Truth Unites - The Apostles' Creed: EVERY Word Explained

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

Gavin Ortlund gives a commentary on every word of the Apostles' Creed. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

This video is an introduction to the Apostles' Creed. This was way more emotional than I expected it to be to make this, to study this. It made me so proud to be a Christian. It made me identify with Christianity more deeply in my heart. As I studied it, I thought, this is who I am. This is what I want to give my life to. I hope you feel the same as you watch. It's a longer video. I invite you to carve out some time. I think there's tremendous value in working through, and there's so much more than meets the eye. We'll go in three sections. First, I'll just introduce the Creed really briefly with four comments, say what it is, why it's important to study. Second, we'll do a word-by-word commentary. That'll be the bulk of the video.

Third, I'll give some suggestions for practical use of the Apostles' Creed individually and corporately. If you want to help the cause here, share the video, like the video, all that kind of stuff. Let's dive in. First, four things to say to introduce the Apostles' Creed. It's brief, ancient, trinitarian, and Christocentric. I'll explain those terms. First, it's brief. This is going to be something we'll return to throughout this video. It's amazing all that it doesn't. say. It's about 100 words in English, 76 words in Latin. On my count, I'll recommend a couple books at the very end. One of them is this great book by J.I. Packer that Crossway put out. Crossway puts great books, and I wrote it out. I don't know if you could see that. Just to make the Latin

words, just to, you know, you feel more prayer when you write it out, you identify with it. And I'm going to be dealing with the Latin version more than the Greek version here, but it's very brief. I'll put it up on the screen so you can see just how brief it is. You can recite the entire Apostles' Creed in Latin in less than a minute. This is compact, succinct Christianity. Think of the Apostles' Creed as Christianity in less than a minute, and there's tremendous value in that kind of brevity for memorization and catechetical and liturgical uses, as we'll talk about. Second, this creed is ancient. Really, I would say, the most ancient creed of its kind. So the Apostles' Creed is an extension out of the Old Roman Creed, which dates back to the second century.

the Apostles' Creed because of the legendary belief that each one of the 12 apostles contributed one of the 12 articles of it, which is not true. But it is true that the substance of the Apostles' Creed goes back to those earliest times of church history, the substance of what Irenaeus and Tertullian and other early Christians meant by the rule of faith, the sort of encapsulation of Christian doctrine that you then use as a hermeneutical guide for how to interpret scripture and so forth, that that really is encapsulated in the Apostles' Creed. So the basic content of this creed is widely dispersed early on in church history. You could think of this as the most ancient summation of Christianity that exists. And the creed was used primarily, more in the

West, really, for two purposes, catechesis and liturgy. Catechesis just means like formal teaching of converts, for example, especially non-Jewish converts coming into the faith, would receive teaching through this creed, and then it would be used liturgically at baptism. The Bachelors, the Baxter baptizened, or the person getting baptized, would be asked a series of questions, framed in terms of the content of the Apostles' Creed, according to an early text called the Apostolic Tradition. So here's the emotional part. I might get choked up at points in this video. I don't know why.

It affected me so much. Well, you'll see why, actually, hopefully. Hopefully you'll feel it too. But these are words that have been said by Christians all throughout church history at that pivotal moment of their baptism where they make a public identification with Christ. And it's just amazing to think about the sense of incorporation into this noble cause that we call the Christian tradition that we get to participate in through these same words. You know, just imagine like an old farmer in Corinth in the second century. And he hears the gospel. And he's 80 years old and he comes

to Christ. And imagine him getting baptized, saying these words. Imagine a wealthy merchant in the third century living just outside Rome, and he comes with his whole family to the waters of baptism, and they're saying these words. Imagine an actress and prostitute in Gaul in the fourth century, whose comes to Christ, her life completely changes 180 degrees, and she says these words when she is baptized. Imagine a young slave boy in ancient England. He's converted around the sixth century through Augustine's missionary labors there. all of these people, this diverse set of saints and martyrs and other wonderful Christians, are saying these words like born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate,

at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, etc. When we say these words, we have this immense privilege of joining in with this great crowd of witnesses who have gone before. To confess the Apostles' Creed is to join into this great tradition, and it's, of course, to stand with our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world today. The Apostles' Creed also has this kind of grassroots quality to it, more so than later creeds like the Nicene Creed, which has more political dynamics that lead to it. I mean, I love the Nicene Creed as well, but this is the result of a council. The Apostles' Creed is sort of more, you know, second century, third century, fourth century, it's kind of rising up, and that's what leads to it.

It has this sort of organic quality to it. And so the baptismal context of the Apostles' Creed is very relevant to its meaning. You can think of this. That's why we say it's a summation of Christian belief. This is what you have to say to come to baptism. That's not the only thing, of course. There's other things as well. Nonetheless, when we confess this Creed, we're joining in with this ancient body of witnesses. It's beautiful.

It's actually thrilling, and we'll talk more about that. Third introductory comment, there's a Trinitarian structure to it. Now, it doesn't address all the questions about the Trinity that are going to come up, and later get worked through, again, in something like the Nicene Creed or the Athanasian Creed as well. But nonetheless, you can slice it up into three sections on the God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I'll put it up, and you can see the Trinitarian structure through what I have emboldened in red font. And so basically what you are saying in this, the verb credo, I believe, is in reference to these three objects and then a series of five articles at the end as well.

So I believe in God the Father. I believe in Jesus Christ's only son. I believe in the Holy Spirit. This is the sort of skeletal structure of the creed. But then note, and this is my fourth introductory comment, that on the screen here you can see the word I underlined and put in blue. This is this long digression that starts with the word who, so that the bulk of the Apostles' Creed is basically a series of historical assertions about Christ.

If the Trinity is the skeletal structure of the Apostles' Creed, the historical work of God the Son is the heart of it. And let's just zoom in on that for a moment. Here's the 11 verbs that are used in the creed about the Son of God's incarnate and ascended work. From start to finish, and as it's often noted, actually, you could add in, again, this is a very compact creed. You could add in his sinless life and his obedience and his ministry to make it get up to 12. But here I just put them in red and we'll go through every single one of these words. Of course, number 10 is the one in present tense, his heavenly session.

The future one is number 11, his second coming. The other nine are all past tense verbs, and they encompass the incarnate work of Christ from the moment of Mary's conception, and then up to his heavenly ascension in Acts chapter 1. The overall pattern is downward and then upward. Humiliation, glorification, first the cross, then the crown, and that's, of course, the pattern of our lives as followers of Jesus as well. So the point is, the bulk of the creed is about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. The effects of that are relatively brief, and they're summarized in these five beautiful articles

at the end that we will get to. Now, again, the thing to note here before we dive in is the brevity. You're going to find forgiveness of sins mentioned, but you're not going to find all that is involved in that, all these different articles of salvation, like adoption and justification and glorification. You're not going to find a particular mechanism of the atonement. And there's so many theological debates you're not going to get here. You're not going to learn when the rapture is going to happen.

You're not going to learn how to think about predestination. There's virtually nothing about the history of Israel in the Apostles' Creed. All those things are important, but they're not here. This, this compact expression is sort of the heart of what people would affirm in coming to baptism. That's why it really is a helpful guide. You can see why people would use this as kind of a hermeneutical lens for interpreting the Bible and interpreting Christianity more generally. So the Apostles' Creed is of tremendous value for us,

and I hope it will strike your heart and your mind and imagination as it has mine in studying it. Let's dive in. Word by word commentary. First, the creed starts with the word credo in Latin, or I believe. Now, it's interesting that it's in the first person singular. Despite being used in corporate settings as well, it doesn't say we believe. It says, I believe the Apostles' Creed is a personal declaration. Those who affirm the Apostles' Creed are making a personal statement of belief.

And the word believe here is more than just a statement of opinion. Like if I were to say, I believe Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time, which I do, but that's a different kind of use of the verb believe. Here it entails a trusting devotion, a reliance, a consecration, a sense of allegiance. You're sort of giving yourself to this. So you can often tell what a word means by comparing it to its opposite. So the opposite of, I believe, the opposite of faith in James I, and his double-mindedness, being unstable is the word he uses, like a wave tossed to and fro.

