Nicene Creed | (Nicea Anniversary)

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

As Webb mentioned earlier, this year is the seventeen hundredth anniversary of arguably the second most crucial church council in history.

The Council of Nicaea, the first most crucial being the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.

What we know as the Nicene Creed emerged from that council.

Now, some of you are familiar with the Nicene Creed, and you might see it printed in your bulletin this morning and say, that's not the Nicene Creed I know.

Sounds a little different.

The reason for that is the Nicene Creed came out of the church council in 325 A.D.

And it was addressing a very particular issue.

But then over the next 50 or so years, they began to realize we need to fill this out a little bit and we need to more fully address one more issue.

So in 381 A.D., what is most commonly known as the Nicene Creed today was put out and affirmed.

I want this morning to do something very different.

I want us to understand the Nicene Creed from 325 A.D., to understand it a little bit better and to more significantly perhaps understand and appreciate its significance for us.

Now, first you might be wondering: what does this have to do with our church?

With our commitment to Scripture, with our following of Jesus Christ.

Those are good questions.

And the answer is one word.

Everything.

It has everything to do with our church, with our commitment to Scripture, and with our following the Lord Jesus Christ.

You see, the Nicene Creed in its initial form derives directly from Scripture, often word for word.

And the primary issue before the Council of Nicaea was the person of Jesus Christ.

So this creed that we know of has everything to do with Faith Evangelical Free Church, with our commitment to the Word of God, and with our following of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it has practical ramifications for your faith.

I think 1700 years later, it's worth thinking about for a few moments, with the ultimate goal of glorifying the God who saves us.

I've wanted to do this all year long, looking, trying to see when's the best time to do this.

And the Lord just brought it about that this could be a good Sunday, and I think it's a perfect Sunday because next week we're beginning a study of Philippians, which leads us into one of the greatest expressions of the person of Christ in all of Scripture.

So this prepares us for that.

Here's what we're gonna do: we're gonna take a road trip, stopping at four historical markers about the Nicene Creed.

Did you guys ever stop at those historical markers?

I loved doing that when we went on trips as a kid.

It's in part because I love history.

I want to read all about it.

That's what I want to do this morning.

I want to take a pit stop at four different historical markers surrounding the Nicene Creed.

And we're gonna talk about those historical markers and consider particular applications and relevance for us to consider.

But I should say something else about creeds before we embark on our road trip.

Some of you come from backgrounds where creeds are recited as part of a Sunday morning service.

So this might really interest you and maybe even stir up feelings of familiarity.

Some of you may have never been a part of what we tend to call high church churches that have a connection to church history and go through a liturgy like that, and you might think this is really weird.

We're so used to just opening the Bible and looking at a passage of scripture.

Why are we doing this?

And then some of you might be from that no creed but the Bible background, right?

That's not a bad thing necessarily.

But you might be suspicious of everything I'm about to say.

So let me bring some clarity to all of that, no matter which perspective you're thinking about and feeling in this very moment.

Clarity begins with knowing the difference between confessions and creeds.

Confessions and creeds.

Sometimes we call confessions statements of faith or doctrinal statements.

So a confession expresses what we believe.

Well, you might say, okay, we as part of the Evangelical Free Church, we have a 12-point statement of faith.

So whoever crafts a confession or a statement of faith covers a broad scope of doctrines and theology that is central to whoever is crafting the statement.

They're wanting to express what they believe.

Creeds are different.

Creeds express who we believe in.

Not so much the what, but the who.

They're generally shorter than confessions and statements of faith, and they tend to address something particular about the history and the context of the time to clarify the God in whom we believe.

So confessions and statements of faith answer the what question.

Creeds answer the who question.

So creeds are about persons.

The Nicene Creed is taken directly from the phrasing of Scripture to express the God in whom we believe.

Most specifically to assert the nature of the Lord who saves us.

And when we grasp that every church group around 325 AD, all from northern Africa all the way around the Mediterranean world into Europe, every church group in existence except a single heretical one affirmed the Council of Nicaea and the Nicene Creed.

We can easily accept this historical marker that reveals more to us about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We can affirm it as the one in whom we believe.

Let's begin our road trip.

We're traveling back first to approximately 300 A.D.

So the council met in the summer of 325 A.D.

But we need to get a glimpse more of the end decades of the 200s and into the 300s to really grasp what's going on.

This historical marker reveals that the Nicene Creed is all about your Bible.

