Sarah M Willis

“On the Third Day He Rose Again”

Sarah Willis — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 15:37:37 GMT

Nicolas Bertin, The Resurrection of Christ, c. 17th- 18th century.

By the time Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, he had carried the message of Christ’s death and resurrection across the Roman world on foot, by ship, through cities where he was welcomed and others where he faced death. He has felt rods come down on his back; sat in prison cells with his feet locked in stocks; been dragged before authorities; run out of towns; surrounded by hostile crowds; and stoned so badly that his assailants left him for dead outside the city walls. He spent nights out in the cold, crossed dangerous roads, survived shipwreck, and went hungry, yet he continued to preach. And, after enduring all of this, he preached the exact same thing: Jesus Christ was crucified, buried, and resurrected.

He sacrificed his old life for scars, suspicion, exhaustion, imprisonment, and the constant threat that the next town he entered could kill him. He endured these hardships not because Christianity gave him a comfortable way of viewing the world, but because he believed something significant had occurred in history and that this event changed everything.

So, what he says in 1 Corinthians 15 is even more remarkable. He tells you how to destroy everything. He states,

“And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:14-19).

Paul places the entire Christian faith on a single historical event and literally provides you with the means to destroy it. This is an enormous risk for someone who has already endured so much for the message. Nobody disputes that the teachings of the Buddha remain valid, regardless of whether he ever sat under a specific tree. The teaching itself is the key element.

In contrast, Christianity established itself differently. From its very inception, it asserted that an event occurred to a specific individual at a specific time in a specific place. Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem, then his disciples claimed that his tomb was empty and that they saw him alive again.

This claim is the primary supporting beam of the creed. Everything before this line serves as preparation, and everything after it relies on this line. Remove the resurrection and the entire structure crumbles. The Church has recognized this fact since the very first sermon preached.

“On the Third Day”

Two things are packed into this phrase, and the first one is a matter of counting. Jesus died on Friday afternoon, and on Sunday morning the tomb was discovered to be empty.

First-century Jewish practices considered any portion of a day to be a whole day, therefore, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday constitute three days. This explains why the gospel writers could write “three days and three nights” and “on the third day” to refer to the same time period without contradicting one another.

The second thing is much more compelling. According to Paul, Christ rose from the dead on the third day, according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:4). This indicates that the early church viewed the timing of Christ’s resurrection as a pattern with roots. Hosea wrote that God would revive His people after two days and raise them up on the third (Hosea 6:2). Jonah remained in the belly of the fish for three days, and Jesus referred to this as the sign He would provide (Jonah 1:17; Matthew 12:40). Abraham traveled toward the mountain with his son and the wood for three days, believing that God could bring the dead back to life (Genesis 22:4; Hebrews 11:19). Prior to God descending upon Mount Sinai, Israel waited at the base of the mountain for three days (Exodus 19:11). Peter establishes his Pentecost sermon based upon David’s statement regarding God’s refusal to permit His Holy One to experience decomposition (Acts 2:27, quoting Psalm 16:10).

Additionally, I find an extraordinary detail in the calendar. According to the Law, on the day immediately following the Sabbath after Passover, a priest was required to present to the LORD the first sheaf of the barley harvest (Firstfruits)(Leviticus 23:10–11).

Firstfruits. Presenting the first of the crop to God showed trust that He would continue to bless the rest of the field. This offering occurred on a Sunday. Paul refers to the resurrected Christ as the firstfruits of those who have passed away (1 Corinthians 15:20), and the timing aligns perfectly because it was designed to. A minor comment on wording. The phrase “He rose again” often confuses readers. In older forms of English, the word “again” means “back” – He rose back up. Nobody is suggesting a repetition.

“He Rose”

The New Testament presents the same event (the resurrection) in three different ways, and each is very intentional.

The first way is that Jesus is raised by the Father. “God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death” (Acts 2:24). The Father’s glory raised Jesus (Romans 6:4). The second way is that Jesus rises under his own power: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19), and, more explicitly, “No one takes it [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:18). There is a third element in this as well — the Holy Spirit. “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” (Romans 8:11).

All three members of the Trinity are involved in the empty tomb, which the earliest Christians noted and never saw as problematic.

Note that the body was a body. It wasn’t a metaphor or a ghost. It was a BODY. This is the area of the church’s defense of the resurrection that it was a major concern, and the Gospel writers seem to almost be going out of their way to make this clear. Luke has Jesus tell the disciples to touch him because spirits do not have flesh and bones, then asks for food, and consumes a piece of grilled fish in front of them (Luke 24:39–43). John has Thomas invited to place his hand in Jesus’ wounds (John 20:27). The scars endured through the resurrection, which to me has always been one of the tenderest aspects of Scripture. The pain He bore is still seen, still a marker of what it cost to reconcile us to God.

However, at the same time something new had occurred with this resurrected body. Jesus appears in a locked room (John 20:19). Friends who were very familiar with Jesus require some time to recognize him (Luke 24:16; John 20:14; John 21:4). This is not a normal/typical human body.

Paul describes the resurrection body using a term that has continually been misinterpreted — sōma pneumatikon. People commonly interpret this as “spiritual body” and hear as “made of spirit.” However, the term refers to what gives life to the body, what animates it. It’s a body powered by the Holy Spirit, physical and eternal, immune to decay. Paul’s entire argument in 1 Corinthians 15 relies upon the continuous nature between the seed you plant and the plant that grows out of it.

If you wish to read further on this topic, I recommend N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God. Wright’s main point regarding historical evidence is that no one in antiquity anticipated this event. Most Greeks and Romans wished to rid themselves of their bodies. Jews who accepted the concept of resurrection believed that everyone would be resurrected at the end of history. A single individual resurrected physically in the middle of history, possessing an indestructible body before all others, does not fit into any available paradigm.

What the First Christians Put Forward

The first Christians didn’t ask people to believe in the resurrection with nothing to go on. From the beginning, they pointed to witnesses, an empty tomb, changed lives, and a movement that took shape around the claim that Jesus had risen from the dead.

A formula older than the gospels.

Paul gave the Corinthians a summary of what he received: Christ died for our sins; was buried; rose from the dead on the third day, appeared to Peter, then the Twelve; then more than 500 at once, then James, then all the apostles, and finally to Paul himself (1 Cor. 15:3-8). It has been established by historians from both sides of the fence that Paul’s description of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection took place within a few years after Christ’s crucifixion. In addition to listing those who witnessed Christ’s resurrection, Paul states that many of them are still alive today. Paul is basically inviting the skeptics to interview the witnesses themselves.

Women discovered the tomb.

All four gospels say women discovered the tomb and were the first to report it. In that legal culture, a woman’s testimony carried little weight, and Josephus states that fact openly (Antiquities 4.219). Any writer constructing a persuasive account for a first-century audience would have put men at the tomb. The gospel writers report women because that’s who was there, and Mark even records the disciples’ first reaction, which is that the report sounded like nonsense (Luke 24:11).

The opponents of Christianity acknowledged the empty tomb.

Matthew records the counter-story that was being circulated during his time: the guards were paid money to tell others that the disciples stole Jesus’ body while they slept (Matthew 28:11-15). Although the accuracy of Matthew’s account is debatable, the earliest opponent of Christianity on record accepted that Jesus’ tomb was empty. Justin Martyr stated that the same accusation against Christians continued to exist over one hundred years later (Dialogue with Trypho 108).

The wrong people converted.

James, the brother of Jesus, is depicted in the gospels as one of Jesus’ family members who believed Jesus to be crazy and therefore refused to believe in him (Mark 3:21; John 7:5). After Jesus’ death, James becomes the leader of the Jerusalem church (Acts 15:13; Galatians 1:19). Josephus reports James’ execution decades after Jesus’ death (Antiquities 20:200). Paul was persecuting Christians when it happened (Acts 8:3; Galatians 1:13). Something major caused a hostile brother and a professional persecutor to become martyrs for the claim.

Monotheistic Jews changed the day.

People raised on a fourth-commandment Sabbath started gathering on the first day of the week (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2), and by the early second century Ignatius describes churches whose whole life is ordered around the Lord’s Day (Magnesians 9). Devout people do not casually rearrange the calendar their grandparents kept.

None of that compels belief. But what it does is put the resurrection in the category of a historical claim with evidence attached, which lets a Christian stand in a break room with their shoulders down. Confidence here rests on something outside your own head with a cloud

What the Resurrection Secures

Four things, and they’re the reason this line sits where it does in the creed.

It’s the Father’s verdict on the cross.

Paul writes that Jesus was turned over for our sins and resurrected for our justification (Romans 4:25). Consider what that sentence means. The resurrection is God’s public acceptance of the payment. We ended a post not long ago on tetelestai – the word written across an account that has been paid. You may hold a check in your hand and have no idea if it is good until it clears. Friday is the payment. Sunday is the clearing. God raised Him and, in doing so, publicly announced to all those who were watching that the debt was indeed cleared and the sacrifice was indeed accepted. That is why Paul can ask who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones and answer with the resurrection (Romans 8:33–34).

It’s the vindication of who he claimed to be.

He was declared Son of God in power by His resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:4). Peter tells the Pentecost crowd that God made Him both Lord and Christ, naming the very man they had crucified (Acts 2:36). Paul tells the philosophers in Athens that God has given assurance to all men by raising Him from the dead (Acts 17:31). A dead teacher’s claims remain mere opinions. This One came back.

It’s the firstfruits of a harvest.

Christ was raised as the firstfruits, and then those who belong to him at his coming (1 Corinthians 15:20–23). Firstfruits language is agricultural and sacrificial. Sunday is both the model and the guarantee of what will happen to all those who are in Him. He will transform our humble bodies to be like His glorious body (Philippians 3:21). The final line of the Creed returns to this promise, and this is why that line exists.

It’s the beginning of the new creation.

The Spirit who raised Jesus is currently working in Christians today (Romans 8:11) and Paul describes anyone in Christ as new creation, with the old gone (2 Corinthians 5:17). The resurrection began something that is continuing to run.

The Heidelberg Catechism packages these into three benefits: by His resurrection He conquered death so that we may partake in His righteousness; we are now living a new life through Him; and His resurrection provides us with the assurance of our own (Q&A 45). Three tenses. Past, present, future all stemming from one Sunday.

Where This Lands in the Ordinary

Two places, in my experience.

At the graveside.

Paul commands the Thessalonians to mourn and tells them how - with hope, in contrast to those who have no such hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). The mourning experienced by Christians remains mourning, but it is fundamentally different. Jesus mourned for Lazarus at his grave site when He knew what He would be doing (John 11:35). Ultimately, Lazarus wouldn’t be the only empty tomb. Jesus knew that his death would be the start of our new lives, our ultimate hope, and the final nail to the enemy of death.

Imagine standing in a cemetery in a wind that cuts right through your jacket. Someone reads the passage about the last enemy to be defeated, and death swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:26, 54-55). While you’re standing there, reading this passage makes it seem like a promise is being made about the individual in the casket. But the empty chair at Thanksgiving is only for a limited period of time. We believe that the resurrection of Jesus defeated death and gives us eternal hope that we are united in Christ’s resurrection. Our hope is real; it depends on whether the tomb near Jerusalem was empty on Sunday morning.

In the middle of a failure.

Resurrection is God’s pattern of demonstrating His ability to bring life out of seemingly impossible circumstances. Peter denied Jesus three times while warming himself by a fire. Afterward, Peter received breakfast on a beach and a job (John 21:15-19). The disciples who fled were the ones who were commissioned. If God’s characteristic action is to raise the dead, then the aspects of your life that appear to have come to an end are precisely the elements that God uses to work — the relationship that others have abandoned hope for, the child that has ceased to speak, the time you believe you wasted, and the version of yourself you wish no one knew.

The resurrection doesn’t prevent you from being at the side of a grave, nor does it prevent parts of your life from breaking down. We are living in that tension of the already, not yet of waiting for the consummation of the kingdom of God, the new heaven and the new earth. The resurrection provides a basis for believing that neither death nor failure receives the last word.

Christian hope isn’t toxic positivity or blind optimism that things will be fine. Christian hope is based on confidence in events Christians believe occurred. Jesus Christ rose from the dead

The cemetery isn’t the end of the story, and neither is the worst thing you have ever done, lost, or witnessed broken down. The resurrection shows that God continues to produce life in situations where life seems impossible.

That Sunday morning, thousands of years ago, altered what Christians see as the final word.

Leave a comment

“He Descended to the Dead”

Sarah Willis — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 14:55:17 GMT

Follower of Hieronymus Bosch (ca. 1550–1570)

If you’ve ever heard the Apostles’ Creed at multiple churches, then you may be aware that the above line is typically the point in the Creed when things become somewhat weird.

Many churches use “he descended to the dead” whereas other churches use “he descended into hell.” Some churches include a footnote or an asterisk with the line (e.g., *or to the dead), and some churches just read quickly over the line.