So to say, I believe, is saying, I am planting my flag in this soil, this is the team that I am joining, I am all in for this cause, these are my people, this is my home, I am not neutral, I'm choosing sides. And it is absolutely thrilling to give yourself away to something like this. to say I believe is to say I'm giving myself to something bigger than myself. And I just want to start, you know, throughout this, we're going to, I'm not going to stray away from being devotional or pastoral as is fitting and appropriate. And here, I would just like to, you know, hold this out for my viewers because I know there's such restlessness in the modern world. So many people are

aching for something big to live for. And Christianity is that great, noble, transcendent truth. that should meet that need in our hearts. And it's just thrilling to, you know, I've actually been praying that at least one person would become a Christian through this video on the Apostles' Creed. But I think because there is that restlessness, I just want to encourage people about how good it feels to be able to say, I believe. And that act of submission and surrender and consecration and allegiance and saying, I'm going to give myself to something bigger than myself that then has the power to correct me.

And that is the secret that makes life work. You know, not living for yourself is absolute misery, giving yourself to something grand and noble, even to other people. But that's a small taste of it, but something much bigger than that with Christianity because we believe it's true. Now, as I studied this part of the creed,

I was thinking about the old Rich Mullins song, which I first heard through Cadman's Call. I listened to a lot of Cadman's Call back when I was in, like, eighth grade, ninth grade, love Cademan's Call. but they sang a version of this. It's a song developed from the Apostles' Creed, and most of the song he's just singing through. You know, I believe in God, the Father, et cetera. But there's this little amplification of it that he gives during the chorus that I think is a faithful sort of emotional response to the Apostles' Creed. I think this helps us. He says, I believe what I believe. It makes me

what I am. I did not make it. No, it is making me. It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man. Maybe now you're starting to get a flavor of kind of why this is so emotional for me and why it's so maybe emotional is not the right word, just meaningful. Like I feel like my feet are touching the ground again. I'm reminded, ah, this is who I am. You know, that's a statement of identity. Say it makes me what I am. So this is what we're saying when we say, I believe. We're saying, I didn't create this. I am not following my own private philosophy that I invented. I'm not concocting my own religion by pulling little bits that I like from different things. If I were inventing a religion, I probably wouldn't come up with something as strange as Christianity,

a Trinity, an incarnation, a crucifixion of the incarnate second member of the Trinity. I mean, this is not the kind of stuff we could have guessed or come up with, very likely. So this isn't a religion we make. This is something we submit to. It's an external reality to ourselves that in submitting to our very identity changes, It makes me what I am. I did not make it. It is making me.

And these words, it is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man. You know, when you give your heart to that, it's kind of like falling in love. You just give yourself to something. This is where the joy of life is found. Now, I understand if you don't think Christianity has any plausibility, then we would need to start further back. This wouldn't be the appeal that I would make to you. But I know a lot of people are on the fence.

And they're like, I think it's true, but I'm not 100% sure. And maybe you haven't planted your flag and said, this is my belief. I believe, you know, crossing that threshold like the countless saints and martyrs have before us. And I just want to invite people to consider the joy of that. That, no better way to live your life than give yourself to something noble and true and good. And sometimes that act is a very non-emotional one. You know, for C.S. Lewis, there was a great struggle for him coming to theism. Most people think around 1929, and he talks about this pressure against him, and he's comparing it

is losing a chess match. But his actual passing into Christianity happens very quietly on a trip to the zoo. He gets in, he gets out, suddenly he realizes, oh, I believe. But other times, it is very dramatic. Sheldon Van Aachen really struggled before accepting Christ. He wrote this great book, A Severe Mercy, C.S. Lewis was instrumental for him and his wife. He talks about, in coming to Christ, and he talks about wanting to believe, this is where I know some people are at. They want to say, I believe. Or maybe they're curious. They're intrigued, but they don't know how to make that leap. He talks about one night he's there sitting on the sofa, and he's by the fire reading a C.S. Lewis book, and he says, some time passes. He's looking into the fire, and he says, I wondered with a

strange mixture of hope and fear whether Christ might be in very truth. My God, you can tell he's on the threshold. He's like wondering. And then he sees his wife is there, and she's praying for him, and she's pleading with him and she says at one point, please believe. Moved almost to tears, he writes, I whispered back, oh, I do believe. And then it says, I was shaken by the affirmation that swept over me. It's like, it's like, you know, sometimes you can't even control it. You just, it just happens to you, and you can't even explain it. It's like, this faith is there now. I can articulate it. I do believe. There's nothing more thrilling in all your life than to give yourself and give your heart, give every, give the deepest places inside of you to Christ. Say, I believe, you know, surrender fully to

him. Give everything you are to him. It's the best decision you will make. It will pay you dividends for eternity. All right, that's just on the first word. Second, I believe in God the Father. Now, there's so much to unpack in every single word here and not a word is wasted. By the way, one of my presuppositions for this whole approach is that I'm assuming that the words are not wasted. So I'm assuming that if it's in here, it's compact enough, 76 Latin words, then they all count. They all matter. The only word I forgot to really say anything about is the word amen at the end, so I won't have any comments on that, though that actually is significant.

And some of the books I was reading do talk about that. But let's talk about these words, there's a lot packed into the words God, the Father. The word Father here is not primarily referencing our relationship with God. It is wonderfully true that when we trust in Jesus, God becomes our Father. father. This is the doctrine of adoption. And we can also speak of God more generally as the father over creation and over humanity. We're speaking in a very non-technical sense there. Paul can speak like this in Acts 1729 because he's quoting one of the poets. But, you know, we've got to be careful there. And I'm going to actually do a video that'll come out probably about five days from when this one

comes out about creation in the image of God. And I'm going to say that this idea of the fatherhood of God is actually involved in that idea. I'm really excited about that video. But here, the title God the Father has a Trinitarian thrust. It's identifying God as the first member of the Godhead. The word Father here designates the relationship between the divine father and the divine son and the begottenness or generation that characterizes that. Now, I know people, Unitarians like this, I know they're going to be maybe upset about this. I want to be clear.

I'm not saying this was understood with perfect clarity and that these terms are all on the table from the beginning of the usage of the Apostles' Creed. There is greater clarity that comes out in the understanding of this. Nonetheless, I think that's basically what is in view here. It's not talking about God, the Father, as in our Father by means of adoption. It's talking about God, the Father, as opposed to God the Son, or as opposed to Jesus Christ, his only son. So Gregory of Nazianzus later in the 4th century, will assert that the term Father

designates the name of the relation in which the father stands to the son and the son to the father. And you can note the last three words there, I think I emboldened them, him that begets. So that's the father. Who is God the father, the one who begets the son? That's his identity. Now, I want to do another video sometime. It's on my list. I keep a list.

And it's on the list. It's down low on the list. Who knows if I'll get there. Sometimes I shouldn't say this because then people start pestering me saying, When are you going to do that one and I'm sorry? I am working hard. Man, believe me, I actually need your prayer for energy. I feel fatigued sometimes, but I'm doing my best.

This video will come out a few days later than I hoped. But I put a lot of work into it. But I want to do a video on begottenness. What is begottenness? What is eternal generation? What is that fascinating relationship going on there between God the Father, God, the in eternity past? And I want to specifically look at these words from the Nicene Creed,

God, light of light. that I think is a great way to put it. I think saying God of God is a pithy way of describing begottenness or eternal generation. So there's so much more we could explore here. But for our purposes, let's just draw out one implication from this, and that is to say I believe in God the Father is much more than to say I am a theist.

This is an assertion of belief in the Christian God. J.I. Packer notes that in the Bible, the great divide is between those who believe in the Christian God and those who serve idols. Now, to be able to say I'm a theist, I'm not taking that for granted. Believe me, those of us who've looked down that road and thought through that from the ground up as I have appreciate all that is at stake there, how decisive that is to be able to say, I believe in God generally.

