What Every Christian Believes.
The Apostle’s Creed Part 3
It was so good to hear I left some of you with questions and controversy from
Last Sunday’s presentation.
To think and reflect and to be stretched in our faith is a good thing.
There is nothing like doing your own work.
Today we will finish up with our series of messages,
What Every Christian Believes.
At this point you should know the difference between dogma and doctrine.
Dogma never changes.
Doctrine varies.
Dogma is what every Christian everywhere believes.
Doctrine is what different faith communities teach about
dogma.
Doctrine interprets Dogma.
Doctrine is a commentary on Dogma.
So one should expect that there are numerous variations on the
themes that Dogma proclaims.
That’s why I say doctrine is opinion.
The problem we get into is when we elevate doctrine to the level of dogma
and start insisting that there is no room for any variation in our
understanding of the scripture,
resulting in the mistaken notion that if you don’t believe
the way I believe then you are wrong.
I remind myself often that everyone is entitled to their own opinion no
matter how wrong it may be.
And that especially includes me—therefore I must be ready to
listen to others opinion and reflect upon their experiences
and search the matters out for myself and ask God
to guide me.
1 John 4:1 (MSG)
My dear friends, don't believe everything you hear. Carefully weigh and examine what people tell you. Not everyone who talks about God comes from God. There are a lot of lying preachers loose in the world.
Do yourself a huge favor and make sure I’m not one of those lying
Preachers and do your own work so that you don’t have hearsay faith,
But a faith that is forged in the fires of your own experience.
To gain and understanding of what all Christians every where believe we have
been considering the Apostles Creed.
You know that the purpose of a creed is to correct wrong thinking.
In the infancy of the church till this day people have developed
doctrines that are not in harmony with the totality of
scripture.
A creed is meant to correct those errors.
I choose the Apostles Creed for our study of dogma because the scholars report
that it is the oldest of the Creeds.
Those who study these matters in depth report that the creed began to
develop prior to the middle of the second century AD (140AD)
This is before denominations,
before the Reformation in Europe that resulted in the Protestant movement
and before the separation of the church into Eastern and Western
factions,
later known as the Orthodox Church and the Roman
Catholic Church.
So this is a statement of belief that arises out of the early church.
Its main purpose is to correct the teachings of Gnosticism.
2 Timothy 4:3 (MSG)
You're going to find that there will be times when people will have no stomach for solid teaching, but will fill up on spiritual junk food—catchy opinions that tickle their fancy.
The Apostle’s Creed is an example of solid teaching”
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 where 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.
In part one
We establish that God is the creator of all things,
thus inferring that the world is good,
And we affirmed both the humanity and divinity of Jesus.
Jesus is God incarnate.
In part two
We reinforced Jesus’ absolute identification with Humanity and with Deity,
how the resurrection is the validating event on Jesus teachings,
that God’s ministry of redemption continues and that
Jesus will return to and call us to account for how we
lived our lives.
Today we will consider the final five statements of the Apostle’s Creed.
Five more things that Christians everywhere believe.
8. I believe in the Holy Ghost:
Of all the mysteries of Christianity the Trinity is by far the most difficult to
comprehend.
We think and reason by making comparisons.
We have nothing to compare the concept of the Trinity to,
So understanding how God is Triune so far has been impossible.
The New Testament reveals to us that the One God is triune,
Existing in Community, identifiable as Father, Son and Spirit,
Remove one and there is no God,
Because Father, Son and Spirit are not three separate
beings.
Not three modes of God, not three offices of God, not three functions
of God, but one God knowable as
Father, Son and Spirit.
How is a mystery.
The Holy Spirit is God, not a force, not a power, rather a personality.
I feel that the name Holy Spirit is very misleading.
I much prefer the Hebrew or the Greek—
The Hebrew name is Ruach,
The Greek name is pneuma
The scriptures reveal that the Holy Spirit, Ruach, Pneumati—
Speaks to us ( Rev 2:7)
Intercedes for us (Romans 2:26)
Leads and guides us (John 16:13, Acts 8:29)
Teaches us and transforms us. (John 14:26, Romans 15:16)
The Holy Spirit indwells the believer.