The expression strikes a modern audience as peculiar, and throughout history, Christians have grappled with its precise meaning. Questions arise: Did Jesus physically journey to a specific place after his demise? Does the creed assert the reality and totality of his death? Or does it allude to his suffering on the cross? Could this be the origin of ancient imagery depicting Christ liberating figures like Adam and Eve from the underworld?

This post will be a little different. Rather than presenting a singular, definitive conclusion, I will explore the foundational tenets of three historically significant Christian viewpoints. I’ll also highlight the common ground shared by all three perspectives. Their shared understanding holds a value that transcends their disagreements.

The Translation Problem

We need to start here, because most of the trouble comes from one English word doing a job it can’t do.

When the Latin is translated from “descendit ad inferna” or “ad inferos”, it is referring to the lower region, the land of the dead. That idea comes from Hades, the Greek name for the same concept. And behind Hades is Sheol, the Hebrew name for the same thing. They all refer to the land of the dead, the condition all people will enter after death.

However, none of these words are used to describe Gehenna, the word Jesus uses to refer to his final judgment (Matthew 5:22; 10:28), and the word many people think of when they hear “hell.” The English language combined two distinct words into one, and we’ve been paying for it ever since. Sheol appears throughout the Old Testament as the place Jacob expects to go down to in sorrow (Genesis 37:35) and the place David claims God is present in (Psalm 139:8). Sheol is the grave, the country of the dead where all people eventually go.

As such, “he descended to the dead” is a more accurate translation of the Latin than “he descended into hell,” and therefore most contemporary versions of the Apostles’ Creed use “he descended to the dead.” If your congregation states “hell,” then it is because of the older English translation of the Latin and the meaning behind it has always been the land of the dead. That clears up approximately eighty percent of the confusion immediately.

Where the Line Came From

The clause has an unusual history; Kelly describes it in his book Early Christian Creeds. It appeared first in the Aquileia version of the creed that Rufinus commented on circa 404 AD. Rufinus noted that his local creed included the phrase whereas the Roman one did not include the phrase.

The line then disappeared from historical records for about two hundred years. It reappears approximately 650 AD and from that time forward it has become a norm for the Western Church. Rufinus’ interpretation of the phrase should also be known since the first person who commented on the phrase viewed it as essentially equivalent to “he was buried”. He viewed it as a method of stating that Jesus truly died.

However, the basic concept behind the clause is much older than the clause itself. Ignatius references this concept around 110 AD (Magnesians 9). Irenaeus worked with this concept during the second century AD (Against Heresies 4.22, 5.31). Melito of Sardis preached about this concept in a Passover Homily around 170 AD.

The Church was making statements regarding Holy Saturday long before anyone added it to a creed.

What the Bible Gives Us

The four passages listed below are the most important ones to consider when examining this topic. Each of these passages should be read before anyone attempts to interpret them.

Peter’s sermon at Pentecost

Peter uses a quote from Psalm 16 and applies it to Jesus: “you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor will you permit your Holy One to undergo decay” (Acts 2:27, quoting Psalm 16:10). Peter argues that David died and was buried, and that a tomb for David exists in Jerusalem, whereas the psalmist’s promise was given to another person. Peter describes Jesus going into the place where the dead go, and then coming out of it.

Paul on ascension and descent

Paul quotes a psalm that speaks of a victorious general taking captive prisoners, and then comments on how the fact that the victorious general ascended implies that there was a previous descent into the lower parts (Ephesians 4:8–10, quoting Psalm 68:18). Commentators have debated for centuries as to whether Paul is referring to the realm of the dead or the earth itself. The passage may very well refer to either.

Peter’s passage

Christ was put to death physically and made alive spiritually; and in this spiritual form he preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed during Noah’s time (1 Peter 3:18–20). Augustine wrote a long letter concerning this passage and acknowledged its complexity (Epistle 164). This is probably the most controversial passage in the entire New Testament, and any honest discussion of it must acknowledge this.

Revelation

The resurrected Christ informs John that he had died and now lives forever and has control of the keys of Death and Hades (Revelation 1:18). Regardless of what occurred on Saturday, Christ emerged from the grave with the keys.

There are two other passages that are often referenced when discussing this topic: Jesus telling the thief next to him that they would be together in paradise that same day (Luke 23:43), and Jesus comparing himself to Jonah in the center of the earth for three days (Matthew 12:40).

Three Ways Christians Read It

Here are the perspectives laid out as fairly as I can. All three have been held by people who loved Scripture and defended the faith at cost.

One: he was really, truly dead.

In this view, the line simply reinforces and elaborates on “was buried.” He didn’t lose consciousness. He wasn’t able to escape from the tomb on Saturday. He experienced death just like all humans who have experienced death. On Saturday, he remained under the power of death. This is Rufinus’s interpretation, and it is also the interpretation adopted by the

Westminster Larger Catechism for the English Reformed tradition — that Christ remained in the state of death and under the power of death until the third day (Q. 50). This interpretation requires little additional information from the text and provides a clear purpose for the clause: it closes the door on every possible interpretation of the story in which he survived the cross.

Two: he suffered the reality of judgment on our behalf.

Calvin developed this idea extensively in the Institutes (2.16.8–12). His primary point was that a physical death alone doesn’t provide sufficient redemption. Everyone dies, but what we need is someone to bear the actual burden of judgment.

Therefore, Calvin interpreted the descent as describing the agony Christ endured, the abandonment expressed in the cry from the cross (Matthew 27:46, quoting Psalm 22:1).

The Heidelberg Catechism builds on Calvin’s interpretation and transforms it into a source of comfort. I have always appreciated this aspect of the Heidelberg Catechism. The descent confirms for me that regardless of how difficult things become in my life, Christ has already rescued me from the agony of hell (Q&A 44). If you were raised within the Reformed tradition, it is likely that this is the interpretation in your heart, regardless of whether you ever heard anyone refer to it as such.

Three: he entered the realm of the dead in victory.

This is arguably the most ancient and widely accepted interpretation, and it dominates the Eastern Church. According to this interpretation, Christ entered Hades as a victor, declared his victory, and brought forth the righteous who had died prior to his arrival. If you have ever seen an Orthodox Easter icon, then you have witnessed this interpretation being depicted. Christ stands atop the broken gates of Hades, with pieces of broken locks and hinges scattered beneath his feet. He holds Adam and Eve by their wrists and pulls them out of their tombs.

Western art refers to this event as the Harrowing of Hell, and it appears throughout medieval English drama and Piers Plowman. Dante includes this event in his Inferno, and the way he describes it is one of my favorite elements of the epic.

In Canto IV, deep within Limbo, Dante asks Virgil whether anyone has ever departed from this area. Virgil replies that he too was a stranger to this place when he observed a magnificent individual enter this area wearing a crown bearing the emblem of victory. This individual removed the first father Adam, along with Abel, Noah, Moses, Abraham, David, Israel and his father and his sons and Rachel, and numerous others from this area and rendered them blessed.

Virgil doesn’t name this individual. He is a pre-Christian poet reporting an occurrence he observed without understanding it, and Dante lets him report it much like someone reporting weather he can’t explain.

Two more in the poem, his companions arrive at locations where rocks forming part of hell have disintegrated into ruins. Both times, the explanation for this phenomenon is identical: everything was shaken when he descended (Cantos XII and XXI). A demon even identifies when this destruction occurred. He informs Dante that the destroyed bridge crumbled a certain number of years ago which corresponds to Friday of the crucifixion.

Dante integrated Matthew 27’s earthquake into the design of hell’s topography. Regardless of how you interpret this, all of that art conveys a fundamental truth: he entered the realm of death and emerged with people.

My honest read on all three.

The first view has the strongest evidential backing and relies least on disputed texts. The second communicates an essential truth regarding the cross, and I will only add that Calvin himself attributes most of Christ’s suffering to Friday. The third possesses the longest lineage within the early church and the weakest foundation within any single passage.

The church has never declared any one of these interpretations authoritative, and I will continue to treat this line similarly, with genuine conviction about what it accomplishes and genuine charity toward the means by which it accomplishes it.

What All Three Agree On

Now the part that pays dividends, because underneath the differing perspectives, every view shares three claims, and each one matters for our lives.

He went all the way down.

Jesus experienced every aspect of human mortality. He didn’t experience most of it. He didn’t just experience the spectacle of his crucifixion. The rest of that Friday was spent dying — when the crowds had gone home, when his body was cold, and when there were no longer any spectators to his death. No matter what the “descent” refers to, it eliminates the possibility that God saved us from a distance where he could observe our suffering without being affected by it.

Death is occupied territory now.

When I am attending a funeral, I often find myself reaching for this line. When a Christian dies, he’s entering a space that Jesus has entered before him. He knows the way because He traveled the path himself. Paul states that nothing in all of creation (neither death, nor life, nor anything above or below) can separate us from the love of God in Christ (Romans 8:38-39). The inclusion of “below” in Paul’s statement was intentional.

The book of Hebrews states that Jesus took on flesh and blood so that he could destroy the power of the one who holds death, and so that He could set free those who have lived their entire lives in bondage to the fear of death (Hebrews 2:14-15).

He holds the keys.

After emerging from that place, Christ possessed authority over it (Revelation 1:18). Death now has an owner, and that owner is One who traveled through death and returned alive. And because he holds the keys, death is not the final word.

Saturday

I’d like to end this post by talking about the day itself.

I believe that line of the Creed is a gift to those who find themselves in a certain type of trouble. Friday is bad and understandable. Sunday is good. Saturday is the day that nothing happens.

The disciples were stuck in a locked room without any news, plans, or teachers. All the promises they had based their lives on seemed to be locked in that tomb. That Saturday was a day of despair, the silence in between the worst day and the best day.

Everyone I know has experienced a “Saturday.” It’s the week between getting the scan and receiving the results. It’s the month following a funeral when people no longer bring food over, and the rest of the world thinks you should be able to continue on as if everything is fine. It’s the time period following being laid off, and before someone calls you back. It’s the years of asking God to provide an answer to something and nothing changes.

No matter how God will respond to whatever question you ask him, he hasn’t answered yet. Until then you will need to keep preparing meals for your family. The Creed provides a line for this type of day. It states that Jesus was also present during this silent time. He spent a full day in that tension, in that silent waiting before the joy of Sunday.

Sunday came, but not before Saturday. No matter the specific take on what all happened when Christ descended on that day, what is clear is that Jesus was victorious. And that’s exactly where the Creed goes next.

Leave a comment

“Suffered Under Pontius Pilate, Was Crucified, Died, and Was Buried”

Sarah Willis — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 14:35:24 GMT

by Matthias Stomer, c. 1650

After hearing about the almighty power of God, the co-eternity of Jesus, and the incarnation, we get to the name of a second-level Roman administrator who ruled over a contentious province for a decade before being recalled to Rome over a crowd-management faux pas. Pontius Pilate has no inherent theological meaning. He’s a timestamp. He’s the ancient version of scribbling “during the second Obama administration” into a hymn.

The Creed is telling you exactly when the Passion took place. It took place at a particular hour on a particular day in a particular city under a particular governor whose name shows up in the tax documents. If you had a time machine, you could go back and watch it unfold.

“Suffered Under Pontius Pilate”

Pilate governed Judea as prefect from around AD 26 to 36. Skeptics also noted that prior to 1961, Pilate was known only from a few Jewish historians and philosophers, some early Christians, and no other Romans. That changed with the discovery of an inscription on a stone at Caesarea Maritima in 1961, discovered during the excavation of a Roman theater. This reused limestone block contained Pilate’s name, his Roman title, and a dedication to Emperor Tiberius. Today, this “Pilate Stone” is housed in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

He is also mentioned by Josephus, a historian who describes Pilate’s decision to allow soldiers to carry their shields with images of Caesar into Jerusalem and his attempt to quell a riot against the construction of a new aqueduct (Antiquities 18.55–62). Then we see him portrayed by Philo, who writes extensively about his actions (Embassy to Gaius 38). Additionally, he appears in the Creed, where his only known contribution to humanity is signing off on the proceedings.

The Latin behind “suffered” is passus est, and it encompasses all aspects of the Passion – the arrest, the trials, the flogging, the mocking, and the walk out to the execution site. The Creed condenses hours of recorded bloody, intense human suffering into a single verb and then goes straight to the aftermath.

How Sure Can We Be This Happened?

That is what Pilate’s name ties the confession to a person, a government, and a moment that belongs to ordinary human history. And once Christianity makes that kind of claim, the question is fair: How sure can we actually be that this happened?

The evidence works almost like a series of concentric circles. At the center are the sources closest to the event. As you move outward, you find Jewish and Roman corroboration, archaeological confirmation, and, finally, later hostile traditions that preserve the same basic memory.

At the center are Paul’s writings, the earliest Christian writings we have. He preaches “Christ crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:23). He tells the Corinthians that he decided to know nothing among them except “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). He tells the Galatians that Christ was publicly portrayed before them as crucified (Galatians 3:1) and says that his only boast is in the cross (Galatians 6:14).

