With 2025 off to a flyer I have been praying that the Lord would help us to be wise in how we as elders shepherd our church through this next season. It would be hard not to see that there has been a swell of new people over the last 3 months! What a great kindness from the Lord. This, though an immense blessing, creates a series of challenges for all of us as we seek to stay on mission as a witness of God’s grace, love-another as Christ first loved us, and be disciples who make disciples of Jesus.
With new people coming in, one thing that I am often asked is why we sing the creed as part of our corporate worship gathering? Maybe you are wondering the same thing. Here is why!
Holding fast to the Faith
Paul introduces his letter to the Galations with this:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.
Galatians 1:3–8 (ESV)
As we sing the creed, we proclaim what we believe in a particular way. We do so, to hold fast to the gospel we have received through Christ, the Word made flesh, brought to us in the Bible, the written word of God. The Creed, which is based on a historic creed, (the Nicene) is structured to give glory to our triune God, and is distinctly Christ centred. The Nicene Creed and others came about to combat false teaching that had and continues to spring up since the birth of the Church, and so we proclaim what is true so that we can be aware of what is not true. In a world that either denies the existence of the divine, or would say all god’s are valid, ‘We believe in one God’.
Joining with the historic faith.
As we sing a historic creed, we are joining in with the history of our faith. As Jude said,
Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
Jude 3 (ESV)
The moment we live in is but a drop in the ocean of the time God is using to glorify his Son through His church. As we sing we recognise the value of our history, in what God has been doing to build, reform and preserve his people across centuries. In our cultural moment, churches are often wanting to look more like the world around us than the holy body of Christ, and unfortunately, a byproduct of this has come a desire to dissasociate from the historic roots of our faith. Things like creeds then, have been seen as barriers to reaching people with the gospel. This mentality, has proven wrong, as today, people are flocking to find purpose and meaning, and something that has stood the test of time. We believe the history of our faith is a bridge to Christ, not a barrier.
In singing, or reading a creed, the words proclaim that ‘we believe’. This is a shared, faith, a common salvation, it is what we collectively as the body of Christ – both across the globe and across time – believe.
A means of Discipleship
Though many more reasons could be given, this will have to suffice. Creeds were always used as tools for discipleship. What do we believe? Well here, read with me, sing with me.
Many of you have noted to me how you often catch my son singing the creed over my shoulder on a Sunday. That is why we do it every week, becuase it is formative. That isn’t to say it is the means of faith, but it can certainly lay a foundation for understanding the content of our faith. No one leaves church humming the sermon. It is the songs that often stick first. Let me finish with this from Dueteronomy.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
Deuteronomy 6:4–9
Grace to you, Glory to God.