What do all Christians Believe? Part 1
I met a friend for coffee the other day.
We ended up lamenting the fact that far too many Christians have no idea
what they believe and why they believe it.
I recalled something that Raul Reese of Calvary Chapel said at a pastor’s meeting:
“Christianity today is like a river, a mile wide and an inch deep.”
He was referring to this problem of believers not knowing what is
essential to their faith, and then not living out those essentials.
If you had to write out what you think a person needs to believe in order to be a
Christian could you do it?
What are the key concepts that every Christian,
Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox believe?
JB Chapman was a Holiness scholar in the early days of our faith community,
He said that there are “three essential characteristics of Christianity”:
1. a creed to be believed
2. a life to be lived
3. an experience to be enjoyed
(H.R. Dunning, The Apostles Creed, p 5 quoting JB Chapman, A Christian: What it Means to Be One)
Today I would like to spend our time together considering what the essential
beliefs of Christianity are.
Those key concepts can be called a creed.
A creed is a basic summary of beliefs.
Beliefs that all Christians every where hold as essential.
As we begin I want to remind you that
“Christianity is not a system of ideas,” but a relationship.
(Dunning, p 9)
All three of Chapman’s observations, believing , living and enjoying come
into play when you have a relationship with God.
Other wise all you have is religion.
A religion with the right ideas,
But no life, no joy.
Christianity is a relationship with God.
It is only through a personal relationship with God that
you can live your life to the full.
Words can be packed with meaning
And that word “personal” in this context is one.
If you place the idea of corporate righteousness on one end,
And personal righteousness on the other,
Different groups of believers can be placed somewhere between
those two points.
For instance the Catholic faith community places a strong emphasis
on corporate righteousness.
If you are a member in good standing with the group,
You will be saved.
Some Protestant faith communities are at the opposite extreme,
Salvation depends solely on your relationship with God,
not on your standing in a particular faith community.
I think both extremes present difficulties that can make living a
devout and holy life problematic,
therefore the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
It is by a willful choice, a “personal decision” that we seek inclusion,
Membership in the body of Christ,
the corporate spiritual kingdom of the redeemed.
And further it is through choosing to love that an individual
remains a part of the real Church.
So it is through a personal relationship, a choice,
that we enter into a corporate relationship that is public.
Having the right ideas about God is not enough.
One must allow those ideas to reorder your whole value system so that you
live them.
The only way you can live your beliefs out is through
relationship with the one revealed in those beliefs.
We are going to look at a creed that has been universally accepted as dogma by all
Christians.
One of the reasons why there are so many different kinds of faith
communities in Protestant Christianity—
Nazarenes, Baptist, Methodist, Lutherans, Episcopal,
Presbyterian, Calvary Chapel, Assemblies of God, Four
Square is because of doctrine.
And the other two branches of Christianity
Catholicism and Orthodoxy for that matter
Doctrine is what different faith communities teach about dogma.
Dogma is what is universally accepted as truth by Christians
Everywhere.
The interpretation and teaching based of dogma become the
doctrines of a particular faith community.
Doctrine is a guideline in how one is to live out dogma.
A creed that is universally applicable is dogma.
Perhaps the earliest Christian creed is “the simple statement—
‘Jesus is Lord.’” (Dunning, p 9)
The creeds of the Christian church grew out of controversy.
My theology professor H.R. Dunning says,
It is “the heretic that makes the theologian” (Dunning, p 12)
What that means is someone would rise up and begin teaching something
that sounded good and right but contradicted something else in
scripture.
And therefore was heretical—
not in keeping with the historical teachings of the faith.
So a creed is correcting,
redirecting our ideas back to what is revealed to us in scripture.
Bringing our thoughts into harmony with the truth once again.
One of the universal creeds of the church is called the Apostles Creed
I’ve broken it down for you into 12 sentences.