It's all about Scripture.

How do we see that?

Well, first we need to understand that in the late third century and the beginning of the fourth century, what that means is the late 200s into the early 300s, persecution of God's people was normal.

It wasn't necessarily constant, but it was very routine.

Mostly it was routine because the Roman Empire still required regular offerings and sacrifices to the Roman pantheon of gods, including Caesar himself.

The Roman Empire was in a time of disunity.

It was divided into two regions.

Two regions having a major ruler and a minor ruler, and an attempt then to bring unity to the whole Roman Empire through that.

And that failed.

And you've probably heard of a guy named Constantine who defeated the other side and unified the whole empire together.

But before Constantine did that, persecution was normal.

Many Christians were persecuted and even martyred.

It's been said that the Christian community itself and churches was filled with people missing digits, fingers, toes, and more, and some with bodies racked by torture.

Making offerings to the Roman gods was a general requirement for everyone.

So Christians paid the consequences if they didn't obey.

And most churches would not welcome a so-called believer who made those offerings out of a sense of obligation to the government.

They said, no, that is sacrilegious and blasphemous.

You are a traitor to Christ.

You're not welcome.

So Christians at this time understood that following Christ as king instead of Caesar, instead of the emperor, came with a cost.

So they knew that the one in whom they believed needed to be worth the cost.

How does that point to the reality that the Nicene Creed is about scripture?

Well, that part of the historical marker begins in northern Egypt in the city of Alexandria.

The bishop there, the way churches functioned was not exactly the same as we function today, so I'm going to try to give you some rough parallels.

A bishop in the city of Alexandria was basically the lead pastor for the whole city of Alexandria.

Then there were priests or what we might call vocational elders that served underneath that lead pastor all around the community.

So the head pastor of Alexandria was a bishop named Alexander.

Yes, he was Alexander of Alexandria.

Alexander had oversight of multiple elder priests serving in his community.

One of those elder priests was named Arius.

Maybe you've heard of his name.

Now, in that time, bishops or head pastors over the whole community had more authority at that time than they do in most Protestant denominations today.

So Alexander, the lead pastor in Alexandria, had Arius as one of his vocational elder priests serving in the community.

Sometime around 318, 319, Arius was studying scripture and reading scripture, and he got this brilliant idea.

Or so he thought.

He sent a letter to his bishop, Alexander.

You with me so far?

Arius sends a letter to Alexander.

And in that letter, he used Scripture to argue that Jesus had a beginning.

That is, Jesus was not eternal.

And if Jesus is not eternal and he has a beginning, Jesus is not God.

Alexander responded with his own letter.

I'm gonna summarize his letter.

No, I'm gonna paraphrase his letter.

He said back to Arius, You're a heretic.

But Arius refused to listen to Alexander, and he spent the next few years spreading his teaching, even going so far as to create memorable little ditties, songs with his theology that were set to bar tunes, so that everybody would pick them up and recite them and remember them very easily.

So Arius's new teaching began to spread more and more, and people began to think, oh, maybe he's got something, maybe he's right.

It was popular at that time to read the book of Proverbs and connect the wisdom that Proverbs speaks of with Jesus, with the person of Christ.

Now here's how Arius did that.

He took 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 21, that speaks of Jesus being the wisdom of God.

1 Corinthians 1:21

And he he read that and he then looked back to Proverbs, specifically Proverbs 8, the end of the chapter, the section at the end of the chapter, where it talks about God creating wisdom.

So he said, if God created wisdom, and Jesus is the wisdom of God, it only makes sense that Jesus is a creature, a created being.

So see, he used scripture, he thought he was using scripture properly, and he began to promote that.

Arius took a common biblical teaching of the time, and he read the scriptures in a way that others weren't doing at that time.

But the way he read scripture was inherently dangerous because it changed, completely changed, the doctrine of Christ that had been handed down from the apostles.

If you look at your bulletin and you see the Nicene Creed in there, you will see that the section about the Lord Jesus Christ is the longest section.

And it's the most detailed portion.

That reveals to us what the framers of the creed were doing.

They were declaring that they believed in a different Christ than Arius.

That the Jesus that they believed in was not the Jesus that Arius was proclaiming.

The church then went on to reject Arius' interpretation by overwhelmingly affirming the Nicene Creed, forever declaring that we believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the Father, the only begotten.

That is, he's from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.

There's lots there.

