May 12, 2014

Credo

I entrust my life to Jesus, the Christ of God,

and love him as both my Savior and Sender.

I confess him Lord of all, Head of his church,

my eldest Brother and the true firstborn Son

in an ever-widening covenant family of God,

into which I have been so graciously adopted.

Through him I have come to worship one God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.


Through the broad witness of the scriptures,

God is worshipped as Speaker, Word, Breath:

a living communion both sublime and simple.

In Jesus’ birth, Eternity stepped into our time.

By his death, our sins have been sequestered.

Since his rising, our humanity sits in Divinity.

With saints of every era, I sing the gospel song—“Christ is risen. He has risen indeed!”


I believe that the atonement of Jesus with us is the clue by which all other matters, divine and human, are to be interpreted. I can say no more about “God” than what we have seen and heard in the incarnation of Jesus: his birth, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and assured reappearance. Yet I give thanks that no more need be known for salvation or service. I believe that the same triune God who saves us from sin also sends us into ministry, and as such, the church dare not separate blessing from burden, promise from perspiration. I believe that the Holy Spirit is always and everywhere provoking the church, in all its forms, toward a continuing conversion of its common life: deeper shared discipleship and wider apostolic witness. I trust that the New Testament was providentially sanctified for that sacred purpose, and that with the Old Testament, the canon is the unique, inspired, and authoritative witness to Jesus as the one true Word of God. I gratefully receive baptism once and the communion meal again and again as signs and seals of our belonging and our vocation. I understand ordination to be a holy demotion within the universal Christian ministry, given for the equipping of Jesus’ people for his purposes in the world. I welcome the great themes of the Reformed tradition – transcendence, covenant, election, providence, stewardship, etc. – as reliable wisdom for interpreting scripture, providing for worship, equipping the saints, and living Christian hope. I believe the gathered church is not an end unto itself, but exists to serve the Servant of all and to be a witness to and worker for the reign of God in this life and in the life of the world to come. I am confident that the Holy Spirit uses the authority of scripture’s witness, the best of our theological heritage, and the trials of the global church to call disciples of Jesus in our own time and place to a more faithful witness in the personal, ecclesiastical, familial, vocational, political, cultural, and social relationships of life. At its best, the visible church is a provisional demonstration of what the living God intends for the whole world. At its worst, the church is a reminder to the world that all is not yet as God will have it be. Even so, the triune God remains faithful: creating, redeeming, sustaining. How do I know? Jesus is alive—present to the Father, present in the Holy Spirit. That is the strange and wonderful news I have heard, and it has made all the difference in my broken, wayward life.


In the weakness of my fallen old flesh, I am but a sinner and an orphan.

Yet in the strength of Jesus’ risen new life, we are saints, children of God.


This is my story. 

This is our song.