Ariticle by Dr. Michael Reeves (Source: https://tabletalkmagazine.com/posts/confessions-in-practice/)

Dr. Michael Reeves is president and professor of theology at Union School of Theology in Wales. He is author of several books, including Rejoicing in Christ. He is the featured teacher on the Ligonier teaching series The English Reformation and the Puritans.

As I wrote in my first post, the creeds and confessions of orthodox Christianity are the necessary, written responses of the church to the revelation of God in the Bible. Far from the cold and formulaic scribbles of dead orthodoxy, as critics sometimes call them, creeds and confessions are the lifeblood of healthy, humble, and historic Christianity. To further highlight why Christians should love creeds and confessions, we need to look at both their limitations and practical uses.

RECOGNIZE THE LIMITS OF CONFESSIONS

Confessions don’t pretend to be more than they are. In fact, they have two requisite limitations. First, a confession is not an extension of Scripture, as if it were God’s Word itself. It is a human response to God’s Word, an acknowledgment that He has spoken. As such, we value a confession only to the extent that it is faithful to Scripture. Thus, a confession is to be assented to whole-heartedly as a confession of God’s truth only when it accurately declares the truth of Scripture.

Second, confessions cannot contain the whole counsel of God or the full compass of everything those who subscribe to them believe. As a response to God’s Word, the confession points to and guides us toward the whole truth found in the Scriptures. A confession points beyond itself. Therefore, the view that confessions limit growth in the knowledge of God and His gospel is a view that misunderstands the intention of a confession. Confessions are not self-sufficient, doctrinal cages, but guides, witnesses, and safety nets.

In particular, confessions describe essential beliefs that command broad assent. They often remain silent on secondary matters or on doctrines that are not relevant to their confessional perspective. For example, it is appropriate and important for the London Baptist Confession of Faith to limit the mode and subjects of baptism according to Baptist principles. For other confessional perspectives, such details are not required. Functioning in this way, confessions promote “unity in essentials, liberty in non-essentials, charity in all things.”¹

REVEL IN THE UNITY OF CONFESSIONS

In acknowledging that God has spoken clearly and specifically, confessions also bind our allegiance to what God has said. A confession is more than an obedient response to God’s Word; it also calls Christians to an ongoing obedient response to God’s Word. Written confessions presuppose that we are fickle people. We naturally stray from what God has said to follow the siren voices of our imagination and our culture. If we want to remain loyal to the gospel, we must bind ourselves to it. This is what confessions do; they fasten confessional Christians to the gospel so that those Christians keep on confessing gospel truth. Confessional fidelity guards against confessing something else. Committing to a confession nails your colors to its mast. You define yourself publicly by that allegiance. Without this commitment, it is much easier to shift allegiance without even noticing. Confessional commitments make it difficult to change our minds on the fundamental matters of the confession. Confessions help define and protect our theological identity.If we want to remain loyal to the gospel, we must bind ourselves to it. This is what confessions do.SHARE

Confessions also protect us from theological drift by binding us not only to the gospel but to our fellow confessors as well. Subscribing to a confession is both public and corporate. The prefix con- in confess means “together.” Confessions bind us together in fellowship under the gospel. Through confession, the gospel becomes our common ground and shared vision. Confessions are fundamentally unifying.

LET YOUR CONFESSIONS PICK FIGHTS WITH HERESY

Our confessions shape our perspective of the Bible and the gospel. Our confessions not only show us where we might be tempted to leave the gospel or compromise it, but they also show us where we need to act and what we need to proclaim. They order our values and priorities.

More strongly than that, however, confessions involve us in the conflict between the gospel and all that is opposed to it, both in our hearts and in the world. We’ve never needed confessions more, even as we witness the extraordinary doctrinal retreat of the church in the face of an increasingly aggressive culture. Specifically, for God’s people to remain loyal to what God has said, they will need confessions that dare to take a stand. A real confession acknowledges truth with authenticity only inasmuch as it acknowledges such a thing as falsehood. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, “The concept of heresy belongs necessarily and irrevocably with the concept of a creedal confession.”² When the notion of heresy seems anachronistic, so must the notion of truth.