Read it aloud with me---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5ebg7ez3TU
1. I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:
2. And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord:
3. Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary:
4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended into hell:
5. The third day he rose again from the dead:
6. He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty:
7. From thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead:
8. I believe in the Holy Ghost:
9. I believe in the holy catholic church: the communion of saints:
10. The forgiveness of sins:
1l. The resurrection of the body:
12. And the life everlasting. Amen.
There in those 12 sentences you have the essentials of Christianity.
Every person, everywhere who believes those 12 statements is a Christian.
Deviation from this proclamation means that they may be heretical in
some of their understanding of what it means to be a believer,
or if the deviation is great enough not really part of what
we call the body of Christ.
The Apostles Creed would be good to memorize.
This will be a three part message.
What I plan to do is that between part 1 and 2 is read the Creed at
dinner time aloud to my family, maybe each one of us taking
turns.
Don’t you think its important to know what you believe?
Each one of those 12 statements is packed full of significant revealed truth.
Simple statements that each worthy of study and mediation to mine the
riches they reveal.
Today we will consider the first 3 statements.
Here is what a Christian believes:
1. I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:
I believe means more that intellectual assent to some fact.
It refers to personally knowing, gained through encounter,
This belief results in so great a conviction that you stake the rest of your life on the
faith fact that there is a God.
God the Father describes a certain type of relationship that we can understand as
the best possible relationship that can be shared between a father and child.
As Father, God created you in an act of love,
Continues to love you by seeking to meet your needs.
He cares for you,
protects and provides for you,
instructs and guides you,
and has an inheritance for you.
Psalms 103:13 (NIV)
As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him…
God the Almighty describes his preeminence and power.
We use technical theological words like
Omniscient, meaning God knows
Omnipresent, meaning God is everywhere
Omnipotent, meaning God can do
God governs the universe so that He can make good on his promise revealed
to us in Romans 8:28
Romans 8:28 (NIV) & 29 (MSG)
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.
God the Maker
To understand the significance of this one needs to know a little about a
heretical teaching that sprang up in the church known as Gnosticism.
One of those heretical teachings is that Matter,
the stuff that makes up what our eyes can see and
our hands can touch is essentially evil.
Only that which is pure spirit is good and without sin.
(Beacon Dictionary of Theology p, 235)
The idea that God is the Maker,
destroys this Gnostic teaching and its implications.
What God has created is not evil, it is good.
Genesis 1:31 (NIV)
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
I believe is a relational statement,
It describes a relationship that is intimate and alive,
It describes a special relationship one shares with the Creator of the Universe.
I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:
2. And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord:
Luke 2:34-35 (MSG)
This child marks both the failure and the recovery of many in Israel, A figure misunderstood and contradicted— the pain of a sword-thrust through you— But the rejection will force honesty, as God reveals who they really are.
Your belief about Jesus reveals if you are a Christian or not.
Both Jew and Muslim will agree to our first creedal belief.
But the second separates the sheep from the goats. (Mathew 25: 31-46)
This statement is made to correct the many heretical misunderstandings that have
and are circulating about the nature of Jesus.
First here’s a little trivia: the name “Jesus” is a mis-translation.
Remember the original languages, we take Aramaic, turn it into Greek, then
turn that into English.
The Aramaic name is Yeshua.
Yeshua translates into English as Salvation.
(http://www.thenazareneway.com/yeshua_jesus_real_name.htm)
Then to clear up another misunderstanding
Christ is not Jesus’s last name.
Christ is a title.
It is the English translation for the Greek Χριστός (Khristós) meaning
which is a translation for the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (Mašíaḥ,), or Messiah.
Messiah means one who is appointed by God for a specific task.
In Hebrew thought the Messiah would be a man, a descendant of David who
would liberate Israel from all her oppressors and lead the nation to
power and prominence.
The Gnostic hearsay taught that Jesus was not a person of flesh and blood.
They denied the humanity of Jesus.
This teaching will be refuted more forcefully in our third
Statement: “born of the Virgin Mary”
What is established is that there is a special relationship that Jesus and the
Father share.
We need to discover the nature of that relationship.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son,
In the Old Testament anyone who did the will of God was considered a son
of God.
If you enjoyed a relationship characterized by obedience to God
you were His son or daughter.