Most important is 1 Corinthians 15:3–5, where Paul tells his readers that he is passing along something he himself had received: Christ died, was buried, was raised on the third day, and appeared to his followers. The wording is formulaic, and scholars across a wide theological spectrum recognize that Paul is quoting an earlier Christian tradition rather than inventing the statement himself.

Paul is already writing within a few decades of the crucifixion, and the tradition he references is earlier than that. Paul also tells us that he personally spent time with Peter and James, the brother of Jesus (Galatians 1:18–19). We are nowhere near the kind of timeline required for a story about a crucified founder to slowly emerge centuries later. Jesus’ death belongs to the earliest layer of Christian proclamation we possess.

One circle out are the Gospel accounts themselves. All four canonical Gospels place Jesus’ execution under Pontius Pilate. They are not four completely independent newspaper reports. Matthew and Luke clearly share material with Mark, and each Gospel writer is making theological arguments in the way the story is told. None of that requires us to throw them out as historical sources. Ancient historians routinely work with sources whose authors have beliefs, loyalties, and purposes.

And on the central claim, the traditions agree: Jesus was arrested, brought before Pilate, condemned, and crucified.

By the early second century, Ignatius of Antioch was still insisting on the same historical anchors. Writing to the church at Smyrna, he says that Jesus was genuinely crucified under “Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch” (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 1.2). Ignatius is a Christian source, but he helps show the continuity of the claim. Paul does not tell one story, the Gospels another, and the next generation something else. The same event runs straight through them.

Around AD 93, the Jewish historian Josephus mentions Jesus while describing the period of Pilate’s government. The surviving wording of the famous passage in Antiquities 18.63–64 has clearly been edited by a later Christian copyist in places. That means it has to be handled carefully. Still, many scholars conclude that an authentic Josephan core remains beneath those additions, including the notice that Pilate condemned Jesus to the cross.

Josephus mentions Jesus again later while describing the death of James. This passage is much less disputed. He identifies James simply as “the brother of Jesus who was called Christ” (Antiquities 20.200). It is almost incidental, which is part of what makes it useful. Josephus is talking about something else and assumes his reader can identify which Jesus he means.

Then, around AD 116, the Roman historian Tacitus explains the origins of the Christian movement while describing Nero’s persecution after the fire of Rome. He writes that Christus, from whom the Christians took their name, “suffered the extreme penalty” during the reign of Tiberius under Pontius Pilate (Annals 15.44).

Tacitus was not helping the Christians with their evangelism. He despised the movement and called it a destructive superstition. He also does not tell us where he obtained his information, so there is no need to claim that he pulled Jesus’ case file out of the imperial archives. The important point is simpler: when a respected Roman historian needed to explain where Christianity came from, he treated the execution of its founder under Pilate as an ordinary historical fact.

Now the circles of witness start overlapping. The earliest Christian writings say Jesus was crucified. The Gospel traditions place the execution under Pontius Pilate. Josephus gives us Jewish corroboration from the first century. Tacitus gives us Roman corroboration from the early second century.

And then there is Pilate himself. Josephus describes his administration. Philo describes his administration. The Gospels put him in the governor’s chair. Tacitus names him as the official under whom Christus was executed. And in 1961 archaeologists at Caesarea Maritima turned over a limestone block and found his name carved into it.

That stone can’t tell us that Pilate sentenced Jesus. It does something more basic. It tells us that the world these writers keep describing is the real one. Pilate isn’t a character invented to make the story sound official. His name is literally in the stone.

Farther out still are later witnesses. Lucian of Samosata, a second-century satirist, mocks Christians for worshiping a man who had been crucified in Palestine (The Passing of Peregrinus 11–13). Mara bar Serapion may refer to Jesus when he speaks of the Jews executing their “wise king,” although the identification is less certain. The Babylonian Talmud preserves a much later hostile tradition concerning the execution of Yeshu around Passover (Sanhedrin 43a).

Those sources should not carry the same weight as Paul, Josephus, or Tacitus. They do not need to. They sit in the outer circle. Their usefulness is that even people mocking, opposing, or standing outside Christianity knew the movement as one built around a man who had been executed.

Put all these circles of witness together, and the case becomes difficult to explain away.

We don’t have to prove that every sentence in every Passion narrative can be reconstructed with equal historical certainty. We do not have to begin by assuming the New Testament is inspired. And none of this, by itself, proves that Jesus is the Son of God.

It establishes the smaller claim the Creed deliberately makes first. A Jewish teacher named Jesus was executed during the governorship of Pontius Pilate. We can have a very high degree of historical confidence in that event. And then the Creed gets more specific.

“Was Crucified”

Rome kept crucifixion largely for slaves, rebels, and provincials. Roman citizens were generally protected from it, and Cicero had said a century earlier that even the word cross should be kept far from the thoughts, eyes, and ears of a Roman citizen (Pro Rabirio 16).

And here, the literary evidence has an archaeological counterpart as well.

In 1968, construction work at Giv’at ha-Mivtar north of Jerusalem uncovered a first-century ossuary containing the remains of a man named Yehohanan. One of his heel bones still contained an iron nail from his execution. The nail had bent, apparently preventing it from being removed before his burial.

Yehohanan was not Jesus, and his bones do not prove that Jesus was crucified. They establish something narrower and useful: Romans really were crucifying people in first-century Judea in ways consistent with the world described by the Gospel accounts, and at least some crucified Jews could subsequently receive burial.

The method itself was designed for humiliation as much as death. The condemned person was exposed to the public and fixed to the wood so others could watch. The point was not simply to kill a body. It was like a billboard on the interstate. Rome was making an announcement about what happened to people who thought they could overthrow the great Roman Empire. “Don’t rebel, or this will be you too.”

This makes what the first Christians did with the cross almost impossible to overstate.

Paul says it plainly. They preached “Christ crucified,” a message that sounded offensive to one audience and ridiculous to another (1 Corinthians 1:23). A later piece of graffiti scratched onto a wall on the Palatine Hill makes the mockery visible. The Alexamenos graffito depicts a man worshiping a crucified figure with a donkey’s head and adds a mocking caption about Alexamenos worshiping his god.

That is how bizarre Christian preaching sounded.

Nobody invents a founder who died that way. Nobody trying to build a movement in the Roman Empire selects the state’s instrument of humiliation as their logo. The early church preached it because it happened and because they’d concluded it was the hinge of everything.

Deuteronomy had already put a curse on anybody hanged on a tree (Deuteronomy 21:23), and Paul takes that verse and turns it over: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). The most shameful death available in that world was the exact form the rescue took.

The church took the empire’s image of degradation and put it in the center of its proclamation because the shameful death itself was part of the claim.

And then Christians went back to their Scriptures and found that the shame had been there all along.

The Servant Isaiah Described

Seven hundred years before Pilate took office, a Hebrew prophet described someone’s execution. Reading it next to the Gospel accounts is one of the more unsettling yet comforting experiences.

Isaiah has four passages scholars call the Servant Songs (Isaiah 42:1–9; 49:1–7; 50:4–9; 52:13–53:12), and many Christians know the fourth as the Suffering Servant. The servant develops like a root emerging from dry land, unappealing in appearance (53:2). This statement takes on a different meaning when we know that Jesus grew up in a small village of fewer than 500 people in a region the government didn’t exactly favor. He becomes despicable and rejected, a man well-familiar with sorrow, a man others shun from looking directly at (53:3).

Then Isiah states the servant was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed (53:5). Isaiah keeps switching pronouns as he goes — our griefs, our sorrows, our transgressions, he bore, he carried, he was pierced. The whole passage runs on that exchange. All of us wandered off like sheep, each one down his own road, and the LORD laid on him the iniquity of us all (53:6).

It is difficult to ignore or overlook the similarities between these passages. The servant was oppressed and mistreated, and though he opened not his mouth, he was treated like a sheep being led to slaughter (53:7), and Mark states that Pilate was amazed when the prisoner answered him with nothing at all (Mark 15:5). Isaiah also says the servant counted the number of transgressors and prayed for them (53:12), while Luke portrays Jesus as praying for the men who were nailing His hands (Luke 23:34). The Servant was buried in a grave with wicked people and with the rich (53:9), which is a peculiarly detailed reference, and is strikingly similar to the burial of a man executed between two thieves and buried in the new tomb of a wealthy member of the Sanhedrin (Matthew 27:57-60).

The Church understood this passage to represent Jesus from its earliest days. When Philip finds the Ethiopian official traveling along the desert road, the official is reading aloud from Isaiah 53 and asks the obvious question — who is the prophet referring to? Luke states that Philip began explaining from that same passage how Jesus is the Good News (Acts 8:26-35). Before that, Jesus applied the same language in Isaiah, saying that he would have to fulfill this prophecy of the Suffering Servant in himself being numbered with transgressors (Luke 22:37). Matthew also directly cites several of the Servant Songs (Matthew 8:17; 12:17-21), and Peter uses an extended section of Isaiah 53 in addressing suffering Christians (1 Peter 2:22-25).

This passage provides clarity to something left vague by historical documentation alone. While all those various Roman and Jewish references provide details regarding an execution occurring outside Jerusalem during a certain governorship, Isaiah identifies why such an execution occurred. The Bible presents to you the purpose underlying the event, which was foretold hundreds of years before Rome ever existed. Jesus was killed because of the transgression of people, according to Isaiah, who speaks in God’s voice (53:8). The nature of the crucifixion, in light of the Suffering Servant, changes from a defeat to a predetermined purpose: It pleased the Lord to crush Him; through the anguish of his soul, many will be counted righteous (53:10-11).

That last piece is what keeps the cross from reading like an accident of Roman politics. Peter says clearly in his first sermon at Pentecost: Jesus was handed over by the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, and you crucified him (Acts 2:23). Real men made real decisions in a real courtroom, and none of it happened outside the plan.

“Died, and Was Buried”

This phrase is in the Creed because people were already denying it.

Died. He actually died. His heart stopped, his body went cold, and a Roman execution detail confirmed it. These were men who had done this job so many times that they would give up their own lives to ensure a prisoner never escaped. John reports the spear thrust into the side and the flow of blood and water (John 19:34), a detail that he insisted upon as an eyewitness to this event, and a detail supported by contemporary medical writers as being indicative of fluid around the heart and lungs of a dead body. Mark records that Pilate was surprised by how quickly Jesus died, and called for the centurion to confirm Jesus’ death prior to the release of his body (Mark 15:44-45).

Buried. The claim of burial includes a specific place, witness, and owner.

Joseph of Arimathea is named in each of the four Gospels, and he is described as a member of the Council that had just voted against Jesus (Mark 15:43). Think about how difficult it would have been to invent a character like that. The early Christian Church was openly at odds with the Sanhedrin, and yet, here’s one in a public declaration that credits the honorable burial of their Lord to a member of that very same Council. Joseph was a named man in a known city, whose story could be verified by anyone in Jerusalem willing to go check. The women are named as well; Mark states that they observed where Jesus was buried (Mark 15:47). According to the laws of the time, women were not credible as witnesses. However, because their presence is noted, it gives confidence that the Gospel writers were accurately portraying what actually happened, not embellishing to up their “credibility.” These details help to establish the historicity. It establishes that there was a body at a known location, which is what makes the third day a claim about that location rather than a feeling the disciples had.

The Place Where It Was Finished

Gods of the ancient world lived in a storybook world. They lived in the land of once upon a time, in the epoch before this one, in a location that was inaccessible by roads. This is the default architecture for a religion, and it’s a dubious one because a story without coordinates can never be verified or disproven.

Christianity jettisoned that. Luke opens his Gospel by listing six political and religious offices along with their incumbents (Luke 3:1-2). He tells you in the prologue that he spoke to eyewitnesses and did his homework so his reader could have confidence (Luke 1:1-4). Peter, preaching to a hostile crowd, says as you yourselves know, because these events were public and local and recent (Acts 2:22). Paul tells a Roman governor that none of this was done in a corner (Acts 26:26).

God came here at a date you can point to, in a city you could walk to, under an official whose name is carved in limestone.

That’s a statement about how he works everywhere else. A God who saves in abstract terms would save you in abstract terms. The Creed describes a God who shows up at a specific address on a specific afternoon and does business there. He came into a real date in the real world. He came into a political situation with a rigged trial, with a governor and a crowd that had been worked up. He came into a body that felt the flogging and torment the way yours would.

So when the Gospel comes to you, it comes to your address. It comes into your specific world. Not to you in general, and not to the version of you that’s got the house tidied up like a showroom. He enters the actual place: the county you live in, the year on the calendar, the specific thing that happened to you when you were nine that you’ve never said out loud, the appointment on Wednesday, the argument in the car last night, the debt, the diagnosis, the name of the person you can’t forgive.

I think about the difference between a person who says I’ll be praying for you on the way out of church and the person who shows up at your door with a casserole and a babysitting plan. Both are well-meaning. One has your address and shows up in that moment.

He knows your specific history because he entered history. He knows your future the same way. Hebrews 4:13 says everything is laid bare before him, and the writer puts that sentence three lines before the invitation to come get mercy and help right when you need it (Hebrews 4:16).

