Today’s Gospel lesson is part of a lengthy dialogue that took place between Jesus and the Pharisees. In this dialogue, the main focus is the identity of Jesus. The Pharisees know that His name is Jesus and that He came from the Galilean village of Nazareth. They repeatedly refer to Jesus as “this man,” and to them he was a mere man – and nothing more.
But people are beginning to openly question whether or not “this man” Jesus of Nazareth could actually be the Christ, the Messiah who long-ago had been promised to the Children of Israel. As you might expect, the Pharisees and the other religious leaders of Israel saw this kind of talk as nonsense and heresy. So when Jesus says that He is the “light of the world” and refers to God as His “Father” and even says that He existed prior to the existence of their Patriarch Abraham, the Pharisees grow more and more angry. In the final verse of today’s Gospel lesson we read that they picked up stones because they wanted to kill Jesus right then and there. Stoning was the penalty for blasphemy – and as far as they were concerned, Jesus’ own words convicted Him of that unforgivable crime against God. Their human minds simply could not understand what Jesus was saying.
Understanding – or perhaps I should say a lack of understanding – has been a big problem from the earliest days of the Christian Church. We want answers. We want to understand how something works or how something happens. How could Jesus be born of a virgin? How could Jesus be true man and true God? How could Jesus do the miracles that he did? How could Jesus die – and then be raised from the dead? From the earliest days of the Church, people have been asking these questions, and sometimes men decide to provide their own answers. When that happens – when people put their own thinking and understanding over the thinking and understanding of God – then things are going to go wrong. That’s what happened 2,000 years ago, and it still happens today.
One of the earliest heresies to plague the Christian church was Gnosticism, the false teaching that Jesus was nothing more than a mere man who was joined by “the Christ” from the time of His baptism to his passion and death on the cross. Another group known as the Eutychians believed that Jesus originally was both God and man, but His divine nature entirely swallowed up His human nature, so Jesus was a true man only in His appearance. People known as Nestorians believed that Jesus is – in effect – the son of God only by adoption. A group known as the Sabellians rejected the concept of Father, Son and Holy Spirit being three persons within the Trinity, insisting that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are just different “aspects” of one divine person, almost as if God wore different masks whenever He appeared to his people. And one of the strongest heresies was known as Arianism, from a group that denied Jesus’ divinity by saying that He was created by the Father – just as everything else was created.
And if you think I’m talking about things and heresies of hundreds or even thousands of years ago, consider this: one of the fastest-growing churches in the world is Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Jehovah’s Witnesses say – just as the Arians said – that Jesus was created. And they totally deny that the Holy Spirit is one person of the Trinity. These heresies aren’t just something of the past – they are very much taught and believed in our world today.
The obvious problem with all of these heresies and many more is that they all take our belief in the Holy Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three distinct persons but one God – and deny this basic truth of the Christian faith. Because they don’t find the word “trinity” used anywhere in the Bible – do a word search of both the Old and New Testaments and you won’t find it, either – people try to use their own human reason to explain what simply cannot be explained in human terms.
That’s one of the reasons why our creeds were developed during the first few centuries of the Church. A creed is simply a statement of what people believe. Over the centuries, three creeds about the Trinity have come down to us as statements that we collectively and individually confess about our faith.
The best known, of course, are the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed. Both clearly and distinctly express our belief that the one true God consists of three distinct persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But the third creed – well, that’s a different matter entirely. We don’t know it so well because we don’t recite it very often. After all, the Athanasian Creed is long – really long. Over time it became the creed that was used once a year on Trinity Sunday and seldom if ever throughout the rest of the Church year. It almost certainly wasn’t written by St. Athanasius, even though it was named for him, and we’re not at all sure when it was written. It’s somewhat of a shame that we’re not familiar with it – because its words do a remarkable job of explaining in our human words what our human minds just can’t comprehend.
I’d like to invite you to turn to page 319 of the “Lutheran Service Book” that has been placed on your seat and join me in reading paragraphs 1 and 2.
(All read paragraphs 1 and 2 aloud)
The first thing you’ll notice is that the Athanasian Creed begins very differently than our other creeds. We begin the Nicene Creed by saying “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty,” and in the Apostles’ Creed we begin by saying “I believe in God, the Father Almighty.” But at the start of the Athanasian Creed, God isn’t even mentioned. Instead, we start out with a warning. “Whoever desires to be saved must, above all, hold the catholic faith. Whoever does not keep it whole and undefiled will without doubt perish eternally.” Wow – that’s strong. There’s no wiggle room here. Believers will be saved and unbelievers won’t. Period.
The next thing you’ll notice is that the Athanasian Creed uses the word “catholic” on more than one occasion. The word catholic as it is used here does not refer to the Roman Catholic Church. When you see or read the word catholic with a lower-case “c” – it represents the idea of a “universal” belief, something that is “true” to all believers. It’s an old word that Lutherans don’t use very often today – if at all – but as it is used in the Athanasian Creed, it is absolutely correct. The faith confessed in the Athanasian Creed is a universal Christian belief that is true to all believers. It was true when the Athanasian Creed was written – and it remains true today.
