Rise and Recite

Millions of people rise together every Sunday around the world and recite the Apostles’ Creed, one hundred twenty-five words which well-meaning adults forced them to memorize way back when.  They’ve memorized it so well, said it so often, they can do it in their sleep.  Go over to their house at 3 AM, shake them awake, bark the command, “Recite the Creed,” they’ll rise and recite:

“I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord: who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary: suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended into hell: The third day he rose again from the dead: He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty:  from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead: I believe in the Holy Ghost: I believe in the holy catholic church: the communion of saints: the forgiveness of sins: the resurrection of the body: and the life everlasting. Amen.”

They say that confession is good for the soul.  Evidently clerics believe repetition is also good for the soul. Way back in an ancient “when,” the Creed was a teaching tool, especially for those who couldn’t read. Lock down the one hundred twenty-five words, and there it is, a summary of the Christian faith.  Or so they say.

Is it?  Of the millions who rise and recite the Creed how many believe it?  Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say all of them do. The question is, by believing the Creed, do they believe the gospel?

The Creed is such a hoary forest we lose the trees.  Such can be the case with anything once learned, always recited.  The words come and go; the intellect bypassed in the process.  They are robots trained to rise and recite; but robots can’t think.  The Creed has become just one more hoop through which the robots must jump on their way to beating every one else to the cafeteria at noon or shortly thereafter.  It’s so familiar that it’s too familiar.

There’s something wrong with the Creed, something deadly wrong. We might take issue with “He descended into hell,” as a contradiction of Christ’s promise in Luke 23:43, but let’s leave that for another time.

As with everything, we have to test the Creed by Scripture, not by “That’s what we’ve always done, we’ve always risen; we’ve always recited.  We’re affirming the faith.” What we’ve always done is not the authority and the question is also, “Does the Creed affirm the faith?

Put the Creed parallel to I Cor. 15:1ff where Paul defines the content of the gospel: “Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved . . . For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.”

There is a strange omission in the Creed.  As millions rise and recite, they never notice it, and those who do blindly accept the omission on the basis of “We’ve always risen and recited.”

What does the trees of the Creed say?  “I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord: who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary: suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried.”

There it is, as plain as day—the omission, an omission of three words which the Apostles would never delete.  Looking at the trees we can see it—“And in Jesus Christ . . . who suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried.” What the Creed omits, Paul includes as vital to the gospel: “Christ died for our sins.” 

Is all this necessary?  Is this omission something you might need to know for a game of Trivial Pursuit, or is this important?  Listen to this man’s testimony:

As a former devout Roman Catholic, I can testify first-hand that I personally, as well as most of the practicing Catholics I knew, did not understand what it meant that Christ died for our sins.  Nor did we believe that Christ was the actual substitute for our sins.  We believed that our own good works were the substitute for our sins.  Sunday after Sunday, we would ritualistically recite . . . the Apostles’ Creed, which referred to Christ’s death but did not address the substitutionary atonement.

“Weekly during each mass we would affirm [the Creed]. . . . which is not equivalent to I Corinthians 15.  This omission has devastating effects, for, in the practical thinking of most Roman Catholics, they must still pay for their own sins through penance and good works.  Consequently, the purpose of Christ’s death is lost on them.”*

Millions in Protestant churches also rise and recite the Creed, a Creed that, in trying to summarize the faith, omits a crucial element of it, the gospel—the very basis of salvation.  Protestants unite with Roman Catholics and see only the forest.  But it’s not only in the rising and the reciting in which they unite.  Millions in each group unite in the belief that, although Christ did die, (and some would say, “for our sins)” they believe that He left us the balance to pay by our own good works.  To millions who rise and recite, the human being is part of the substitution, and when that belief is held, grace is gone and the gospel which saves has left the building.

The Creed affirms the historicity of Pilate, the crucifixion, the death, and the burial of Christ, but it doesn’t give Christ’s death the interpretation the New Testament does: the full and finished payment for our sins.  Rather than giving Christ’s death the Bible’s meaning, it gives it no meaning at all.  The Creed does mention “the forgiveness of sin,” but doesn’t connect the forgiveness with the full payment Christ’s death made for those sins.  The robotic reciter is left to his own devices in that he can believe that what he does, not what Christ did, brings that forgiveness of sins.  The Creed is simply having him believe in the forgiveness of sins without specifying the means of the forgiveness, the death of Christ.

The Apostles preached the substitutionary death of Christ for our sins and they did so because it’s part of the good news to be believed.  For whatever reason, in trying to summarize the Christian faith, the Creed fails.

In the most famous Super Bowl commercial of them all, a woman with blond hair runs into a sci-fi setting packed with bald human drones who are listening to their leader address them on a giant TV. The woman, chased by storm trooper types, throws a sledgehammer through the screen.  They call it “The 1984 Commercial,” the one which introduced the Macintosh.  (Some people, when they saw that commercial, stood and cheered.)

In church after church, someone needs to throw a sledgehammer at the Apostles’ Creed, awaken the rising and reciting drones, awaken them to the point of becoming noble, as the Bereans who “searched the Scriptures to see if these things were so.”

“The Gospel of the Christ,” pg. Thomas Stegall, pg. 550

Dr. Mike Halsey,
Pastor, County Line Church