And you, if you've worked through that, I hope my channel serves those of you who have questions about that, giving assurance about that. You know, I'll do videos on that, even though they don't get as many views. I'll do stuff. keep doing that. But when we confess in the Apostles' Creed, I believe in God the Father. We are confessing, I believe in the Christian God, the true and living God, the God of the Bible, the God who called Abraham, the God who said, I am who I am to Moses, the God who gave Solomon wisdom, the God who protected Daniel. In other words, this is not a philosophical designation. This is a covenantal and personal name.

When you say these words, this is not the only thing to get from the creed at this point, but this is one application, I guess I'm drawing. When you say these words, you're declaring not just what you profess, you're declaring in whom you trust, God the Father. You know, one of the things John Owen, the Great Puritan used to say is that each member of the Godhead should draw out particular emotional response from our hearts. Each member of the Godhead should be dear and precious to us in particular ways. we should have particular affection and adoration and respect for each member of the godhead.

And so it's very significant. And we can pray to each member of the godhead distinctly. And so it's very significant that we here are confessing our belief in this God, God the Father. He is then designated with this qualifying adjective. And intriguingly, it's this adjective rather than any other that could be given. almighty or you can see the Latin word omnipotentem it's always harder for me to pronounce that because you put the syllable in the wrong spot in the different spot if it's Latin so think of omnipotent where we get this word that's the Latin adjective there just means all powerful

I believe in God the Father almighty or all powerful how interesting that the Creed doesn't say I believe in God the Father all knowing or I believe in God the Father omnipresent or I believe in God the Father, omnibenevolent, or all loving. This reminds us that when we speak of God, it is appropriate that among the first attributes we ascribe to Him is Almighty. You know, we should approach God in this way. This is the real God. Think of Nebuchadnezzar when he comes to learn the real God, the God of Israel.

He calls him Most High, and he says, none can stay his hand. Think of Jeremiah praying and saying, nothing is too. hard for you. Think of the psalmist declaring all that he does. He does all that he pleases. So from the beginning of the creed, we're positioned in humility. This helps our emotional reaction to the creed. Okay? We're coming in submission before a grand, majestic vision of God as the almighty one. This is actually really decisive just into our whole theological method, that before we get to God as Redeemer and Savior and lover, we must start with God as king and sovereign.

Because otherwise it diminishes his work, his love and his redemption. We have to see that in context with all that God is. And this is helpful. You know, in your prayer life, call God Almighty. Throw that in. See how that affects your heart as you're praying and you say, God, I pray, and then call him Almighty. God. Now, there are some concerns about this. One of them is, is omnipotence logically coherent?

We won't chase this down real in depth here, but of course some people raise questions about this. It's actually a more complicated idea than you expect philosophically to say, can any entity do all things? Because questions about logical impossibilities come up, can God make a square circle, or even things like, can God sin? Can God cease to exist? Can God be corrupted and so forth? And the answer to that is no, but we would say that's not a limitation on God's power. Anselm's proslogion chapter 7 deals with this really well. I think he effectively shows that this is just a linguistic issue. So sinning or being corrupted are actually expressions of weakness, and thus they don't imply any limitation at all upon God. and it's simply a matter of language that we use the verb cannot, or the helping verb cannot,

to describe that. Similarly, with a square circle, that's just a logical impossibility, therefore there's nothing there to be created. That's not a limitation on God. The limitation there is in the object, not in the subject. It doesn't reflect upon God. It's just a nonsensical idea. Read Anselm for more on that.

Another question, though, more pastoral one is, actually, I've discovered in my ministry, many people find the omnipotence of God threatening. And any talk of power has a intuitively negative vibe to it, perhaps because we've seen assertions of power that we have experienced as domineering, manipulative, controlling. And so we need to be very clear to sharply distinguish God's power from any conception of manipulative control. One theologian is actually spoken of God's omnipotence as a gentle omnipotence, which is a fascinating phrase. You know, think of it like this. God's omnipotence is not always noisy. It's when we conceptualize the power of God, we should think not only of thunder and lightning,

but also the way the tree grows after the thunder and lightning is over. It's the omnipotence of God that equally causes both. By his divine power, God also causes the tree to grow a tiny bit the next morning. And of course, the big thing here, of course, is to never divorce God's omnipotence from his goodness and love. And once we see that, we see we want an omnipotent God. Just like if your house is being attacked and you call the police, you want police that are powerful. You don't want weak police. And for the person who trusts in Jesus Christ, happy thought, God's power becomes a power that is actually at work for you and in you by his spirit. So God's omnipotence is a good thing. All right, next, the creed then further identifies

God in one more way, this time by means, not of an adjective, but of an activity, creator of heaven and earth, or maker of heaven and earth. Now, in the phrase here, the words heaven and earth are a merism, as are, as they are in Genesis 1, 1. First verse of the Bible. So a merism is just a literary device or a rhetorical device that uses two contrasting elements of something to refer to the whole. If I say, I fasted day and night, day and night means all the time. If I say, I searched high and low, that means I searched everywhere. Heaven and earth is just an ancient way of saying everything. A modern parallel term might be something like the universe.

So when we designate God, we are designating God the Father, Almighty, who is the the maker of heaven and earth, he made all things. Now here's a problem. Why is God the father singled out as the creator here? What about the Son and the Spirit? Is this a denial of the doctrine of inseparable operations, which holds that all three persons of the Holy Trinity are at work in every external action of God? Or worse still, does this somehow imply that the Son and the Spirit are themselves created beings? And the answer to that is no. To designate God the Father as Creator doesn't necessarily mean we are excluding the work of the Son and the Spirit in creation. The role of a certain person in the Godhead unto a certain action can be emphasized as a matter of what Fred Sanders calls appropriation.

But it doesn't follow that that action is exclusive to that person. So we can speak of God the Father as Creator without implying that the Son and Spirit are not involved also in creation. and in scripture we very clearly do see their involvement in creation. All things are made through the sun or by the sun, and we see the Spirit's agency as well. Now, we'd need to say more about that to fully cover that, but I at least wanted to note that and alert people to that. You can read Fred Sanders' wonderful book on the Holy Spirit for more on that. Now, here's the point to sort of apply this and work with this a little bit.

It's very significant that we begin with an identification of God, our Creator for at least two reasons. First, the doctrine of creation grounds our relationship with God. Nothing about salvation and frankly, nothing even about sin will make sense apart from this framework. This is the fundamental framework we must think in when we relate to God. He's our Creator. And because we stand before him in that relationship as our maker, we are accountable to him. We are not autonomous. We're not self-made. Rather, we live every moment. with a sense of obligation unto him. Now that's so basic, but actually we cannot assume that in our culture.

I think one of the biggest needs we have for evangelism in the modern West right now is simply conveying a sense of God, because that is absolutely essential for anything of the gospel to make emotional sense to people. You're not going to feel a need for salvation if you don't have a sense of guilt, and you're not going to feel a sense of guilt if you don't have a sense of the holiness and majesty of God. Martin Lloyd Jones used to speak about his preaching, the goal of preaching is to convey a sense of God. I like that. The second reason the doctrine of creation informs our, is so important, is that it informs our whole stance to the world.

Here's a happy note. In affirming God as maker of heaven and earth, the creed is opposing gnostic views in which the material or physical universe is evil. But by implication, it's also affirming, just like Genesis 1 did, the God. goodness of all that God has made. This is a wonderful, there's several things in this creed that were controversial then, but now we tend to take for granted. But we need to understand this is something of a unique contribution of Christianity, maybe not absolutely unique. I'm not, I can't speak to that, but somewhat unique. And it's such a happy thing that the physical world, all of it is good, all of it is made by God, and all of it reflects God. You won't find one tiny corner of the world that doesn't

bear the imprint of a good and wise creator. Every blade of grass, every single one. There's not one that is wasted. There's not one blade of grass you have ever seen that's just a waste of space. God made it. God delights in it. Every star in the sky.