Ruach takes up residence within you.
Pnemati empowers you to live your life to the full.
The Holy Spirit is God at work,
At work in the world,
at work in us,
at work in our faith community. (Dunning p. 71)
The Holy Spirit is God immanent,
God right here with us,
God right here in us.
Acts 17:28 (NIV)
'For in him we live and move and have our being.'
By the Holy Spirit we are transformed into the image of Jesus.
By Ruach the path of righteousness is made clear to us.
By Pneumati we desire to do God’s will and enabled to
accomplish that will.
Thus the Gnostic teachings that God is separate and removed from us,
unknowable to us,
unconcerned about us, is refuted.
The Creed affirms belief in The Trinity,
One God,
The Father above us, The Son before us, the Spirit within us.
The last four statements describe the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
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:
Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried:
He descended into hell:
The third day he rose again from the dead:
He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty:
From where he shall come to judge the living and the dead:
I believe in the Holy Ghost:
9. I believe in the holy catholic church: the communion of saints:
When this creed was written there was no Protestants;
No official division between Greek and Latin thinkers.
Catholic does not refer to Catholicism.
The word catholic simply means universal,
there is just one body of believers,
The group of people that have responded to God’s
invitation of redemption.
“The Gnostics believed that the most important Christian doctrines were reserved
for a select few.”
That word catholic refutes that notion, as catholic carries with it the idea of inclusion.
http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/creeds/apostles.htm
The word church is a translation of the Greek word ecclesia—
Ecclesia means “the called out ones.”
The communion of saints.
The one God exists in Community and invites us to join in on
the communion.
Communion refers to intimate interaction.
It is the unifying of hearts without the loss of individuality.
A diversity in unity.
1 Corinthians 12:12 & 27 (NIV)
The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. …Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
It is the communion that is being saved. (Eph 5:23b)
The Holy Spirit, Ruach, Pneumati,
Calls the church into being,
gathering whosoever will, into one body,
nurturing that body, strengthening that body,
saving that body.
It is God the Holy Spirit who calls the church into being,
drawing individuals into the divine communion of Father, Son and Spirit.
Uniting us together into oneness of the Trinity.
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:
Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried:
He descended into hell:
The third day he rose again from the dead:
He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty:
From where he shall come to judge the living and the dead:
I believe in the Holy Ghost:
I believe in the holy catholic church: the communion of saints:
10. The forgiveness of sins:
The Gnostics taught that humanities predicament was do to a lack of
knowledge.
You don’t need forgiveness, you need enlightenment.
“Ignorance, not sin, was the problem.” http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/creeds/apostles.htm
But the Creed says no, ignorance is the result of sin.
And the only remedy for sin is forgiveness.
I have been convinced that we can best understand sin from a relational
perspective.
Sin is therefore anything that deters, damages or destroys right
relationships.
There are four relationship with which all of humanity is concerned.
A relationship with God, with Others, with the Earth and with
Self.
The Genesis chapter 2 and 3 tell us of the human predicament.
Humanity was created in righteousness.
Those four relationships were right.
But in an attempt to be like God,
Adam forsook his first love,
And righteous relationships were no longer.
Humanity became estranged.
We are alienated from God, Others, the Earth and Self.
This original sin,
Creates acts of sin.
Things that we do that further deter, damage and destroy
the relationships we have.
Forgiveness leads to reconciliation.
About making amends, about setting things right, about settling accounts.
The scripture teaches that God the offended party does for us what we can
not do for ourselves and made reconciliation possible through our
identification with the Atonement of Jesus.
It is the ministry of the Holy Spirit that makes it possible for us to realize right
from wrong and thereby detecting that there is something wrong with us.
It is the ministry of Ruach to awaken us to our estrangement from God, Others,
The Earth, and Self.