Confessions of faith are never neutral or abstract. They are spoken in specific situations and address particular issues. Loyalty to them requires an active rejection of the heresies they condemn. It is not possible for Christians today to confess the Apostles’ or Nicene creeds alone. Even these two early creeds were responding to the theological issues of their day. That is not to say that the ancient creeds no longer have any validity. They maintain all their validity. But we cannot simply turn back the creedal clock. New theological issues and errors have always required new confessions to deal with them.

CONFESSIONS AND CHRISTIAN INTEGRITY

Confessions do not typically dictate Christian behavior. Confessions are, after all, testimonies to the faith, not testimonies to our response. To an age that sees doctrine as a cerebral nicety, this inevitably makes confessions look somewhat irrelevant to “real life.” But the very existence of confessions testifies that there is truth that demands a response. Confessions demand that we have the integrity to respond appropriately to the truth being confessed. In this way, doctrine becomes profoundly life shaping. For example, to confess with integrity that Jesus is Lord and that the Spirit works in us to make us Christlike necessarily means rejecting sin and altering every aspect of our lives. By demanding integrity, confessions forbid nominalism or empty, intellectual assent.

In sum, confessions draw us, body and soul, into obedience to God’s Word. Through confessions, we challenge our bent toward rejecting divine revelation. We are taught the gospel with ever-greater clarity. We join with the gospel and there find unity with others who have done the same. We defy and deny what our confessions oppose. We mold our lives, thoughts, ministries, and teaching to the unchanging standard of God’s Word. In the end, we stand with our confessions and proclaim that God has spoken.

Editor’s Note: This post was first published on September 29, 2017.
 

1. This quote is typically attributed to Augustine, but is in fact probably penned by Peter Meiderlin, a seventeenth-century Lutheran theologian. ↩︎
2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christology (London: Collins, 1978), 75.

Article by Craig Van Dixhoorn (original source: https://www.crossway.org/articles/10-things-you-should-know-about-the-churchs-historic-creeds-and-confessions/)

1. Creeds are honest.

Honesty is the original impulse behind almost every statement of faith. Cults hide what they believe until you’re so far into the riptide that you can’t do anything about it. Honest churches do the opposite: they announce what they do believe and (in the best creeds and confessions) even a few things that they don’t. We want everyone to know the most important facts and ideas revealed in the Bible and denied by the Bible, so we summarize them in our creeds.

2. Creeds promote unity.

The best doctrinal summaries promote church unity. They help us to identify, through a common set of priorities and teachings, what we have in common with other Christians. And that is not all. These summaries also have the potential to create peace in the church, since people coming to the church will readily be able to see what it teaches, and will be able to compare it with the Scriptures, which is the only basis on which Christian teaching should be built. Avoiding doctrinal disguises minimizes unhappy surprises.

3. Creeds are old.

The classic Christian Creeds were written in the early history of the church. Most confessions were written sometime during the Protestant Reformation. This is useful. When it comes to doctrinal statements (and much else besides!) age is more of a benefit than a liability—it is good to study texts which remind us that Christianity was not invented last Tuesday.

4. Creeds and confessions can be long.

Lengthy creeds and confessions are a good thing! Evangelical statements of faith are often too short and not sufficiently theological. As I see it, the church needs to experiment with theological maximalism, in place of its current minimalism, if we are to maintain a faithful witness to Christ in our generation. A dozen doctrinal points on a website is probably inadequate for the church’s thriving, for its mission not only to evangelize but also to teach the nations. Big creeds and confessions hold out a large faith for us to own, offering a welcome view of the triune God and his work and more robust statements of the gospel of Christ.

5. Creeds remind us we are not alone.

Classic creeds remind us that we don’t simply read the Bible by ourselves. We read the Bible as one body and find unity in so doing. Reciting a creed as a church declares that we read the bible in ways similar to other Christians in the depth and in the breadth of the church—over time and around the world.

