feel free to ask me about that sometime if you want)
READ Col. 1
-But just like we had a bad creed last week, I have another really bad creed that went viral a few years ago during a livestream from a “church” in Edina (I won’t even mention the name of it), called “The Sparkle Creed,” and it is as bad as that makes it sound. Are you ready to hear it? DO NOT recite this one with me because it is horrible:
-non-binary doesn’t work to a being that isn’t gendered, God is spirit so that’s a category mistake. Also, He always reveals Himself in the singular and masculine throughout the Bible, so why aren’t they using God’s preferred pronouns?
-I have no clue what fabulous tunic Jesus wore, Joseph wore a fabulous tunic in Genesis, but not Jesus (maybe they confused the 2 people?). Jesus also didn’t have 2 dads, this completely ignores the mother of Jesus, you can’t create a baby with 2 dads!
-And on and on the nonsense goes (what does an AIDS quilt have to do with Jesus? love is love is love?) What are they actually confessing to believe in and where is their unbelief here? This whole thing is merely a humanistic statement that aligns with all our modern culture’s little-g gods. I shared last week that it’s significant that the Nicene Creed begins with WE believe (although some manuscripts said I in terms of one being baptized), but look how this one begins. Friends, this is one of the biggest problems in our world today: excessive focus on the individual. Even for Christians in the West, we view our faith as something we pick and choose. We jump from church to church whenever we want, we run from commitment and complain when things don’t perfectly align with what we want. And in that world, Jesus offers us something radically different: an invitation into a relationship with the triune God, who has eternally existed in a loving relationship of 3 equally divine persons, and our job as Christians is to invite others into that relationship that happens from the Father, through the Son, and in the Spirit.
-The question before us today is point one in my outline:
Is Jesus God?
-Think back to last week, I said the primary question the early church was working to determine was in this world, where there’s God, then a HARD line that separates Him from His creation, where do you put Jesus? Arius (4^thcentury pastor) argued that the Son has to go below the line because God is one, so he used the phrase “There was a time when the Son was not” as his motto. But is that what the Bible actually reveals about God? I alluded to this last week, but Dan Brown (who just used an argument from Bart Ehrman) in The da Vinci Code spun a funny story about the Nicaean council meeting to “create” the Bible that ostracized people and didn’t represent “true” Christianity. That’s nothing close to what happened! In fact, this debate pushed people back to the Bible, and many of the early church fathers had the entire Bible memorized! Their writings are dripping with quotes from the Bible, which is why the Nicaean creed is similarly dripping with the Bible.
-One of my favorite professors in seminary said he wished instead of asking “what do you believe” when talking about this creed, pastors would ask “In whom do you trust,” because this creed is focused on the God of the Bible, not in what we do. So I’m going to ask you to recite it with me again this week, and following my professor, church, in whom do you trust?
-I want to look at 2 passages from the Bible before we work our way through the creed that will help us answer this question and will help us hear where some of the wording from the creed comes from!
-First, John 1. John begins by alluding to the creation account of Gen. 1, and then goes on to tell us that the Word (who John later reveals is Jesus) was in the beginning. And this Word was with God and was God. With and was, separate and together. And then we see our preposition that we got from Fred Sanders last week: through. From the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. He’s also described as the light (which is important for the creed)
-Second is what we read earlier, the Christ-hymn of Col. 1. Building up to this, Paul has been saying focusing on what we have in Jesus, then He bursts into this praise: the image of God, if you want to know what God looks like, look to Jesus. Firstborn (but not in terms of being created, this is priority) and we see that creation was THROUGH Him (visible and invisible). He is before and holding together everything, and He’s the head of the church. AND the Firstborn from the dead (pointing to another resurrection that we will experience). God has ALL his fullness dwell in him. How much is all? All! Nothing’s left out of God’s fullness dwelling in Him (that’s another way of saying He’s God). Jesus also provides the way to peace: through His blood.
-I don’t know if you picked up on it from those passages, but those pretty clearly seem to be saying that Jesus is God, don’t they? And just in case we missed it, look at what Jesus says in John 10:30. And this is the point where the Jews know exactly what He’s saying and pick up rocks to kill Him! The question is: how do we talk about that? And that’s where the debate came from at Nicea:
-We’ll take this in 2 parts, the first is the divinity of Jesus, second is the work of the incarnate Jesus.
The Only-Begotten
-First thing to note is just as we confess one God, we also confess one Lord, but then it goes on to describe the HS as the Lord! That’s intentionally done so that we understand that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are also united. This word has a wide range of meanings throughout the Bible: used in the Greek translation of the OT to translate the divine name (Yahweh). In the NT it can refer to Jesus as God, and in other places it can be a sign of respect (such as calling a ruler my lord). In this case, it’s referring to Him as His divine name.
-Jesus Christ, transliteration of Joshua, the one who led his people into the promised land, and Christ is the anointed one, the long-awaited Messiah from the OT.
-Now we get to the good stuff! The only-begotten. Taking language from John 3:16, the creed states that Jesus is the only one who was begotten from the Father, and that this “begetting” is eternal.