Israel’s whole sacrificial system ran on repetition. Morning and evening, day after day, year after year, the priests stood and offered the same sacrifices that could never take away sins for eternity (Hebrews 10:11). Once a year the high priest went behind the curtain with blood, and then he came back out and the calendar started over. The system kept teaching the same lesson: sin costs a life, and the debt has to be repaid.

Then Christ entered history. He entered once for all, securing an eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12). He appeared at the consummation of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself (Hebrews 9:26). After making purification for sins, he sat down (Hebrews 1:3; 10:12).

John gives us his last word from the cross: tetelestai (John 19:30). It is finished. That’s the word he chose to die on.

God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). God put him forward as the place where wrath is satisfied, through faith in his blood (Romans 3:25). He canceled the record of debt that stood against us, nailing it to the cross (Colossians 2:14).

And the reason he could be the sacrifice at all runs straight back to the line before this one in the Creed. A lamb without blemish (1 Peter 1:19). A high priest who was tested in every way and came through clean (Hebrews 4:15). The perfect human being, offering the one life that was never marred by sin, on behalf of everyone whose life was.

When Anselm wrote about this in the eleventh century, he framed the problem as an arithmetic that only one person could solve: the debt was owed by humanity and payable only by God, so it had to be paid by someone who was both (Cur Deus Homo 2.6).

Which is the Creed’s logic, arriving in the order the Creed put it: conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of a woman, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead, and buried.

The Creed gives us an address because salvation happened in our world. It gives us a governor because salvation happened in real time and with real people. And it gives us a cross because something happened there that does not need to happen again.

God entered our history. And when he said finished, he meant it.

What Does It Mean to be Serious About This Line?

Christianity calls us to trust something that happened in the real world.

When you say, “suffered under Pontius Pilate,” you’re stating that your faith is based on historical events. Your belief in the resurrection will be confirmed by what God actually accomplished, rather than on how assured, religiously-minded, or devout you happen to be at any given time. Paul was willing to gamble his life for this claim — if Christ was not raised, our preaching and our faith are empty (1 Corinthians 15:14, 17).

When you say, “was crucified,” you’re remembering what your deliverance cost. This isn’t a salvation from an armchair, or a Monday quarterback position. God took part in the violence, humiliation, suffering, and injustices we see every day as a result of sin.

When you say, “was buried,” you confess that Jesus completely experienced the depth of suffering. Not even death has been a place that He hasn’t visited.

And when you hear Him say, “it is finished” from the cross, you know there’s nothing left for you to do. There’s no additional payment needed. What you continue to drag out before God doesn’t create an unfinished picture of the cross. Repenting brings sin into the light, and it points to the glorious work Christ did on the cross for you.

So maybe this is the line to take with you this week. Think about the thing you continually bring back up, the failure that continues to serve as evidence against you. The memory that causes you to question whether God’s grace truly extends that far?

Now, go back over this line of the Creed with that pain, that failure in mind. And remember His last word: “Tetelestai.” God dealt with real history and real sin. That includes your own.

Subscribe for more content and help support this blog!

Leave a comment

“Conceived by the Holy Spirit, Born of the Virgin Mary”

Sarah Willis — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:36:24 GMT

Adoration of the Shepherds, Pupil of Rembrandt, 1646

There is a great deal missing from the Apostles’ Creed. No Sermon on the Mount. No Lord’s Prayer. None of our teachings about communion, none of our teachings about baptism, none of our teachings about how to love your neighbors, none of the parables. And yet the Apostles’ Creed dedicates eleven of its one hundred and ten words to tell you how he was conceived and by whom he was carried.

I didn’t think much of those eleven words for many years. They seemed to me to be biography, the pre-story, the way a movie tells you a character grew up in Ohio. I’d say them, and my brain would immediately start moving toward the next plot point.

I’ve since learned better, but I’ve also learned that I wasn’t alone. Ask a large group of lifelong church-goers (particularly Protestant Evangelicals) why the virgin birth is in the Apostles’ Creed, and you will probably receive versions of: it shows he was special, it demonstrates that God can do anything, or a shrug and the honest statement that they’ve never really thought about it. Many sincere Christians use it as a Christmas ornament, a miracle we pull out in December, admire, and put back into storage in a box with tape holding it together until the following year. It’s just another decoration without much thought put into it for our daily faith.

That’s unfortunate, because that is one of the most significant lines in the entire confession. The purpose of the Creed was to provide a new believer with the basic structure of the Christian faith in something they could commit to memory prior to their baptism. Whoever created it decided to spend eleven words on that one sentence instead of so many other things from Jesus’ ministry. Remove that line and the roof falls in.

Those eleven words state in one breath that Jesus is fully divine and fully human (similar to the previous emphasis I brought up last week on the line just before). Both parts. Both are true. All of the benefits of Christianity depend on both sides being true simultaneously, and it is the second half, which states that he was born of Mary, that most of us tend to underestimate.

“Conceived by the Holy Spirit”

The first half tells you where He came from.

Luke reports the angel Gabriel appears in Nazareth and delivers news that would shock anyone else alive. Then Mary asks the practical and obvious question: how is this going to work? After all, she’s a virgin. The angel responds with two very important verbs: the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you (Luke 1:35). episkiazō is the verb Luke chose for the second word. This is the word used in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint) for the cloud that rested over the tabernacle in the wilderness. The glory was so thick that Moses couldn’t enter the tent (Exodus 40:34-35). Luke uses this word again when the cloud covered the mountain during the Transfiguration (Luke 9:34).

What’s being described here is God’s presence settling over a place and filling it. The tabernacle was the tent where God came down to dwell among his people. John reports the same thing with a different picture when he writes that the word became flesh and pitched his tent among us (John 1:14).

This is a statement about origin. Jesus isn’t produced by human endeavor, human planning, or a promising family’s ambition. He originates on God’s side of the line. Matthew underscores this point by connecting Jesus’ name with Immanuel (God with us) four verses later in his birth account (Matthew 1:21 & 23). The individual being carried within Mary’s womb is God Himself, arriving and dwelling among us.

All that follows this in the Creed relies on this. As previously noted, Athanasius’s argument relies on this: a creature cannot save creatures. If Jesus is merely a very good man with an extraordinary birth story, then the cross is tragic with no relevance to your life. That’s why the first half of this line is so crucial, because it sets a clear declaration that God personally came here.

“Born of the Virgin Mary”

The second half tells you what He came as.

He was born. Carried for nine months, delivered in blood and noise, handed to a tired woman in a borrowed space. He nursed. He required his diaper changed, or whatever the first-century equivalent was. He woke people up at two a.m. He learned to walk by falling down. Luke states that Jesus grew, physically and intellectually, just as all children grow (Luke 2:52). Later, we read how he gets thirsty, gets tired, and sleeps through a storm because he is exhausted from working.

This is the portion of the Creed that the early church fought tooth-and-nail for, but surprisingly which direction the battle originated from. I had always assumed that the battle was with skeptics who found the birth too miraculous. However, in the first centuries, the battle was actually in the opposite direction. The Docetists (from Greek meaning to seem) taught that Christ only appeared to have a body. Same instinct we met with the Gnostics in my previous post: flesh is beneath god, therefore the Son must have worn a convincing costume. Some of them taught that He passed through Mary like water passing through a pipe, using her as a corridor and taking nothing from her

Around 110 AD, Bishop Ignatius of Antioch wrote against this under armed guard while traveling to his own execution. His letters continuously hammer one word: truly. Jesus was truly born, truly ate and drank, truly nailed up, truly died (Letter to the Trallians 9). He tells the church at Smyrna that Jesus really was of David’s line according to the flesh, really born as human, not just appearing to be (Smyrnaians 1). I think this warrants our attention because this was a man walking toward an arena, spending his last letters asserting that the body of Jesus was a real body.

Mary is in the Creed because she provides the human descent. She provides him his humanity: his blood, cells, face, and the body he lived in for thirty-three years.

Joseph is also in the record of Jesus’ birth. Both Gospels print a genealogy, and those lists differ. Matthew begins his Gospel by listing the line from Abraham down through David and Solomon to Joseph, whom he calls the husband of Mary (Matthew 1:1-17). Luke runs his list in reverse order, starting with Jesus going backward through David’s son Nathan all the way to Adam, and flags the whole thing with a phrase easy to miss upon a quick read: Jesus was the son as was supposed of Joseph (Luke 3:23-38).

Many people have been working on that difference since about the third century, and there are two long-standing explanations worth knowing. One holds that Matthew gives Joseph’s legal and royal line while Luke gives Mary’s bloodline, with Joseph listed in a customary manner through her father. Another explanation holds that both lines trace Joseph (one through legal succession to the throne and one through physical descent), with a Levirate marriage somewhere in the chain accounting for the split. Around 220 AD, scholar Julius Africanus was already wrestling with this question in a letter preserved for us by Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 1.7). So if you have questions, you’re not alone. It’s a question has been alive for eighteen hundred and fifty-eight years.

Regardless of which explanation proves true, the doctrinal result lands in the same place - both Mary and Joseph are necessary for it. Through Mary he receives a real human body and real Davidic blood. Through Joseph he receives the legal claim, an adoptive father in david’s royal line (which is how a throne was transmitted in Israel) and what gives teeth to the angel’s promise that God will give him the throne of his father David (Luke 1:32). Matthew’s list includes liars, prostitutes, adulterers and several kings you would definitely leave off your family Christmas card, and four women besides Mary, each having their own complicated story. Jesus entered a real family, filled with the good, the bad, and the ugly. And it’s a real family with a real paper trail.

Why Eleven Words Hold So Much Importance

There’s a type of Christian literature that treats the virgin birth as “optional equipment.” Hold onto the ethics, hold onto loving your neighbor, continue to see Jesus as the greatest moral teacher ever, and leave the miraculous conception behind as merely a first-century means of expressing that He was incredible. Treat it as a metaphor or an allegory. It has been stated by individuals who consider themselves within the Christian community for over a century. Harry Emerson Fosdick preached this idea from a Manhattan pulpit in 1922 and included the virgin birth specifically among doctrines a Christian may “lay aside.”

J. Gresham Machen countered Fosdick’s argument in Christianity and Liberalism in the following year, and then wrote another six-hundred-page book solely focused on one clause (The Virgin Birth of Christ, 1930). In my opinion, Machen’s conclusion is worth keeping in your back pocket, because five separate things come apart when this line goes.

Firstly, the reliability of the Gospel accounts begins to break down precisely at the location these accounts provide the most specificity. Both Matthew and Luke provide detailed accounts of this occurrence, including the name of the location where it occurred (Bethlehem); the fact that Mary was engaged to Joseph (the nature of their engagement – betrothed); the problem Joseph encountered as a result of her pregnancy (he considered divorcing her due to her pregnancy before she gave birth to the Child); and the fact that there was a census during which Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem. Two authors, writing for two distinct audiences, agree on the single piece of information that would have been most difficult to create artificially or easily mocked. If you treat these sections as mere decoration, you’ve developed a methodology that will soon apply the same reasoning to discredit the account of the empty tomb.

Secondly, if the Son is not eternally pre-existent, He ceases to be eternal. As a result of an ordinary human conception, a new person exists whereas previously there existed no person. The entire New Testament affirms the opposite — the Person who was present from eternity with God (John 1:1-3, 14; Colossians 1:16-17; Hebrews 1:2), who created all things (Colossians 1:16-17; Hebrews 1:2), is sent (Galatians 4:4). Being sent implies a person already existing to be sent. The miraculous conception is what a divine Person becoming incarnate and entering humanity from outside it appears like from the inside.

Thirdly, He acquires Adam’s ruin as well as Adam’s flesh. The causal term in Gabriel’s announcement that most readers quickly gloss over links the manner of Mary’s conception and the holiness of the child — the Holy Spirit shall come upon you; therefore, the Child to be born shall be called holy (Luke 1:35). Each other human being enters existence within the lineage extending from Adam and thus carries what Adam passed down (Romans 5:12). The second Adam must initiate a new lineage rather than continue an existing one. Hebrews describes the Priest we need as holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners (Hebrews 7:26), and if a sacrifice is blemished, it can save nobody.

Fourthly, the promise fails. Genesis 3:15 provides a promise regarding a Child of Woman who will crush the Serpent. Isaiah provides a promise of a Son Who will be named Immanuel (God With Us) (Isaiah 7:14). Additionally, there is a twist in Matthew’s genealogical list worthy of noting since we recently covered it. Matthew’s genealogical tree proceeds directly through Jeconiah, King David’s descendant whom God cursed and declared would have none of his descendants prosper upon David’s throne (Jeremiah 22:30).

For generations, readers have observed that this twist allows Jesus to inherit the right to sit upon David’s throne via Joseph while also inheriting none of Jeconiah’s blood. While Haggai seems to undo Jeconiah’s grandson Zerubbabel’s curse (Haggai 2:23), many commentaries carefully divide concerning how much weight should be placed upon this. This has long been an interesting observation worth mentioning and truthfully presenting.