6. Creeds and confessions expose disagreements.

Creeds also show how we disagree. This, too, is good. Discussing our differences is better than papering over them and pretending they don’t exist. By the time of the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s, so much had been learned—and so many doctrines were disputed between the Reformers and Rome—that the category of creed was supplemented by longer lists of doctrines that Christians confessed. Creeds were still in use, most often in worship, but now confessions were written to expound what Lutheran and Reformed Christians believed. These confessions carefully articulated what doctrines were shared in common with the old faith of Rome, and where the Reformers were forced to disagree with Rome in their recovery of the teachings of the early church, and most basically, of the Bible. They also explain where Reformers disagreed with one another. This is helpful, for knowing where we disagree allows us to talk at the curb. Living with labels, but without understanding, results in verbal grenades being lobbed over walls.

7. Creeds and confessions help us learn.

Creeds and confessions pay careful attention to precise wording. They provide the kind of labeling that allows for Christian learning. These documents function as teaching materials that lead us deeper into the Christian faith. With texts like these, Christians no longer need to be content with speaking of “salvation”, for example, only in general. Once alert to fuller teaching, Christians can then celebrate justification, discover adoption, and bless God for sanctification, perseverance, and glorification.

8. Creeds and confessions help us to avoid error.

Even as creeds and confessions served as bulwarks against doctrinal error in time past, they continue to do so in the present. Errorists and heretics are often uncreative. The basic shape of their faults remain the same over the centuries. Creeds set doctrinal parameters that safeguard the principles of the church against the increasingly common tendency to be inclined toward everything new and fancy. Tip: It’s helpful for pastors to read the relevant section in a creed or confession before preaching a tricky doctrine, or one that is easy to state incorrectly.

9. Creeds and confessions help us worship.

Creeds function not only as a teaching tool but as a worshipping tool as we remember why it is that we gather together: it is because of who God is and because of what he has done. While not usually used in worship, confessions are also useful for worship. Careful distinctions provide richer material for praise than do broad generalizations. Saying more about the character of God and the grace of the gospel encourages more confidence in prayer and praise.

10. Creeds and confessions are biblical.

From the beginning, the word of God has offered, and the people of God have employed, statements of faith. Old Testament readers encounter such a statement in the capstone of the books of Moses: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:3). It is what New Testament readers see when Paul provides the Corinthians with a summary of his own teaching: “I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve” (1 Cor. 15:3-4). In Paul’s instruction to Timothy, he reminds Timothy to follow the pattern of sound words (2 Tim. 1:13) so that the church would not be tossed about in uncertainty. Biblical summaries are biblical!

Buck Parsons answers:

TRANSCRIPT:

Those who understand the place of creeds and confessions understand how helpful they are to the church. My concern is for those who don’t know the creeds and the historic Reformed confessions and thus don’t refer to them or use them on a regular basis. Often, if they’re not using them, are not aware of them, or haven’t studied them, typically they are basing their faith on a very short confessional statement that either their church or some organization has made up.

All churches have to have some sort of basic confessional statement to some degree. But if they don’t have a significant, formulated, historic, attested-to creed or confession, then the likelihood is that their creed or confession is changing quite frequently, sometimes even based on the moods and whims of their own pastors, elders, or congregation.

Creeds and confessions help to ground us and to guard us. They become a perimeter to help us know where we can go and where we can’t go.

They also serve us as maps or guides for us. I like to hunt. I love to hike and backpack and fish. Especially here in Florida when you’re backcountry fishing, you need maps. You need to know where you’re going so you don’t run aground and so you can find your way back. You use maps, looking at where people have gone before you. You’re saying, “They have gone here and have told us: ‘Don’t go this way because you’ll run aground there. You’ll run aground into heresy there, into false teaching there, and into error there, so steer clear of this way and that way and steer a straight path.’”

Creeds and confessions help us to do that. They help us to train up our children. And they help our teachers, our pastors, and our elders to remain steadfastly orthodox in the faith.

This historic creed has stood the test of time as a means to keep God’s people in the truth, as well as to expose heretics who cannot adhere to it. The historic background of Arianism is explored (along with its modern day adherents, the Jehovah’s Witnesses) as well as a full debunking of the idea that the concept of the Trinity was introduced by Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. This sermon has many applications for our own day.