It is the ministry of Pneumati that encourages us to try to make amends,
To repent, to see the impossibility for us to right our wrongs, and finally
surrender in faith identifying with the Atonement of Jesus,
in order to be reconciled to God.
And it is the Ministry of God the Holy Spirit to begin a process of making all our
relationships right, as they were meant to be at the time of humanities
creation.
That process is known as sanctification.
The path of salvation begins not with secret knowledge,
But rather with the forgiveness of sin.
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:
Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried:
He descended into hell:
The third day he rose again from the dead:
He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty:
From where he shall come to judge the living and the dead:
I believe in the Holy Ghost:
I believe in the holy catholic church: the communion of saints:
The forgiveness of sins:
1l. The resurrection of the body:
Recall that the Gnostics taught that the body and everything of the material world
is evil.
There idea of salvation is to escape the confines of the body and as
spirit return to the Supreme God.
“The chief goal of the Gnostics was to become free forever from the taint of matter
and the shackles of the body, and to return to the heavenly realm as Pure
Spirit.”
http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/creeds/apostles.htm
The resurrection of the body also refutes this idea as well as beliefs in reincarnation and transmigration.
A bodily resurrection also points to the character and form of eternal life.
Whatever the shape of eternal life is,
it is in some bodily existence.
1 Corinthians 15:21-24 (MSG)
Death initially came by a man, and resurrection from death came by a man. Everybody dies in Adam; everybody comes alive in Christ. But we have to wait our turn: Christ is first, then those with him at his Coming, the grand consummation…
Christians believe that since Christ rose bodily from the grave,
That at his second coming,
All who lived lives of faithful commitment to Him will rise from the
grave.
It is God the Holy Spirit who will raise you up.
1 Corinthians 15:51-54 (NIV)
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed-- in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."
At Jesus second coming,
There will be devoted disciples alive and well,
Sleep is a metaphor for death.
There will be Christians who will not experience the death of their
physical body,
But will be transformed,
There perishable, mortal body will be changed
Into an imperishable, immortal body.
It is Ruach who brings this salvation to the one’s who have lived by
His guidance.
The Apostle Paul writes to the Christians in Philippi
Philippians 3:10-11 (MSG)
I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself. If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it.
It is Pneumati that empowers us to live this way,
Giving up anything that would prevent us from knowing God,
For it in knowing God that we have eternal life (John 17:3),
Empowering us to enter into suffering to redeem the wrongs of
a sin sick world.
Raising us from the dead validating our life’s work. (1 Peter 5:4)
God the Holy Spirit will resurrect the followers of Christ.
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:
Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried:
He descended into hell:
The third day he rose again from the dead:
He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty:
From where he shall come to judge the living and the dead:
\I believe in the Holy Ghost:
I believe in the holy catholic church: the communion of saints:
The forgiveness of sins:
The resurrection of the body:
12. And the life everlasting. Amen.
1 Corinthians 2:9-10 (NIV)
"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" -- but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
What is this everlasting life?
The Holy Spirit has revealed to us that everlasting life is living God’s
life. (John 10:28, 17:2; Revelations 22:17)
Being part of the eternal communion of the Godhead.
We get these glimpses of what that kind of existence is like:
No more death or mourning, or crying or pain (Rev 21:4)
Righteousness, peace and joy. (Romans 14:17)
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness and self control (Galatians 5:22)
Everlasting life is loving and being loved,
Existing in a state of acceptance and belonging,
It is possessing joy and peace
It involves serving and worshiping God in perfect
righteousness.
It never ends.
What do all Christians everywhere believe?
Read it loud and strong with me:
We 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:
Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried:
He descended into hell:
The third day he rose again from the dead:
He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty:
From where he shall come to judge the living and the dead:
We believe in the Holy Ghost:
the holy catholic church: the communion of saints:
The forgiveness of sins:
The resurrection of the body:
And the life everlasting. Amen.
Amen means “so let it be”
What you believe, through God the Father above you,
And God the Son before you,
And God the Spirit with in you,
May you live.
Amen?
Amen.
(listen to the end of the podcast)