Christian, What do you Believe?

An Introduction

Every Sunday, at a certain point in the liturgy, our pastor will have us turn to the back of our hymnals, either to the Apostles Creed or Nicene Creed, and will ask the question, “Christian, what do you believe?” We respond by reading back those creeds in unison. After the service, we have a time of teaching where we can ask questions about the sermon. During this time the pastor also teaches us the answers to two questions from the Westminster Shorter Catechism. What has struck me about this practice is that as a church we are learning the basics of the Christian faith apart from individual study or an individual sermon - from the oldest to the youngest. This has been fascinating to me. Exciting, too! Growing up in a church that did not adhere to the Reformed tradition, I was never exposed to historical writings like creeds, confessions, or catechisms. I don’t particularly know why, and it isn’t my intention to speculate. 

Before we go any further, I want you to know it isn’t my intention in this series to convert any non-Reformed folk to Reformed Theology, but to provide tools and resources for study and encouragement; to provide exposure and insight into the thoughts of the men who built up the Christian Faith upon the foundation, the founder, and the finisher of our faith, Jesus Christ. 

Throughout my life, the overall expectation communicated in my church and at sundry Christian events was that they wanted you to know Jesus and believe the gospel, to share that with others, and to bring them to church. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The problem I faced, and many Christians still face, is that my friends were wrestling with deep theological questions and facing gigantic moral decisions while I was still a relative baby in the faith. They were asking questions that demanded answers from Christianity. These were questions that couldn’t be answered by just knowing Bible stories or listening to the “right” music. They were questions that required a deep grasp of the fundamentals. And, despite growing up in a good, godly household where the gospel was both preached and lived out, I increasingly found myself at a loss for words in conversations with my friends at school. There, in the government school system, we were being indoctrinated into the secular apologetic. The doctrine of evolution laid a foundation of atheistic thinking, and from there flowed worldviews, behaviors, and questions in opposition to Biblical truth. The Big Bang was their authoritative origin. An entire dogma was developed in public schools about the beginnings of the human race, sexuality, the earth, our purpose, and more. Every bit of it was opposed to Jesus Christ, casting doubt on the validity of Christianity in the face of supposedly superior scientific scholarship. Innocent questions in elementary school developed into heated accusations in high school. Plus, in the classroom, a young Christian taking a test must give answers that they believe are lies in order to get a passing grade, thus forcing a child to separate their faith apart from “the real world.” There’s your belief and there’s what the State believes, and the State thinks you’re wrong. Your friends think you’re wrong. And neither of them are afraid to let you know it. Eventually, not wanting to face ridicule or, more importantly, not wanting to bring shame to the faith by giving bad answers, I stopped engaging. Many young Christians stop engaging. The result was and is quietness and apostasy. After all, if Christianity doesn’t have all the answers, then what good is it to engage the culture or witness to our friends? It is much easier to act like them, at first just to get by, but one day you find out that you’ve become just like them. So, when faced with the questions and accusations of the devil, we, like our father, Adam, hold our peace. And in our quiet, the darkness lodges in the hearts of our generation, and death reigns while many fall away.

And if you think my situation is unique, and that I’m making much ado about nothing, then just look up Ligonier Ministries’ State of Theology results from 2020. Christians don’t know how to think like orthodox Christians, and are allowing ignorance and/or subjectivism to make shipwreck of their faith. Just look at the current wave of deconstructionists. I guarantee they all have at least one thing in common. They became friends with the world, and thus enemies of God, (James 4:4) because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (Romans 1:25)

“Well, that’s depressing, Seth. What are you on about?”

The Bible has the answers! Our faith isn’t blind and stupefying! Christianity isn’t just a preferential alternative to worldly philosophies, it is the supernatural weapon that destroys worldly philosophies,

“For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5)  If you or your children are finding yourselves falling away from Jesus, or getting colder towards him, it is because you are letting the world teach you more about the Bible than the Bible itself. And if you are reading your Bible and still wrestling with questions, then I’ve got good news for you.

The questions that we ask of Scripture, and that are asked of us Christians by the lost people of the world, have already been asked before. The answers have been searched out in the Scriptures by bold men of the faith. They mined the Scriptures. They sought God. They prayed. They debated. They refined. They reformed. And those men have written down the answers for our edification. And we live in a time where it is easier than ever to obtain them. Since the early days of the Church, these doctrinal statements have taken the forms of creeds, confessions, and catechisms, and they have helped to grow and guide countless generations into a fuller knowledge of the truth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Over the next several weeks, we’re going to be taking a look at some of these writings in more depth. Writings like the Apostles Creed or the Athanasian Creed. We’ll look at some key confessions. We’ll go over some catechisms like Martin Luther’s Catechism, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the good ole Westminster. Along the way, we’ll discuss things like the Trinity, Creation, the Gospel, the Canon of Scripture, and more. We’ll also provide some solid resources to explore. 

Are you ready to equip yourself and your family with the truth? Are you ready to be grounded in the unshakeable foundation of Jesus Christ as revealed in the Holy Scriptures? It is time to learn to teach, and to teach well. Pastors teach your flock. Don’t just preach. Parents, teach your children. Don’t just send them to church. The time for outsourcing our Christian development is over. It wasn’t working! It isn’t working! It’s time to bring it back in-house. As God commands in Deuteronomy 6:4-9:

 “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. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

And when Paul instructs Timothy and Titus to appoint men as leaders in the church, he tells them to seek out men that are able to teach sound doctrine while also being able to rebuke and correct false teachers. One of the areas where this would be evident would be in that man’s management of his own household as evidenced in his conduct, his wife’s conduct, and his children’s conduct. In other words, the man taught his family the orthodox truths of the Christian faith, and it manifested itself in their home. Now, if you are a single mother or a widow with children, this doesn’t count you out. Proverbs 1:8 says, “Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.” There are plenty of places in Proverbs that exhorts the listener to not forsake his or her mother’s teaching. So ladies, be prepared to learn, so that you, too, can teach your children. And before we move on, if any particularly surly children or teenagers are reading this or listening to it, with a mind to just fold your arms and roll your eyes as your parents start teaching you Biblical things, I’d love for you to consider Proverbs 30:17.

“The eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures.”

Eye-roll at your own peril.

Next week we’re going to be taking a look at Martin Luther’s Larger Catechism. I love his perspective on the use of catechism in ministry and in the family life. And I think his format is simple enough to begin slowly implementing on a regular basis. So check back in next Friday for a deeper look at that great teaching tool!

In the meantime, one of the resources that I highly recommend downloading on your smartphone is an app called Christian Creeds & Confessions by James H Price. It’s free! It comes pre-loaded with quite a list of the confessions and catechisms, but it also has a feature where you can manage and add more Christian documents. You can even link it with your favorite Bible app, so that you can look up the reference verses with just a tap. This is an excellent way to begin familiarizing yourself with these pillars of Christian history. 

But before I end this post, I want to leave you with the Apostle’s Creed. So, I ask you. Christian, what do you believe?

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth;

And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord;

Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary;

Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended into hell;

On the third day he rose again from the dead;

He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty;

From there he will come 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.