-This is where Arius got off, because it’s a category error to assume that God is exactly like us, and this is also where this is good news for us. Begetting is a way of referring to the relationships within the Trinity, it’s not the same way that we “beget” today. So even though the Father “begets” the Son, there was never a time where the Son wasn’t “begotten” from the Father. What that means is we can’t apply the limit of time to this relationship; God has forever existed as Father and Son (and we can add Spirit to that list).
-And what makes this good news for us is it’s because of this relationship that we’re here today. One of the realities about God that we read in 1 John 4:8 is that He is love, but love assumes that there is someone else to love, otherwise that love turns inward and becomes self-love, which is gross! Love requires there to be someone else that the love is directed towards (which is, as the EFCA SOF says, why God eternally existing as a loving unity of 3 equally divine persons is so significant). Contrast this with Muslims who believe that Allah has 99 names that describe Him, one of which is “the most loving.” But who has Allah been loving? Muslims emphasize the unity of God and call those who believe in the Trinity heretics, strong words about Christians! But who has Allah been loving for eternity? And the word is specifically supposed to refer to love of someone else. If that someone else means that Allah loves his creation, then suddenly he’s not a completely independent god, he’s reliant on his creation to allow him to be loving, that’s not the case with the Christian God. That’s why we can say that God didn’t need to create us, He is completely independent in himself, but out of the overflow of God’s perfect trinitarian love, He created everything to be brought into that pre-existing relationship, which means our purpose in existing is to love God, and then represent that love to the rest of creation (doesn’t that almost sound like what Jesus said is the summary of the law? Love God, and love your neighbor) And once again, we see the importance of the prepositions from Fred Sanders: from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.
-God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. Jesus is God, light, and the true God, and He’s also the Son who is sent from the Father: unity and diversity at the same time.
-They then clarify what they meant when they said begotten: not made, meaning that God’s begetting is different than a human begetting. This is another way of attacking Arius’s argument that Jesus was a created being.
-And now, finally, we’re at the one word that isn’t found in the Bible. One note: it’s not wrong to use extra-biblical words to attempt to describe things that are true about God, it helps us understand what we’re talking about! The Greek word they used is the word homoousios which is of the same essence (or Being as the translation we’ve been using says).
-And there’s a fantastic story that goes along with the choice of this word! The bishops kept attempting to use only words from the Bible, but Arius and his crew kept sitting in the corner chuckling to themselves as each word was proposed because they could use those same words with different dictionaries to stick with their perspective that Jesus was a created being. Here’s what Athanasius wrote about 20 years after the council:
-Dissimulation is a fancy word for hiding one’s internal thoughts and feelings to trick someone else. Arius and his followers (called Arians) were able to take the biblical words and twist them to mean what they wanted them to mean, which is why the council needed to come up with a word that couldn’t be twisted by them. And do you see how this discussion drove them back to the Bible to try to summarize what the Bible says in a way that can’t be debated?
-And the debate became which of these 2 words is the best description of the Bible’s definition of Jesus? And it’s been said that never has so much hinged on a single iota (the Greek letter i). The first word: homo (is a common word today, means “same”) the second word is ousia (“essence” or “being” or “substance”) some of the trick is in translation there isn’t always a 1 for 1 correlation, and words change meaning over time, so I like the way this translation has “Being” with the capital letter. The second proposed word changes the first word from “same” to “like”, which means Jesus is like the Father in essence, which Arius could have affirmed in his own way. And after much debate and discussion, the word homoousios became the orthodox way of referring to the Son, that is He is of the exact same essence or Being as the Father. Because of the unique relationship within the Trinity, people had to carefully determine how we would talk about it, which words adequately describe it, which words make it more difficult, and how can we all come to the same dictionary definition? You may remember this picture from last week, the 7 statements to describe God (which 1 book I read this week said is still not helpful because it looks like there are 4 instead of 3! Do you see why this is so difficult to discuss?) But what it’s trying to communicate is what we just talked about, which can be seen like this: The words they landed on to make sure that Arius couldn’t sneak by was “being” or “essence” which the three were referred to as “persons.” If you want to know about why they landed on persons, email me!
-But that doesn’t get to everything that Jesus did, as we see in the next section:
Was Incarnate
-What is the incarnation? We established from the first section that the Son is God, but then what about all the other stuff that He did, like taking on flesh and living as a human (like we saw in Colossians earlier). And it’s important for us to realize that even when the council that met at Nicaea was done, the debate wasn’t done. We heard from Athanasius earlier, who wasn’t even a bishop at the time, but spent his life defending the Nicene creed against misinterpretation. Then after Athanasius was another guy who continued refining what it was that the Bible revealed about Jesus, and here’s why we needed Jesus to become incarnate:
-Essentially, what he’s arguing is that if Jesus wasn’t completely human, then we can’t be completely saved. As an example, what if Jesus didn’t have a physical body (as some early cults tried to argue)? Then the only thing that could be saved is our immaterial parts, which is one of the things that this creed makes clear didn’t happen. Jesus was fully and completely human so that we could be fully and completely saved.
-It begins with the entire reason Jesus came: for our salvation. Did you notice that this is the first time it turns any attention to us? This is all focused on God and what He has done for us to bring us into relationship with Him. And then after mentioning us, it goes back to focusing on the second person of God:
-And I think it’s helpful for us to see the 10 verbs in this section that provide a summary of what Jesus did, and do you see how there’s what He did in the past, what He is currently doing, and what He will do in the future.
-First He came down from heaven, he humbled himself is the way Phil. 2 says it. Was incarnate comes from the Latin translation of this word, but the Greek word used is something like “was fleshified.” This is a unique term that describes something that only God could do. One author stated that this is different than embodied because “every living human being is embodied, but only Christ is God incarnate.” The Greek word emphasizes the fleshiness of this, the reality that Jesus entered into a fully human existence. This is a slight tangent, but I’m not a fan of people who say we as Christians are supposed to do “incarnational ministry.” I understand what people mean by that in that we’re supposed to represent Christ to the world, but I worry that it conflates what only Jesus could do with what we can do. We can witness and point to Him, only Jesus can be incarnate.
-And see how He became incarnate: from the HS and the Virgin Mary. We’ll look closer at the HS next week, but the first description of the HS in this creed is the life-giver. Just as the Spirit was hovering over the waters in the first creation, here He was involved in this special creation of the God-man, Jesus Christ, as Luke 1:35 tells us.
-And to make it explicit that Jesus was fully human, a literal translation of this next phrase is “in-humanized.” This is where Arius’s famous statement didn’t go far enough: there was a time when the Son was not human, but there was never a time when the Son was not existing. And friends, this is the craziest part of the whole story of Scripture. God eternal, who existed before time and space lowered himself down to our level by entering human history and being born as a baby. Again, I think Gregory of Nazianzus is helpful here: at no time during His earthly existence did He stop upholding the universe, but He also added humanity to what He was. Somehow and some way the eternal and invisible God added humanity to Himself, and with that said we’re at the mystery card again! Now, think of what the author of Hebrews says about Jesus:
-I remember pondering this verse when I was in high school, and theologians love to debate: could Jesus have sinned? As if sin is inherent to being human. Unfortunately for the rest of us, it is. But that was not a part of God’s design of humans, sin actually is a marker that we’re not fully human, so Jesus was the most human person to ever walk the earth.
-After ensuring that we understand Jesus’ humanity, we get to His work on the cross. He was crucified under Pilate, pointing to the historical reliability of this event as well as God’s sovereignty in guiding even a Roman governor!
-Then it says he suffered death, but could the eternal and all-powerful God even suffer, much less die? One of the truths we confess about God is that he is immortal! I appreciated with Phillip Cary said about this:
-And this creed goes even further in saying that He was buried. He died all the way, even facing the realm of the dead, which means when we die, we don’t need to be afraid, because Christ has already conquered that, too!
-And then we get to the reason to be a Christian: Jesus didn’t stay dead. On the third day He rose again! And this resurrection isn’t just for Jesus, this resurrection is the first fruits of death itself being undone! Jesus, in death, ensured that we never have to live apart from Him, so even when death comes for us (if the Jesus doesn’t come back before that day), we have nothing to fear! Jesus is with us here and there, and this was God’s plan “according to the Scriptures.”
-After 40 days, He ascended back into heaven, the place where He came down from. But now there’s something different about Him: He now has a body, forever. Jesus, the 1^st century Jewish man, is now living in heaven as a fully incarnated human, which blows my mind! Now, heaven isn’t some place that we need to go into space to enter, it’s an invisible realm that we can’t see with our physical eyes right now, but somehow God can still see and interact with us here. And Jesus, the Son of God is currently sitting at the right hand of the Father, and a better way of thinking of sitting would be “is enthroned” as David describes in Psalm 110. While Jesus’ atoning work is done, the Bible tells us that He lives to constantly intercede on our behalf, to constantly lift us up before His Father.
-And lastly, this isn’t the end of the story. He has promised that He will return, the same way He left, in glory. This return won’t be humble, this return will be as the conquering King who will judge the living and the dead, which means no one is off the hook. And when He returns, that’s just the beginning of the end, because His kingdom will never end!
-And if we are in Christ, if we have been saved, if we have believed that Jesus is the Son of God, then we are brought up into this perfect trinitarian relationship because the of what Jesus has done for us.
-He came down, was incarnate, and was made man. He was crucified, he suffered, and was buried. Then he rose again, ascended into heaven, and is seated at His Father’s right hand, from where He will come again in glory, and all of this was: for us and for our salvation.
-This is the miracle of the Trinity, that God became a man to enable men and women to become children of God. I can’t think of any better news, of any better hope then trusting in this God of love.