Fifthly, salvation becomes something generated by the human race. This is perhaps the most disturbing to me. If we are able to produce a savior under sufficient circumstances, then the Gospel becomes simply a story about human potential with a spiritual ending. Mary supplies the body, but the initiative is exclusively God’s. This configuration runs throughout everything — the manner in which faith comes to us; the manner in which grace arrives prior to our asking; the manner in which this entire rescue begins on His side of the line.

But I can already hear people saying the Gospels of Mark and John open without providing a birth narrative, and Paul never explicitly outlines the conception. Two things about that. The New Testament writers write whatever they need to convey for their respective purposes (these are letters after all), and Mark opens at the Jordan River just as a war correspondent reporting from the front reports. And Paul, without illustrating anything, gives us the theology underlying what he illustrates when he writes that God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law (Galatians 4:4)—sent from somewhere and born from someone in one stroke. By 110 AD, Ignatius insisted on the virgin birth in letters to churches who already recognized this claim. No one argued whether it occurred. Instead, they argued whether Jesus’ flesh was genuine.

Therefore, when someone talks to you that this line is nothing more than a Christmas ornament, here is the brief summary of what it means if that’s the case: remove it and you will lose an eternal Son, a sinless substitute, a reliable Gospel account, and a rescue that came from God’s side. What remains is a good man with an uncommon reputation, and such a man can’t bear your sin.

The Second Adam

Point three above deserves its own space because this is where the doctrine stops being a technicality and starts being about your life and salvation.

Paul has an approach of defining humanity that sounds like this: everyone lives under some kind of head. The head of the family that we enter into through birth is Adam, and what he does flows downward toward us all. One man’s disobedience brought many into rebellion against God; one man’s obedience brings many into harmony with Him (Romans 5:12-21). Because death came through a man (Adam), resurrection comes through one man (Jesus) (1 Corinthians 15:21-22). Paul refers to Jesus as the Last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45-49).

Follow the logic. In order for Jesus to be the head of a human family, He must actually be human, truly one of us, enter into humanity in the same manner, run in the same road under the same conditions as we. A person masquerading as something isn’t a true representative of anything. The entire hinge of Romans 5 requires an actual man with actual skin to accomplish what the first man failed to accomplish.

This is exactly what the Gospel accounts portray. The first Adam faced a garden filled with abundance. He had a full belly, and he had everything provided for him. He had one command, and he disobeyed it. The second Adam faced a wilderness, enduring forty days without food or water. He had absolutely everything taken away from Him, yet He remained steadfast (Matthew 4:1-11). Whereas the first man attempted to achieve equality with God, Jesus chose to relinquish equality with God in order to become a servant. Jesus became obedient all of the way to the Cross (Philippians 2:6-8). Genesis provided an assurance that there would be a Child of Woman who would crush the Serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15), and Paul states that promise rested upon a particular baby, born of a virgin in God’s perfect timing.

In addition to building his entire theology based on this in the second century, Irenaeus labeled this concept “recapitulation” — Jesus running humanity’s story once again from its inception and successfully completing it at every place where we botched it (Against Heresies 3.18, 3.21-22; 5.21). Consequently, the normal details of his life possess considerable significance. He had difficulties in his familial relationships, He worked, He exhausted himself physically, and He grieved at his friend’s burial site. He went through every aspect of life, and He remained obedient.

When you are in Christ, you have changed families. You’re no longer subject to what Adam failed to accomplish. You’re subject to what Jesus accomplished, and his record is what you are credited with. This is the practical dollar-and-cents value of the Second Adam — and it necessitates that He was indeed a human being from an actual womb

Which Makes Him a High Priest Who Understands

Now, the other thing that this line gets you, and this is probably the thing I would go to first during a really tough week.

Hebrews is a book that presses the hardest on why the flesh had to be real. Hebrews makes an argument that since the children shared flesh and blood, He did too. And because of that, His death could break the hold of death (Hebrews 2:14). In order to be the perfect substitute sacrifice, He had to be as much like his brothers and sisters as possible. And because of that, when He sits at the right hand of the Father, He is a compassionate and trustworthy high priest. Because he went through suffering when he was tested, he is able to help those who are being tested (Hebrews 2:17-18).

We have a great high priest who is able to identify with our weaknesses, because he was tested in every way we are (Hebrews 4:15). The Greek word behind “identify” is sympaschos, or to undergo suffering with, to experience it in your own body. The author’s conclusion is an invitation: come to the throne confidently and receive mercy and help just when you need it (Hebrews 4:16).

You already know the difference this makes, because you know it socially. When you’re going through something terrible, there’s the person who writes a nice note and says the right things but is far away. But there’s the person who comes and sits beside you on the porch step and says I know what you mean; I’ve gone through that. They both care, but they don’t both get it in the same way. The friend who lost her mother is the one you will call when your mother is dying because she’s not guessing how it feels.

Hebrews states that’s the kind of priest you have. He knows what happens when you are hungry and irritable. He knows how it feels to be misunderstood by your family, to be exhausted with people, to pray fervently in the darkness and to not feel anything returning. He prayed with loud crying and tears (Hebrews 5:7). He didn’t feel anything through reports. He lived through them in flesh and blood that He received from Mary.

Gregory of Nazianzus wrote a response to someone who claimed that Christ became incarnate while having a divine mind where a human mind should be located. He responded that what has not been taken upon itself has not been cured (Epistle 101). Whatever part of us Jesus refused to assume, He left unhealed. He assumed everything, and everything is included in salvation.

What Does It Cost to Be Serious About This?

If you say conceived by the Holy Spirit, you’ve said God came here Hiimself. No arrangement existed. No qualification occurred. Everything began on His end of the line. This flies directly into the way most of us live. I know I often find myself trying to clean up my life before bringing it to God, as if I were cleaning up the house before guests arrive. God came into a home no one cleaned up. He provides the power. He provides the solution to the mess of our world.

If you say born of the Virgin Mary, you’ve stated that He came into a body similar to yours. A real body with real hunger, real fatigue, and a real family with real problems. Nothing within ordinary embodied existence is beneath Him because He experienced all of these things as well.

Therefore, combining both statements yields what is our salvation and our faith. He is God, so He is able to save. He is human, so He is able to represent humanity before God and relate to humanity internally.

This week, I want you to identify the most difficult item currently on your plate (the diagnosis, the child that refuses to talk to you, the dreaded night job, etc.). Then ask yourself one question: how does it differ if the person you are praying to has a body, has been tired, and has been misunderstood like you?

God isn’t viewing your week or life from afar. God has been here. God entered into common everyday existence on purpose so that He might meet you in the middle of the pain and mess of life and carry you through to the throne room of God.

Subscribe for more content and help support this blog.

Leave a comment

“And in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, Our Lord”

Sarah Willis — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 15:27:30 GMT

Ecce Homo by Antonio Ciseri, 1871

My students sign their names to their papers over 100 times per semester. By October, I can typically recognize all of their names simply based on how they write. That is quite an accomplishment considering the unique challenges of deciphering some of their handwriting. What makes this possible is having seen so many examples of their work.

In our day-to-day lives, a name can become worn out and smoother due to repeated usage. This doesn’t mean it’s lost importance; rather, it shows us that we need to allow the original ruggedness and ridges of the name to catch us into remembering its significance.

The next line of the creed lists four names stacked upon each other, and with repeated exposure, we have worn away every single one of them. Jesus. Christ. His Only Son. Our Lord. If we repeat them quickly enough, then the four names appear to become a single word which is used to conclude prayers. But we have to stop and remember the immeasurable worth of each name. People were dragged into stadiums to die over these words. People were walked toward fires to burn alive over them. People took bullets over them.

“Jesus”

Start with probably the most widely known name in this list.

Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew Yeshua, which is a shortened Yehoshua (Joshua). This name means “the LORD Saves.” And it was just as common as John in a class of fourth graders today. Josephus, the Jewish historian writing around the time of Jesus, refers to nearly twenty individuals by the name Jesus. The Gospel accounts have to include a location (e.g., Nazareth) to help identify which individual is being referred to (just as you would refer to “the John from the sales floor” if there were multiple Johns).

As such, God came to earth with a name so mundane that you would have to attach a hometown to ensure which one you are referring to. The angel explains the name to Joseph prior to the birth of Jesus, stating that Jesus will save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). As such, the name is essentially a job description provided in advance. Four verses later, Matthew references another name and attaches it directly alongside Jesus in Matthew 1:23, referencing Isaiah — Immanuel, God With Us. The two names listed side-by-side bear the entire weight of the faith. God is with us, and God will save us, both represented by a child with a fairly common name from a small town that may have had less than 400 residents.

Nathaniel’s response concerning Jesus’ hometown is fairly reflective of the attitude of the time: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46). Nazareth was a community that people frequently ignored; a community that people didn’t boast about being a part of. Picture a small rural town in Mississippi that “city folks” frequently joke about, assuming it is too small, too impoverished, too ordinary, and too remote to be important. Yet, that is exactly where Jesus grew up — in an unpretentious community. Each of us has some variation of Nathaniel’s query. Is God capable of working through that person, that family, that church, or that forgotten area of the world? Time and time again, God demonstrates His power in the locations we would bypass. He enters the mundane and transforms it for His glory.

“Christ”

A lot of people misinterpret Christ for many years without feeling ashamed; there is no shame in it since there is no indicator in how we pronounce it that signifies its function. Christ is a job title. Like “Sheriff,” “Doctor,” or “Coach,” it precedes a name.

Anointed One. To anoint someone meant pouring oil on their head during their installation into an office. Prophets received anointings. Priests received anointings. Kings received anointings: Samuel poured a horn of oil over David while his older brothers watched (1 Samuel 16:13). The act created a visual representation. It demonstrated publicly that this particular individual was officially chosen for this office.

Thus, the confession “Jesus is Christ” represents a statement regarding an office. Israel had been awaiting a specific promised messiah: A son of David who would reign permanently on the throne (2 Samuel 7:12-13), a servant who would take upon himself the guilt of Israel (Isaiah 53), and someone anointed to proclaim good news to the poor and release prisoners (Isaiah 61:1). When Jesus rose in the synagogue at Nazareth and read from that exact passage quoted in Isaiah (“today this scripture is fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:18-19)), He began the process of declaring Himself as qualified for the position publicly. And almost immediately, His neighbors attempted to throw Him off a cliff.

Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi serves as the pivot point in Mark’s gospel account: “You are the Christ” (Mark 8:29). And Jesus immediately starts talking about being killed, which sends Peter into a panic, because the job Peter had in mind involved Romans leaving and thrones being occupied. The title was right, but Peter’s mental picture of what that looked like was very inaccurate.

It is feasible to get the answer right on the test, but be mentally detached by miles. In other words, you might declare “Christ” with complete doctrinal accuracy yet envision someone whose purpose is to facilitate my own personal success.

“His Only Son”

This is the phrase they battled to death over, and I’m not being metaphorical.

Latin is here is unicum. And behind that is the Greek monogenes, which is a word that John uses repeatedly for Jesus (see John 1:14; 1:18; 3:16; 3:18). Old English renders it “begotten,” which sounds antiquated until you understand what was at stake.

In the early part of the fourth century, an Alexandrian priest named Arius began preaching a view that seemed rational and spread rapidly. God is one, and god is unbegun, he stated. The Son is glorious. The most supreme of all creatures, and the one through whom all other things were created. But the Son was still a creature. There was, in the chant that his followers allegedly sang in the streets, a time when he was not.

You can see why it caught. It protects God’s oneness. It gives Jesus an exalted rank. It tidies up the math.

Athanasius spent nearly fifty years and five separate exiles battling against it, and his argument boiled down to something a pastor can preach from the pulpit: a creature cannot redeem other creatures. If the Son is classified within the category of a creature, then what happened at the cross was simply one of us died for the rest of us, and we’re still stuck in the insurmountable ditch of sin and death.

By 325 AD, The Council of Nicaea chose the term homoousios (“of the same substance as the Father”), and the Nicene Creed expresses this concept as follows: begotten, not made. A carpenter creates a chair. But a chair is made up of different stuff than a carpenter. But the Father begets the Son, and the Son is the same kind of thing the Father is. Whatever the Father is, the Son is that.

Therefore, the word only does something tremendous for those who follow after Him. He is Son by nature. We are sons and daughters by adoption, and scripture is clear regarding the distinction. Paul states that God sent His Son so that we may obtain adoption as sons (Galatians 4:4-6). John states that whoever receives Him, He grants the authority to become children of God (John 1:12). Hebrews refers to Jesus as firstborn among many brothers who is not ashamed to call others His family (Hebrews 2:11).

This adoption picture is beautiful and as wonderful as it appears. Adopted children have identical rights as biological children. Same name, same table, same inheritance, and same last-minute panic about who’s picking them up from practice. None of the arrangements are conditional on the child’s performance. Someone took an action beyond their obligations. They processed papers, paid fees, and drove to court to get them

Our standing in the family of God stems from Jesus. He is the Son. We are connected to Him because we are in Him

“Our Lord”

Now comes the explosive one.

