What we believe
We confess the Apostles’ Creed as the confession of our faith, and this is what we stand on in our ministry:
I believe in God the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ,
his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived from the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary,
who suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried,
descended into hell,
rose again from the dead on the third day,
ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty,
who will come again 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.
Today some people who call themselves Christians do not always believe the same things we do. So we explain here how we understand this creed.
The Trinity
We believe that there is only one God, and this God exists in three Persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The Trinity is in many ways a great mystery for us. But at the same time it is an exact summary of many Bible truths about the nature of our wonderful and extraordinary God.
God the Father
We believe in God the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth.
There is one true God — the God Christians believe in. The gods of other religions are deceivers, idols, false gods. God is the only true God, and He has the power to create, to destroy and to save.
That all the people of the earth may know that the LORD is God, and that there is none else.
For thou art great, and doest wondrous things: thou art God alone.
Now therefore, O LORD our God, I beseech thee, save thou us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the LORD God, even thou only.
Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith.
Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.
There is only one God. This was true in the days of the Old Testament. It was true in the days of the New Testament. It was true in the first centuries of the Church. It is true today.
In today’s world, besides Christianity, there are many other religions — Hinduism, Shintoism, paganism, black magic, Islam, Judaism, all kinds of tribal beliefs, and so on. But their gods are nothing more than idols. Some people worship demons. Some honour the created world. And some worship the products of their own imagination. The Bible says that only the Christian God is truly God; only the Christian God will judge the world; and only the Christian God has the power to save us.
The power of the Father has no limits, because He has the strength and the ability to do everything He wants. His power has no equal, because He is the only One who has such power, and only one God is almighty.
We believe that our God is the maker of heaven and earth, that God alone created the universe. And God alone keeps giving life to everything that exists, holding up the world He made.
Although the Father has the leading role in creating and holding up heaven and earth, we see in Scripture that the whole Trinity takes part in these works. The Son was the means, or the instrument, through which the Father created the world and through which He still holds it up today. The part of the Holy Spirit in creation is expressed in Scripture less clearly.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
The words the Spirit of God literally refer to God in all His Persons. But from our New Testament point of view we see that here the work of one Person of the Trinity — the Holy Spirit — is pointed out.
Jesus Christ
We believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived from the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, descended into hell, rose again from the dead on the third day, ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty, who will come again to judge the living and the dead.
The New Testament speaks of Jesus as the Son of God, pointing to His place in the Trinity. It speaks of the divinity that belongs to Jesus and of His eternal sonship, which was there before He came to earth. Jesus is the only eternally begotten and always existing Son of God.
Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.
Jesus was also a full human being: He was conceived from the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Like all people after Adam and Eve, He began His life in His mother’s womb; Mary’s pregnancy went on in a natural way and ended, at the right time, with the birth of Jesus, and this event was also completely natural. It even made her fiancé Joseph doubt that she had been faithful, but God showed him the truth in a dream. So we see that the child Jesus came into the world the same way ordinary human children are born.
From Scripture we see that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. These are events that Jesus could live through only by really being a human being.
As He is dying, Jesus speaks of His “soul” or “spirit”:
And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.
Dying on the cross, Jesus knows that although His body will be laid in the tomb, His human spirit (that is, His soul) will go to God the Father.
From Scripture we also see that the death of Christ pays for sin, because Christ became the sacrifice in our place. Jesus took on Himself the guilt for our sin and bore the punishment for it. When we come to faith in Christ, what His death achieved is applied to us, and we receive the forgiveness of sins and peace with God.
By His resurrection Jesus defeated death, and from now on death has no power over His people. Yes, we die a physical death, but our souls are immortal and do not suffer the pains of death. Besides, the resurrection of Jesus means that one day God will give us resurrected bodies too — like the one Jesus has now — no longer subject to death.
Jesus is the centre of our faith. He is the Lord of the universe, the centre around which the whole history of mankind turns. He is our God, our High Priest, our King. And our salvation is in knowing Him, loving Him and finding life in union with Him.
The Holy Spirit
I believe in the Holy Spirit.
From the fourth century on, the divinity of the Holy Spirit has hardly ever been questioned. It is clearly stated in Scripture and has always been held by the church. Even in the first centuries of Christianity the divinity of the Holy Spirit was questioned very rarely, and only by those who insisted that God is one Person.
There are passages in Scripture where the Holy Spirit is directly called “God”:
But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land? Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.
When we worship God, we recognise and proclaim the divinity of the Holy Spirit. We bow before Him and serve Him faithfully. We pray to Him, praise Him in songs and draw attention to His ministry to us through the sacraments and the spiritual gifts.