That's even more miraculous when you know how many there are. And he calls them all by name. Unbelievable. Every single corner is crying out to us. God made me. If we have the ears and the humility to hear it. Raspberries taste really good because God made them. Waterfalls are really cool because God made them. Cheetahs can run really fast because God made them. I have young kids. I like watching

nature documentaries and learning about, you know, just amazing. The way the cheetah's tail coordinates with its body to make it maximally fast, it's amazing. Didn't think we'd get into that in the Apostles' Creed, right? But I mean, this is all sort of implicit and this making of heaven and earth. It's a happy thing that we get to affirm here. The creed is designating that Christianity is not embarrassed by, but actually gives a full-throated affirmation of the world, and therefore the arts, vocation, the enjoyment of the world. Christianity is not a religion of retreatism and cynicism. If you appreciate what the Gnostics were saying and how Christians were opposing them, actually this is very significant for our stance to the world, for how

you treat your job, for example. The Apostles' Creed with this phrase is encouraging a posture of curiosity and exploration. Implicit in the words, maker of heaven and earth, is a kind of open-heartedness to the world. This is what God has made, you know. This is not a religion that encourages you to stay in your room, close the door, and just, you know, drown out, the big, bad world out there. Christianity is not anti-reality. Rather, the calling of Genesis 1 is. to go and subdue it. And that's why, you know, again, we sort of take this for granted today, but actually, this is actually a huge contribution. This is the kind of religion that has the intellectual resources to fund and inspire something like science, which it did. All right, moving on.

Now let's take these next seven words, and let's work through this phrase. So, and in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord. So we have sort of three decisions. distinct titles for the second member and object of belief here. So the word and carries over the verb I believe. So we're saying, I believe in God the Father, and I also believe in this other entity. Jesus Christ, His only son, our Lord. Lots going on in every single word here. The word Jesus, of course, refers to a name, but Christ is a title. This is not like Jesus's last name. Or, surname. This is a title meaning Messiah or anointed one. We don't have any Old Testament history in the creed, but actually it is implicit here in this very title, because the Jewish people

awaited one who would serve as a prophet, priest, and king, the three anointed offices in the Old Testament, and bring salvation and deliverance to God's people, and ultimately to the entire world. This is the Messiah. And to call Jesus Christ is to make that confession of faith grounded in that expectation of the Hebrew Bible. The word son, by contrast, is, again, Trinitarian. This is denoting Jesus's relationship to God the Father, hence the word His. Again, I understand it's not going to flesh this all out like the Nicene Creed does, but that's the focus here. It's the relation of God, the Father, God, the Son. And so you've got the word Son is Trinitarian, denoting Jesus' relationship to God the Father, hence the word His,

and then the word Lord is covenantal, denoting his relationship to us, hence the word are. So we put it up again for emphasis to see that. His son, our Lord. But in that former relationship, there's this very one important word that it's easy to skip over. Unicum in Latin, in the Greek, it's the word monogenes, which you can translate. as unique or one of a kind or potentially only begotten, though this is very much contested. Now you see this word, the Greek word there, monogenes all throughout John's writings, like John 316, he gave his one and only son, or his only begotten son. And if you want a defense, I'm not

going to go into this in all detail. But as long as this video is, there's going to be a lot more that we could have gone into. Actually, if you can believe this, the reason this takes me so long to do, and I worked so hard to pare it down, is because I actually paired this down to get it briefer, because there's so much to unpack. But just to reference this here, if you want a defense of the traditional translation of this word only begotten, check out the excellent work of Charles Irons in this book that'll put up on the screen, retrieving eternal generation. For now, he's done a good case for that. For now, I'll just note that this is the language that will come to be taken as reference. the doctrine of eternal generation or begottenness from the Father.

Now again, the Apostles' Creed doesn't go into that. It doesn't flesh that out, but it is perfectly consistent with that later development that you will then see in the Nicene Creed, for example. So you hear again, you have this skeletal structure, Jesus Christ, God's only son, and therefore, our Lord. And don't miss the plural. Remember how we started off noting that it says, I believe, not we believe, nonetheless, it doesn't say my Lord.

Isn't that interesting? So this balances out the earlier singular with the plural here and reminds us that we are, it's a personal statement, but it is made with an awareness that this is of a corporate context and identity, that there are brothers and sisters all around us that confess the same Lord. The word Lord is employed by Thomas as a parallel to God when he worships him and to who say Jesus' Lord is one of the earliest and most basic Christian affirmations. This is one of the two affirmations that lead to salvation in Romans 10.

This is an affirmation that is used as a test of discerning the Holy Spirit in 1st Corinthians 12.3. And in the church, the Lordship of Jesus is so helpful to hold up high and make visible because it relativizes all the other distinctions. and it unites us under him as our head. It means unity. Think about, you know, the wealthy senator and the slave both come before the baptismal waters, and they are on equal footing there before Christ. There is no slave or free in Jesus Christ.

We are under the lordship of Christ, and that has huge implications for our relationships with each other in the body of Christ. It also means we repel and resist the intrusion of any other Lord claiming to come into that sacred space. Jesus is our Lord, and therefore there is no one else to whom we give that ultimate allegiance. And it's beautiful to think of this, but it was the Lordship of Jesus that caused certain German Christians to bravely oppose the Nazi effort to incorporate the church as an organ of the state. We are bound, they wrote in the Barman Declaration, together by the confession of the one Lord of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

In other words, it wasn't just that Hitler was evil, though that is obviously true. It's that his demands for allegiance are simply not possible for a Christian to make. We already have one Lord. Today we have to remember that whatever our political views, we should always relativize them under the greater allegiance that we have to Christ. You know, Jesus is king. That's our ultimate allegiance, and then we engage the political process as an extension out of that more basic allegiance to Christ. And it's happy to remember that when we confess this, Jesus Christ, our Lord, this is what every person will one day confess, according to Philippians 2.

Happy thought that the confession of the Apostles' Creed will one day be spread to all people when Jesus comes back. So what we can observe here, stepping back in big picture, is that at the heart of the creed is not an abstract principle or an idea or a philosophy, but a person. There's a name in the creed. And from this identification, then we get into this lengthiest section of the creed, this long digression, starting with the word who, and extending through these 11 verbs describing his activity. and what we are reminded of by this, I think, is that Christianity is about real historical events. This is a very concrete religion. This 75-word summation includes words like Pontchus Pilate. You know, this is not just some philosophy somebody came up with.

This is about real concrete events. Karl Bart talked about the inclusion of Pilot in the creed. It's like he gets two out of the 76 words. And his metaphor for this was like a lowly dog sneaking into a formal room in the house. And you look over, you see the dog there, and you're like, what are you doing in here, you know? But the inclusion of Pilate is important as a reminder that we're dealing with real concrete historical events, not a timeless ideal. The gospel has a when and a where. God came down in the Roman Empire, not in the Babylonian Empire.