We have largely defused this term in contemporary culture. We sing it on a Sunday morning while sipping coffee in our vehicle, and it costs us nothing but the latest price in the drive thru line. But in the first century, however, kyrios was electric.

Two elements loaded that word simultaneously, and both of them are volatile.

The first element loading kyrios was what occurred when Jewish translators translated their sacred writings into Greek about two centuries before Jesus’ arrival on earth. God’s personal name – the four Hebrew letters transliterated as YHWH, which is too holy to speak out loud – they translated with kyrios – Lord. When the earliest Christian believers (all of whom were Jewish monotheists who would rather die than refer to a man as god) referred to a carpenter from Nazareth with kyrios, they were saying something they should have found abhorrent.

Paul cites Isaiah’s declaration that every knee shall bow to the LORD and applies it directly to Jesus without hesitation (Philippians 2:9-11 citing Isaiah 45:23). Paul cites Joel’s declaration that everyone who calls upon the name of the LORD shall be saved and inserts Jesus into that slot without blinking (Romans 10:9-13 citing Joel 2:32). Thomas reaches that point with his hands extended, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).

The second element loading onto kyrios is political, and it was what got people killed. Kyrios Kaisar (Caesar is lord) functioned as a loyalty oath across the Roman Empire. A pinch of incense. A sentence. And you could go home.

Therefore, when Christians declared Jesus is Lord, all those in hearing distance heard the scandal created by that declaration.

Around the year 112, a Roman governor named Pliny wrote to Emperor Trajan asking for guidance because he had Christians in custody and was unsure how to proceed. He described what he had learned about them: they met prior to dawn and sang a hymn to Christ as to a deity (Letters 10.96). That’s a hostile administrator filing paperwork accidentally documenting what these people believed. He executed them for stubbornness; they refused to declare Caesar is lord.

Then there is Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, in his eighties being arrested and brought into the stadium. The proconsul offers him a standard deal — swear allegiance to the fortune of Caesar, curse Christ, and you can go home to your own bed. The account we have has Polycarp responding that he served Christ for 86 years, and Christ never did him wrong. Therefore, how could he blaspheme his king (Martyrdom of Polycarp 9)? They burned him. The letter reporting it went out from one church to another so everybody would know why he’d died.

That is the word we sing on Sunday.

Each of us serves something that issues orders. The calendar, the mortgage, the algorithm, our own reputation, or the vague fear of what others will think. Declaring Jesus as Lord is an allegiance transfer away from all that. We see how this plays out in everyday places. How do you spend a Saturday? What are you going to do for a raise? Are you going to tell the truth when lying will close the deal faster?

Also note the pronoun — our Lord. The confession comes from a mouth in a room full of other mouths, meaning the same allegiance ties me to the Lord as it does to people I would have never chosen. It ties me to people whose politics irritate me, whose kids are hard to hang around with. You get the Lord, and you get his people. There is no version where you take Him alone

What It Looks Like Today

You say Jesus, you’re admitting that God made Himself at home in the ordinary and the everyday: a simple name; a small, insignificant town; a physical body which became weary. The everyday, dull, unpretentious quality of your real-life is the terrain through which He has traveled.

You say Christ, you have to admit that He occupies a position that you didn’t create for him. He comes into the world with a task in process, and part of this task is the cross. Much of my disappointment with God stems from assigning to Him a position or role that He has never assumed.

You say His Only Son, you have to admit that your status as being included in the family is a gift supported by documentation (the nail-scarred hands and the empty tomb). Your inheritance comes through Him, and you are included in Him.

You say Our Lord, you have to admit that there is someone other than yourself issuing commands, and that you’re included among all those who have said the same thing.

Here is your assignment for the week. Choose one item on your calendar for the upcoming seven days — something you do not want to discuss; something you need to buy; a text message you have been putting off sending; an empty evening. Say aloud “Jesus Christ, His Only Son, Our Lord” over this one item. Now ask what would be different regarding this decision if the fourth word was true.

This is the entire test.

If you like what you’re reading, subscribe to follow along in this series on the Apostles’ Creed!

Leave a comment

“I Believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth”

Sarah Willis — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 16:26:11 GMT

Sistine Chapel Ceiling: Creation Of The Sun And Moon, Michelangelo, 1508-12

I’ve witnessed this in every small group I’ve ever been a part of. At some point, someone has had a terrible year. Maybe the scan came back with bad news, or the marriage imploded in the driveway, or their child is struggling with addiction. They sit there with a paper cup of coffee growing cold in their hands, and at some point, around week four of their season of struggle, they say it aloud: I don’t know if I believe in God anymore.

What that person is saying is that they feel alone in the wreck. They say they believe in God, but he feels distant, like He’s abandoned them. This is where many people may find themselves in the broken reality of our day-to-day lives. It’s messy and chaotic. But the God who created the universe is still there, still holding us, and the creed declares it from the outset.

So that is where we’re starting too. We’re going to slow way down, because four separate claims are stacked up in that sentence and most of us breeze through all four of them in about two seconds flat.

“I Believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth.”

“I Believe”

We have a translation problem, and we caused it ourselves.

When you say, “I believe,” chances are you’ve made an estimate. I believe it will rain on Thursday. I believe he’s telling the truth about the mileage. It’s a guess with a evidence.

The Latin here is credo, and it comes from a root that pairs “heart” and “to place.” It’s the word for when you put your heart somewhere. It has the consequence of handing over your trust and, potentially, your life.

Picture the marriage altar. You stand at the front of a church when you’re twenty-six years old and say, “I do,” and every single human being in that room knows that you’re not just saying that with a wedding ring. You have bet on a person that you can’t possibly have finished sorting out, and you will spend the next forty years trying to figure out what you signed up for. Nobody in that building is thinking that you’ve made a strongly-held opinion known about your spouse.

Two little things about the word, and both are important to note.

The first is that it’s singular. “I believe.” The Nicene Creed says, “we believe,” and that’s because it’s coming out of a council of bishops gathered together and speaking on behalf of the church. This creed says “I,” and that’s because it starts out as an answer a soaking-wet person is giving in the middle of a river, in front of some neighbors, on the day their old life officially ends. You can be in a room of four hundred people chanting it in unison, and you’re still saying it by yourself. Your mother can’t say it for you. Neither can your pastor.

The second is that preposition – “in.” Just because it’s small doesn’t mean it isn’t doing an unbelievable amount of work. Augustine broke this down in a sermon on John’s Gospel and came up with three separate things we might mean (Tractates on the Gospel of John 29.6). You can believe that God exists, the way you believe Australia exists, a fact filed away in a cabinet of trivia, costing you nothing on a Tuesday. You can believe God, meaning you take him at his word when he says something. Or you can believe into God, which is the one where you throw your weight. The creed uses that third one.

Which raises a question, “If believing into God is that big a thing, where does anybody get it?” I used to think I supplied it myself. I would work up the nerve, clear the evidence bar, and produce belief the way you produce a decision about a mortgage. But the Reformed tradition directly challenges this view.

Scripture calls faith a gift. Paul tells the church at Ephesus that they were saved through faith, “and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). He tells the Philippians that it “has been granted” to them to believe (Philippians 1:29). Jesus says flatly that no one comes to him unless the Father draws them (John 6: 44), and when Peter finally names him correctly, Jesus tells him he didn’t figure that out, the Father did (Matthew 16:17). Left to ourselves, the picture Scripture paints is grim: dead in our trespasses (Ephesians 2:1), a mind that won’t submit to God and can’t (Romans 8:7). This is what the Reformers meant by total depravity, and it’s more precise than the phrase sounds. It means the rot reaches into the will itself, into the very part that would have to reach for God. A corpse doesn’t decide to start breathing. So, when belief actually shows up in you, it arrived as a rescue.

I find that oddly liberating on the mornings the feeling isn’t there. If faith were a thing I manufacture, a thin morning would be a failure of production, and I’d have to go make more. If faith is something God gives, a thin morning is just a morning to ask him for it again, which is exactly what the father in Mark does when he blurts out the truest prayer in the Bible: “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). That’s not a man faking confidence. That’s a man asking God to supply the very thing being asked of him.

“The Father Almighty”

The creed says the Father almighty. Relationship first, power second, and every ancient version keeps that order in Greek and in Latin. Athanasius argued in the fourth century that naming God from his Son is both the more accurate move and the more reverent one (Against the Arians 1.34). “Father” tells you who he is. “Almighty” tells you what he can do. You have to know who someone is before their power means anything good to you.

Imagine a big, muscular man walking into a room. Whether your shoulders drop and your stomach tightens or you give an ear-to-ear smile really hinges on whether he’s on your side. 240 pounds feels like safety when it’s your coach, and he’s showing you how to survive in that spot. Those same 240 pounds are a horror show in a parking garage at 1 a.m. Same weight. Same strength. The whole thing pivots on relationship, and the creed starts with relationship first.

This is Jesus’ own vocabulary. He teaches his disciples to open prayer with Father (Matthew 6:9). In Gethsemane, sweating and afraid, hours from the worst thing that will ever happen to him, he reaches for the Aramaic Abba. It’s a “home” word; the word you’d hear a kid use at the dinner table (Mark 14:36). Paul says that same household word gets put in our mouth by the Spirit, so we come before him like children hollering down the hallway for a parent (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6). That’s the 2 a.m. voice, the one you use when your car won’t start in a Cracker Barrel parking lot two states from home, and you call the one number you know will pick up.

Now the second word. Our usual way of translating this next word causes us to miss its full significance.

“Almighty” is our rendering of the Greek pantokrator. We hear it and picture raw force, unbridled strength, and boundless potential. The Greek word, though, gets to the idea of a grip. The word is built from “all” plus “to hold,” and it describes how much of the world is in his hands right now. Kelly notes in Early Christian Creeds that the Greek Old Testament translates pantokrator for the Hebrew title we normally get as “LORD of hosts,” the commander, the one with the whole field of battle in his grip. Revelation is saturated with this concept, written for Christians in dire straits, a reminder that the certainty of God’s dominion was their absolute anchor.

With this frame in mind, God becomes much more grounded and accessible. It communicates that the events transpiring within your home are, at this very instant, resting in his control. The custody hearing. The biopsy. The kid who won’t get out of bed.

Which is exactly the hardest sentence to say out loud on the worst day of your life, and I won’t pretend otherwise. This line has been said in famines and camps and at gravesides, by parents holding a child’s hand at the end. They said it because letting go of it was worse.

Put those two words next to each other, and the oldest problem in the world is sitting right there in the middle of your sentence. A good Father would stop this. An almighty God could stop this.

Most of us let one go. Most of us do it without ever announcing it. We keep Father and lose almighty, and end up with a God who loves us and wrings his hands — sympathetic, well-meaning, roughly as useful as a friend who sends a card. Or we keep almighty and lose Father, and end up with a force running the universe that has no particular fondness for us, which is a thing to be managed and appeased and mostly avoided.

The creed won’t do either of those things. It puts both words in one breath and declines to explain how they fit. I’ve learned to hear that as honesty. The creed spends the next eleven lines telling you what this God did about suffering, and the answer comes as a Friday afternoon under a Roman governor. Hold the tension for now. The rest of the creed is the answer. Most of us do let one go, and we do it without ever announcing it.

“Creator of Heaven and Earth”

The creator clause shows up in the Western and Gallic forms that eventually solidify in our received text. Somebody wrote it in deliberately because there was a fight going on.

In the mid-100s, a teacher named Marcion built an enormous following on a tidy solution to a problem people still bring up in every Bible study in America: The Old Testament is hard, and the God in it can seem like a stranger. Marcion’s answer was two gods. The God who made this world (matter, bodies, dirt, blood, childbirth, decay) is a lesser and cruder deity. The Father of Jesus is a different God, higher and kinder, who showed up to get us out of the mess the first one made.

Marcion was not alone. A whole movement that we now file under the label “Gnostic” was teaching a version of the same instinct: that the physical world is a mistake, or a prison, and that salvation means escaping the body to become pure spirit. Matter was the problem. The goal was to escape the cage.

And here’s why a second-century argument is worth exploring: we never actually killed the idea. You hear the Gnostic echo every time someone says the body is a shell they’re waiting to shed, or that they’re “a soul temporarily having a human experience,” as if the human part were the packaging and the real you were vapor. You hear it in the wellness spirituality that treats the body as an obstacle to transcend, and in the flip version that treats the body as nothing but an appetite machine to be maximized. Both of them pushing the idea that the flesh isn’t really you and doesn’t really matter. You hear it in a Christianity that has reduced the whole Gospel to “going to heaven when you die,” escape hatch and all, with the actual earth written off as a losing rental we’re all just waiting to vacate. Same old instinct. The stuff God made is second-rate, and the plan is to get out.