The Holy Spirit is directly and personally present in the whole creation. Through His Spirit God stays with us and lives in us. By the power of the Spirit God creates, holds things up, works miracles, and so on.
The Church
When people hear the word “church”, most of them picture a building where Christians gather for worship. It may be a large, richly decorated cathedral. It may be a small, simple chapel or even a former warehouse. Someone’s house, a hut, or even a cave where believers gather can serve as a church. But in the Bible “the church” means first of all the people of God, the holy community of those who confess faith in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
We believe… in the holy catholic Church
In our time many Christians see no need for the Church. Sincere believers often think that the church as an organisation is a purely human invention that only gets in the way of a person’s own relationship with God. But the teaching of the Bible is that the Church is the Kingdom of God on earth, the gathering of His people and the main means by which He gives grace to those who are faithful to Him. According to Scripture, the Church plays a key role in starting and keeping our relationship with God.
And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Because the church has its origin in the Old Testament, it is not a new institution. It is the same people of the covenant. God has always had His own people, who were called by different names through history. What matters is that the Church has always been part of God’s plan for the world.
When we look at how the Church grew from the Old Testament into the New Testament Body of Christ, it is clear to us that God holds it up. The Church exists because God wants it to, and because it serves God’s purposes. It is not a human invention and not a departure from the Bible. The Church is the bride of Christ and the Body of Christ; it is loved by God and set apart to serve Him and for His glory.
The life of the church today is in many ways different from the life of the first believers and of the believers at the time the Apostles’ Creed was written. But the essence of the church has not changed. It still brings together the people of God’s covenant. As before, it is the vessel chosen by God to bring the Good News to the world and to change the world into the Kingdom of God on earth. We, the Church, are holy to the Lord. We are His Kingdom. We are His people. In Him we are one with each other. And through us the Lord Himself acts.
Salvation
We love our great God — the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We treasure the Church He created. But our greatest joy is the Good News that we have the promise of salvation. We are glad to be sure that God loves us, that He forgives our sins and has prepared a wonderful future for us, both in this world and in the world to come.
I believe… in the forgiveness of sins
Christians who believe the truth of the Bible recognise that one of the main problems the death of Jesus had to solve was the problem of sin. Sin cuts us off from God’s blessings and brings God’s curse on us. And we cannot solve this problem by ourselves. When we speak of the problem of sin, we mean that sin brings our condemnation. And if we are outside Christ, we have no way to get rid of sin or of its consequences.
Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.
Sin put mankind under God’s curse, broke our fellowship with God and made it impossible for us to make peace with Him on our own. It doomed us to eternal condemnation, and only God, in His mercy, saw fit to send us a Redeemer.
The problem of sin is really very serious. All mankind is sentenced to condemnation and ruin. We cannot save ourselves. We are doomed to bear God’s punishment forever. We are unable to win back His favour or to cover our sin in any way. Without God’s merciful forgiveness we have no hope of salvation.
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.
The Father loves us just as Jesus does. The plan of our salvation belonged not to Jesus but to the Father. It was the Father who sent the Son to die for us. The Father’s love for us is so great that, for the sake of our salvation, He freely decided to sacrifice His Son.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Scripture clearly teaches that God does not forgive the sins of every person. Some people receive forgiveness, others do not. Why is that? From our human point of view, the reason is that forgiveness usually includes some element of personal responsibility. Speaking in general terms, people who carry out the responsibility placed on them receive forgiveness; those who avoid this responsibility have no forgiveness.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
We believe… in the resurrection of the body
We also see that Scripture clearly teaches that at the Second Coming of Christ not only our souls but also our bodies will be glorified.
Our body dies because of sin; physical death is the punishment for human lawlessness and the fall. But the Good News proclaims the rebirth of our body. It says that Jesus came to redeem the whole person — both soul and body. And this resurrection is full of glory. It is the reason for our great joy and triumph. With the resurrection of our bodies we will at last be able to proclaim the final victory over death. We will at last be able to inherit all the blessings God has prepared for us in the new heavens and the new earth. And we will at last see with our own eyes the victory of Jesus Christ.
We believe… in the life everlasting.
On the one hand, eternal life begins for us at the moment we are born again. Our spirit is made alive and will never die. On the other hand, eternal life will not begin in full until our body is also made alive in the resurrection.
And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.
In a sense it is right to say that eternal life for our soul begins in this life, at the moment we are born again. But we will not have life in full until our bodies are raised on the Day of Judgement. Only then will our whole being be alive before God. Until then we have only a foretaste of eternal life, thanks to the redemption of our souls. So only when our bodies are also given new life will we live the way God planned from the beginning.