In One God – Sermon Manuscript

-My parents offered to watch the kids last night, so Cara and I got to go out for a date night, and we tried a new to us place called Crisp & Green in AV. Decent salads and smoothies if you’re looking for a salad! But they had something on the wall that serves as a perfect illustration of why we need to study something like the Nicene Creed:

-I’m not sure about you, but I’m not looking to a salad place to tell me what to believe! Also, what does it mean to be 100% authentic? There’s all sort of different creeds that people hold to today (one of which is always be 100% authentic to yourself). But what is a Christian creed? What do we claim to believe in?

-We’re going to kick this series off reading from Deut. 6:4-8 (pg. 157)

-Our bread and butter here is picking a book of the Bible and walking through it. But how do we know how to interpret what’s in the Bible? Another way of asking this question is: how do we know which interpretation is the correct one? I share this regularly when I preach, but there are debates about all sorts of things in the Bible! The correct translation of specific words, the authors meaning behind the words, why some authors use words differently (if you want to wade into the waters look at the different ways Paul and James use the word “works”). One way the church (when I say that, I’m referring to the universal church) has tried to answer that question is by creating creeds, or statements of belief. Generally, these occur in response to specific questions or issues that are brought up as people start digging into Scripture, and the earliest debates in the church were focused on the question of how Jesus could be God. How could a first-century Jewish man who ate, walked, breathed, and slept be the Creator and sustainer of the universe? Especially when at the core of the Jewish faith is the confession that the Lord our God the Lord is one. I’ll mention this now as a teaser, but the big debate centers on this picture: where does Jesus fit in the understanding that God is unique when there’s a hard line between God and creation, does Jesus go above or below the line?

