What's the use of faith? (2)

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 Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 1 Corinthians 15:3-5

Last time I stressed the fact that faith – if it is truly Christian faith – has solid content. It is far more than just cheerfully hoping for the best, “looking on the bright side of life”.

This is clear from what we might call Paul’s mini-creed in 1Corinthians 15, quoted above. But I pointed out that in the early centuries of the church several other longer, fuller creeds were composed, a prominent one being the “Apostles’ Creed”:

We believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived from the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, was dead and was buried. He 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. He will come again to judge the living and the dead. We 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.

Truly Christian faith has two aspects: first, believing that certain things are true; and second, believing in a personal God who has been made known to us in Jesus Christ. In essence, it is both believing and trusting. And this is why creeds – declarations of faith – while certainly they can become repetitive and mechanical, have their place.

Two reasons for this are worth highlighting…

First, A clear statement of faith has the effect of binding us together as a community of believers. I’ve changed the wording above from “I” to “We”, because I’m thinking of its use in a corporate act of worship, which for most of us probably means Sunday morning in church.

Put it another way… Christian faith is, of course, a deeply personal thing: it’s about my relationship with Almighty God. But it is never a purely private thing. When we come to faith in Jesus we are reborn into a whole new family. Why else did he found the church in the first place? So that we might have something to grumble about and say we don’t need?

What is sometimes described as “privatised religion” has become very common. It can be summed up in the shallow remark “I’m a spiritual person, but I don’t believe in organised religion”. Anyone who says that is claiming to know better than Jesus, for didn’t he speak explicitly about “building his church” (Matthew 16:18), and isn’t that bound to entail an element of “organisation”?

Another symptom of privatised religion is the songs we sing. Have you noticed how many new songs are all about me? What has happened to those great corporate songs which, as a gathering of God’s people, we offer together to him? They may be either ancient (“Oh God, our help in ages past”) or modern (“Lord, for the years your love has kept and guided,/ Urged and inspired us…”), but what matters is that they reflect our joint faith in Christ.

Any service that lacks such “we” songs is seriously lop-sided. They do what a shared creed is designed to do: they enable us to say, putting it crudely, “We’re in this together – you are my brother, my sister! And our God is a great God”.

A second reason that creeds have a place… They were composed – the ancient ones anyway – before the church was infested by the wretched plague of labels.

The universal church has developed an extraordinary ability to splinter into groupings. These may then co-exist for centuries, sometimes with an uneasy toleration, other times with out-and-out hatred. How must the Jesus who prayed the prayer of John 17 weep!

Actually, I need to be careful what I say here: if you look back to 1 Corinthians 3 it’s clear that the seeds of this poisonous development were planted early; the church in Corinth seems to have had a Paul-faction, a Peter-faction and an Apollos-faction. But at least such factions are not reflected in the early creeds.

In fact, going back to the Apostles’ Creed, it’s interesting to notice that it’s quite non-specific on certain matters of doctrine. Certainly, it is structured on trinitarian lines – God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit – but there is no doctrine of the Trinity. The crucifixion of Jesus is obviously key, but there is no “theology of the atonement”, a subject over which Christians still disagree today. (Nor is there, incidentally, in the mini-creed in 1 Corinthians 15: Paul - the man who wrote Romans 3, all about justification by faith! - is content to say that “Christ died for our sins” and leave it at that.)

The tragedy of splinter-groups is that they (or should I say we?) are all convinced that we are right; which of course implies that any group that disagrees with us is therefore wrong; which in turn breeds arrogance and self-righteousness. Oh Lord, forgive us!

So, whether we’re Baptist or Methodist, Anglican or Roman Catholic, Pentecostal or Reformed, Brethren or Orthodox, Calvinist or Lutheran, Charismatic or Salvation Army, Brethren or Seventh Day Adventist or… well, just plain right, of course, Lord, teach us humility!

Here’s a story… I once greeted a new couple at the door of the church after the morning service. They told me that they had just moved into the area and were looking for a church. Then they added, “Actually, we are Swedenborgians”. It’s not often that I’m stumped for words, but I have to admit that I was that day. When I got home I did a bit of rummaging around in various text-books…

That couple didn’t eventually settle with us. I wonder if they went off and founded the first ever Swedenborgian congregation in Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, UK. I do hope not! But if they did, wouldn’t they only be doing what the rest of us have done in our time?

Father, please help me to take scripture with great seriousness, and seek to put it into practice in my life. But help me also to be humble and teachable, recognising that on some matters I could be wrong. Amen.