2 Timothy 1:13-14 I Believe in God: Intro to the Apostles’ Creed
Fourth Century Baptism
If you became a Christian in the fourth or fifth century in the Roman Empire, the process would have looked something like this:
After being invited into the life of the church, and deciding that you did, indeed, want to follow Christ, you would have been asked to participate in the rite of baptism. More than a single day event, baptism was a multi-week process in the days leading up to Easter.
You would have been what was known as a catechumen, and you would have undergone intensive catechetical instruction, often led by the bishop himself. On Holy Saturday, you would have been invited to stand before the church and you would have been asked questions similar to these:
- “Do you believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth?”
- “Do you believe in Jesus Christ, God’s Son, our Lord?”
- “Do you believe Christ died on the cross and rose again from the dead?”
- “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?
Then, early on Easter Sunday morning you would have been taken to the baptistry where you would be anointed with oil, renounce the devil and his works, confess your faith in the Trinity, and then be immersed in water. At that point you would be prayed over, clothed in white, and led to join the rest of the congregation for the Easter celebration.
It was the questions asked at the baptismal celebration that became the basis for what we know as the Apostles’ Creed. Over time it transitioned from a series of questions to an easily memorized confession of faith. It is short. Depending on the translation, the Creed is about 120 words. It has been a standard feature in Christian worship for at least 1500 years.
And, starting today, we are going to do a series of sermons on the Apostles’ Creed. From now until the end of May we are going to go line-by-line through the creed and talk about what it says and what it means. Hopefully, if I’ve timed it right, when we get to Easter Sunday we’ll be at the line that says “on the third day, He rose again from the dead.”
Today, I’m going to give you some background on the Creed and talk about why it matters and is worth our time. Then I’ll end today by talking about what are probably the key words in the whole Creed: “I Believe.”
But let’s begin by saying the Creed together. One way or another, we’ll try to make sure the Creed is recited or sung in every worship service during the series. One of my goals for you is that, if you don’t have it memorized already, that you will have it memorized by the time we are done.
It is proper to stand when the Creed is recited, so I’ll ask you to stand now. We’ll have the Creed on the screen.
Christians, what do you believe?
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
History of the Creed
Let’s start with some background. I’ll call this: facts about the Creed.
The first thing is, despite its name: The Creed was not written by the Apostles. It is tempting to believe that this creed came directly from the mouths of those who knew Jesus best. And there was even a legend that each of the 12 Apostles contributed a different line to the Creed. But this is almost certainly not true.
Instead, the Creed was formed over a period of time. As I said at the beginning, its origins most likely lie in the baptismal celebrations of the early church and the questions that new believers were asked to affirm. As such, the Creed has no single author and there is no single document that historians can point to as the source of the Creed.
But, at the same time, the language used in the Creed is very, very old. As early as A.D. 107, only about 70 years after Jesus, a Christian leader named Ignatius wrote a defense against those who denied that Jesus was truly a man. It read, in part:
Be deaf, therefore, whenever anyone speaks to you apart from Jesus Christ, who is of the stock of David, who is of Mary, who was truly born, ate and drank, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died in the sight of beings of heaven, of earth and the underworld, who was also truly raised from the dead.
Then, about 50 years later, another summary can be found:
[I believe] in the Father, the Ruler of the Universe, and in Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, in the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, in the Holy Church, and in the Forgiveness of Sins.
You can see the beginnings of the Creed’s language in these quotes.
We can date the emergence of another creed, the Nicene Creed, with a lot more certainty. The Nicene Creed--which helped establish the Doctrine of the Trinity–was written at the council of Nicea in A.D. 325. It contains similar language to the Apostles’ Creed and follows a similar form, and it is safe to assume that it was based on an early form of the Apostles’ Creed.
The Apostles’ Creed is shorter and easier to memorize than the Nicene Creed, and so it remained more popular for use in worship services. Scholars say that the wording that is most common today was finally settled upon in the 7th Century.
So, if it wasn’t written by the Apostles, why do we call it the Apostles’ Creed? Good question. My third fact is: because it is a reflection of Biblical teaching.
The Apostles’ Creed is not scripture. It was not written by the Apostles. But the Christian church has long believed that it is an accurate summary of what the Bible and the Apostles teach.
A good illustration is this: the moon is the second brightest object in our sky. But the moon does not generate any light of its own. The moon’s light comes entirely from the Sun. The moon is a reflection of the light of the Sun.
