Apostle’s Creed

Brunei Sermon Apostle’s Creed 13th January, 2013

Bethel Church

Written By Rev Law Hui Seng

Posted By Teresa Han

Main Idea: I believe in God

Objectives: a. To relate the Apostle’s creed to our Christians’ life.

b. To teach the doctrines of God, creator and Christ the Son of God.

A. Introduction

- You may have been reciting the traditional Apostle’s Creed Sunday in and Sunday out, but you do not much about its meaning and how it is related to your spiritual life or daily life. I pray that as I preach and teach you its meaning and background, you will appreciate it and each time you recite it, it will strengthen your faith in Christ.

1. 我信上帝，全能的父， 创造天地的主。

　　I believe in God, Father Almighty, Creator of heavens and the earth.

　　2. 我信我主耶稣基督，上帝的独生子；

　　I believe in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord,

　　3. 因着圣灵感孕，由童贞女玛利亚所生；

　　conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, given birth through Virgin Mary,

　　4. 在本丢•彼拉多手下受难，被钉在十字架上，受死，埋葬；

　　suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and buried,

　　5. 降在阴间；第三日从死里复活；

　　was descended into the Death, and the third day risen from the dead;

　　6. 他升天，坐在全能父上帝的右边；

　　He ascended into the Heaven, seated at the right hand of Father Almighty,

　　7. 将来必从那里降临，审判活人，死人。

　　and will come back from there to judge the living and the dead.

　　8. 我信圣灵，

　　I believe in the Holy Spirit,

　　9. 我信圣而大公之教会、圣徒相通，

　　I believe in the holy universal Church, the communion of the saints,

　　10. 我信罪得赦免，

　　I believe in the forgiveness of sins,

　　11. 我信身体复活；

　　I believe in the resurrection of the body,

　　12. 我信永生。阿们！

　　I believe in everlasting life Amen!

- I will begin with what is a creed, a simple historical background and the reasons to use it for the universal Christian church. Then, an explanation of its meaning and how it relates to our Christian life through a series of sermons.

B. What is a Creed?

- The word creed in English is coming from the first Latin word of the Apostle’s Creed, ‘credo’, I believe.

- There are 2 meanings in reciting the Apostle’s Creed. Firstly, it is an individual’s believe in the Trinitarian God, therefore, out of the 12 statements, every statement begins with the phrase ‘I believe’. Secondly, it is a demonstration of the whole congregation’s faith origin and worshipping the true God.

- Historically, there are other 3 creeds: Nicean Creed; Chalcedonian Creed; and Athanasian Creed.

- Apostle’s Creed is among the simplest creed, it was formed out of early believers’ faith development.

- A creed is simple, short and precise for the purpose of memorizing.

C. A Simple Historical Background

- A creed was formed out of the problems faced by the early church believers. It was used for personal devotion, public worship, dealing with cults and persecutions.

- There are quite a lot of creedal formulas in the New Testament. They became the backbone of the later creeds. For examples, popular ones are ‘...if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’. And believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.’ (Rom 10:9); the shortest ones are ‘Jesus is Lord’ or ‘Jesus is Messiah’.

- In the days of apostle, they used scripture as their creeds. Then, in the later days, it was not suitable. On the one hand, one or two verses cannot include the whole faith of Christianity. On the other hand, the challenges faced by the church were very different. For examples, to counter the cultic teachings, the church cannot just respond with one or two verses as the cults also used the scripture as their basis. The challenges had been thrown to Christians by the Ebionites, they made Christianity to be Judaism; Gnostics, they tried to Hellenize Christianity.

- Apostle’s Creed was slowly formed in the midst of all these struggles. It was not written by the apostles but by the early believers through a long process of debates in the first few centuries

D. Reasons to use Apostle’s Creed

- Firstly, the apostles of the early Christian churches always repeated their important content in their preaching. And this method could have been learnt from Jesus, for example in preaching sermon on the Mount. Apostle Creed could be formed out of the need for preaching.

- Secondly, the young churches were newly formed, they needed established liturgy like the Holy Communion and baptism for public worships. An example is in Philippians 2:5-11. The declaration of their faith in their worships in the midst of persecution and cultic teachings had several functions: teaching, comfort, encouragement and expressing Christian stand with Jesus, therefore, confronting the evil power.

- Thirdly, the early church did not have a pure mentality as we assume, before Emperor Constantine made Christianity the national religion, different churches had their own separate individual explanation for their belief. There was no systematic teaching on their belief. The animistic believers of the Gentiles who converted had difficulty grasping their Christian belief. This called for the need of Apostle’s Creed.

- Fourthly, the cultic teachings had caused the formation of the creed. The creed would tell the believers what to believe and at the same time, pointing out the wrong teachings of the cults.

E. I Believe

- When a person has a blur understanding of his belief, his object of belief will disappear, he will be disappointed with his past, he will have no hope toward himself now, and he has no expectation for his future.

- He does not feel important of himself, he has given up on himself, and now, anything can own him or her.

- Let us now examine our Christian understanding of ‘believe’. It has 2 parts, i.e., (1) the object of belief and (2) the response produced because of the belief, the meaning of belief.

- Christian believes in God, the object of our belief is God. We believe God in Christ who accomplished all the things for us. Because we have understood what He had done for us, we responded to Him in Christ, we commit to Him, love Him and obey Him.

- Therefore, the more you know the object of belief, the more you will respond to Him.

- The first part of belief is knowing and the second part is action. Knowing is knowing the object of belief; and action is actually the emotional response towards the object of belief. The 2 actually happened at the same time. After you know what you believe, then, you have a response. This process involves a relationship.

- So, the more you know this God whom you believe, the more personal in relationship you will have with this God. If not, you will not have a personal relationship with Him.

- It is very crucial for us Christians to understand our object of belief, God.

F. I believe in God

- What do you mean when you declare ‘I believe in God’? It means I do not believe in a God who is defined by someone else; not believe in a God defined by myself because God is God on His own, He acted and spoke and reveal Himself throughout history.

- He entered time and space, and through His work on earth, we know Him.

- He is given to us; He presented Himself to us.

- Therefore, when you declare ‘I believe in God’ you believe in God who reveal Himself to you. You are not believing in a God whom people voted as God with such a definition.

- When you let this God be God on His own in your life, you have a relationship with Him. He definitely wants to know you and vice-versa.

- It becomes like a boy-girl relationship. In such a relationship, you want to know a guy better, you need to allow that person to ‘reveal’ himself or herself to you.

- You cannot imposed your own understanding about him or her on him or her.

- Similarly, when anybody wants to know God, it cannot be depending on his/her effort only. There must be initiative coming from God, revelation coming from Him, and words coming from Him. It must be the participation of both sides. In knowing God, there must be a dialogue. Otherwise, God is just what we made Him to be, our narrow view of God.

- God’s revelation to us through His creation, salvation and end time theology (eschatology), all are deeds of God which we can know in the bible.

- Through the deeds of God, we come to know Him in our inner life, so, in the process, if there is any mismatch, contradiction, etc, e.g., in view of God’s revelation of Himself to us, our own wrong understanding of him must be corrected in order to allow God to be God in our life. We cannot change him to match our understanding of Him.

- Take for instance, for many years, I assume that God does not love Muslims. This is my own understanding of God which is wrong in view of the Bible, where Jesus said, “For God so loved the world” and also Jesus commanded us to make disciples of all nations.

- So, when you said I believe in God, you mean, “I believe in God who has spoken, acted. He is not a dumb God.

G. Conclusion

- Do you mean what you declare as you say, “I believe in God”?