Sermon text: John 8:48–59
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
The Lutheran Church, as you know, is a creedal church. So are the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox churches, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Anglicans, the Episcopalians, and others: creedal — meaning they express their faith in a written form in the liturgies of the church. Now whether the modern churches believe what they say or not, nonetheless, they have a tradition of being creed churches. A creedal church accepts and makes use of the creeds. And a creed is a statement of faith. A creed is a statement that summarizes what the Bible teaches on specific doctrines.
The historical ecumenical creeds were created to provide the church with a definitive statement of the specific doctrines that were under assault during the period of the early church: the first 500 to 600 years of the life of the New Testament church. Once written and accepted by the faithful churchmen of the days, the creeds became a regular part of the church service. It was a way to guard against — or to drive out — false doctrines regarding the things that the creeds spoke about. The creeds were intended to clarify what the Bible teaches regarding the person and nature of God and the work of salvation. The creeds also gave the congregation the public opportunity to confess the faith once delivered to the saints. The faithful accepted the three ancient creeds — the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian Creed — as correct expositions of who God is and what God has done for us and for our salvation.
Heretics at the same time rejected the creeds. They were written against the heretics. Of course they would. All the creeds that were written though, that were accepted ecumenically, are contained in the Book of Concord as a way of showing the Roman Catholic Church of the day — as well as everyone else — that the Lutherans weren’t manufacturing anything new, nor departing from that which the Bible itself had said and the creeds had in fact embodied.
As to the history of the creeds: the Apostles’ Creed was in circulation and use by the middle of the 3rd century A.D. and was a part of the early baptismal rite. The first two parts of that creed — the Father, the Son — the Nicene Creed was written and approved in 325 A.D., and the third part, on the Holy Spirit in the church, was written and approved in 381 A.D. The longest and most complex of the three creeds, of course, is the one that we just spoke: the Athanasian Creed. And it was written and approved in the fifth century A.D. As you now know, it has a lot of technical terms and phrases, and is quite complex, as well as quite profound. But it explains the doctrine of the Trinity in its most deepest way, and in such a way that Bible-believing Christians in the true church can be clear about what it means to confess God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: unity in Trinity and Trinity in unity.
In one Trinity Sunday sermon, Luther said this about the creeds in general and about the Apostles’ Creed in particular: “Rightly did the church fathers compose the creed or symbol in a simple form, repeated by Christian children: ‘I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,’ and ‘in Jesus Christ His only Son,’ and ‘I believe in the Holy Ghost.’ This confession we did not devise, nor did the fathers of our former times. As a bee collects honey from many fair and beautiful flowers, so this creed collected, in appropriate brevity, from the books of the beloved prophets and apostles, from the entire Scriptures, for children and unlearned Christians to read and to know. It is fittingly called the Apostles’ Creed.”
Now the Old Testament: it teaches that God is one too. And Christians are monotheists. We adhere to what was written in the great Shema, that is Deuteronomy 6:4 and 5: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” At the same time, a plurality of persons is taught by the Godhead and strongly indicated throughout the Old Testament. The first Hebrew name for God, Elohim, has a plural ending. Yet it’s always been translated not “gods,” but “God”: Elohim.
Then there’s verses like this. God said to Himself, “Let us make man in our own image.” At the Tower of Babel, He said to Himself, “Let us go down and confuse their language” — both in plurals. The New Testament speaks of the persons of the Trinity more clearly and forcefully. As Jesus was ascending, He instructed the disciples: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” He didn’t say baptizing them in the names, plural. He said singular: in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And as we confessed in the Athanasian Creed, we worship three persons in one Godhead, and one Godhead in three persons: the blessed Holy Trinity.
In the gospel lesson this morning, Jesus made it clear to the Jews that He existed even before Abraham. He applied the name of God, the great I AM, to Himself. The Jews therefore said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” And Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” When Jesus claimed to be living before Abraham and applied the great I AM title to Himself, the Jews understood exactly what He was laying claim to. He was claiming to be the Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity — and that’s why they wanted to kill Him. The same thing happened in John 10:30 and 31 when He said, “I and the Father are one.” They picked up stones to stone Him.
So why the need for creeds, each longer and more detailed than the one that came before it? Because false teachers rise up in every time and in every generation, challenging and corrupting the teachings of the Christian church. In the opening centuries of the early church, false teachers were undermining the doctrine of the Trinity and the two natures of Jesus Christ. In the Middle Ages, the heresies shifted to the way of salvation, thus confusing works-righteousness with a gospel of true grace.