It happened, the incarnation happened 2,000 years ago, not 3,000 or 1,000 or something. So let's work through these 11 verbs. Ah, it's thrilling. First two will put up, here we have the first two events in the incarnation of the Son of God. Okay, the word incarnation means God, the Son, becoming a man. And the first two events are conception and birth. Now, these are different, though sometimes we might mush them together or fail to think this through. We're going to see the full narrative schema of the incarnate and ascended work of Christ as we work

through these 11 verbs, it's thrilling. So, but to start here, we have to recognize conception and birth are different. They're separated by usually around nine months, and this reminds us that, though it's so amazing to be able to speak of God as a baby, and that's completely theologically correct to say God became a baby. You can also say God became an embryo, and God became a fetus. Mary conceived and went through all of the ordinary stages of a human pregnancy. Amazing, and it didn't have to be that way. You know, God could have beamed down, like in Star Trek when they beamed down from the ship. He could have beamed down conceivably as a full-grown man, but he didn't. And we're going to notice, this will be our presupposition throughout all this, is that everything Jesus did

is important for our salvation, all that he did. And that includes his, the conception and birth. Now, in that process, Mary is the vessel, and the Holy Spirit is the agent, conceived by the Holy Spirit born of the Virgin Mary. This is something we see in Luke 1 with this verb overshadow. So the angel tells Mary that the reason shall have a baby, despite being pregnant, is that the Holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the most high will overshadow you. This is the same verb for the cloud at the transfiguration, overshadowing the disciples. This recalls the Spirit's work in creation in Genesis 1-2, hovering over the waters. We also know from Romans 8-11 and elsewhere that it's the Holy

Spirit will give life to us with a resurrection body. So the Holy Spirit's role in the virgin birth of giving life is fitting, given his identity and work elsewhere in creation and redemption. You think of the Nicene Creed's identification of the Spirit as the Lord and giver of life. Now, let's just observe this. Let's not rush past anything here. We often will focus on the later deeds of Christ in his incarnate work. And this has been my major emphasis throughout this exposition of the creed here, that we often just put all the focus upon the death of Jesus. And, you know, we throw in the resurrection too. That's important too. But it's important to see the full narrative spread. And I've argued elsewhere that the very incarnation itself is a saving

event. It's not just sort of putting the golf ball on the tee to tee you up to hit. It's not just preparatory. Some Christians have argued for that. I say, I don't think so. I think it's much more consistent with the church fathers and just with good theology and with scripture to see the incarnation itself as a saving event the moment that mary conceived something new emerged that had never happened in all created history or eternity the incarnation was as pivotal a change to reality as creation itself at creation for the first time you have something other than god createdness comes into being at the moment of Mary's conception, now you have something completely new, a union between God and creature. The divine and human natures are united in one person. And one of the emphases all throughout

the church is that this is something that changes human nature. Humanity 2.0 emerges then, even though it is fully manifested at the resurrection on Easter morning. Anselm puts it like this, at the incarnation, human nature was exalted. For more on that, see my chapter on the Atonement in my book Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals. Pretty sure I have a video on that as well, and I discuss I Renaeus and Athanasius as examples in that chapter. But the idea is what comes about on Easter morning, the new, the second Adam, the last man, the life-giving spirit, the typology Paul has in 1st Corinthians 15, right? First Adam, second Adam. That's implicit already in the incarnation. That's not an arbitrary addition.

that point. Read that if you want more about that. But isn't that thrilling? It's how it helps you to see the full sweep of events. Now, with regard to the Virgin Mary, if you want a great defense of the Virgin birth, read J. Gresham-Machan on this, great treatment of it about 100 years ago when it was very controversial, he rightly argues that this doctrine is interwoven with a healthy Christology wholesale. So to affirm the Virgin birth is not just a random thing you just have to tick the box, this actually helps you guard against various Christological heresies. It helps illumine the nature of Jesus' sinlessness and his status as a person who is fully divine and fully human. And the virgin birth is also just a good litmus test for the supernatural character

of Christianity more generally. If you can't believe in the virgin birth because it just seems too miraculous, you're just not going to get along well with Christianity, because you're going to come along and there's going to be a lot of other miracles like God raising the dead, even raising bodies that have been cremated and scattered. So you've got to get on board with miracles. God spoke the universe into being he can intervene, and the virgin birth is a good test case of that. Now Christians disagree about whether Mary remained a virgin during and then after the the birth of Christ over the course of the rest of her life. One of these days, I'm going to try to get around to make a video on the perpetual virginity of Mary. Don't expect it soon. Again, I'm a bit

waterlogged right now. But all Christians should give unqualified affirmation of the virgin birth as envisioned here, and we should oppose modern theologians like Emil Bruner who rejected it. All right, next little phrase here, we've got these four verbs referencing events that then occur in rapid succession, and they even overlap a little bit, but they're not identical. Again, let's approach this creed with the assumption that it's not wasting space, and that actually each word matters. So the words suffered under Pontchus Pilate, draw our minds to a slightly larger reference than just mere crucifixion,

though that's where it came to an apex. But we can think of the larger complex of events involving his trial, is being flogged, he's carrying the cross, the crown of thorns. There's more suffering than merely the act of crucifixion and really the entire unjust humiliation of this whole legal process. But the apex of this is, of course, crucifixion. And the creed says he is crucified. Crucifixion, of course, as we know, is associated with shame and defeat in the ancient world. This is the way the Roman Empire made an example out of you so that everyone would look at that and say, wow, I don't want to be that person. And it will never cease to be astonishing for us to consider that God incarnate submitted not just to death, but death in that form.

And as Philippians too teaches us, we are to think of this as a tremendous act of humility that should change every aspect of our lives. if God incarnate was willing to submit to death on a cross, how dare we boast? How dare we be lordly and look down upon others? Every aspect of Christian relationship and posture should be bathed in humility as we follow a crucified God. Now it's significant that he was crucified. Jesus was not beheaded. Jesus was not drowned.

He didn't get the electric chair. You know, it matters that he died by this means. and Galatians 3 reminds us that it was death by this mechanism by which Jesus endured the curse of sin. It's also significant that he died and was buried. Here's what hit me emotionally. I've studied this a little more. I talk about this a little bit in the chapter in theological retrieval for evangelicals that I mentioned, but I want to drive it home to our hearts here. Man, this is helpful to consider. So it's significant that there's a passage of time between the death and resurrection of Christ. And this hit me afresh. Just think about this. Why do we have a Jesus who had to die and remain dead?

You could conceptualize it happening differently. You might think of Jesus just suffering, atonement suffering on the cross for several hours, but before the actual moment of death comes, he achieves a resurrection body. Or you could imagine death comes, but either immediately or within a few seconds of his death, he is resurrected and the cross shatters into a thousand pieces, or at least you could conceptualize the resurrection happening sometime Friday evening, sparing Jesus the shame of burial and making his triumph more public. That's not how it happened. And again, it's significant the way it did happen. He died and he was buried. His lifeless body was laid in a tomb. He was laid in a tomb. He entered into a state of death.

So it's customary for Christians to think about Christ's saving work in these two phases. I think this is helpful categories for us. The descent and the ascent. I think I mentioned this earlier. The humiliation and the glorification. The burial, we can think of as the pinnacle moment of the humiliation. The Westminster Shorter Catechism references this as the apex of that state and talks about how he continued under the power of death for some time.

Now, just, again, the emotional, the way if you think this through, it strikes you emotionally, just think about this. When a human body dies, it starts changing. The most significant initial signs of death are a cessation of breath, a cessation of heartbeat, and a cessation of neural activity. And then the body starts going through various changes. You know, your blood is no longer pumping throughout your body, so you can't get rid of wastes, and your body goes cold, the limbs become stiff, the eyes of a problem.

corpse change, they're no longer transparent. Water in the body tends to sink to the lowest parts. You don't have any kind of circulation. It's kind of gross and sad to think about. And typically decomposition begins very soon and goes through different phases, and you can read about this. Now the tricky thing here is how to interpret Psalm 1610, and you will not let your Holy One seed decay, and we wonder, is this a reference to the resurrection proper, or is there some kind of preservation of the body of Jesus on Holy Saturday. We call Saturday Holy Saturday between. We don't need to resolve that here, but I'll just make this point. Look into that one yourself. But at this point, just think about this, that the body of God incarnate went lifeless.

In his choking breaths on the cross, he eventually succumbed down, in sinking down into the darkness, loses consciousness, and his life is extinguished and his heart stops. Now, to clarify, we are speaking about the human nature of Christ, the divine nature cannot die. But nonetheless, this is a real death. Jesus's heart stopped beating. And the gospel speak of Joseph, of Arimathea, one of my favorite characters, acquiring the body of Christ and preparing it with linen and spices and laying it in a tomb. John's account of this, fascinatingly, includes Nicodemus in this. I wrote an article about this once and the courage that would have taken these men.