In the same way, we can think of the Creed like the moon. It doesn’t generate any light of its own, but the light it has it gets as it reflects the light of the Bible. The things in the Creed, the information the Creed declares, are things that come directly from Scripture. And the usefulness of the Creed is the way it summarizes Scripture for us.
One of the key statements of faith in our Reformed tradition is the Heidelberg Catechism. And the Catechism has a whole section—questions 22 through 58—that are based on the Creed. Here’s what the Catechism says about the Creed, question #22:
- What then must a Christian believe?
- Everything God promises us in the gospel.
That gospel is summarized for us
in the articles of our Christian faith--
a creed beyond doubt,
and confessed throughout the world.
A “creed beyond doubt, and confessed throughout the world.” The next Question and Answer is a recitation of the Apostles’ Creed. It is a faithful reflection of Apostolic teaching.
And then, fourth fact: Credo means “I believe”.
The dominant language of the Christian Church for its first 1500 years was Latin. The earliest versions of the Creed were all written in Latin. And the first word of the Creed, in Latin, is “credo.” “I believe.” There are three sections to the Creed, and each section begins that way: “credo”, “I believe.” So that’s where we get the word Creed, and that’s what Creed means.
A Ruler, A Treasure Box, A Lock
So, now, let me talk about why the Creed is worth studying. Why I think it is important enough for us to take three months to go through this line by line. And to do that, I want to look at our scripture text for today. 2 Timothy 1:13-14. Here’s what it says:
13 What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. 14 Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.
Let me give you a little background. The books 1 and 2 Timothy are letters written by the Apostle Paul to his young friend Timothy. Timothy was a young man who was converted to Christ under Paul’s ministry and became one of Paul’s traveling partners. Eventually, Paul sent Timothy to Ephesus to be the pastor of the church there. These letters, then, are coaching from Paul to a young pastor leading his first church.
And one of the themes of these letters is that Paul urges Timothy to remain faithful to the teaching he received from Paul. Paul keeps using phrases like “continue in what you have learned” (2 Timothy 3:14) and “here is a trustworthy saying” (2 Timothy 2:11 et al) and “the things you have heard me say…entrust to reliable men” (2 Timothy 2:2). Essentially, Paul is saying that there is a core message about Jesus that it is Timothy’s responsibility to pass on to others.
The word we often use for this is “doctrine.” Doctrine is a word that comes from the Latin translation of “sound teaching” in verse 13. And that’s basically what “doctrine” means: it is a collection of beliefs and teachings that summarize the good news of Jesus.
In other words, that’s precisely what the Apostles’ Creed is attempting to be. It is a summary of the message of Christianity. It is the core teaching of the Christian church.
And in these two verses, Paul gives us three different word pictures of why this “sound teaching” or “doctrine” is so important. I think they are three good ways to think about the function of the Creed in the church today.
So, first, the Creed is a Ruler. The Creed is a measuring stick. It is the standard by which everything that is taught in the Church should be measured.
Look at the passage again. Paul calls it “the pattern of sound teaching.” A pattern. Like a blueprint. Or like a seamstress would use to sew a dress. It’s the underlying sketch or outline, the essential structure that it is going to take to build a building or have a wearable piece of clothing. You might add some flourishes here and there, play around with the colors a little bit, but you have to stick to the pattern if you are going to have anything useful.
About 30 years ago, when I was in seminary, I went to our denomination’s annual gathering. And while we were there, the agency that was overseeing seminary students like me—that is, seminary students that were not attending one of our denominationally owned seminaries—held a luncheon. And during that luncheon, a member of the board of directors for that agency stood up and addressed us.
He wasn’t a pastor, he was a dairy farmer. But he cared very much about the future of the church. So he told us a story from his childhood.
He said that when he was a young man growing up on the farm, his dad gave him a chore. They were going to replace all the hoses on the milkers. They had a big spool of hose, and it was his job to cut the hoses to the correct length. So his dad gave him a sample, a piece of hose that was cut to exactly the right size. The son was supposed to use that to cut about 50 pieces of hose.
So, the son unrolled some hose, took the sample, and cut a piece off. Then he took the piece he had cut, used it to measure out the next piece. And so on. He cut a piece, used it to measure out the next one, and cut again. He did this until he had 50 pieces. But when he and his dad went to put the hoses on the machine, they discovered that over half the pieces were too short.
