6 Lessons We Learn from the Nicene Creed

Six Abstract Statements

Listed here are six abstract statements—or, we would say, six classes—we are able to be taught from this seventeen-hundred year-old confession of religion, the Nicene Creed.

1. The Nicene Creed stresses the significance of believing the precise factor.

Sadly, we frequently hear Christian leaders and church buildings right now downplay the significance of doctrinal constancy. They might not deny important articles of the religion, however they will speak about doctrinal precision as if it have been alien to the Christian religion or one thing that will get in the way in which of genuine discipleship. Such a spirit of doctrinal latitudinarianism is antithetical to the spirit of Nicaea. To be part of the historic, orthodox Christian church, nevertheless, we should consider not less than as a lot as is affirmed within the Nicene Creed. Which means Mormons (who don’t settle for Nicene orthodoxy), Unitarians (who deny the Trinity), and liberals (in the event that they deny the deity of Christ, the virgin start, and the resurrection) can’t be thought-about part of the church catholic.

2. The historical past of the Nicene Creed teaches us that new statements (and modified statements) are sometimes essential to fight new errors.

The Nicene Creed doesn’t inform us all the things we have to know and consider. If the 318 bishops from the Council of Nicaea have been alive right now, undoubtedly they’d see the Christian religion threatened in new and alternative ways. The Nicene Creed is a creedal flooring, not a creedal ceiling. The Creed of Nicaea itself was considerably modified from Nicaea (325) to Constantinople (381). The church thought-about it the identical creed as a result of it was doctrinally the identical, however it represented a major augmentation and possibly began from a separate formulation altogether. The church within the fourth century understood that new threats to the religion advantage new efforts to delineate reality from error.

3. The Nicene Creed fashions for us the central significance of the Trinity.

Too many Christians give too little thought to the Trinity, and too few church buildings educate their individuals concerning the Trinity or be sure that their worship is totally Trinitarian. By structuring its “rule of religion” across the Trinity, and by spending a lot time attempting to rigorously clarify and vigorously shield truths concerning the Trinity, the Nicene Creed exhibits us a greater means. The doctrine of the Trinity just isn’t a math downside to keep away from or a largely irrelevant doctrine that we are able to tuck away within the attic of our minds. To be a Christian is to be baptized within the triune identify and to worship the God who subsists as three individuals sharing one undivided essence. If we wish to know God as he’s, what might be extra vital than figuring out, learning, and loving the doctrine of the Trinity?

4. The Nicene Creed underscores the significance of “faith” for Christian life and worship.

We frequently hear that so-and-so is “non secular however not spiritual.” Even Christians have gotten into a nasty behavior of constructing “faith” the unhealthy man reverse the nice man of the gospel. If faith means man-made worship or man’s try to earn God’s favor on his personal, then Christianity has no place for faith. However normally when individuals speak about being “non secular however not spiritual,” they imply that they need a religion that’s unencumbered by doctrinal boundaries, sacred rites, and the establishment of the church with its authority construction and obligations. The Nicene Creed emphasizes the significance of every of those “spiritual” components. The religion of Nicaea assumes that the Christian is a part of a church and understands the significance of the sacraments.

The historical past of the Nicene Creed teaches us that new statements (and modified statements) are sometimes essential to fight new errors.

5. The Nicene Creed just isn’t embarrassed to view Christianity with a soteriological focus.

On the coronary heart of the creed’s confession is the excellent news that the Lord Jesus Christ got here down from heaven “for us and for our salvation.” Typically you hear individuals say that trendy evangelicals invented this salvation-focused gospel, or that Westerners corrupted the gospel by making it so individualistic, or that medieval individuals have been scared into believing in a God of judgment as a result of the church needed to manage them. However we see proper right here within the fourth century that the church conceived of the Christian religion as irreducibly about sin and salvation, about judgment and forgiveness, about how we might be saved from the human downside that’s sin and dying.

6. The Nicene Creed factors us to the long run.

A part of what we respect and honor within the Nicene Creed is its age. It’s historical. It was the primary official, ecumenical church creed. And Christians all around the globe nonetheless use it seventeen hundred years later. However we might miss the purpose of the creed if we simply admired it as a relic of historical past or as a reference to the previous. The Nicene Creed itself ends by sending us into the long run. The final line begins with the verb “we glance” (prosdokumen in Greek). We stay up for, we need, we anticipate, we hope for the resurrection of our our bodies and everlasting life on the earth to return. In Latin, that last verb is expectamus. The Nicene Creed intentionally ends on a be aware of expectation and hope.

And bear in mind, it isn’t simply life that we’re eager for—life with out ache, life with out sin, life with fellow Christians and with fellow relations who died in Christ. We stay up for all that, as nicely we should always. However extra importantly, the life we stay up for is life with the triune God—the God that the Nicene Creed does a lot to elucidate and honor. For ages upon ages we’ll thrill to know and to worship God the Father Almighty, to bow earlier than his solely begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and to sing reward to the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life.

This text is tailored from The Nicene Creed: What You Need to Know about the Most Important Creed Ever Written by Kevin DeYoung.

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