↓ Our Savior Lutheran Church, Grants Pass, OR
↓ Faith Lutheran Church, Medford OR
TRINITY SUNDAY- ATHANASIAN CREED – OUR TRIUNE GOD
This Sunday is celebrated in the Christian Church Year as TRINITY Sunday. The Festival of the Holy Trinity marks the end of the Church Year’s first half. The festivals of the first half commemorate past historical events. This festival differs radically in that it is an expression of a Great Doctrine. It comprehends all the teachings in the historical events and is an expression of the Church’s adoring worship of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the first half of the Church Year, we considered God’s great acts for the Salvation of the world. Today we bring this Half of the Year to a close by observing the (last) festival of the Church Year, the Festival of the Holy Trinity. We observe it in commemoration and confession of the God who has done all the great things that are preached in our churches throughout the year. We did that today by confessing the Athanasian Creed. The object of our observance is to confess that this God is God alone, that we know Him as He has revealed Himself, to give expression to our faith in the one God, and to praise and worship Him as the God who alone is worthy to receive praise and worship.
WHO IS GOD? The natural knowledge of God tells us only that there is a god, something that virtually everyone acknowledges, even if it is only a “prime cause” or “nature.” We only know the living God, the God who is really there, because he has chosen to reveal Himself through the inspired Word given to Adam and Eve and to their descendants, and then written by the Prophets in the Old Testament and by the Apostles and Evangelists in the New Testament.
JEHOVAH, I AM Because of the deceit of the devil and of the sinful nature of man, God is continually misrepresented and the faith of people is turned away from the True God. In the Old Testament, God identified Himself as the One who had revealed Himself to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and as YAHWEH, (or JEHOVAH, the Great), “I AM.” This is the unique Name He revealed as His own. Interchangeably with this He revealed Himself also in the Spirit of God, and in the Angel of the Lord. For this reason, the first-century Jewish people who accepted Christ as their Messiah had no difficulty understanding God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
WHY HAVE CREEDS? Because of the centrality of Christ as God the Son in God’s work to save us, early Christians confessed that Jesus is at the same time true man, as well as True God with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and yet (there are) not Three Gods, but One. Jesus Identified himself also with YAWEH/JEHOVAH, declaring, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” At various times false teachers arose who denied different aspects of the reality of God, especially the Divinity of Christ. In response, statements of belief called Creeds were written to clearly state what God revealed about Himself in the Bible.
NOT A FIGMENT, BUT REAL While we grow in our understanding of the God in Whom we believe, the important thing is that our faith is in the God Who is really there. For that reason to deny what God has said about Himself is to put our faith in something other than the God Who is there (and putting it in) a figment of our imagination.
LONGEST (OF 3) CREEDS The Athanasian Creed is the most extensive of the three ecumenical or catholic (meaning “universal,” accepted by all Christian churches) creeds. Probably being written after the year 450 (and after many heresies had been refuted) this Creed contrasts such false teaching with the truth. This Creed accentuates the fact that our faith rests in the God Who really did create us, redeem us, and call us to faith through the Gospel and that only such faith is saving faith. It clearly teaches that faith in any other god leads to damnation.
TRINITY SUNDAY The Athanasian Creed is traditionally confessed in the Divine Service on Trinity Sunday, because of its exhaustive expression of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity
ECUMENICAL CREEDS The Athanasian Creed is one of the three “ecumenical” creeds, meaning all Christians should be able to confess these Creeds together. The first Lutherans included the Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, and Athanasian Creed in the Book of Concord as a sign that, together with all Christians, Lutherans say these Creeds as our own Confession of faith. At the very least, we confess the Athanasian Creed together in church on Trinity Sunday.
UNIQUE CREED The Athanasian Creed “is different from the other two creeds in that it is not as much an ‘I believe’ statement of faith as it is a Hymnic description of the faith, ‘we worship one God …’ ” In this Creed, we say that “whoever does not faithfully and firmly believe this [faith] cannot be saved.”
“DONE GOOD” Paragraphs 38-39 (out of 40) sometimes trouble Lutherans: “At Whose coming all will rise again with their bodies and will give an account of their own works. And they that have done good will enter into life everlasting; and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.”
But these words come from Jesus’ own Words: John 5:28-29: “Do not marvel at this: for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice 29 and come forth – those who have done good, to the Resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the Resurrection of condemnation.”
PUT TOGETHER Putting the two together: Jesus said, “Those who have done good will come forth to the Resurrection of life.” The Creed says, “They that have done good will enter into life everlasting.” Jesus said, “Those who have done evil will come forth to the resurrection of condemnation.” The Creed says, “They that have done evil will enter into everlasting fire.”
TAKE IT TO HIM If we have questions about this statement that “those who have done good” enter into everlasting life in Heaven, and “those who have done evil” go to “everlasting fire” in hell, we bring our questions to Him (i.e. Jesus).
JESUS’ OWN WORDS Jesus answers us with His own Words in John 3. Jesus says it very clearly in the Gospel for (today)
Trinity Sunday:
John 3:15: “Whoever believes in [the only-begotten Son] shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
John 3:18: “He who believes in [the Son] is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
CONCLUSION In the Athanasian Creed, “they that have done good will enter into life everlasting” are those who repent of their sins and believe in Jesus, and that “good” is by faith given them to believe, and “they that have done evil will enter into everlasting fire” are the unbelievers and the unrepentant.
To the Holy, Undivided Trinity, the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit be all glory, honor, and dominion; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.