Just imagine Joseph and Nicodemus there. and they're looking at the body of Christ. Imagine, you know, his head is lying limp. You can pick up and look at his bloodied face, and he's got no life in his body. You picture Nicodemus there recalling his conversation at night with Jesus, when he'd been enthralled by this person and intrigued by this person back in John 3, and now he's looking, he's dead, you know? And you think about these two wealthy men.

Wealthy men never did the burying like this. This was typically not their tasks, so you wonder if they're fumbling over. over the how to fold the linens and so forth. Just imagine looking, the feeling the body of Christ and it's cold and stiffening. Can you imagine the emotional impact? Totally it get emotional. Of rolling the stone into place. And you know that feeling in your heart when the stone clicks into place.

And you know he's in there now. The stone is, the doorway is enclosed. And what is significant about this and what emerges from this, is the full solidarity of Christ with us in our humanity from womb to tomb. This is the Savior we have. So Gregory of Nisa puts it like this. I was drawn into some of these great quotes from the Church Fathers by this helpful book by Ben Myers on the Apostles' Creed. Gregory of Nisa's commenting on this, and he says, death is rendered necessary by the birth. He who had determined, once for all to share, the nature of man must pass through all the

peculiar conditions of that nature, seeing then that the life of man is determined between two boundaries. Had he, after passing the one, not touch the other that follows, his proposed design would have remained only half fulfilled. So these two boundaries are birth and death. And what he's saying is Jesus had to go through it all. It's all important. And I just think about this, you know, that terrible event that we all dread death. So much of life, we spend time not thinking about it, right? But hardly anybody can avoid this, unless you're Enoch or Elijah, your odds are pretty good. You're going to go through it.

Even Jesus went through it. There's a great scene in the Narnia books where Aslan says, very few people have not died. Even I died. But what this cements into our hearts is that nothing, even death, can possibly separate us from the love of God if we have trusted in Christ. This is the kind of hope and comfort we have in the gospel. It's like pervasive salvation, you know. Our natural state, of course, is to live in fear of death.

This is why Hebrews 2.15 is talking about death as a kind of lifelong slavery. And this is how we are. If we don't have the gospel, this is how it is. There's a famous letter written from the second century by an Egyptian woman named Irene. It's called the Letter of Condolence. and she's basically just writing to try to comfort her friend who had a young child who died. And she expresses her condolences and her sorrows, and she ends the letter by saying this. Nevertheless, against such things one can do nothing.

Therefore comfort one another, farewell. And I thought, what a contrast to First Thessalonians for. The death of Jesus, the burial of Jesus, changes everything. We no longer need to be afraid of that event. it might be unpleasant but it's lost its sort of sting the kind of murkiness of it the darkness of it the uncertainty of it when jesus introduces himself in revelation one to john he says i died i like that i'm i am alive forevermore i have the keys of death and hades so i didn't mean for this to become such a sermon but it's just hard to reflect upon this without going there you know because

this is what we need to know if jesus has been there before us we don't need to need to be afraid of it. I used the illustration once. I let a camping trip on Catalina Island off the coast of California many years ago, and we were looking at the caves. And later, I used this thought experiment. Would you be willing to just walk into the cave as far as you can without a light? And everyone's saying, not interested in that. Then I said, okay, what if someone goes in front of you and has a light and leads the way? Would you then be willing to go and follow them? Almost everybody he says, oh yeah, that'd be much less scary. That's a great image of the difference that the gospel makes for death. It has lost its sting. And actually, seeing that Christians are not afraid of death

is one of the most powerful testimonies for the truth of the gospel. Many, like John Wesley, have been converted through it. Let's push forward. Next phrase, here's something cool. We said that Christ's saving work comes in these two great moments, descent and assent, right? Well, as we've emphasized, the burial is the pinnacle of the humiliation. This phrase, he descended into hell, actually is probably best taken as referring to the beginning of Christ's exaltation and triumph and victory. Even prior to his return to life on Easter morning, the glorification has begun. Now, why do we say that? And what does this mean? This is perhaps the most controversial and difficult phrase in the entire creed. We should not think of hell here as the opposite of heaven,

as a place of torment and final judgment. Rather, at this time in history, this is a reference to the realm of the dead. The term here comes from a Latin word meaning low, the word inferes. You get words like inferior, and the Greek word means something like the bottom or the depths. And when it's in the plural, so it's accusative, masculine plural here, the dead. it often in that case, and in the plural, will refer to the realm of the dead. So you could say, you could almost say he descended to the dead. Or you'll sometimes hear the word Hades be used instead of hell or sometimes the word underworld.

Hopefully this communicates. Now, full disclosure, this phrase is not found in the old Roman creed. It's not as old. Nonetheless, it has very strong historical attestation. And more importantly, as I'll try to show in a second, I think it's basically biblical. And so I really want to encourage evangelicals to be more open to this and not suspicious of this as sometimes we can be. Here's two tips about how to interpret the creed. Number one, don't make anything in it just completely redundant.

Again, it's not wasting words. So if all you try to do is say, well, he descended to the dead, that just means he was buried. if you don't mean anything more than just he died and was buried, if it's not adding anything on, then it's just sort of redundant, right? It's like, well, why is it even there then? Another tip for interpreting this is to try not to violate the chronology. This is my concern with John Calvin's view of this, which emphasizes that the descent into the dead is a bearing of God's wrath. But that would be very strange to put it here after burial if it's referring to something that is primarily happening while Jesus is suffering on the cross. That would be discronology. So if you respect

those two sort of hermeneutical principles, it's the own particularity of this phrase, that it's not redundant, and its chronology, it raises the question of kind of what are we talking about here? What does this mean? What is Jesus doing between burial and resurrection? And this hopefully will thrill your part as it does mine. Fascinating and complicated topic, let's be brief here, and I'll just read from Matt Emerson on this. I'll put up a picture of his book. This is a great resource. It's already several years old now. Man, the years go by fast. I think it came out in like 2019. But great book. Here's how he puts it. Christ, in remaining dead for three days, experienced death as all humans do. His body remained in the grave, and his soul remained in the place of the

righteous dead. He did not suffer there, but remaining hypostatically united to the divine nature of the sun, proclaimed the victory achieved by his penal substitutionary death to all those in the place of the dead. Fallen angels, the unrighteous saint dead, and Old Testament saints. And he argues, Emerson argues that there are basically three purposes to the dissent, solidarity in the experience of death, as human beings do, proclaiming victory to all. all the dead, and releasing Old Testament saints. And he notes, this basic threefold importance of Christ's descent was virtually ubiquitous in the early church from the second century onward. Now, this is usually not understood as a post-mortem offer of salvation, but rather as a declaration of victory.

And so, I think that's partly why it causes some evangelicals to wonder what's going on here. Boy, I love this. Okay, does it sound... Is it too far to say this? I don't know. Is it too far to think of Jesus almost sort of trash talking to the demons? Is it too far to kind of saying,

in your face? You know, now that he's defeated death, I don't know if that's too far if that's helpful or unhelpful. Drop it if it's not helpful. But the point is, it's a declaration of victory. And I really want to encourage... You know, other traditions

actually have a better understanding of this than many Protestants, especially like the Eastern Orthodox have a lot on this. But I would just say that we can appreciate that this idea does seem to be biblical. It just seems like something in 1 Peter 3 is going on when it says, put the death in the flesh, made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison. Now, I'm aware there's other ways to interpret that.

But boy, what's the best way? It sure sounds like something like what we just described as the descent of the dead, or 1 Peter 4-6, says the gospel was preached even to those who are. dead. Ephesians 4-9 says he descended into the lower regions of the earth. So yeah, people will come up with different views of these things. I'm not trying to settle it. I hope one of the things that happens a lot in my videos is I'll address something but not like fully canvass it and make a case. And then someone who's being targeted by that takes the other view of that, takes offense at it, and people expect me. Man, the expectations. But I'm trying to speak to most of the audience here.

