Why Confess the Creeds?

6 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, 7 rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. Colossians 2:6-7

Last week we considered Paul’s admonition to us in this text that we are to walk in Christ in the same way in which we received Him. Just as we received Him by faith – rejecting all attempts at self-deliverance or self-justification – so we are to walk by faith, looking to Him and to His promises to fulfill in us that which is good and pleasing in His sight.

Today Paul admonishes us to be rooted and built up in Christ and established in the faith which we have been taught. Paul calls us to be faithful to the faith as it was handed down in the churches, to (in his words to Titus) hold firmly to the traditions which we have been taught. Like Jude, Paul wants us to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. To rejoice in the goodness of God, who has delivered us from our sin and rebellion and restored us to a right relationship with Him through His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Word of God, who lives and reigns together with the Father and the Spirit for all eternity.

This injunction which Paul gives the Colossians is one of the reasons that we, each Lord’s Day, recite the Nicene Creed together. As this summary of Scriptural teaching rests in our bones and becomes part of us through corporate confession, we are being rooted and built up in Him. For each Lord’s Day we grow in our knowledge of Him – where did He come from? He was eternally begotten of the Father before all worlds. Who is He? God of God, light of light, very God of very God. Is he a creature? Begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father. What has he done? Through whom all things were made, who for us men and our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made man; and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried, the third day He rose again from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

This, brothers and sisters, is the Christ we worship. The very one who is worthy of all glory, laud, and honor. The very one who created all things and to whom it is right and fitting to give glory and dominion. And it is in this One that Paul tells us to be rooted and grounded and in whom we are to grow.

And so, coming into His presence, let us kneel and confess that we have failed to appreciate fully His glory and to honor His name accordingly.