THE NICENE CREED

325 AD and 381 AD*

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, Light of Light, Very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father**; By whom all things were made;

Who for us and for our salvation, came down from heaven,
and became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man;

For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, He suffered death and was buried, and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father; He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead; and His kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son He is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets.

We believe in one holy catholic*** and apostolic Church; we acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins****; We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. AMEN.

*The original Nicene Creed (325 AD) ended after the words,
“We believe in the Holy Spirit”. Content was added at the Council of Constantinople (381 AD). The Council of Ephesus (431 AD) reaffirmed the creed in this form and forbade additional revisions.

**“One in essence, three in Person” is the most concise definition
of the doctrine of the Trinity. The three divine Persons, are distinct in terms of their personal relationships to one another, but not in their essence or Being. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are co-eternal, co-equal and equally divine.

***The word “catholic” refers to the universal Church

**** Because water is a cleansing agent for dirt on the body, it is a fitting visible sign for the spiritual cleansing that God effects for our souls in Christ. But note that the reality of forgiveness to which baptism points comes to pass only as baptized individuals repent (Acts 2:38).

Article by Justin S. Holcomb who serves as Canon for Vocations in The Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida. He also teaches at Reformed Theological Seminary and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. (original source: whitehorseinn.org)

Tradition is the fruit of the Spirit’s teaching activity from the ages as God’s people have sought understanding of Scripture. It is not infallible, but neither is it negligible, and we impoverish ourselves if we disregard it. — J. I. Packer1

Obviously, Christianity did not begin when it was born, nor did our generation invent Christian thought. We live two thousand years removed from the time of our founder, and—for better or for worse—we are the recipients of a long line of Christian insights, mistakes, and ways of speaking about God and the Christian faith. Today’s Christianity is directly affected by what earlier Christians chose to do and to believe.

The fact that Christianity developed over time (as opposed to having spontaneously appeared)—that the sixteenth century, for instance, looked very different from the third, and that both look very different from the twenty-first—can sometimes lead us to wonder what the essential core of Christianity is. As a result, some people decide to ignore history altogether, and they try to reconstruct “real Christianity” with nothing more than a Bible. But this approach misses a great deal. Christians of the past were no less concerned with being faithful to God than we are, and they sought to fit together all that Scripture has to say about the mysteries of the Christian faith—the incarnation, the Trinity, predestination, and more—with the intellectual power of their times. To ignore these insights is to attempt to reinvent the wheel and to risk reinventing it badly.

Thankfully, the church of the past has given us a wealth of creeds, councils, confessions, and catechisms. These are tools the church has used to speak about God clearly and faithfully, to guide its members closer to God, and sometimes to distinguish authentic Christianity from the innovations, heresies, and false teachings the New Testament warns of. While their purposes differ, all try to communicate complex theological ideas to people who do not have sophisticated theological backgrounds (in some cases, to people who are illiterate).

Once the divine authority and sufficiency of Scripture are properly understood and established, we should regard the church’s ministerial authority (the theological statements from the tradition) as very useful tools. John Calvin writes:

Thus councils would come to have the majesty that is their due; yet in the meantime Scripture would stand out in the higher place with everything subject to its standard. In this way, we willingly embrace and reverence as holy the early councils, such as those of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus 1, Chalcedon, and the like, which were concerned with refuting errors—in so far as they relate to the things of faith. (Institutes of the Christian Religion 4.9.1)

What Is a Creed?

The English word creed comes from the Latin word credo, which means “I believe.” Church historian J. N. D. Kelly says that a creed is “a fixed formula summarizing the essential articles of the Christian religion and enjoying the sanction of ecclesiastical [church] authority.”2 More simply, the creeds set forth the basic beliefs of the church that have been handed down from earliest times, what the New Testament calls “the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” (Jude 3). When teachers throughout history called parts of this faith into question (usually the parts that were taken for granted or less well-defined), the early church reaffirmed the essentials in ways that honored the traditional teaching. Continue reading →

Deuteronomy 6:4

While John 3:16 is the most famous verse in the Bible, it is fair to say that in the Old Testament, the most well-known words are found in what the Jews call the Sh’ma, found in Deuteronomy 6:4. There in English we read these words, “Hear O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” This is nothing less than a creed for the people of Israel that was recited daily. It clearly affirms mono-theism – the belief in one God.

