In Christian teaching, faith always has to do with persons. It is not wishful thinking nor is it simply gullibility. Faith indicates confidence in a Person. Some say they have faith in a government. They really mean they have faith in those who administer a government. You don’t have faith in things. You have faith in those who build or operate things.

We often stand up in church and recite the Creed and sometimes say, "That is my faith." The Creed is not our faith – it is an expression of our faith. No phrase or mere combination of words deserves our faith. Our faith is in the God, those words describe, praise or thank. Our faith is always in a Person.

Faith represents an attitude of life. It is not just verbal assent to a proposition. We do not win salvation by speaking affirmatively in a loud voice. If our life belies our words, our statement of faith is meaningless. Justification by faith means that our hope of divine approval is justified by the fact that our lives are definitely facing Christ in the path of Christian progress. We declare our faith in words but as Studdert Kennedy once put it, what we really do is "bet our lives on God."

If we say we have faith in a friend, it is because we believe in him and trust him. If questioned about our faith in that friend, we say we know his family, his training, his reputation, his previous record, what he has done, and what other people think of him. That is what the church has done with our Lord Jesus Christ. The church proclaims her faith in Him because it knows His heavenly Father, and how he was trained, his reputation, his life, death and resurrection and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit that speaks to his character.

This seems pretty clear, but it is really necessary to have a Doctrine and declare it with a Creed? There are two reasons why we cannot just aim our lives toward God and hope for the best.

First, our minds are an important part of us and we use them constantly. Faith is an attitude of life and covers all of the elements of which we are made – will, instinct, feelings and reason. We must not only love God, we cannot avoid thinking about Him. If we are to think intelligently, we must organize our thoughts. Christian doctrine is organized thinking about God.

Second, Christian history shows a tendency to twist the Gospel to suit individual personal ideas and stray from apostolic tradition. Some early Christians said that Christ was divine but not really human. Others declared that He was a fine man but not necessarily divine. Others found even more finely tuned interpretations to suit their particular purposes. In order to protect the integrity of the Gospel, the Church found it necessary to state the facts in exact terms which could not be misconstrued.

For example, one idea proposed was that our Lord, being divine, could not really die and the Crucifixion was not an actual event. To protect the teaching of the Apostles, the Church wrote into the Apostles’ Creed such plain terms that there could be no misunderstanding of the teachings. It says, "He was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell." It clearly states He was crucified. He was dead. He was buried. And He went to the place of departed spirits.

It is not enough to say, "I believe in God." It makes a difference what kind of God you believe in. We do tend to become like that which we worship. Today, we see people who worship an indulgent God who would never reprove them and we watch them discount sin and become self-righteous. We see people who worship a vague spirit of Goodness and we watch them become spiritually shallow, sentimental, and even deficient in personal responsibility. On the other hand, those who worship an exacting Judge gradually turn critical themselves and become censorious and unsympathetic with the frailties of their neighbors. It is not informative when people say they are religious unless we know what kind of religion they have. It is like those claiming to be spiritual without any declaration of their beliefs

Early Christians were bound to defend Christ against misrepresentation and to protect the very character of God. Christian living hangs on the premise that we tend to become like that which we worship. The Apostles’ Creed became a baptismal symbol when converts were being brought into the Church as adults. It was not composed out of someone’s imagination. It was hammered out on the anvil of Christian experience to preserve the fullness of the Christian revelation. There were a number of creeds in the early church. There was the Creed of Antioch, Creed of Jerusalem, the old Roman Creed and others with slight variations but serving the same purpose. The Apostles’ Creed finally emerged with general acceptance of the Church.

Shortly after Constantine ended the persecution of Christians, new interpretations twisted the meaning of the baptismal creeds to the extent that apostolic tradition was no longer visible. Arianism taught that Jesus was a creation of God as opposed to being of one substance with God. Another Church Council resulted in the Nicene Creed to state our beliefs in such a manner as to dispel misunderstanding about the Holy Trinity. Theology grows, changes, and develops as human knowledge increases but it is totally dependent upon the stability of the Creeds.

Since the reformation, a number of "confessions" of faith were launched upon the Christian world. These have resulted in some people protesting against the use of creeds at all. The significant difference is that the creeds are not from a nation or a separated body of Christians. They are products of the universal Church living in unity and speaking in unison. They are designed to promote unity. They only state what is essential. The later confessions are designed to justify division. They expound in detail and often result in restrictive, disputable and highly contentious propositions.

Christianity requires a recognizable framework of Christian teaching if it is to possess any substantial character at all. To believe in Christianity but not in the creeds is like believing in education but not in schools. It is like saying you believe in justice but not in laws. Christianity is a way of life and it needs a road to travel with directions, landmarks, and recognized points of progress.

The historic Creeds contain our beliefs on the following:

Remove any one of these and you have a mutilated Gospel which is not Christianity in the apostolic tradition. The historic Creeds are a protection to the integrity of the Gospel. They are a unifying bond extending throughout the Christian world. They preserve the continuity of the Christian religion. They maintain a standard by which all developments of Christian doctrine may be tested. They are a compass for Christian travelers and an anchor against spiritual drifting. They serve as a constitution for the Church and a check upon changing by-laws and disciplinary regulations. They make for stability of purpose in the Church as a whole, and the recitation of them is a powerful aid in fortifying the faith of every individual Christian.

Public recitation of the Creeds often raises a question concerning conscience. How can a person say, "I believe" when they do not fully understand every item in the Creed. The physician does not wait until he understands everything about the human body before he begins treatment. He holds the unanswered questions in suspension while he attends the current problem. We are no different. We are not isolated persons dealing with God separately. We are parts of a corporate society served very well by the Creeds. As understanding increases, our faith will continue to be held to the apostolic tradition by these Creeds.