“Only begotten” speaks of a special relationship that is uniquely shared
between the Father and Jesus.
Jesus is the only one who has perfectly, in explicit obedience,
Accomplished what Father wanted done.
That makes Jesus our model.
We are to be like Jesus.
Salvation is being intimately involved in a process of transformation.
God takes us where we are today,
And we journey, becoming more and more like Jesus,
As we travel.
It’s the last part of the statement that makes or breaks Christianity.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord
Again we must move from the English, through the Greek to the Hebrew,
where we discover something inconceivable.
“Lord” is the personal name for God Himself.
Exodus 3:15 (NIV)
God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The LORD, the God of your fathers--the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob--has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.
Exodus 6:2 (NIV)
God also said to Moses, "I am the LORD.
LORD when printed in capitol letters in English represents the Hebrew word Yahweh.
Yahweh is the corrected name for the mistranslation Jehovah.
To call Jesus Lord is to believe that Jesus is God.
Not just a son of God, not just the Messiah of God,
But God incarnate.
God in the flesh.
John 1:14 (NIV)
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Philippians 2:5-11 (NIV)
Your attitude
should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did
not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself
nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient
to death-- even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is
above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and
on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Paul tells us that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Yahweh, Jehovah,
God.
Jesus shares a special relationship with God the Father because they
are one.
John 8:58-59 (NIV)
"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" At this, they picked up stones to stone him…
We simply can say that Christians believe that Jesus is fully God and fully human.
How this can be is a mystery.
Yet it is a mystery that must be for the possibility of redemption.
For only God can atone for the mess his great creation,
Humanity has made.
If you do not believe that Jesus is fully God and fully human,
You have rejected the teachings of the New Testament.
And you are not a Christian.
You are not a believer.
Jesus is fully God and fully human,
This is exactly what the third statement proclaims.
I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth;
And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord;
3. Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary:
Given the Gnostic teaching that Jesus was not really human,
The statement establishes the full humanity of Jesus.
And at the same time contradicts another false teaching that said that
the Christ spirit descended upon the man Jesus at his baptism,
and left him when he cried out on the cross,
“my God my God why have you forsaken me.” (Mark 15:34)
What I want you to be aware of concerning the virgin birth,
Is that the concept of a pregnant virgin is a stumbling block to many.
It is extremely improbable.
Liberal theologians explain it off as a myth, mere legend.
Fundamentalist theologians understand the words literally.
Conservative theologians understand the virgin birth to represent the method
of divine intervention God choose to bring
about the redemption of His creation.
It is this truth which is essential to the faith
That redemption required God to incarnate into human history.
For God to become like us to save us.
In Jesus full divinity and full humanity exist,
so that in the economy of creation,
sin can be atoned for.
Early church Father Athanasius wrote:
“He became what we are in order to make us what He is.”
How this plan of redemption unfolds is covered in the next four statements.
But we need to stop here.
There is just so much you can take in at one time and I think we have
reached that time.
I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth;
And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord;
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary…
These are the first three statements that the Church considers essential to the Christian faith.
But remember belief is never meant to be an intellectual exercise.
The creed describes the nature of the one in whom you have a relationship.
You can believe the right things,
But miss the real thing.
In closing let me ask you a few questions.
1. How would you describe your relationship with God?
Is it more knowing about Him or is it more knowing Him?
2. If you want to know God, have you ever asked Him to accept you as His own?
Now this asking is more than just words,
It is actually an action and words just represent your desire.
The action is one of repentance for your sins.
Recall sin is anything that deters or damages or destroys right
relationships.
Sin causes estrangement.
Estrangement results in separation.
What are you willing to do to have your relationship with God reconciled?
What’s it worth to you to end your estrangement?
Your desire to be accepted, is seen in your acts of repentance,
Of forsaking your sins,
By this you know that your request is serious,
You want God to make you His child.
3. How do you know that you are accepted and in the process of becoming like
Jesus?
What is happening in your life right now that acknowledges the fact
that you are being saved by grace?