So I'll just encourage if you want to chase that down, look at Matt Emerson's helpful book, look into this elsewhere, there's some other great treatments of it. I would just say, I would just encourage people to be open to this. This seems both biblical and Catholic, meaning universal, and it's also, or almost universal in the early church. It's also just thrilling to think of Jesus, celebrating and proclaiming his death. And then, of course, we have this reference to Christ's resurrection. By the way, we say on the third day, because in the ancient world, any part of the day was reckoned as a day. I've done a lot of work on Christ's resurrection. I took a whole year back in like 2010 to make this my focus. And so I will just direct you to this video,

linked in the video description, for more on that happy event. Let's keep pushing forward to get to the end here. Next phrase has basically three things going on, three fundamental events, the Ascension, the Session, and the Second Coming, past, present, future. If you want a great book on the Ascension, I'm always trying to recommend good resources. Patrick Shreiner has a great book on the Ascension, which is a very neglected event. I'd recommend that book. Sometimes we sort of, you might say the ascension of Christ gets overshadowed by the resurrection. But of course, these are two distinct events, each with their own meaning and significance, separated by about 40 days, according to Acts 1.3. And the ascension is full of theological significance.

Read Shriners' book for a great full treatment, but let me just give one example. The ascension signals God's care for creaturely material reality in redemption. Jesus not only took on a body, he retained that body on his return to heaven. The word became flesh? Well, guess what? The word is still flesh. The flesh is in heaven. Jesus is put his eyeballs, his hands, his feet.

They're up there in heaven. Now, some people struggle with this. reading this book, and some people will dispute this. I remember reading this book years ago, and the author is saying that basically, as best as I understand him, that while the resurrection is physical at the ascension, Jesus's body sort of dematerialized and became non-fleshly. But I think that's problematic. First of all, that doesn't seem to be what Acts 1-9 says. It says a cloud hid him from their sight, so it's not clear why you'd need a cloud to hide him if he was dematerializing anyways. But the more basic point is I think we just need to step back and question

our assumptions about heaven there. It seems to be this idea that like, well, heaven is not friendly to the physical. But why should we think that? Already we've got Enoch in Genesis 524 and Elijah in 2.1, going to heaven and they both seem to be bodily events. You know, Hebrews 11 describes it as, you know, he's not found because God has taken him. In both cases here, there is no trace of Enoch or Elijah after they're off the scene. It's not like their soul floated up. It seems like they were bodily assumed to heaven. And so if heaven can accommodate bodies, then, you know, there's no problem with the accommodation

of Christ's body. So I think the better approach here is articulated by Thomas Torrance, who says, as in the incarnation we think of God becoming man without ceasing to be transcending God. So in His ascension, we have to think of Christ as ascending above all space and time without ceasing to be man or without any diminishment of his physical historical existence. Torrance is a really interesting thinker. He talks a lot about science and the universe, and he's interpreting events like the ascension of Christ in relation to them.

He also speaks of Christ's ascension, therefore, as the confirmation of creaturely reality before God. It's amazing to think there's a human brain and a human heart and human feet in heaven right now. Secondly, the creed references Jesus' heavenly session. He ascended to heaven and sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. Now, isn't it happy to think that Jesus is active right now? Sometimes we think of Jesus and we're like, oh yeah, he was back there in the past and he's out ahead in the future. We'll be with him out there and we read about him in the Gospels.

But we need to know Jesus is alive right now and active, and he is at work. And this is wonderful to think about. Sitting at the right hand of God is not a literal place. It's about regal power. This is an image of kingly sovereign authority. It recalls, for example, Psalm 110. Now, in my video on the resurrection, I go into a lot more detail on this in terms of what is involved in the heavenly session of Christ, Christ. And I talk about it in terms of his three messianic

offices of prophet priest king. He's sending his spirit to illumine the preaching of the gospel. He's interceding for us now as our high priest, and he's ruling over the nations, fulfilling the Davidic covenant, establishing God's rule, subduing foreign enemies, and so forth. So there's a lot more we could say about this, but just one encouraging application. I'm trying to draw devotional applications from all this along the way. Here's a happy thought. Through Union with Christ, we're already seated in the heavenlies with him. What in the world does that mean? Well, read Richard Gaffin's book on Union with Christ, if you want a good understanding of that, G-A-F-F-I-N. But in the meantime, it can and should encourage prayers like this beautiful prayer from the Anglican

prayer book, which asks that we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost. This makes me think of Colossians 3. Set your mind on things above. Then the third and final clause here references to the one future event, and that's the second advent of Christ. Now this phrase, the living and the dead, we've got another sort of merrism here. This is a way of saying everybody, those who are alive at the second coming, and those who have already been deceased prior to the second coming. and what we can observe here that is significant is that the purpose of the second coming is judgment. So this is helpful for us to remember that the difference, there's this fundamental difference

between the first and second Advent. That's why we have to have two of them. The first coming of Christ was in humility and for salvation. The second coming of Christ will not be like that. It will be in glory and for judgment. Now God's judgment is good. God's judgment restores the world to justice and harmony and shalom. And it's not just good for us, the people of God waiting for him, though that is what we should think. We should cry out and say, soon, Lord, come soon. But it's also just happy to think that then Jesus will get the credit he deserves. Think of what it will be like, you know, to see the face of Christ coming in glory, and every knee will bow, and the world will be right again.

and what a happy thing, you know, these prayers at the end of the book of Revelation, but come, Lord Jesus, what a happy thing to direct our hearts to. When you're suffering, what a hope to be able to say, you know, come Lord Jesus. It's almost like I feel like we should, especially these days, just try to speed up the second coming through prayer. I don't know if we can do it. I don't think we can do that. But just to petition him, to return, I think that is a great thing to do.

And I'm so thankful that we have that hope. you know, that this world, the current state is not as good as it gets, but there's a hope of a, he's going to come back and make all things right. When you're suffering, this is a happy prayer. Jesus return soon. And we can use the language of these great hymns like haste the day. In the final wing of the creed, you have a repetition of the word credo, I believe, and then there's an affirmation of the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Godhead, followed by five articles of salvation. Who is the Holy Spirit? I find that Christians are often afraid of the Holy Spirit, and we neglect the greatest resource we have,

especially young children who have only ever heard the Holy Spirit called the Holy Ghost, which is probably, if you use that terminology, make sure you explain that to young kids. That is not going to help them. Here's a tip. Learn the full biblical range of terms for the Holy Spirit, because the very titles that we are given help us understand who he is and what he does for us. For example, Jesus calls him helper. In the upper room discourse, John 14 to 16, last night on earth,

Jesus spends a lot of time talking about the Holy Spirit, and he calls him a periclet, or the paraclete, meaning advocate, counselor, or helper. Let every single one of those translations strike you. And hopefully, like me, it's kind of a helpful conviction of, oh, I need to look to the Holy Spirit more. advocate, counselor, helper. What a great word, helper. You know, in the gospel we have the objective work of Christ there done on the cross in history, but then we have the subjective work of the spirit applying that, helping us, working it out, sustaining us, giving us strength. And we don't need

to be afraid of the Holy Spirit. I think one of the great tragedies is when we see excesses, and therefore Christians become afraid of the Holy Spirit. We should pray to the Holy Spirit. We should cultivate a relationship with the Holy Spirit. You can say, Holy Spirit, help me. Holy Spirit, give me strength. He is personal, and what a wonderful thing to discover him as a helper. You know, let that be personal to your heart.

All right, finishing off, we have these five wonderful phrases that summarize the consequences of the work of Christ in the gospel. and we'll go through them point by point to finish off, the we're almost done. The first two phrases consider the effects of the gospel corporately for the entire church. Now, I want this video to be mainly constructive rather than polemical. If you want a case for a Protestant interpretation of Catholicity specifically, you can see my book or you can see my comments at the beginning of this interview that I did with my friend, Austin Suggs, the gospel simplicity. We talked a lot about that at the beginning of that dialogue, and I always enjoy talking to him.

so that might be something where if you want that, go there. Here, I just want to give a more basic, constructive explanation of even where our views among different Christian traditions might even overlap and agree. The word holy means set apart, and the word Catholic means universal. The church is holy because of the work of Christ on her behalf, and she is called to live out that holiness by being salt and light in the world. This verse, these three verses in Matthew 5 alone about being light are so convicting to think about. Are we doing that in the world right now? Are we a light shining out into the darkness?