-One of the first things we have to admit is that in order for us to know God, He has to come down to our level. John Calvin, in his institutes, said, “God, in so speaking, lisps with us as nurses are wont to do with little children.” He’s saying that any talk God does to us is like baby talk, which is good for us, but it also means there are things that are said that we can’t fully understand, if we could completely understand God then He wouldn’t be God, we would! So then as we dig into what God has revealed, it takes some work and effort for us to figure out exactly what is meant in this “baby talk.”

-We also need to do some (what I have previously called) “Theological tune-up” from time to time! It’s worth trying to take some of what the Bible says and putting it together into a coherent system of belief (which is called systematic theology). I’ve shared this picture before, but it bears repeating as a reminder of how we grow in our knowledge and understanding of God. Exegesis is working to answer the question what does the text say? Biblical theology answers the question how has God revealed His word organically and historically, tracing various themes and ideas throughout the whole Bible. Historical theology answers the question how has the church historically understood this text? Systematic theology answers the question what does the Bible say about certain topics? And finally, pastoral theology answers how should humans respond to God’s revelation? We need all of these disciplines, but they’re often segmented off from each other, and in preaching the tendency is to do exegesis and then jump to pastoral theology without doing any further work. This series is intentionally taking some time to drill down into systematic theology, how do we put together what the Bible says about God? And all of these areas of study shape and inform each other in a feedback loop to help us grow in our understanding of what God has spoken to us. We need all of them working together to help us.

-I also like being late to the party, last year was the 1700th anniversary of the writing of the Nicene Creed, so I thought we should look at it, but I’d rather look at it after everyone else has already done it! My hope by the end of this series is that some of you have this creed memorized! So instead of doing a key verse in the sermon notes for this series, I’ve printed off some half sheets that have the whole thing on them, and the elders are also working to memorize it to recite at our meeting next month (so feel free to ask them how they’re memorization is coming). We’ll ALSO be singing a song after the sermon each week that helps us learn the words to this creed and move to a proper response. The words are also going to be on the screen each week, so would you please recite this creed with me (modern translation that I linked to in the sermon preview)

What is a Creed?

-At the most basic level, a creed is an articulation of right belief, it’s where we get the word orthodoxy from 2 Greek words: orthos meaning straight or correct, and doxa meaning praise or belief. And that’s just 1 of the orthos, because for Christians the end goal isn’t just orthodoxy, the end goal of correct belief is orthopraxy (praxis Greek doing or practice) which is guided by orthocardia (right emotions), this is loving God correctly with all our heart, mind, soul, strength. This is meant to be a means of aligning what it is we believe with each other.

-Sometimes creeds were called symbols (from the Latin symbolum) which served as a sign or a token of being on the same side. For example, imagine a soldier is approaching a building at night, it’s dark outside, so the soldier standing guard says, “Halt! Who goes there?” and this army has a response that means they’re on the same side (open sesame). Another meaning of the symbolum is a pledge of allegiance giving from a solider when they were inducted into the army, they were given a creed something to recite that served as their confession in. Similarly for Christians, when they were baptized, they were pledging their allegiance to this God.

-There are a number of what we could call “creeds” throughout the Bible (different than other creeds because these are all inspired), but there are numerous phrases that were used to identify God’s people throughout Scripture. One of the common phrases I’ve heard from Evangelicals is “No creed but the Bible.” And I understand and empathize with that impulse, but as soon as we say that we’re actually enacting a creed! And even more difficult: what do we do when heretical groups claim the same thing, as we’ll see with Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses? Really briefly, a few examples of what could be viewed as creeds throughout the Bible:

-We read this one earlier, Deut. 6, and do you see how this is God’s people pledging their allegiance to Him alone? God’s Words are to be at the forefront of everything they do.

-Another example is found in 1 Cor. 15, Paul quotes something that he says he received. That is he didn’t make it up or come up with it, it was passed down to him, and then he passes it down to the churches he plants and supports.

