Comedian Emo Phillips told an interesting story some time back. It is a fictitious story of course, but makes a strong point worthy of our consideration.
I was walking across a bridge one day and I saw a man standing on the edge of the bridge about to jump off. So I ran over and said, "Stop! Don’t do it!" He said, "Why shouldn’t I?"I said, "Well, there’s so much to live for!" He said, "Like what?"
I said, "Well, are you religious or atheist?" He said, "Religious." I said, "Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?" He said, "Christian." I said, "Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?" He said, "Baptist!" I said, “Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?" He said, "Baptist Church of God."
I said, "Me too! Are you Original Baptist Church of God or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?" He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God!" I said, "Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?"
He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915!" At that I said, "Die, heretic scum!" and pushed him off the bridge.
Unity at the expense of truth.
One of the problems that has perplexed the Christian world concerns the truth. As Christians we are rightfully concerned that we preserve the truth of God’s word and that our precious faith not be compromised by liberalism or legalism. In 2 Timothy 1:13-14 (NIV) Paul tells young Timothy, "What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you— guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us."
Last week I spoke about churches who abandon the truth for the sake of unity. Entire denominations are denouncing their traditional beliefs and are embracing the progressive beliefs of our culture. They have failed to guard the, "good deposit" that was entrusted to them in Christ.
A church in a nearby community burnt down years ago. As I remember it was a small Presbyterian Church and they couldn’t afford to build a new building. So they approached an American Baptist Church and said, "Hey, our church burnt down and we have no church home. Can our congregations worship together?"
The two churches worked out an agreement and began worshiping together. But there was one problem. One church was Presbyterian and the other was Baptist! As you might guess, Presbyterians and Baptists, while having some areas of theological agreement, happen to have some very stark differences! Among many of their differences the pastor of that church told me that the Baptist congregation believed in adult baptism by immersion. The Presbyterians believed in infant baptism by sprinkling!
Knowing how sensitive people are about baptism, I asked the pastor how they managed to unite two congregations with such opposing viewpoints. The minister looked at me a little funny and shrugged his shoulders. He told me that when people were ready to give their lives to Christ, they now had a personal choice to make. They could be baptized by immersion or they could be sprinkled as infants! Some of the members of that church were sprinkled and some were immersed. I asked the pastor where he stood on the matter but he didn’t really give an answer.
As I noted last week, churches today are pursuing unity at the expense of truth. It used to be tradition that each Sunday after church, Christians would race to some local smorgasbord to select a meal that met their liking. When I was growing up our family would leave church and try to beat the Baptists and Methodists to the Red Wood Inn. The Red Wood Inn had an awesome smorgasbord. They had a little of everything from sliced roast beef to fried shrimp and chicken, and including fresh fruit.
But today Christians don’t have to leave the church to go to the smorgasbord. Instead the church has become a smorgasbord— a smorgasbord of beliefs and practices. And you can load up your plate any way it suits you! Churches want to please everyone. So many churches today encourage their members to pick and choose whatever suits their fancy. Their philosophy is, "Don’t come to church to have your beliefs challenged and sharpened. Come to church and stay the way you are."
Doctrinal purity, Christian unity.
So in light of this, the issue for us concerns how we can achieve Christian unity while at the same time remaining doctrinally pure and faithful to the truth. One of the ineffective ways that good-intentioned churches have sought to achieve unity and to remain doctrinally pure is by developing creeds. As you many of you know, creeds are statements of belief. They are confessions of faith. They define what is distinctive about a given collection of believers. Creeds are designed to protect the church against heresy and false teachers.
The Apostles Creed.
For example, one of the earliest creeds is the Apostles Creed which declares, "I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord. He was conceived 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 (universal) Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen."
Now surely you can appreciate the truth this creed contains. There isn’t too much, if anything in this creed that one could refute scripturally. In fact many early Christians and churches around the second century began signing onto this creed. They liked its ring of truth and brevity.
The creed was used to provide instruction to new Christians, to help refine the beliefs of the Church’s membership, and to communicate the gospel to culture. Over time, creeds like the Apostles Creed took on added significance. They became a test of fellowship for new believers and aspiring leaders. This creed became a measuring stick whereby churches separated "true" Christians from the goats and the "wheat" from the chaff. They reasoned that true Christians would instantly discover the truth of their creed and want to subscribe to the creed.
And this is exactly how creeds are used in churches today. Churches dangle their creeds out before the world assuming that any real believer or reasonable person will surely subscribe to their beliefs. And if you do not agree with their creed, they tolerate you and try to convert you for a while. But they eventually encourage you to move on--but not before branding you a heretic or something worse. In some of the Church's darkest moments people were burned at the stake and branded heretics for refusing to sign on to these doctrinal creeds!
The Nicene Creed.
Well not long after this Apostles Creed was released, well-intentioned Christians began to site its inadequacy to protect the Church against heresy. The creed seemed to be missing a lot of things that the scriptures taught about. The creed didn’t say anything about the divinity and humanity of Christ. The creed didn’t say anything about the origin of Jesus Christ or of baptism. The creed didn’t say enough about the Holy Spirit.