We're going to talk more about what that means in a moment.

But first, consider a significant relevance or application of this first historical marker.

We learn just from the context out of which this creed comes that it helps us read and interpret scripture properly.

Let me review real quickly.

Arius started with a common teaching from the time in church history.

Jesus is the embodiment of God's wisdom.

Doesn't sound like much is wrong with that, right?

Jesus is the divine wisdom, the essence of divine wisdom in the flesh.

But Arius took that common teaching where no one else did.

He used other scriptures then to generate an inaccurate assumption about Jesus as the divine wisdom in the flesh.

And then when Alexander, his superior, and the leader of the church in Alexandria, told Arius that his interpretation was off base, was wrong and blasphemous, Arius refused to listen.

He began spreading his teaching all around, trying to convince as many as he possibly could.

In fact, he did gain a particular champion in a pastor from another community.

He tried to convince as many churches, as many people as he could, that his perspective on scripture was correct and that the view of Alexander and everyone else in the church leaders was wrong.

It took the counsel of Nicaea to fix that problem.

So the Nicene Creed then warns us about three dangers in our approach to Scripture.

Number one, it warns us to be extremely careful about novel or new teachings that stand out from accepted doctrine.

Be careful.

It also warns us to be extremely careful about pushing for our own interpretation or way of reading scripture when others are cautioning us about our views.

There might be a reason for that.

It warns us to be careful about following teachers, even elders and pastors in the church who are championing a new and novel approach to Scripture.

Now, are there instances where people like Arius with new and different teachings are right and that the church should follow?

Yes, it's possible.

But the Nicene Creed and the history around it and why it happened should caution us to be extremely careful in how we approach and handle Scripture.

That's our first historical marker.

Ready for the second one?

I am.

This is the exciting part.

The Nicene Creed is about the incarnation of God.

The Nicene Creed is famous in part because of one word.

It's that big word at the bottom of the Jesus section, or in the Jesus section, not the bottom.

Consubstantial.

That's the what the how it's translated in many versions of the creed.

But before I say any more, we need to remember that creeds are trying to explain who we believe in.

Thank you.

I feel like Webb up here saying info.faith3.com.

Who we believe in.

Who we believe in.

But here's the trial that came with that.

They're attempting to explain a divine being with human words.

That's an impossible task.

How do we explain a divine being who is infinite with our words?

But the people and the teachings that were around, like that of Arius, made it necessary at times to attempt the impossible.

So the impossible question that they were wrestling with is, what is God made of?

If Arius is saying that Jesus had a beginning, he was a creature, that means he was made.

So what is then, if we believe that Jesus is God, what is God made of?

Well, God is spirit, scripture says.

What is a spirit made of?

Nothing?

How do we answer that question?

God isn't really made of anything because he's not made.

So we're faced with an impossible question.

Your brain hurting yet?

If you need to, feel free to stand up and turn around and jump up and down.

It's okay.

Get the blood flowing.

We're just starting.

The framers of the creed, though, in that council were compelled to try to answer the impossible question because they felt they had to ward off Arius' idea that Jesus was a Creature who had a beginning.

To do that, they asserted that God, the Father Almighty, the maker of all things, visible and invisible, is where we must begin thinking about our question.

Jesus, they argued, is the Son of God, begotten from the Father, the only begotten, just as John 1.14 reminds us.

He is the only Son, the only begotten Son.

Begotten, both in Scripture and in the Creed, in its most basic sense, maybe an oversimplification, means comes from.

Jesus is the only Son who comes from the Father.

He comes directly from the Father, from the essence, from the being of the Father, which means that if Jesus is the only begotten, he is everything that the Father is.

I like how James Dolazelle paraphrases this part of the creed.

He says, Jesus, well, he starts with God.

We're talking about who God is.

So this part of the creed is that Jesus is really, really, really God of really, really, really God.

Captures it pretty well.

So when the framers of this creed said begotten from the Father, they meant that everything that makes the Father God is also in Jesus, the only begotten Son.

The only one from the Father, who is of the Father.

He is everything the Father is.

Jesus is God from God.

He is light from light.

He is true God from true God, begotten, not made.

Or as the author to the book of Hebrews says, he is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.

Jesus, God the Father, no difference in their nature.

So the creed turned to combat Arius by asserting that Jesus has always been God because he comes from God.

He was never made or created.

He is entirely God because he has existed from eternity past in the same essence as the Father.