You can see the appeal, then and now. It solves several problems in one motion, and it flatters our suspicion that the physical world is where everything goes wrong. Irenaeus and Tertullian both wrote against Marcion and the Gnostics alike, and their argument was that this fix dismantles the whole faith. It cuts Jesus off from Israel, salvation off from creation, and God off from the world he came to redeem. So, the church wrote all of it out of the confession in five words. One God. Father and creator. The hands that made the dirt are the hands that took the nails.

It means your body is good. It’s God’s own idea, and the creed circles all the way back to that in its final line with the resurrection of the body. Your aging knees, your gray hair, the scar on your forearm. That’s not the packaging to be thrown away. That’s you, and he made it.

“Heaven and earth” is a Hebrew way of saying everything, naming the two ends to mean the whole, the way you’d say you looked high and low for your keys. Genesis 1:1 opens with it. Nehemiah 9:6 and Isaiah 44:24 hammer it. Paul stretches it over the visible and the invisible alike (Colossians 1:16). In Revelation 4: 11, the whole court of heaven says it back to God as worship. Every square inch of it is His. He’s not throwing away the material world. The plan is the rescue of the whole thing, broken parts included. When we sing about going somewhere else, the creed keeps pointing at the floor under our feet.

What It Costs to Mean It

But what does this mean for us? What does it cost us to proclaim this?

If God is Father, you are not self-made. You were kneaded and sculpted by the Creator, and so was everything you can see. You didn’t earn your existence, and you can’t get fired from it. Which is great, until you are the kind of person who runs on achievement, and then it is a hard Gospel to believe. I’ve had years where, to me, being useful felt safer than being loved. Being loved as a gift is uncomfortable for a person who is work-ethical and has a to-do list.

If God is almighty, you are not in charge. Most of my worry, when I face it straight-on, is me applying for the job of pantokrator – trying to cup it all in my hands, the lesson plans and the kid’s fever and my husband’s cardiologist and the roof. The confession lays that down. Laying things down hurts your hands on the way, the way it does when you’ve carried grocery bags too far from the car and your fingers won’t uncurl.

If God is creator, your ordinary Wednesday is the main event. The laundry, the carpool line, the pot on the stove, the student who won’t look up, the ache in your left knee when it rains — he made that stuff and said it was good. There is no further up the spiritual hall for you to move into. This is the room.

This is what I’d suggest doing with this line for a week. Say it out loud, once a day, just the first line. Standing at the sink or sitting in the car before you go in. Give it two minutes, then see which of the words is the one giving you trouble: I, believe, Father, almighty, or creator. It’s usually one specific word. It’s almost never all of them. And once you know which one is yours, that will do more for you this month than another seven points for the existence of God.

If you want to follow and support, consider subscribing!

Leave a comment

What Is the Apostles’ Creed? A Beginner’s Guide to the Oldest Thing Christians Say Out Loud

Sarah Willis — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 18:11:40 GMT

Tapestry, ca. 1550–1600

The first Sunday I stood in a crowded church saying the Apostles’ Creed aloud, I lagged everyone else about half a beat the entire time. Lip-syncing. Guzzling air. Hoping I knew what line came next and thinking, oh please no.

I felt like a fraud. I wasn’t. I just hadn’t grown up saying this every Sunday in a Southern Baptist church.

I teach high school English, so I’ve watched this a time a two. Kids memorize poems and speeches before they have any comprehension of why people still care about them. They carry those words around with them for months, a couple of centuries of weight packed down into something solid. And then they have to say the poem or speech, and they look up afterward with weird looks on their faces, as if the words just rose up and started moving without their permission.

Often understanding happens after the memorization, not before. You sometimes have to hold the words until they’re able to hold you.

I also teach jiu-jitsu, which taught me the same lesson with more bruising. You drill a movement four hundred times before you feel why it works. You go on faith that your coach knows what she’s talking about. And then you’re mid-roll, panicking and running on instinct until suddenly you remember that move and it’s alive, carrying you where you need to go while you play catch-up.

The Apostles’ Creed is like that. It’s the oldest thing most Christians say out loud, and it’s been holding people up for around eighteen hundred years through persecution, plagues, empires, church splits, and every century’s very confident announcement that Christianity was finally finished.

In the next twelve posts, we’ll work through it line by line. But first, we need to know what we have.

The Creed

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

About a hundred and ten words. Forty seconds to say, tops, and it took the church several hundred years to get it that short.

So Did the Twelve Apostles Write It?

No, but the story of how that rumor started is too good not to tell.

In about the year 404, the first proper commentary anyone wrote on the creed (if you’re interested, it’s the Commentarius in Symbolum Apostolorum) began with Rufinus of Aquileia passing on a tradition that he had heard. The story is this: just before the twelve apostles set out to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, they met one final time, and each one of them in turn contributed one line. Peter speaks, and Andrew speaks the next line. The twelve go round, and the twelve sentences come together, and they have done work has crystallized the faith in miniature, and is ready to be taken in twelve different directions.

It’s a wonderful story. It’s also almost certainly not true, and the church has known it was not true for a long, long time. When Eastern and Western church leaders met at the Council of Florence in the fifteenth century, the Eastern delegates in effect told the Westerners, “Okay, we know this is your story. Come on, you know we don’t really believe that.” And no serious historian defends it now. J. N. D. Kelly (whose Early Christian Creeds remains, even after decades, the book to which every other book’s footnotes lead back) reads the legend as a later attempt to explain a text whose actual origins the church had simply forgotten.

But here’s the thing that makes the real story better: the creed is genuinely apostolic in content even though it isn’t apostolic in authorship.

Think about your grandmother’s cornbread recipe. No one sat down and thought up the recipe on a Tuesday afternoon. It got made, and it got changed a little, and it got passed on to a daughter, and it got changed again. By the time it gets to you, it has no single author, but it’s unmistakably one recipe. That’s the creed. It didn’t emerge from a committee meeting. It grew, over time and under pressure, and in the direction that the water was already running.

The Actual History (I Promise This Is the Fun Part)

It started at the water.

Before the creed was a creed, it was a set of questions somebody asked you at your baptism.

The earliest Christians didn’t hand converts a doctrinal statement to initial and date. They walked them into the water and asked them three questions. Do you believe in God the Father almighty? Dunk. Do you believe in Christ Jesus, his Son? Dunk. Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? Dunk.

Three questions, three dunks, one confession. That three-part shape is a direct product of what Jesus told his followers to do in Matthew 28:19.

This creed was never meant to be a classroom exercise. It was designed to be said out loud, soaking wet, in front of witnesses, on the day your old life ended. That’s exactly the scene Paul has in his head in Romans 6:3–4 and Romans 10:9–10. You say it with your mouth, in public, at the hinge of your life.

The early Roman form of those questions is what scholars call the Old Roman Symbol, and it’s the direct ancestor of what we say now. According to Kelly, the core of this creed dates back to the second century (Early Christian Creeds, 101–103).

The oldest complete copy we have is a little wild. It turns up in a letter a bishop Marcellus of Ancyra wrote to the bishop of Rome around the year 340, and we only have that letter because a man named Epiphanius quoted the whole thing in a book attacking him (Panarion 72.3). History preserves things by accident constantly.

Rufinus gives us the Latin version about sixty years later. There may even be an earlier witness to the practice. The baptism rite in a document called the Apostolic Tradition has the candidate asked the three questions and dunked after each one. I’ll be honest with you, though, scholars now argue hard about who actually wrote that text and when.

It was a family resemblance before it was a text.

In the 100s and 200s, Christian writers kept referring to something they called “the rule of faith.” Not a document, more like a shared summary of the story that every church knew, said a little differently in every town, but recognizably the same thing everywhere.

Same song, different keys. You can go read it for yourself in about ten minutes. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.10.1 (c. 180) and Tertullian, On the Prescription of Heretics 13 (c. 200) are the two clearest. Both are free online. And notice what both men say about it: it’s something they received, not something they wrote. Which is exactly how Paul describes the gospel summary he hands on in 1 Corinthians 15: 3–5: “I delivered to you what I also received.”

And why did the church need a rule? Because people kept showing up with a different story.

That’s the part I think we miss. The seemingly unremarkable phrases in the creed often served the most crucial functions. “Creator of heaven and earth” sounds like throat-clearing until you know that a teacher named Marcion had a huge following built on the idea that the God who made the world was a lesser, meaner god than the Father of Jesus. That line is a door slammed in his face.

“Suffered under Pontius Pilate” sounds like filler until you notice it does something no myth ever does: it puts the story on a calendar. It names a mid-level Roman bureaucrat. Nobody adds a mid-level Roman bureaucrat to a legend. You add him because it happened, on a Friday, while a specific unpleasant man was in office. A comparable maneuver can be found in Paul’s 1 Timothy 6:13.

A few lines got added along the way.

This part surprises people, but it shouldn’t. The creed grew.

“He descended to the dead” (descendit in inferna) first appears in the Aquileian text that Rufinus was commenting on in about 404, and then, rather curiously, drops out of sight for two hundred–odd years before reappearing in about 650 to stay.

“The communion of saints” is probably the last part to show up. It is first attested in the Explanatio Symboli of Nicetas, a missionary bishop in what is now Serbia, around 400. It then appears in c. 460 in a book attributed to Faustus of Riez, then in sermons of Caesarius of Arles in the 540s, then in the seventh-century Gallican liturgy. It was a phrase gradually filtering in from the edges of the map.

The very name of the creed itself is later than you would expect. The phrase symbolum apostolorum, literally, “the apostles’ symbol” means, metaphorically, a badge, a token, something you show at the door. And that phrase turns up in Ambrose, Letter 42, around 390.

The wording that we say today, nearly word for word, first appears in a Latin handbook by an itinerant monk named Priminius (De singulis libris canonicis scarapsus) in the early 700s. But he didn’t invent it. Kelly points out that creeds “practically identical” to ours were already in circulation in southern Gaul in the 400s (Creeds, 413). This is why scholars normally describe our text as of Spanish-Gallic origin rather than Roman. Then Charlemagne got involved in the early 800s and insisted that everybody in his empire recite the same one, and that was that. The version that had been evolving out in the provinces eventually made its way back to Rome and became the standard.

It’s not the same kind of thing as the Nicene Creed.

People mix these up constantly.

Apostles’ Creed

Where it came from: Grew up out of baptisms

What it’s for: Teaching new believers

How it sounds: Plain, personal — “I believe”

Length: ~110

Nicene Creed

Where it came from: Written by church councils (325, revised 381)

What it’s for: Settling a specific fight (about who Jesus is)

How it sounds: Precise, technical, corporate — “We believe”

Length: ~226

Crafted at Nicaea in 325 and later refined in Constantinople in 381, the Nicene Creed functioned as a legal text designed specifically to counter the teachings of Arius, a priest who asserted the Son was a created entity. The importance of every phrase within it is comparable to key legal evidence. The Apostles’ Creed is what you tell a kid at the front door before you send her out into the world.

Quick note: Eastern Orthodox churches don’t use the Apostles’ Creed in worship. Not because they disagree with anything in it, but because of what it leaves out. They want the more precise Nicene language about Jesus, so that’s the one they say.

Okay, But What Even Is a Creed?

A creed isn’t there to take the place of the faith, or to shrink it. It’s there to make the faith sayable: out loud, together, by people who will never meet each other and don’t share a language.

It’s a story, not a checklist. Credo is Latin for “I believe,” but it lands closer to “I give my heart to” than “I hold this opinion.” Read the creed again and count the verbs. God makes. God comes. God dies. God rises. God returns. God gathers. God restores. That’s a plot. It reads like a testimony, not a multiple-choice exam.

And the Bible does this too, all the time. 1 Corinthians 15:3–5, Philippians 2:6–11, 1 Timothy 3:16, Colossians 1:15–20 — those all look like little pre-existing confessions the writers are quoting, not composing. Israel had been doing it for centuries; Deuteronomy 6: 4–9 hands you a creed and then tells you to say it at dinner, in the car, going to bed, and getting up. The Shema set the precedent for Christian believers.

It’s a fence. A fence marks where the field ends. Inside it, you can run anywhere you want. The creed says nothing about church government, the end times debate, or whose theology podcast you should listen to. There’s enormous room in there. It just tells you where the field stops. Paul calls this “the pattern of sound teaching” and tells Timothy to guard it (2 Timothy 1:13–14). Jude calls it “the faith once for all delivered” (Jude 3). Hebrews calls it the foundation, the thing you build off of, not the whole house (Hebrews 6:1–2).

It’s a gift you didn’t earn. You didn’t write it. Neither did I. That’s the whole beauty of it.

Think about wedding vows. Sometimes people write their own vows because the borrowed ones are boring. But the borrowed ones work because they’re borrowed. You’re saying something bigger than your own feelings on that particular Saturday. They reflect a wisdom gathered from so many marriages, so many lives lived. And on the Tuesday five years later when you don’t feel a single romantic thing, the vow is still there, holding the marriage while you catch up to it.

That’s what the creed does. On the mornings when my faith is thin, and I can’t produce one sincere original sentence about God, I can stand in a room and say words that eighteen centuries of people have said, and let the church carry me for four minutes. That’s what a body of Christ is for (1 Corinthians 12:12–27).