Jesus quotes the Sh’ma in Mark 12 (v.29):

28 One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, “What commandment is the foremost of all?”

29 Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD;

30 AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.’

31 The second is this, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’

Even in our own day, one Jewish theological website refers to the Sh’ma as “the centerpiece of the daily morning and evening prayer services and is considered by some the most essential prayer in all of Judaism. An affirmation of God’s singularity and kingship, its daily recitation is regarded by traditionally observant Jews as a biblical commandment… It is recited at the climactic moment of the final prayer of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, and traditionally as the last words before death. Traditionally, it is recited with the hand placed over the eyes.”

Through the many centuries of Israel’s history, the regular, repetitive reciting of the Sh’ma has kept many generations of Jews away from the gross idolatry that surrounded them. That was not always the case, of course, and yet this creed was used to keep Israel distinct and separate as God’s people.

Romans 10:9

When we come to the New Testament, Romans 10:9 outlines a simple creed of the early church – “Jesus is Lord.” The verse reads, “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved…”

To get the full impact of what this entails we need to understand something about what it meant to live in the Roman Empire in the first century.

The Romans were polytheists, believing in many gods and all people in the Empire, without exception, had to acknowledge the divine nature of the Emperor, Caesar. There was an affirmation to affirm – two simple words, “Kaiser Kurios” which meant “Caesar is Lord.” As and when demanded, this creed had to be affirmed by all under Roman rule. Not to say this could well mean instant death. Many Christians were fed to the lions and wild animals in the Coliseum in Rome because of their stubborn, heroic refusal to recite this simple affirmation to Caesar.

This scenario is so foreign to us in our day and time that perhaps I have to spell it out so that we all grasp the true reality of all this. As they entered the dreaded arena, the Christians had only to say two words and they could live: “Kaiser Kurios” – “Caesar is Lord”. Instead they proclaimed, “Iesous ho Kurios” or “Jesus is Lord”, and paid for the privilege with their blood.

Story after story could be told of the brave Christians who, under the certain threat of death, would not renounce their Master, men and women who would not bow their knee to Caesar, acknowledging him as a god. Instead, they confessed the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It therefore meant something… really meant something, to recite this early creed.

1 Corinthians 12:3

This is the historical background for the statement in 1 Corinthians 12:3 – “no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” This early creed “Jesus is Lord” was therefore supremely precious to the people of God. Allegiance to the creed was a matter of life and death. The Christians would rather die than, by their words, renounce Jesus Christ.

This confession of the Lord Jesus was admittedly basic and it is very evident that as Christians grew in their knowledge of God and of Scripture, so their creeds and confessions expanded and grew, and over time, became more broad and comprehensive. As novel (new) ideas and heresies spread in and around the church, the true Christians needed to expand the vocabulary of their creeds in order to stem the tide of the false doctrines.

1 Corinthians 8:6

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, affirms the monotheistic foundation of the Sh’ma while also acknowledging the full deity of Christ. Jesus is the Lord, Creator and Sustainer of all things.

“There is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” – 1 Corinthians 8:6

Ephesians 4:4,5

Here we see a confession that affirms our unity in Christ between Jews and Gentiles.

The Apostle Paul writes, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

While physical differences remain in that males remain males, females remain females, and the ethnic distinctions of Jew and Gentile and color still exist, the dividing wall of hostility between them has been broken down and abolished forever (Ephesians 2:11-18). Though we are not all not identical, we are all one in Christ Jesus. While there are still Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, no division between these two groups should exist in the church. We are united in Christ.