So that big word, consubstantial, not made consubstantial with the Father.

I had to, I told somebody this last week, I have to figure out how to describe consubstantial to a first grader.

How do I do that?

In the most basic sense, consubstantial means the stuff of which something is made.

So whatever stuff God is made of, Jesus is made of.

That's what consubstantial means.

Jesus is God.

That's why John would say in John 1.14, we have seen his glory.

What kind of glory?

As if we're looking at the Father Himself.

What did Jesus say later to his disciples when one of the disciples said to him, Lord, just show us the Father and we'll be satisfied?

And Jesus went, Have I been with you so long and you don't get it?

He who has seen me has seen the Father.

So those pastors and those elders in Nicaea, by the way, Nicaea is uh is is a a part of a modern Turkish city.

That's where they were meeting.

It was sort of in between the two divisions of the empire, so it was technically a neutral ground.

Those pastors and elders in that council, about 300 of them, refused to accept anything less than the full deity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Is it really 10 o'clock?

My goodness.

What do I do?

Um I gotta say this.

The Church of the Latter-day Saints, Mormons want to claim today that they're Christians.

Their view is very much like the view of Arius.

Jesus is a created being.

That is to be condemned.

Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe that Jesus is divine.

Friends, we face this today.

You face this today.

Who is the one in whom you believe?

This is only, though, the first part of this road stop.

Arius wanted to make scripture say that Jesus was created, but the rest of the church said, absolutely not.

Jesus is the same essence as the Father, and they made all things, not one thing was made without Jesus, which means he remains before creation.

John says in John chapter 1, all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

John 1 · chapter mention

How does he make himself?

You see how Arius is leaving out a host of scripture to make his presuppositions work.

Not one thing was made without him, but the Son, the uncreated, always existing one, who is the exact essence, image of the Father, descended and became incarnate, and became human.

He suffered and he rose on the third day.

Friends, what this implies is beautiful.

First, the creed includes everything about the Lord Jesus Christ that we hear in 1 Corinthians 15 and Philippians chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

But you need to remember that it was important to the believers of that time who were suffering on a routine basis for their faith.

It was important for them to know that God became human and suffered like us.

The beautiful implication here is wrapped up in the humanity element.

So when we say that the Nicene Creed is about the incarnation, we have to connect that with the incarnation of deity, of God.

We suffer because of sin.

And it's because of sin that we have no way to reach the holy God.

Ever since God removed Adam and Eve from the garden and barred them from re-entry, we have been kept from making our way to God.

Our humanity in all of its sinful brokenness keeps us from God.

So God became one of us.

God pursued us with his goodness and mercy by taking on our flesh and suffering.

Said differently, we could not reach God, so God came down to us.

Here then is the relevance or the application of the creed being about the incarnation of God.

It helps us experience the divine love that God has through the reality that God, the divine one, condescended to become like us, to even suffer and die a death on the cross.

If what Arius said was true, then John 1.14 is false.

If Jesus was a created being, then the eternal word would not have become flesh and dwelt among us.

We would not have beheld his glory.

We were just seeing some mirage shimmering in the hot desert air.

And we are without hope if the word did not become flesh and dwell among us.

But what love is this that God, the Son who proceeds from the Father and is the very essence of the Father, would become like us and suffer for us.

You do not fully experience the love of God until you begin to meditate and grasp that God, the one who is truly God, light from light, true God from true God, the image and essence of the Father through whom all things were made, would become like one of those he made.

It blows the mind.

So pondering the Nicene Creed and the incarnation of God helps us experience God's love in the way that it is intended to be.

Philippians 2 tells us is the eternal God who took on flesh and suffered, died, and rose again.

But the risen Christ is no mere man who is just raised from the dead by the power of God.

No, he is the exalted God because he ascended into the heavens where he sits today at the Father's right hand.

So this exaltation is first about the person of Jesus.

He now, this very moment, exists as fully God and fully man.

Two natures in one.

He has never ceased to be God, and with his ascension, he doesn't cease to be fully man.

He is now in heaven with the Father, seated at the Father's right hand in the fullness of his deity and the fullness of his humanity.

But this exaltation is second not simply about the person of Jesus, but about Jesus as our Savior.

I've picked on some denominations, so I may as well pick on some more.

We cannot ascend to God.

So God descended to us.

And then, this is marvelous.

God descends to us, taking on our nature so that he might suffer and die for us.

And then, as the God man, what does he do?