Here’s what happened: because he always used the most recent piece he had cut as his measuring stick, each successive cut was getting incrementally shorter and shorter. Instead of using the sample his dad had given him for the pattern for every cut, he was shaving a little off with each new piece.
And here was the point: this man, who was passionate about the future of the church, wanted us young preachers to know that the Bible was the standard. That we had to “keep the pattern of sound teaching.” He didn’t want us to be shaving a little off here and there.
That’s a lesson, and an illustration, that has stuck with me for 30 years. He was talking about the Bible, but I think we can apply to the Apostles Creed as well. The Creed is the summary of the Biblical message. It’s a pattern of sound teaching. It’s the ruler by which we should measure everything we teach in the church.
Or, again, we can say that the Creed is a Treasure Box. The Creed contains the message of salvation. It’s good news. It’s a rich treasure.
Look at the passage again. Paul talks about “the good deposit that was entrusted to you.” It’s like a family heirloom. God has entrusted it to Paul, now Paul is entrusting it to Timothy, and it is Timothy’s job to entrust it to other reliable men who will, in turn, entrust it to others (cf. 2 Timothy 2:2), and so on, right down to us, today.
And the emphasis here is that it is a “good deposit.” It is valuable. Think of someone receiving the family jewels and taking them to the bank: a gold necklace with diamonds, an antique watch, a priceless ring. It’s irreplaceable stuff. Full of value and meaning because you got it from your father and he got it from his and so on and so on. So you take it to the bank, and you get a safe deposit box, and you entrust it to the bank to protect it and care for it.
And it's the same thing with the sound teaching Paul is passing on to Timothy. This is the pure doctrine that tells us that God exists and that He is the creator of everything. It’s the core message that God’s Son became a human being who lived in history and died on the cross. It’s the good news that Jesus rose again and is today seated on the throne of heaven. It’s the promise that Jesus is coming again and one day will set things right. It’s the teaching that the Holy Spirit is with us now, that the church is Christ’s body on earth, that forgiveness of sins is available, and that our own resurrections are coming someday.
This is a rich treasure, it has invaluable wealth. God has entrusted it to Paul. To Timothy. To us.
God is the owner. But it is up to us to keep it safe. We have to look after it.
Which leads to one more picture: the Creed is a Padlock. The Creed tells us what can absolutely NOT be removed from Christianity. The Creed shows us the essential truths of Christianity.
Look at the passage one more time. Paul says we should guard this “pattern of sound teaching,” this “good deposit that was entrusted to you”. We should guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit. But we must guard it.
Let’s go back to the family heirloom illustration. Suppose you go back to the bank where you left the jewels, and you ask the banker to bring them back out. But when you get your great-grandmother’s gold chain, you notice that a couple of diamonds are gone. You look at that antique, irreplaceable watch, and you notice that there are scratches all over it, the glass is cracked! This is damage that was not there before!
You would not be happy. You’d be pretty angry at the bank, at the banker. You’d probably sue. He was supposed to look after these valuables you had entrusted to him.
Well, in the same way we are supposed to diligently guard what God has entrusted to us. Guard the treasure of pure doctrine. Guard the gospel.
Because, make no mistake, there are people who would like to take off the shine, people who would like to steal a few diamonds and break the glass. A little later in this letter Paul warns Timothy that a day is coming when “people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4)
We’ve seen it throughout the history of the church, and we see it in our own day. People who shave a little off here and there, people who question or pervert the teachings of the Bible, people who try to reduce or challenge or change what we believe.
And the Creed is a guard against that. The Creed represents a padlock, locking down and securing what we believe.
The Creed does not contain everything Christians believe. There are a lot of important beliefs in Christianity that the Creed says nothing about. But the Church has long held that this is the essential core of belief—one sermon I read called it the “irreducible minimum”—of Christianity.
There are a lot of varieties of Christianity out there, a lot of different denominations and theological emphases; but for the most part Christians have agreed that if you can affirm the things in the Creed then you are inside of the church. You might be Protestant or Catholic, liberal or conservative, but if you can affirm the Creed we still believe you are Christian.
But if you cannot affirm the Creed, then you are not Christian. These are the essential beliefs that cannot be changed. These are, as the saying goes, hills worth dying on.