1 Timothy 3:16

Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 3 were a confessional statement against the raging heresies of the day, as well as an affirmation of the truth:

“By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness:

He (God) who was revealed in the flesh,

Was vindicated in the Spirit,

Seen by angels,

Proclaimed among the nations,

Believed on in the world,

Taken up in glory.” – 1 Timothy 3:16

Concerning this verse, Pastor Tom Hicks writes, “This confession was written as the church faced a number of additional heresies, including Gnosticism, Asceticism and Paganism. It confronted these newer heresies even as it also confronted the older errors of Judaism. We learn from this that the older errors don’t go away, which is why the church must keep adding to its confession. The church needed to confess that Christ is Lord, contrary to Judaism. It needed to declare the full humanity of Christ over and against Gnosticism. It needed to affirm the sufficiency of Christ’s work to save, contrary to Asceticism. And it needed to confess that God is one, over and against the polytheism of Paganism.”

From the Garden of Eden to our own day, truth has always been under attack. Throughout Israel’s history and through to the time of the early Church, God has used the short creeds and confessions found in Scripture as a means to keep the faithful sound in doctrine.

Article: A Case for Robust Confessions of Faith in the Churches by Tom Hicks, Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of Clinton, LA. (original source here)

A question often arises as to whether the church should have a minimal confession of faith or a robust and encyclopedic confession of faith. Some argue that a church’s formal confession should be short so that Christians with a variety of views on secondary doctrines may all join the church, while the pastor is free to teach anything he believes the Bible means. But I submit that it is the biblical responsibility of the church as a whole, not just the pastor, to confess its understanding of the meaning of the whole Bible, and that the pastor is to submit to the confession of the church. The Bible says that “the church” is “a pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Tim 3:12). Some worry that subscribing to a robust confession of faith is unworkable in a local church, but I disagree.

Historically in America, most early Baptist churches had comprehensive confessions of faith, two of the most influential of which were the Philadelphia Confession among Baptists in the North and the Charleston Confession among Baptists in the South. Both of those confessions are based on the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. Practically speaking, in our day, the churches need a robust confession in order to promote greater health and to remain faithful to Christ amidst the rising tide of secularism and individual autonomy. But most importantly, the Bible indicates that the church should confess its understanding of the Bible as a whole and therefore, the church’s confession ought to be robust.

1. The Basic Biblical Requirement of Confession

The Scriptures teach that Christians are to confess their faith. In the Old Testament, a basic confession of faith is found in the Shema. Deuteronomy 6:4 says, “Hear O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”

In the New Testament, we see the content of a basic confession in Romans 10:9-10, which says, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”

So, at a very basic level, a confession of faith in Christ as Lord and Savior is required for salvation. But this basic confession will expand as Christians grow in their understanding of Scripture and as they disclaim doctrinal errors.

2. The Expanding Nature of Confessions in the Bible

When we study the confessions found in the Bible, one of the things we find is that as the church encounters new errors, it confesses more and more doctrine in order to confront those errors.

A Confession Against Judaism. 1 Corinthians 8:6 combines the confession that there is one God with the confession that there is one Lord Jesus Christ. It says, “There is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” In this confession, the basic Jewish affirmation of monotheism is affirmed. But in order to distinguish themselves clearly from the Jews who denied the deity of Christ, the church also affirmed Christ as Lord and Creator of all things.

A Confession Against Division. Some professing Christians in the early church would have divided the church between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. But the Apostle Paul confessed in Ephesians 4:4-5, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” This confession affirms the oneness of all who are united to Christ.

A Confession Against Gnosticism, Asceticism and Paganism. We see a further expansion of the church’s confession in 1 Timothy 3:15, in which Paul writes so that “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by the angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.” This confession was written as the church faced a number of additional heresies, including Gnosticism, Asceticism and Paganism. It confronted these newer heresies even as it also confronted the older errors of Judaism. We learn from this that the older errors don’t go away, which is why the church must keep adding to its confession. The church needed to confess that Christ is Lord, contrary to Judaism. It needed to declare the full humanity of Christ over and against Gnosticism. It needed to affirm the sufficiency of Christ’s work to save, contrary to Asceticism. And it needed to confess that God is one, over and against the polytheism of Paganism. Continue reading →