I want to start with a story that goes back more than sixty years. When I was a young boy, my mother — a faithful Methodist woman — loaded me and my brothers up every single week and took us to a small chapel nearby in Chesapeake, VA. She didn’t make it optional. Sunday morning came, you got dressed, and you went. And I am grateful for that to this day. There was a rhythm to that little chapel that I can still feel. The hymns. The wooden pews. The smell of that old building. And somewhere in the middle of every service, the congregation would stand together and recite the Apostles’ Creed. Every Sunday. Without fail. Now I have to be honest with you — at the time, I had no idea what most of it meant. I was saying words I didn’t fully understand, following along with a congregation of adults who seemed to know exactly what they were doing. I said the words because that’s what you did. But here’s what I’ve come to understand more than sixty years later: those words were working on me even when I didn’t know it. They were laying down a foundation before I even understood what a foundation was. They were shaping something in me — the very shape of Christian belief — that would hold pieces of faith together until the day I finally accepted Jesus as my Savior. I didn’t understand them then. But I needed them then. And I think some of you might be in a similar place today. You’ve heard the Apostles’ Creed. Maybe you’ve even said it somewhere along the way. But do you know what you’re saying? Do you know what each line means and why it matters? That’s what we’re going to do this morning. We’re going to walk through this ancient confession — line by line — so that when you say it, you know exactly what you are declaring.
From Confession to Creed
Recently we established something foundational: creeds are biblical. God’s people have always used compact, memorable summaries of truth to anchor their faith. From the Shema in Deuteronomy to Paul’s early confessions in 1 Corinthians 15 and Philippians 2, the practice of summarizing belief is woven into Scripture itself. Today we take one step forward. We’ve come to the first great post-biblical creedal statement of the Christian church: the Apostles’ Creed. Now, the Apostles’ Creed was not written by the apostles themselves — though it grew directly out of their teaching. What is historically true is that this Creed developed from the baptismal confessions of the early church. In the early centuries, before a new believer was baptized, they were asked three questions: Do you believe in God the Father? Do you believe in Jesus Christ, His Son? Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? These questions formed what scholars call the Old Roman Symbol — an early form of the Apostles’ Creed used in Rome as far back as 200 AD. Over the following centuries the church refined and expanded that confession into the form we have today. And all of it flows from a simple, powerful biblical truth. Look at Romans 10:9-10. Paul writes: “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation.” (CSB) Two things working together — believing in the heart and confessing with the mouth. The Apostles’ Creed is exactly that. It is the church saying together, out loud, what we hold to be true in here. It is conviction made into words. Let’s walk through it together.
I Believe in God the Father Almighty
The Creed begins with three words that are more loaded than they look: “I believe in.” Not “we believe” — though we say it together. “I believe.” This is a personal declaration. Faith is not inherited from your family or absorbed by sitting in a pew long enough. It is a conviction you own. And that is where the Creed puts you from the very first word — it demands that you show up. And what do we believe? “In God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.” “God the Father” — this is not just a theological category. It is a relational claim. We are not confessing a force, or a cosmic principle, or a distant divine architect who built the universe and walked away. We are confessing a Father. Personal. Present. The God who can be known and who wants to be known. “Almighty” — all-powerful, sovereign over everything. Nothing exists outside His authority. “Creator of heaven and earth” — He made it all. Everything you can see, and everything you cannot. Now here is the weight of this simple opening line. In the first two centuries of the church, early Christians were living in a world absolutely drowning in gods. Rome had gods for every city, every trade guild, every military campaign. The Emperor himself was considered divine, and loyalty to those gods was loyalty to the Empire. When a Christian stood up and said, “I believe in God the Father Almighty” — they were not just making a theological statement. They were making a political one. They were drawing a line. In 155 AD, Polycarp — the elderly bishop of Smyrna — was dragged before Roman authorities and given a simple choice: say “Caesar is Lord,” burn a little incense to the emperor, and walk free — or die. Polycarp looked at them and said, “Eighty-six years I have served Christ, and He has never done me wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?” He was burned at the stake. These first words of the Creed cost people everything. They are not casual words. They are conviction words.
I Believe in Jesus Christ, His Only Son
The longest section of the Creed is devoted to Jesus — and rightly so. Listen to how much ground it covers. “And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. The third day He arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from there He will come to judge the living and the dead.”
Every single phrase in this section was written with a specific purpose — to protect the truth about Jesus against people who were actively trying to distort it. “His only Son, our Lord” — Jesus is not a prophet. Not simply a good teacher. Not one divine figure among many. He is the unique, one-of-a-kind Son of God. And He is our Lord. That word Lord matters — it’s the same word Paul uses in Romans 10:9 when he says confess that Jesus is Lord. This is the center of Christian confession.
“Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary” — this line affirms two things at once: His divine origin and His fully human birth. In the early church, a movement called Docetism — from the Greek word meaning “to seem” — taught that Jesus only appeared to be human. He was really a spirit in the shape of a man. A teacher named Marcion went even further, cutting the humanity of Jesus out of the gospel entirely. The Creed pushes back hard on all of it: He was born. Of a real woman. In real flesh. He was fully human.
“Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.” Notice the historical specificity here. Pontius Pilate — a real Roman governor, governing at a real and documented point in history. This is not mythology. The suffering and death of Jesus happened in the real world, on a real date, under a real government official whose existence is confirmed by Roman records.
“He descended to the dead.” He truly died. He entered the realm of death fully. This line matters because the resurrection that follows is a real resurrection from real death — not a resuscitation, not a vision, not a spiritual metaphor.