-Another one is thought to be found in 1 Tim. 3, which again focuses on Jesus.

-Finally, there’s a few different places where we have a VERY short creedal statement, I’ll use Rom. 10:9, but it’s also found in 1 Cor. 12:3, Phil. 2:11, and that is the proclamation that Jesus is Lord. It’s a confession of truth, of aligning ourselves to this specific God who took on flesh as the God-man Jesus.

Why Study a Creed?

-The first and most important reason is because creeds provide guardrails that serve as protection from heresy. One brief caveat here before I continue, that word is used far too loosely today by so many online organizations that become “heresy hunters” who are trying to condemn as many people as they can! It’s not a Christian virtue to constantly be looking for problems in others. I have a pastor friend who likes to say that Christians are called to operate with the perspective of love, which means we assume the best about others, we don’t operate with the perspective of skepticism, that’s not a Christian virtue. That being said, heresy is still a real thing that we need to be aware of! So a few examples of groups today who deny the Nicene Creed, and why we need to understand what this creed is saying:

-We’ll start with Jehovah’s Witnesses (of which Michal Jackson was a part of, and so was Prince). On their website under what they believe they say:

-Do you notice that they’re quoting the Bible to back up what they believe? Does that mean that they’re orthodox in those beliefs? Absolutely not! In fact, I often see JWs at the library when we take our kids there, with their displays to try to convince others to join this heretical cult!

-What about the group formerly known as Mormons (LDS)? Here’s a quote from their website from an article titled “Becoming Like God.” Distinct beings, unity of the divine. What is divine, and what are beings? But Joseph Smith said some pretty crazy things too, like: Does any of that sound like what we read in the Bible, or like what we read about in the Nicene Creed?

-One more modern-day example: United Pentecostal Church International (oneness penecostalism) again deny the Trinity. There aren’t 3 persons of the Godhead, they are 3 “modes” or perceptions of God. They even explicitly state that they baptize only in the name of Jesus.

-Do you see how they’re taking the Bible and twisting and distorting it to fit their ideas? They even reference various verses but then ignore or gloss over any verses that don’t fit within their ideas. This is why we need creeds to correct the areas where we may be tempted to twist the Bible. As an example, my kids will often ask the question “Does ____ believe in God?” So YouTube stars, actors, basketball players, etc. And that’s fine for their age, but as you get older you know it’s not enough to ask that question, you need to go to the second question of WHICH God someone believes in. The Nicene Creed tells us which God is the God of the Bible that we should worship.

-Secondly, it allows us to avoid what CS Lewis called “chronological snobbery.” Friends, we are not the first Christians to live! God has been at work among His people for millennia, and it helps us to know and love God by learning from the examples of those who have wrestled through various issues in the past.

-A secondary question to the above is why study of THIS creed (besides it being the 1701^st anniversary of it). Because it’s the most important creed in church history. It’s the only creed that has been affirmed by every branch of orthodox Christianity (not the eastern orthodox church), thus serves as a good foundation for “theological triage.” If you haven’t heard that before, you haven’t been coming here very long! We need a way of ranking specific doctrines, because denying some of them would land put you in heresy, but other doctrines have a wide margin of belief to them and you’re not in doubt of worshipping the wrong God.

-If you noticed when we recited it, it’s broken down nicely into 3 sections that all begin with “We believe” and each section refers to 1 person of the Godhead: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The trinity is what separates Christianity from every other religion that has ever been created, and whatever language we use for it is going to fall short in some area. We’re entering into the realm of the divine when we talk about theology, which means there’s going to be things that our human minds can’t completely comprehend. There’s also no analogy that accurately describes the Trinity (egg and clover they’re all separate, water can’t be all 3 at the same time, human as father, son, and husband only gets to the relational aspect of the trinity but breaks down into modalism).

-In an attempt to simplify some of this conversation, there are 7 statements that are true about God, which are all found in this picture. So if you can start to understand this picture, you’re starting to grasp the one true God who has revealed Himself to His creation. 1. The Father is God. 2. The Son is God. 3. The Holy Spirit is God. 4. The Father is not the Son. 5. The Son is not the Holy Spirit. 6. The Holy Spirit is not the Father. 7. There is only one God.