We've got a lot of work to do. The church is Catholic because she extends to places all over the world and includes people from every tribe and language and people and nation, but also happily back through time. And so that's one of the glorious things of expressing this creed. We are joining with so many who have come before us. And this is really what is involved in the phrase communion of saints, which we need to camp out on for a second here and explain because it's so wonderful. Communion, or you could translate the word fellowship of saints, refers to a spiritual union we have throughout the body of Christ. To be a Christian, it means not just my, now I have a relationship with God. It means I'm entering into a family, a community, and a tradition. And a lot of

modern hearts are searching for that right now. If they don't find a good outlet to meet that desire, they'll find a bad one. That's why I want to spend my life commending Christianity, because it's the food for which the world is hungering. Communion of saints is a living spiritual reality. Under Jesus Christ, our head, we have union. Watch my video on Anselm and friendship for how much we've lost this today. We have such an impoverished vision. The Heidelberg Categism reminds us that this is first with Christ, and then it flows out to each other. We have communion first with Christ, and then it flows out in our relationships in the body of Christ, and it involves us using our gifts to serve others. So this isn't just about comfort and hanging out and having friends.

This is productive for the kingdom of God. This is about building each other up to be the full stature of Christ. Now think about this. That's included in the creed, but predestination is not. The communion of saints is in there. The rapture is not. We need this. We've lost this so much today.

Let me just give one example of how important this is. Origin wrote a whole defense of Christianity early on, responding to the pagan critic Selsis. At the very beginning, he talks about how Jesus was silent, well accused, and he remains silent today, but the answer he gives is through his genuine disciples. In other words, what commends the gospel to those around us is the behavior of Christians. That is how it should be. Now, when we don't live up to that, we discredit the gospel. That seems like what the New Testament teaches, John 13, by this all men will know you are my disciples

if you love one another. John 17, Jesus prays for unity so that the world will believe. I think this is so convicting right now and so important. This may be, you know, this is in the Apostles' Creed. If you don't understand Calvinism, if you don't get the rapture right, that it won't have as big give an impact is this. Do we love each other? Are we talking about each other in a way that reflects this spiritual reality? Because it will commend the gospel or it will discredit the gospel right now. The way we debate and disagree and attack each other in the body of Christ, I'm sorry to say, and I think it often discredits the gospel. Peter Craft once made the great remark that the greatest argument for Christianity is the martyrs. I think that's true. I used to, I was talking

to the friend about this. I think that's true. I don't know why it's true. I just know. to see these men and women of God. It is so hard to explain that unless Jesus rose from the dead. Then the creed affirms the forgiveness of sins. Here's a beautiful thought about this, such a brief thing to summarize in terms of the consequences of the gospel, but of course this is at the core of what the gospel does. It establishes harmony in our relationship with God

by forgiveness of sins because our main problem is sin. That's the biggest problem in our lives. And therefore we need forgiveness. of sins, not just healing or changing, but we need God to forgive us. And this is what the gospel accomplishes. And here's where I want to encourage people. If you don't, if you deny the virgin birth, then you are not believing the Apostles' Creed. But guess what? If you deny that you're forgiven, even after you've surrendered your life to Christ, you are also not believing the words of this creed. Isn't that a happy thought? That just as surely as

God is almighty, and Jesus rose from the dead. So also, it is equally true, according to the Apostles' Creed, that if you've truly repented of your sins and trusted in Christ, you are washed whiter than snow, you are clothed in the righteousness of Christ, God looks at you and says, acceptable, pure, righteous, holy. That's the gospel, and it's the best news you could possibly imagine. I have just a minute or two to finish, so let's finish it off. Final two phrases here are future-looking,

and refer to the future effects of the gospel. First, the resurrection of the body. Now, this is the part of the creed that would have been most controversial for people historically. To say, I believe in the resurrection of the body, that is not a generally held ancient belief. That is specifically Christian and relatively rare. This is a rejection of Gnostic alternatives, but other views as well, and it would have and did earn ridicule. You see that in Acts 17. This is the point of the gospel. It was a point of tension and was sort of embarrassing back then.

In later times in history, this is not where we get tension. This is not where we get pushback. But in the first century, it was. And once again, it highlights how Christianity is not a retreatist and defeatist religion. The goodness of material reality is once again affirmed. This is one of the strongest emphases of Christianity. We saw it in that God made heaven and earth. We saw it in the incarnation, and here we see it in the final resurrection. I have a lot more to say about that, but mainly see my video on heaven, where I talk about what a difference it makes that will have a body in heaven. Finally, the creed affirms life everlasting or life eternal.

The word life here doesn't just mean unending existence or a duration of consciousness. It has to do with the quality of life. You see that all throughout John's Gospel, for example. And the Heidelberg Catechism reminds us that this life has already begun. gun. I love these words. I now already feel in my heart the beginning of eternal joy. There are simply no words to describe the joy of Christianity. This is one of the great things. That's why I C.S. Lewis titled the book Surprised by Joy. You know, if Christianity means anything, it means joy. This is a happy religion. You take the long term, I mean, in the short term, it's not always happy,

but you take the long-term view, and the only way I know how to describe the joy of this is through the arts through literature. You think of the Narnia stories ending and saying this is the great story which no one on earth has read. It goes on forever, and every chapter is better than the one before. Think of how you feel when your favorite movie ends, and what if the way you feel at the end of that movie is actually a picture of what's going to happen one day? You know, the joy of a happy ending and resolution and good defeats evil. That is what Christianity says will be. be inherited for those who are in Christ. I'm going to make heaven a major focus of Truth Unites in 2025, because I think we need that right now, and it's such a happy thing, an edifying thing to

think about. All right, let me just finish by stating how to use the creed. Corporately, it's helpful to use this as a piece of liturgy. You know, someone might say, well, yeah, but I already believe the Apostles' Creed. Okay, fine, it's not just about imparting new information. We internalize and own something when we repeat it over and over and over. Even if you don't do it every Sunday, regular usage is a wonderful thing, and young people want this. We should not make the mistake of thinking our young people don't want liturgy. Yes, they do.

And when do you do it? Well, you can do it in connection to the sacraments. At baptism, have everybody who comes, say it together, at the Lord's Supper, before partying of the Lord's Supper, in between worship songs. sing a song put it up on the screen have everybody you know this can be done so well

and here's the thing about liturgy it doesn't have to be real clunky like the church that I served previous to where we're currently at was more low church but I would try to introduce liturgy but I would just try to do it in a way

that's authentic to the culture there so we would say the memorial acclamation at the Lord's Supper you know Christ has died Christ is risen Christ will come again and it doesn't need to be overly formal if your church culture isn't overly formal. Liturgy can actually take expression and feel authentic to whatever your current church culture is.

And young people are thirsting for this. Why don't we do this more? It's like, what the heck else are we doing in church if we're not doing things like reciting the Apostles Creed, you know? And then individually, this is a wonderful thing to maybe memorize. It's brief enough to do that, to recite it in your morning devotions, or even to take a particular clause and meditate on it throughout the day. I have so much more to say about this, but if you want more on this or on other creeds,

let me know in the comments. If you made it to the end, let me know what you think. I'll heart your comment. Tell me if you say, I watch to the end, and I'll heart your comment if I see it. I appreciate people making it all the way through a longer video. Of course, it helps to like the video, share the video, and if you'd like to support Truth Unites, you can see how to do that on the website. But I'm going to call it there.

hopefully this blessed you and thrilled you as it has me, and what it does ultimately to me is make me say, I want, this is me. I'll close by saying those words again. I did not make this, but it is making me. That's how I feel about the Apostles' Creed and Christianity. This is, this is it. This is what I want to give my life to, and I know many of you do as well. So what a wonderful reminder of that is the very truth of God and not the invention of many men. Thanks for watching everybody. Thank you.