“The third day He arose again from the dead.” This is the hinge of everything. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15 that if Christ has not been raised, our faith is worthless and we are still in our sins. The resurrection is not one truth among many. It is the truth that holds all the others together.
“He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.” He is not just risen — He is reigning. The right hand of the Father is the position of highest honor and supreme authority. He is not absent. He is ruling.
“From there He will come to judge the living and the dead.” History is not drifting without purpose. It is moving toward a conclusion. And Jesus is at the center of it. Every phrase in this section is weight-bearing. Take any one away, and the structure of the gospel begins to collapse.
I Believe in the Holy Spirit
“I believe in the Holy Spirit.” Five words. But they carry enormous theological weight. The church knew that Christians needed to affirm the full Trinity together — Father, Son, and Spirit — and so the Creed makes space for the third person, even if it does so with brevity. The Holy Spirit is not an “it.” He is not a feeling, or a force, or simply God’s power operating at a safe distance. He is a person — the third person of the Trinity — who lives in every believer, convicts the world of sin, guides the church into truth, and empowers Christians to be witnesses. The early church understood this, but false teachers kept trying to downgrade Him. Some treated the Spirit as less than fully God — a kind of divine assistant, not a full member of the Trinity. The church would not allow it. At the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD, the bishops expanded the language of the Nicene Creed specifically to address this, confessing the Spirit as “the Lord, the giver of life, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified.” One God. Three persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Creed plants a flag for all three — and what we confess about the Spirit is no small thing. He is not an afterthought. He is God at work in you right now.
The Holy Catholic Church
Now here is the line that trips people up — especially in a Baptist congregation. And I want to address it directly and honestly.
“I believe in the holy catholic church.” Every time I said that word as a young boy in my mother’s Methodist chapel, I had no idea what it meant. And I know that when some of you see that word right now, your first instinct might be to think of Rome. The Pope. Vatican City. That’s not what this line means. The word “catholic” here — with a lowercase c — simply means universal. It comes from the Greek word katholikos, meaning “according to the whole.” The holy catholic church is the whole church — believers of every nation, every language, every century — united by one confession of Jesus Christ as Lord. That is actually a deeply Baptist idea. We believe in one universal body of Christ that transcends denominations and centuries. Every person who has ever placed their faith in Jesus belongs to this church — from the martyrs of the first century to the congregation sitting in this room right now.
Some churches change the word to “universal” when they recite the Creed — and that is perfectly fine. Others simply say “catholic” and understand what they mean. Either way, the declaration is the same: there is one church, and Jesus is its head.
The Creed continues: “the communion of saints.” This is the fellowship of all believers — living and gone. When we gather on Sunday morning, we are not alone. We are joining a chorus that stretches back two thousand years — people who said the same things, faced the same doubts, and held to the same Lord.
Forgiveness, Resurrection, and Life Everlasting
The Creed closes with three magnificent truths that form the complete picture of what the gospel gives us. “The forgiveness of sins.” This is the gospel in three words. Not the forgiveness of some sins — the ones we consider manageable. Not forgiveness for good people who mostly get it right. The forgiveness of sins — full, complete, purchased by the blood of Christ and offered freely to everyone who confesses and believes. Go back to Romans 10:9-10. When we confess with our mouths and believe in our hearts, we are saved. And what that salvation means — at its most personal and most immediate level — is that our sins are forgiven. All of them. Every one. That is what we are declaring when we say this line.
“The resurrection of the body.” This one caught many in the ancient Greek world completely off guard. Greek philosophy taught that the body was a prison for the soul — something to be escaped when you died, not something to be redeemed. The church said: no. God made the body good. Jesus rose bodily from the grave. And one day, every believer will be raised bodily as well. We are not saved out of our bodies. We are saved in them and with them. The resurrection of the body is the Christian hope — not floating in the clouds forever, but a new creation, body and soul, made whole.
“And the life everlasting.” This is where it all lands. The whole confession — from “I believe in God the Father Almighty” all the way to this final phrase — is pointing toward a life that does not end. What we have in Christ is not simply a better way to live right now. It is eternal life. This age will end. But the life that is in Jesus will not. That is what we are saying when we reach the end of the Creed. We are saying: we know where history is going. We know what holds when everything else falls apart. And it is going somewhere glorious.
Words Worth Knowing
So here we are — every line walked through, every phrase examined. I want to close by coming back to where we started. I was a young boy who said these words without understanding them. And looking back across more than sixty years, I can tell you: I wish someone had sat me down and explained what every line meant. Because the day those words finally connected to real faith — the day I understood what I was actually saying and meant it with my whole heart — those old words became powerful in a completely new way. That’s what I want for you. Not just words you can recite. Words you own. Words you understand. Words you believe.
Here is the challenge I want to leave with you: memorize the Apostles’ Creed. Write it out this week. Say it every morning. Not because the words are magic, but because knowing what you believe — being able to say it clearly — matters. Paul told us in Romans 10 that confessing with our mouths and believing in our hearts work together. The Apostles’ Creed gives you language for that confession. It gives you a testimony. When someone asks you what you believe — and they will ask — you will have something solid and clear to say.
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Craig Valley Baptist Church, next to Bibo’s at 171 Salem Ave in New Castle, welcomes you to visit and share in the love of God we have experienced. We meet Sundays at 11AM, with an upbeat service of music, sharing and preaching. You don’t need to dress up, and you won’t be asked to speak, so just come and hang out and meet new and old friends! Questions? Call 540-864-5667 or email pastor@cv-bc.com.
– Pastor Scott Gabrielson