-I’ve shared this story a couple times before, but it bears repeating as we begin this series. In seminary, you’re required to take some theology classes, which means we got to read a few books about theology. In talking about the Trinity, my professor said because we’re in the realm of God, we have a “mystery” card to play, but that doesn’t mean as soon as we enter into that realm we jump to waving the “mystery” white flag, we need to put in the work before we jump to the mystery. Our focus over the next 4 weeks is going to be exploring the beautiful doctrine of the Trinity, what theologian Fred Sanders calls “the happy land of the Trinity.” Even the word “trinity” isn’t in the Bible, it’s a word that humans came up with to describe this picture: tri (3) unity.

-Why was this creed written? In response to an early church debate that was taking place. There was a bishop (elder/pastor) named Arius who was trying to uphold the unity (oneness) and uniqueness of God. If God is one, then that means that even the Son had to be created by God. He was picking up the terminology from one of the most well-known Bible verses: John 3:16 (in the old NKJV that I memorized it in), begotten means there was a beginning time, right? That’s how it works with humans, I begot my kids, there was a time before they existed. Unfortunately, we can’t project the way humans work unto God. So when Arius was reading this, he equated begotten with created, but that’s not what is meant by this statement. God’s begetting is connecting to the way they relate to each other, not the way ordering of the Godhead (we’ll get there, don’t worry!). But Arius began teaching this, and apparently even created catchy songs that were spread across the Mediterranean by sailors (Athanasius said the songs weren’t even very good).

-Recently converted emperor Constantine, in order to protect the unity of his kingdom convened this council that met in Nicea to determine who was right: Arius or Alexander (bishop of Alexandria). Over 300 bishops convened, and there wasn’t a clear winner at the beginning. But it’s important for us to know that they didn’t set to determine ALL orthodoxy (inerrancy and the books of the Bible wasn’t even a discussion topic, contrary to Dan Brown’s presentation) primarily focused on the deity of Jesus, and worked to clarify the relationship God had between Himself and how that impacts us today.

-I mentioned Fred Sanders earlier, but I love the way he summarizes the way we respond to God:

-We’ll be discussing more about the council each week as we work our way through the creed, but with all that background, let’s look at the first section:

God is One

-We believe: instead of a mere intellectual ascent, this is a way of ascribing allegiance to the one true God, who has declared from the beginning that He is one. He has no parts, He cannot be divided, He is completely united in being. This begins in the same place that shema began as a way to acknowledge the past history of God’s work. One note on this creed, the authors worked their hardest to use only biblical language, and they were successful with all except 1 word. But you’ll need to come back next week to find out what that 1 word is! There’s also some debate over how to translate this opening phrase, some manuscripts have the plural (we), others have the individual (I). One purpose in having this creed is to give something for those who were getting baptized to agree to! So in that case, it’s I believe, but WE all affirm along with those getting baptized.

-Second, the first things He’s called is Father, and this gets to His relation to His Son, Jesus, and because of what Jesus has done it also describes His relation to us. He’s not just the father though, He’s also the almighty. The words used by this creed were used to refer to some other gods too, in this case it’s a way of saying that God is the ruler over everything.

-He’s also the maker (or creator) of heaven and earth. This is a way of saying everything (like when someone says I’ve been working day and night, you don’t take it to mean there was no breaks), it also echoes the language of Gen. 1

-Lastly, it alludes to Col. 1:16 when it says that God created the visible sphere and the invisible sphere. But this also is a way of denying the Gnostic heresy that said Jesus was just 1 of a plethora of gods in the supernatural realm.

-This is the shortest section of the creed because this wasn’t really up for debate. Even the heretics believed in the unity of God, but what do we do with it today? We believe. Belief is more than just a mental check box (like saying you read the terms and conditions of every app you download), this is confessing our allegiance in this God who is completely united and can’t be divided. This God created everyone, including you and me, and what’s the most amazing about this God is He doesn’t leave us alone. He comes down in flesh to bear the penalty for our sins and then comes down to indwell those who confess that they believe in His name.

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