So there are three word pictures you can use as you think about the Creed. This is why it is worth our time: It’s a ruler, the standard by which we measure our teaching. It’s a treasure box, it is the good news of our faith. And it is a padlock, it is the irreducible minimum of our belief. To disbelieve anything in the Creed is to cease to be a Christian.
I Believe
So now, to wrap up, let’s look at the first two words of the Creed. What I am saying are arguably the most important words in the Creed: “I believe…”
When we recite the Creed, when we say: “I believe…”, what are we saying?
There are three things.
For one, when you say “I believe…” you are saying “I agree…”. You are saying that you affirm that these things are true. You agree that there is a God who made heaven and earth. You affirm that Jesus is His only Son. You know that Jesus was born to Mary and suffered under Pontius Pilate and died on a cross. You also agree that He was raised from the dead and that He is seated in heaven today. You are saying that all these things are true. That you are convinced.
You believe it.
This is an important part of belief. You have to agree that these are true statements. Because if you don’t think they are true, if you think the resurrection is a fairy tale and God’s existence is wishful thinking, then you’re out. There’s no sense going any further with Christianity. If you don’t agree that these statements are true, then the Creed is meaningless.
But, it is important for us to understand that simply affirming the truth is not enough. The book of James says that even the demons believe that there is a God (James 2:19). They know He’s real as well as any beings in the universe. But that doesn’t mean they follow Him. There needs to be something more.
So, there is another sense that when you say “I believe…” you are saying “I pledge…” You are saying that you commit yourself to this God. You are saying that you believe Jesus Christ is our Lord.
In this sense, reciting the Creed is like saying the Pledge of Allegiance. When we stand and say the Creed together we are declaring our loyalty to God. It is our oath, our commitment, our vow. When you Pledge your Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America you are saying that you commit to being a loyal citizen. In the same way, when you say the Creed you are saying that you are committed to following Christ.
Another word for this, a word the Bible uses and a word that we often use in the Church, is “confession.” When we say the Creed we are “confessing” our faith. We are owning up to it. We are admitting it—declaring it, really—to those around us. Romans 10:9 says that we must confess with our mouth that “Jesus is Lord” in order to be saved.
But even that is not everything we mean when we say “I Believe…” More than just agreement or a pledge of allegiance, to say “I Believe…” is also to say “I trust.”
This is probably the most important thing. Even demons agree that God exists. And Jesus says that there will be a bunch of people who will say “Lord, Lord” at the judgment only to be driven away as people He never knew (see Matthew 7:21-23). But the true believer is the person who has fully entrusted themselves to Jesus.
Romans 10 says not only that we must confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord, but we must also believe it in our hearts (Romans 10:9). This is the sense of the word “believe” there. We must trust in Him. We must give our lives to Him.
Get in the Wheelbarrow
Let me close with this illustration:
In the 19th century, the greatest tightrope walker in the world was a man named Charles Blondin. On June 30, 1859 he became the first man in history to walk on a tightrope across Niagara Falls. Over 25,000 people gathered to watch him walk 1,100 feet suspended on a tiny rope 160 feet above the raging waters. He worked without a net or safety harness of any kind. The slightest slip would prove fatal. When he safely reached the Canadian side of the Falls, the crowd burst into a mighty roar.
In the days that followed he would walk across the Falls many times. Once he walked across on stilts, another time he took a chair and a stove with him and sat down midway across, cooked an omelet and ate it. Once he carried his manager across riding piggyback. And once he pushed a wheelbarrow across loaded with 350 pounds of cement.
On one occasion he asked the cheering spectators if they thought he could push a man across sitting in a wheelbarrow. A mighty roar of approval rose from the crowd. Spying a man cheering loudly, he asked, “Sir, do you think I could safely carry you across in this wheelbarrow?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Get in,” the Great Blondin replied with a smile.
The man refused.
That makes it clear, doesn’t it? It’s one thing to believe a man can walk across by himself. It’s another thing to believe he could safely carry you across. But it’s something else entirely to get into the wheelbarrow yourself.
Believing in Jesus is like getting into the wheelbarrow. It’s entrusting all that you are to all that he is.
It’s not the strength of your faith that matters, it’s the strength of the one in whom you place your faith that makes all the difference.
The God we confess in the Creed is strong enough to carry you safely across. When we say we believe, we are putting our lives in His hands.
