What does it mean to be a Christian, a member of the Church? What exactly is Christianity? These are great questions, and it’s interesting that we hear a variety of answers. It’s interesting because, for almost 2000 years, and almost everywhere the Church has existed, we’ve shared a common confession, the Apostles’ Creed, the simple summary of the essential and profound teachings of the Scriptures. You can memorize it and confess it with the Church on a weekly basis. It is, in so many ways, the statement that distills Christianity for us. And it starts with the words, the declaration, the commitment: “I believe.”
“I believe” (credo in Latin) is what makes the Creed a confession. We are personally and publicly committed to a truth, a reality that is revealed to us in the Scriptures, a disclosure made by God, a Word spoken by God. That truth is God himself, the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Creed has a Trinitarian structure, the first Article confessing God the Father, the second Article God the Son, the third Article God the Holy Spirit (and our spiritual inheritance guaranteed with him).
So, as to the question, “What is Christianity?” the Creed answers with a statement of belief in a revealed, historical, divine, relational reality. Christianity is not primarily about what I do, or even who I am; it is a matter of belief. Nor is Christianity an empty “belief” untethered from an object; it is a matter of belief in… The object of our faith, the God we trust, is the vital part of this Creed. It’s like walking out on to the ice; how tentatively you crawl or how boldly you stride makes no difference, but the strength of the ice. Our belief is merely our response to the dependable God we proclaim, our placing of our trust in him, our declaration that he is trustworthy.
Our unbelief, our distrust of God, is at the heart of what is wrong with our humanity. Jesus Christ alone is the True Believer, the Faithful Witness, the one whose trust in God is itself the restoration of our humanity. His faith in God makes our faith possible. Our salvation is worked out in us as we believe the Gospel.
Christianity, then, is a life of personal faith in the Triune God who has made himself known for relationship through Jesus Christ. Christianity is the giving up of living in-and-of-and-for ourselves, and living outside ourselves in Christ. Christianity is living in biblical history, living in a new personal story given to us in the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a free gift of God’s grace. Christianity is living in a new humanity that is intimately and irreversibly united to the divine life of the Trinity as we live vicariously in the One who unites humanity and divinity in his own Person, Jesus Christ, by faith.
Does this make sense to you? Does it resonate with your understanding of Christianity? Does it describe your own personal participation in Christianity, your own confession, your own allegiance? How important is this confession to you? What are some ways it changes your life? How have you heard others define Christianity differently, and how might you engage with them using the Creed?
