I agree with what the Apostles Creed states but so does Satan. I think the Gospel message should have been put in? It’s through putting your faith and trust Jesus Christ that one is saved or something like that. Thoughts?
Discussion
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Martin Vandenhoven
— PAUL’S GOSPEL —
Confess with your mouth Master Jesus, because with the mouth confession is made to salvation. We do this because we believe that Jesus died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and He was buried, and He rose again from the dead on the third day, according to the Scriptures and He was seen afterward by a whole list of witnesses. Then, when we believe God raised Him from the dead, our belief in the Resurrection of Christ leads to righteousness.
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Doing Romans 10:9a & Romans 10:10b, due to believing 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, results in Romans 10:9b & Romans 10:10a.
— THE BIG PICTURE —
Because we have been sold by Adam to Satan to be under his dominion of sinfulness, it is literally impossible for us to keep the Law in the way that God requires anybody (including the angels) to keep His Law. The Law is good, but we are not good.
With ancient Israel, God called them to try to obey it the best they can, offering blood sacrifices all the time to cover their sin when they couldn’t keep it. Even though human beings must not give in to our sinfulness, it’s literally impossible for us not to give in to it. When Israel did obey God, they were blessed. When Israel did not obey God, they were cursed. God gave the Law to Israel, even though He knew they could not keep it, for the purpose of magnifying the reality that we are sold under sin. Our corruption from sin has the effect of dimming our understanding that sin is bad for us and against God. Through Israel, He has shown the entire world just how bad sin is.
Jesus Christ was sent by God at just the right time in history to become an eternal blood covering, so that the institutions of the Levitical Priesthood would stop, and He became the High Priest of a Priesthood that existed before the institution of the Levitical Priesthood – the Melchizedekian Priesthood. He offered in Heaven – one time – His blood from His one-time death.
The Law still exists and is still good. It is God’s Law. We are bound by it, but not in the form of ordinances (The Ten Commandments), because we cannot follow it that way. When we accept Messiah’s action and call on His name for our salvation, we are born from above. God has written His Law on our hearts now, instead of on tablets of stone. He has replaced our stony hearts with fleshy hearts (for our fleshy bodies that He has goodly given us). We can keep away from sin – follow God’s Law – even better under the New Contract than they could under the Old Contract between God and man. We can please God, instead of being a wearisome burden to Him. With the giving of the gift of The Holy Spirit to individual Christians, our consciences can attain and maintain great sensitivity, and we have power to perform what we want to perform – that is, we have the power to sometimes dominate our sinful bodies in order to serve God with our minds. Our ancient ancestors – both Jew and Gentile – could not do that. They had to strictly maintain themselves by externally memorizing and rigorously applying God’s Law with willpower.
God is with us now. Jesus Christ is Immanuel, God with us and man (ish) inside God (YHWH). Jesus (YHSHWH) is the new Adam, God’s Word made flesh and the Head of God’s entire creation. We simply look to Him, see His love, find that His yoke is easy and His burden is light, and, since the burden of the *written*, external Law is gone, we can and actually do follow Him, because now we can do so by our faith in Him due to what He has done for us in making Himself the sacrifice. The Gentiles have been able to attain to godliness, due to the preparation work that God did in Israel, and Israel is made complete by God’s inclusion of the Gentiles, which provokes Israel to jealousy so she will seek Him out. To we who are born again by the truth of Christ and His work, according to the gospel that Paul preached to the Gentiles, all things have been made new! It is good news!!!
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Hi Jeremy, what does this have to do with the Apostles Creed?
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The Gospel is the Person and work of Jesus Christ — indicative. That’s in the Apostle’s Creed, I believe. Putting our faith in Christ is a response to the Gospel.
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What Jesus did is good news (“gospel”). Here’s the bare-bones Scripture of Paul’s Gospel:
Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand, by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures, and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve. After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.
^–That’s what we *believe*, and this is what we *do to be saved* and *believe to get righteousness* –V
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved, because with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
You could clean it up a some by rearrangement into more streamlined and modern English and by leaving out detail, but this is it. If you want “THE GOSPEL” put into a creed, this is what the Bible says it is. The Apostle’s Creed talks about good things that we should know but they don’t all have to be known in order to receive salvation.
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I like the very last part ‘a creed that the apostles held to’!
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For comparison, here’s a copy of The Apostle’s Creed. It’s already got some length to it. You would have to add two things to have the whole of Paul’s Gospel in there: 1) belief that Jesus was seen after the resurrection by many reliable witnesses and 2) verbal confess of Master Jesus.
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
and born of the virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to hell.
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended to heaven
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
From there he will come 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. -
Maybe also replace the word ‘catholic’ with universal!
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Curious why you use the term ‘Master Jesus’?
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One crechanging say all the necessary things. The need to say something keeps on changing. WELS statement booklet (This We Believe) runs for many pages and more keeps needing to be added. Because confusion in the world keeps on growing.
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Have you ever done a study comparing the Apostle’s creed with the Nicene creed?
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Creeds are for the saved. Imo no reason to put the gospel in. Although that said it would have been nice seeing as sometimes you just need to hear it again. Also, I saw you said replace the word “Catholic” with “universal”. Although that is alright I don’t see any reason to change it. If we completely avoid the word then we run the risk of someone coming across an older copy and getting confused as to why it has Catholic. I know of some who rejected all early church history because that word was used and they didn’t understand that it didn’t mean the Roman Catholic church had perverted their church documents.
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Honestly, the Apostles Creed, nor any other writing by church children ( I call the patristic writers church children because they were not the church fathers….they were children of the fathers, who were the Apostles and prophets of the New Testament…see 1 John anything…he calls his hearers little children) But I digress……their writings were not inspired by the Holy Spirit….and by that I mean God breathed in the same way the Old and New Testament were. So, although nice to read, they are not the final word on Truth. Jesus said and the Apostles followed, believe on the name of the Lord and you will be saved. Those who believe on the Son have life….those who do not, the wrath of God remains on them.
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