He ascends back to heaven, going before us to the Father in a preview of what he will do for all of his own.

Here's the relevance.

The Nicene Creed helps us see Jesus as the forerunner of our faith.

He goes before us and he paves the way.

Many of you are familiar with Hebrews 12, which speaks of Jesus being the author and perfecter of our faith.

That's all true.

But Hebrews chapter 6, verse 20 also says he is the forerunner who goes into the heavenly temple where God's presence is, into the very presence of God before us on our behalf as our forerunner.

Hebrews 6:20

Friends, this strengthens our faith in the midst of uncertainty.

And it gives us hope.

Even those Nicene believers who were suffering for their faith, it gives them hope because Jesus, the God man, was a man who went first, making ascent to the Father now possible in and through him.

God became man and suffered as the God man whom death could not keep down, and then as our forerunner, he went ahead of us to the Father.

So the ascension proves that we who are in Christ now have access to God in our humanness in Christ.

It proves that suffering does not keep us from God, but makes us more like Jesus.

It proves that for the one who is in Christ, even death itself is merely a path to follow our Lord to the very presence of the one who condescended to save us.

This is the God we love.

Now I'm wanting to preach a couple more sermons on the Nicene Creed.

We'll just go to Philippians next, though.

So much that we could spend analyzing here.

Historic marker number four, the Nicene Creed is about the fullness of the gospel.

We'll finish here.

Jesus, the Creed, asserts, will come again to judge the living and the dead.

This is not a surprise to you.

There is no gospel.

There is no good news without sin and death and judgment.

Or there's no need for a savior without sin and death.

There's no need for saving if there is no judgment.

The one we love and the one in whom we believe is not the creature that Arius argued for.

No, the one in whom we believe is the judge of all the earth.

And one day he will judge all the living and the dead.

All will bow before him, bow before the God man, Jesus Christ, when he returns as the glorious judge, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ, the God man Redeemer, is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Can't I get an amen for that one?

Thank you.

This good news.

This is good news because the gospel includes judgment against sin, death, and unbelief.

Oh, but the joy for those who say, This is the God I believe, because in Christ there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

So the creed is about the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, including judgment for sin.

And your judgment for sin will happen.

It's whether or not you will be judged for your sin or whether Christ has been judged for your sin.

Leads us quickly to the relevance.

The Nicene Creed helps us see beyond the trials of the moment to the glorious Christ as our righteous judge.

Many Christians in those decades of the Council of Nicaea suffered terribly for their faith.

But the creed was a way, especially in reciting the creed, was a way to point those believers to Jesus as a reminder that however evil the judges of this world may be, however torturous it may be to follow Christ in this world, one day the glorious Christ will rule as judge over everything and he will make things right.

So the glory of the gospel is not only that Jesus is God from God, light from light, true God from true God, but that he who was clothed in eternal light wrapped himself in flesh to suffer for our sin, so that we might one day stand before him in his righteousness with no condemnation.

At the same time, he vindicates his name, he vindicates his deity, he vindicates his glory, he vindicates his holiness through his own righteous judgment of the living and the dead.

That's why this is this morning is a bit unusual.

But I hope this road trip has helped you see that the Nicene Creed was the result of rallying around the word of God to show everyone who it is in whom we believe and who it is that we love.

The work didn't end in 325.

Pastors and elders continued to refine the creed to ensure that it accurately expressed the apostolic belief of the God we love.

So by 381, 50-ish years later, the creed was modified once more to express the deity of the Holy Spirit.

They decided, you know what?

We've said this about Christ.

We need to say more about the Spirit.

And so the familiar words about how the Spirit fits into the person of God and our salvation were added with we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son, and who has spoken through the prophets.

These are what the church believed were the first principles, if you will, of the God who made us and saves us, and who it is that we love and serve.

Taking an historical road trip now and then reminds us of these truths.

Even 1700 years later.

And it guides us in the end to properly express the nature of the God we love.

Would you pray with me?

Our Lord Jesus, we come and we bow in awe before you.

I trust, Lord, that through your spirit you have enlarged our hearts as well as our minds.

That we would leave today, yes, with a greater uh understanding and comprehension of who you are and what you've done.

But that it wouldn't just stay in our heads, but that it would reach our hearts.

So that we would lift our voices and our hands in praise, that our our whole being would respond with joy and adoration and love to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

May all glory, honor, and praise be given to you.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.