Jesus taught that we must remain in His word and His word if we’re going to have eternal life: “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” And the creeds, all three of them, are appointed to guarding the words and the doctrines given by God in His verbally inspired Old and New Testaments. Truly, truly I say to you: if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. Those who break the word will see death. We just said the same thing when we recited the Athanasian Creed: all who would be saved must first keep the true catholic faith. And if anyone does not keep it whole and undefiled, without doubt he will perish forever. And the Christian faith is this: we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. It’s a mystery. And as I’ve repeatedly said, we don’t really care much for mysteries. We like 20-minute solvable TV shows. That’s how we grew up. We want the answers at the end. But the Trinity is a divine mystery, equal to the mystery that God sent His Son to save a wretch like you.
By whose creeds? As long as we are at it: why liturgies and formal prayers? A good section of Christendom doesn’t much care for liturgies and prayers. I’ve told this story before, and I hope you forgot. I was at my brand new parish in Mason City, Iowa. I was there about a month, and right next door to the church was an alley, and across from the alley was a little town grocery store. And one day I used to go over and get a little sandwich from the deli each day. And one day I went over to the deli. I got my sandwich. I stood in line, and the little fella in front of me turned and said, “Hey, Father, I have some friends of mine that keep telling me not to pray the Lord’s Prayer because it’s a rote prayer. What do you say?” And my reply was, “You need new friends.” And I got the same response from everybody in the line behind me.
Rote memory is a good thing. It’s the foundation upon which we learn everything. That’s just the fundamental fact. And the creeds understood that. The authors of the creeds understood that the way to fend off false doctrine in a congregation is to use proper, biblically based liturgies, hymns, and creeds. And so we continue in that tradition here. All are intended to instill a right understanding and a true comfort of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We use such things because false teachers use the words of the Bible too. They invoke Bible verses. They use Christian vocabulary. But false teachers always twist the meaning or misunderstand. They rip things out of context. They don’t understand the Greek and Hebrew languages. They explain mysteries of the Christian faith through the lens of philosophical axioms. All of which corrupt ultimately the doctrine of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s the way St. Paul was given by the Holy Spirit to write: “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.”
The Apostles’ Creed was probably written in the second century to deal with a heretic by the name of Marcion. He denied that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament were the same God. The Nicene Creed was developed in response to the teaching of a bishop named Arius. Like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Arius said that the doctrine of the Trinity was too illogical, too difficult to understand, and that it would be easier to believe that the Son of God was something more like an angel: a being superior to human beings, but inferior to God the Father. According to Arius, Jesus was a subgod, a Greek demiurge type character. Arius thought that there was a time when the Son of God did not exist, making Him thus a created being. The Athanasian Creed was an exposition of what the Bible actually teaches regarding the Godhead. It was intended to wall us off from all heresies concerning the Trinity and the person and the work of Jesus Christ.
Up until the 20th century, that worked pretty well. Christians and Christian churches took doctrine seriously, took liturgy seriously, took hymnody seriously, and took the creeds seriously. The apostles took the Old and New Testament seriously. There’s a reason for this stubborn adherence to the doctrine. That’s because all Scripture is ultimately about Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ is ultimately always about the way of salvation. The apostles held stubbornly to the teaching of the Scriptures, and the first Christians in the opening part of the book of Acts did the same. Acts 2:42: they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers. That “prayers” means liturgy: liturgical prayers in the church.
God revealed Himself as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Thus God is one. One God in Trinity, Trinity in unity. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. And no one comes to the Father except through the Son, Jesus Christ. In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. The creeds rightly teach that from the Father, the Son is begotten, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from both — but the Son and the Holy Spirit and the Father: none are created.
“Jesus is Lord.” That is: to believe in Jesus Christ is only possible, it says, by the Holy Spirit — so much for free will and decision theology. All three persons of the Trinity were present and active in creation. The same three persons of the triune God brought about the incarnation of Jesus Christ: the Father sent God the Son through the Virgin Mary, who conceived the God-man, by the power of the Holy Spirit, into the world to save the world. Jesus began His public ministry at His baptism. The Holy Spirit came down as a dove, and the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Jesus prayed to the Father of the Spirit, who were with Him throughout His entire earthly ministry.
Then came the cross. In the ninth hour, Jesus cries out with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli” — that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In that moment, the eternal union of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was somehow broken. Another mystery. God the Son was forsaken by God the Father. On Easter morning, the Father raised the Son to life from the dead. And over the next 50 days, Jesus would remind and point the disciples to the sending of the Holy Spirit over the word and sacrament ministry of the church. It was into the whole name of God that you were baptized.
You are a believing Christian because God the Father called you by the word — the Word made flesh — and the Holy Spirit into life, from death to resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are a believing congregation for the same reason. That just as He called, gathered, enlightened, and sanctified you through the word of God written, spoken in flesh, in the sacraments — just as He called you, He called this little congregation. He has called, gathered, enlightened, and sanctified.
So the next time — next year — when we say that long creed again, always remember: you are the whosoever. Confess, and you shall be saved. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.