The heresies that plagued the church – the heresies that led believers away from the teachings of Scripture – often focused on the Holy Trinity, often focused on the three persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit who represent not three gods, but one God. The first commandment makes it perfectly clear that there is only one God. In both Exodus chapter 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 5, God tells the Children of Israel: “You shall have no other gods before me.” In Deuteronomy 6:4, Moses proclaims: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” But in Genesis 1:26, God says: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” God didn’t say “Let me make man in my image, after my likeness.” No – we have all of these plural words. “Let us” … “our image” … “our likeness.” In John 10:30, Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” How can three persons be one God and not three Gods? How can we understand?
Let’s return to the Athanasian Creed and read together paragraphs 3 to through 26.
(All read paragraphs 3 through 26 in unison)
The words of warning that we read in paragraphs 1 and 2 are replaced by simple statements of fact. No speculation, no interpretation – just facts. No attempts to explain how there can be three persons but only one God – just repeated statements that there are three persons but only one God. Our feeble human brains never can and never will be able to understand this. The Trinity can never be explained in human terms. But in the Athanasian Creed as well as the Nicene and the Apostles’ Creeds, we confess the three persons of the Trinity in one God. Remember that the Athanasian Creed came out of a time when some said that the Trinity consisted of three Gods – or that some persons of the Trinity were not God. A lot of those ancient heresies that I mentioned earlier largely agreed that God the Father is God, but they disagreed big-time about Jesus.
Jesus Himself taught us that He is both God and man – but again, that goes against our human reason, it goes against what we can understand. After all, how can a man – any man – actually be God? And what do we understand about His mother Mary? Is there any possible way that a virgin can give birth to a child? Was Mary actually the mother of God? Was Mary’s human son also the Son of God? How can we understand?
The answer is that we can’t understand – we can only believe. We believe, teach and confess that Jesus is God, but He is God in a human body. He was and is fully human like we are. He got hungry, He got thirsty, He got tired, He felt pain, He felt emotions like we feel. But He also was sinless. He also is God.
We summarize this by saying that Jesus had two natures, the human nature and the divine nature. At some times He chose to reveal His divine power, like when He healed people of their diseases, when He fed thousands of people with a few small loaves of bread and two small fish, even when He brought dead people back to life. At other times Jesus did not use His divine powers – especially when He suffered and died on the cross. Why is this so important? Let’s read paragraphs 27 through 38 together.
(All read paragraphs 27 through 38 in unison)
Did you notice what’s happening in these paragraphs? All of those heresies that I mentioned are being refuted. And they are being refuted by nothing less than this summary of God’s entire plan of salvation for His beloved children! We have absolutely no way to make amends for our sins, to make things right with God for what we have done and what we continue to do every minute of our miserable, sinful lives. The wages of sin is death, and that’s exactly what we deserve – eternal death. So God the Father sent His Son to save us from our sins. Jesus Christ – true man and true God, one person of the Holy Trinity of one God but three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We still can’t understand it, but we confess it. We know it to be true, no matter what the Arians long ago nor the Jehovah’s Witnesses today nor any group of heretics may have believed and falsely taught.
We’re nearing the end of the Athanasian Creed, but first we run into a paragraph that seems a little puzzling. Please join me in reading paragraph 39.
(All read paragraph 39 in unison)
At first glance, this almost sounds like we’re going to be judged based upon our good works. And we know that is wrong – absolutely wrong. In Romans 3:20, St. Paul writes that “by works of the Law no human being will be justified” in God’s sight. Paul explains it in even greater detail in Ephesians 2:8-9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
But Paul continues in verse 10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” When Jesus returns in glory on the last day, we have the blessed assurance that our sins have been forgiven. We are, as Paul says, created in Christ Jesus for good works. As baptized children of God, our sins have been washed away, and when Jesus looks at us He sees only good. So paragraph 39 really isn’t contradictory at all. Again, as we have seen throughout our study of the Athanasian Creed, it simply states the facts as the Triune God has revealed them to us.
I find it interesting that the Athanasian Creed concludes with this final statement and then this final warning. Please join me in reading paragraph 40:
(All read paragraph 40 in unison)
My friends in Christ, this is, indeed, the catholic faith – the universal faith, the one and only true faith – that we confess. But “whoever does not believe it faithfully and firmly cannot be saved.” The Athanasian Creed ends just as it began – focusing on the word “believe.” Our human minds can never understand the concept of the Trinity, can never understand the fact that the one true God consists of three distinct persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We can only believe that God the Father created the heavens and the earth and that He sent His Son – God the Son – to redeem us from our sins. We can only believe that we have been brought to faith by the work of God the Holy Spirit. Because we have been brought to faith in the Triune God, we know that we are saved. We can’t understand it – but as we confess in all of our Creeds, we most certainly do believe it.
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