And so churches went back to the drawing board and the Nicene Creed emerged. The Nicene Creed contained most of the Apostles Creed but its authors added a few choice phrases.
“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with 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, for 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. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic (universal) Church 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."
Like the Apostles Creed, you won’t find too much in here that doesn’t jive with scripture. The trouble with the Apostles Creed was that it left out important concepts. The trouble with the Nicene Creed is that it left important concepts out. It didn’t mention anything about free will, the origin of sin, and other things like that! And so there came a time when even the Nicene Creed had to be rewritten. In fact it would be rewritten two more times before an entirely new creed had to be developed to get the job done.
Creeds never quite summarized the eternal counsel of God.
And so these creeds, while useful in some respects, never quite got the job done. Time and time again churches would write up newer, more expanded, manmade creeds to fend off false teachers and false teachings. These creeds had this tendency to grow from a few paragraphs, to pages, to volumes! The problem was that these creeds set out to do the impossible. They set out to summarize the boundless, eternal counsel of God in mere paragraphs or pages. To say it another way, these creeds sought to replace God’s word in one fashion or another.
You won’t be surprised to know that today there are over two thousand denominations or "brands" of Christianity in America. And virtually every one of these denominations has its own creed describing those essential beliefs that define a true Christian and follower of Jesus Christ. And every one of these groups demands allegiance to their respective creed. The Catholics have their creeds, as well as the Presbyterians, Reformed Church, Southern Baptists, Episcopalians, and Methodists. And these creeds continue to propagate the kind of artificial divisions that keeps the universal Church from accomplishing her mission of making disciples. The Catholic creed makes Catholics only, and the Methodist creed only makes Methodists.
And so in the beginning these creeds were written to protect the Church and preserve its doctrinal purity but in the end they did nothing more than divide the Church. And to this day the trend continues. A church splits away from its denomination and before you know it, it has a new name and it has written a brand-new creed to suit its emerging theology! And so what has been lost is Christian unity. And Jesus said in Matthew 12:25 (NIV),"Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand."
So we don’t want unity at the expense of truth, right? And we don’t want the division and infighting that creeds have brought to the Church!
And so how do we maintain Christian unity and doctrinal purity at the same time? Our church emerged as part of a movement of Christians and churches that believed unity and doctrinal purity could be achieved. We believe this unity can be achieved by setting aside divisive human creeds. We believe this purity can be achieved by embracing a simple faith in Jesus Christ and by letting the truth of God’s word stand on its own. The word does not need to be supported by manmade creeds.
No creed but Christ. No book but the Bible.
Our belief is that the Church should only have one creed. That creed is Jesus Christ. John 1 tells us that Jesus Christ is the living word that became flesh. He is God’s incarnate word come to earth in the flesh to redeem us for the Father’s glory. Our creed is a living, dynamic, transforming Lord who has given us his perfect word as a means of achieving both global unity and doctrinal purity. He cannot be reduced to a bulleted list of beliefs. Jesus is a person, not a prepositional statement. He is God’s word, not men’s word. Jesus is not about certain articles of belief. He is the single article of belief! And so our church has adopted phrases like, "No creed but Christ." And, "No book but the Bible."
Just think about this for a moment. Virtually every denomination sincerely seeks to live under the lordship of Christ. Virtually every denomination sincerely believes that the Bible is God’s inspired word. Virtually every creed that has ever been developed has its source in God’s word.
Our Church believes that since scripture is the source of every creed, unity can best be achieved to the degree that every church returns to the Bible as the sole rule for faith, practice, doctrine, and authority. We believe that there is no better way for Christians to achieve doctrinal purity than by setting aside their creeds and proclaiming, "No creed but Christ" and, "No book but the Bible."
A quick little exercise will demonstrate this truth. When I count backwards from three I want everyone in this room to say out loud what their Church background is. Catholic, Methodist, whatever. 3 – 2 – 1... (CHAOS ensues).
This time when I count backwards I want everyone to say "Christ." 3 –2 – 1... CHRIST!
Imagine if every Christian could unite under the simple name of Christ! Imagine if every Christian sought unity through God’s authoritative words instead of through the artificial authority of divisive human creeds. Imagine if every Christian sought doctrinal purity in like manner! Imagine what tremendous good might be accomplished for God’s glory.
As I said last week, our church is a church of the book. You won’t find any creeds on our lips, only a common allegiance to Jesus Christ. We have no creed but Christ. This book, the Bible, is our lifeline. It is our means of achieving unity and doctrinal purity. It is our key to unity without compromise and doctrinal purity without division. This book alone is the vehicle that God has chosen to use to unite us and mature us.
In the next few moments I want you to think about the powerful draw Jesus Christ has on our hearts and our lives. Together we profess a simple faith. "No creed but Christ! No book but the Bible!" So we open up God’s word and we plead, "Give me Jesus. Give me Jesus."