It fits in your pocket. It was built for memory, for people who couldn’t read, who didn’t own a Bible, who were in danger. 1 Peter 3:15 assumes a regular Christian can explain their hope on the spot, in the street, under pressure with clarity. You can carry this thing into a prison cell. You can teach it to a five-year-old. Try that with a systematic theology textbook.

And What a Creed Isn’t

It’s not a substitute for the Bible. The creed has no intrinsic authority. The ultimate authority comes from Scripture. Every line exists because somebody read the Bible carefully and tried to say the whole thing briefly, which is precisely what Jesus does when he summarizes the entire Law and Prophets in two sentences (Matthew 22:37–40).

It’s not a complete theology. Huge things are missing. The Sermon on the Mount. Communion. Justification. Israel. It was never trying to be all things. It’s the front door, not the floor plan.

It’s not a denominational team jersey. Catholics, Orthodox, Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans, and the nondenominational church in the strip mall can all say these exact words. In a world this fractured, this is a uniting thing (Ephesians 4:4–6).

It’s not a magic spell. Reciting it doesn’t save anybody. James 2:19 is savage about this. He says the demons have flawless theology, and it hasn’t helped them a bit. And Jesus is blunter still in Matthew 7:21–23: not everyone who says Lord, Lord. Confession without allegiance is just accurate information.

It’s not a way to skip thinking. This is the objection I hear most: recited words go dead. Sometimes they do. Isaiah 29: 13 names that exact problem: lips close and hearts far. But the fix for a hollow confession isn’t no confession. It’s a deeper one. That’s the whole reason for this series.

And “no creed but Christ” is a creed. I say that tenderly as I can, because I’ve heard this so many times. But everybody’s got one. The only real question is whether yours got examined in daylight, or whether you absorbed it by accident from your family, your feed, and the general mood of the room. An unexamined creed still runs your life. It just doesn’t ask permission first.

What’s Coming

Twelve posts, one per line, which I now see as an accidental nod to that old legend about twelve men standing in a circle:

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth
And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord
Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary
Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried
He descended to the dead
On the third day he rose again
He ascended into heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father
He will come again to judge the living and the dead
I believe in the Holy Spirit
The holy catholic Church, the communion of saints
The forgiveness of sins
The resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting

Every post I’ll tell you where the line came from, what fight it was picking, what Scripture holds it up, and what it actually costs to mean it.

If you’ve been saying these words your whole life without looking at them, come with me. If you’ve never said them at all, come anyway. You can stand in the back and mouth along half a beat behind. That’s where I started.

Some FAQs

“Is the Apostles’ Creed in the Bible?” Not as a single passage, no. But every line comes out of Scripture, and the New Testament has short confession-shaped summaries scattered through it that look like creeds in seed form. 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 and 1 Timothy 3:16 are the usual suspects.

“Why does it say ‘holy catholic Church’? I’m not Catholic.” Small-c catholic just means “universal” — the whole church, everywhere, in every century. The word is way older than the Roman Catholic Church as a distinct institution. You are not accidentally converting.

“What does ‘he descended to the dead’ mean?” Honestly, that’s the most argued-over line in the whole thing, and it gets its own post. Some versions say, “descended into hell.” The question underneath it ( where was Jesus on Saturday?) has at least three serious answers, and I’ll lay them out fairly.

“Do I have to believe every single line to call myself a Christian?” The creed is trying to describe what Christian belief is, so that’s not a “nothing” question. But faith has a growth curve. Saying it while you’re still wrestling with parts of it isn’t as sign of being a hypocrite. You’re still learning and growing in faith, growing in the grace of God.

The Bible Behind Every Line

If you want to read ahead or if you’re teaching this in a small group, here’s the Scripture under each clause.

1. God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth: Genesis 1:1; Deuteronomy 6:4; Nehemiah 9:6; Isaiah 44:24; Malachi 2:10; Matthew 6:9; 1 Corinthians 8:6; Ephesians 3:14–15; Revelation 4:11

2. Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord: John 1:1–14; John 3:16; Romans 1:3–4; Romans 10:9; 1 Corinthians 8:6; Philippians 2:9–11; Colossians 1:15–17; Hebrews 1:1–3

3. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary: Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:18–25; Luke 1:26–38; John 1:14; Galatians 4:4–5

4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, died, buried: Isaiah 53; Matthew 27:11–66; Mark 15; Luke 23; John 19; 1 Corinthians 15:3–4; 1 Timothy 6:13; Hebrews 13:12

5. He descended to the dead: Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:24–31; Romans 10:6–7; Ephesians 4:8–10; 1 Peter 3:18–20; 1 Peter 4:6

6. On the third day he rose again: Hosea 6:2; Matthew 28:1–10; Luke 24; Romans 4:25; 1 Corinthians 15:4–8, 20

7. Ascended into heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father: Psalm 110:1; Luke 24:50–51; Acts 1:9–11; Ephesians 1:20–23; Hebrews 1:3; Hebrews 8:1; Hebrews 12:2

8. He will come again to judge the living and the dead: Daniel 7:13–14; Matthew 25:31–46; John 5:22–29; Acts 10:42; Acts 17:31; 2 Corinthians 5:10; 2 Timothy 4:1; Revelation 22:12

9. I believe in the Holy Spirit: Genesis 1:2; Joel 2:28–29; John 14:16–17; John 16:13–15; Acts 2:1–4; Romans 8:9–17; 1 Corinthians 12:4–13; 2 Corinthians 13:14

10. The holy catholic Church, the communion of saints: Matthew 16:18; Acts 2:42–47; Romans 12:4–5; 1 Corinthians 1:2; 1 Corinthians 12:12–27; Ephesians 2:19–22; Ephesians 4:4–6; Hebrews 12:1, 22–24; 1 John 1:3

11. The forgiveness of sins: Psalm 32:1–5; Psalm 103:12; Isaiah 1:18; Jeremiah 31:34; Matthew 26:28; Luke 24:47; Acts 2:38; Acts 10:43; Ephesians 1:7; Colossians 1:13–14; 1 John 1:9

12. The resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting: Job 19:25–27; Isaiah 25:6–8; Daniel 12:2; John 5:28–29; John 11:25–26; 1 Corinthians 15:35–57; Philippians 3:20–21; 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18; Revelation 21:1–5

Where I Got All This

The old stuff (most of it’s free online)

Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.10.1 (c. 180) — the “rule of faith,” clearest early version
Tertullian, On the Prescription of Heretics 13 (c. 200) — same idea, different town
Apostolic Tradition 21 — the three baptism questions. Heads up: scholars now argue hard about who wrote this and when, so don’t lean your whole weight on it
Marcellus of Ancyra’s letter to Rome (c. 340), quoted in Epiphanius, Panarion 72.3 — oldest complete text we’ve got
Rufinus, Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed (c. 404) — the twelve-apostles legend, and the first “descended” line
Ambrose, Letter 42 (c. 390) — first time it’s called the apostles’ creed
Nicetas of Remesiana, Explanation of the Creed (c. 400) — first “communion of saints”
Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures (c. 350) — what it looked like to teach this to converts
Augustine, On Faith and the Creed, and Sermons 212–215

The serious scholarship:

J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (3rd ed., 1972). Still the standard. If you buy one book off this list, buy this one.
Liuwe Westra, The Apostles’ Creed: Origin, History, and Some Early Commentaries (2002). The big modern study and updates Kelly in places.
Wolfram Kinzig, Faith in Formulae (Oxford, 2017, 4 vols.). Every early creed text, critically edited.
Bradshaw, Johnson, and Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary (2002). Why you should be careful citing “Hippolytus.”
Jaroslav Pelikan, Credo (Yale, 2003). The best book anywhere on what creeds are for.
Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vols. 1–2 (1877, public domain). History’s dated; the side-by-side texts are gold.

If you want something more:

Ben Myers, The Apostles’ Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism (2018). Short, gorgeous, line by line.
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline (1949). Lectures on the creed given in a bombed-out building in Bonn.
Michael Bird, What Christians Ought to Believe (2016). Written for people raised on “no creed but the Bible.”
J. I. Packer, Affirming the Apostles’ Creed (2008). Brief and easy to understand.
Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed (2003). Strong on how counter-cultural these claims are.

Leave a comment

The Command I Keep Trying to Escape

Sarah Willis — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 20:01:19 GMT

The Combat, William Etty (1787–1849)

Anger has a temperature. I can tell you mine down to the degree.

It’s down low in my chest, just behind the sternum, this little pilot light that never quite goes out. On most days, it is good, it is quiet. It hums small and blue, not heating anything. Then somebody says the thing or does the thing or, honestly, I just remember the thing and I feel the flue swing open. Heat climbs my neck. My jaw sets itself without asking me. My hands clinch with opinions.

It’s no secret, the Lord has done real work here, and I want to give credit where credit’s due. For a season, the fire got out on a regular basis and scorched people I love. I’ve made a lot of progress. I am more controlled these days. I can sit across from someone who has genuinely wronged me, and I can keep my voice level. I can keep my words kind and to anybody watching it looks like peace.

But y’all. I know what banked coals are. If you’ve ever kept a wood stove you know you can shut the damper, close the door, go to bed, and come down the next morning to find that fire alive under its little coat of ash. Orange. Patient. Just waiting on air.

Also, fun fact about me: I do jiu jitsu. Have for almost a decade now. I tell people I train because it keeps me healthy, it relieves stress, which is true. Here’s what’s also true: several nights a week I put my hands on another consenting adult and try, within agreed-upon rules, to make them quit. There is a sanctioned hour in my week for a little controlled violence, and I love it. I have made peace with loving it. Mostly.

Paul had his thorn in the flesh, that messenger sent to harass him, the thing he begged God three separate times to take away (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). The Bible never tells us what his was. I can tell you mine. Mine glows.

So when Scripture commands me to forgive, it’s talking to a woman who keeps coals. It knows exactly who it’s dealing with. And it will not lower its voice for me.

A Command With Teeth

“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15).

I understand the temptation to water this command down. I’ve had the feeling myself. But it’s in the same gospels where Jesus tells the whole story about it: a guy’s forgiven 10k talents of debt (that’s billions of dollars; an unfathomable sum in ancient money), gets outside, then beats up someone for a few coins by comparison (Matt 18:21-35). If I’ve had everything forgiven, and I won’t forgive, I’ve missed the point of what was done for me, entirely.

Initially, it feels like my grudge is between the person who hurt me and me, but it walks right over to the cross and stakes its claim. Every time I hold on to it, I’m functionally saying that what Jesus paid for me was less than what that person owes me. And when I write that out, it’s ludicrous. And I live like it’s true way more often than I want to admit.

The Anger Underneath

James says, “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20).

For years, I convinced myself that my anger was righteous anger. That’s the thing about anger. It always comes to you dressed like justice. “They were wrong. I was wronged. This fire is holy!” And yeah, sure. Sometimes the wrong was wrong! Forgiveness never requires you to deny that the thing happened or that the thing mattered. Denying the thing is just sinning with a Bible verse duct-taped to it.

But Paul draws a line I step across all the time: “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil” (Ephesians 4:26-27).

Anger is allowed to be a visitor. Scripture just forbids it from becoming a tenant. Mine just signs a lease. Mine unpacks boxes. Mine, the longer it stays, the more it renovates. It rips out gratitude and suspicion is installed, yanks up joy and resentment is laid down, until the whole house is decorated around the offense. I have lived in that house. Some weeks I still keep a key.

“Give no opportunity to the devil.” Paul’s words are a magnifying glass on me. Because my anger is a foothold. It’s a door I prop open every night I crawl into bed to re-litigate an argument I should have won

What Forgiveness Actually Is

Somewhere along the way I picked up the idea that forgiveness was a feeling. Like I’d know it happened when the anger evaporated and warm fuzzies moved in. So I waited on the feeling. It rarely showed. And I decided I must just be bad at forgiving.

But look at how Paul frames it: “Bear with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (Colossians 3:13). “As the Lord has forgiven you.” God’s forgiveness of me was a decision that cost Him everything, made while I was still His enemy (Romans 5:8). He never sat around waiting to feel like it.

Forgiveness is a decision to release the debt. To take my hands off the scale. To resign from all the jobs I keep giving myself: prosecutor, judge, warden. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). He’s a better judge than I am anyway. Better information, cleaner motives, zero pettiness.

And here’s what I’m learning, slowly and badly: the decision comes first and it usually comes more than once. I’ve had to forgive the same offense on a Tuesday and again on Thursday and again a month later when the memory jumped me in the car line. I used to think that meant my forgiveness didn’t take. Now I think that’s just what seventy times seven looks like from the inside (Matthew 18:22). Sometimes it’s the same wound, released again every time my hands sneak back around it.

The Grace in the Thorn

Okay, here’s the strange mercy I never saw coming. When Paul begged God to take his thorn God said no. He said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

I have begged God to just take the anger. Make me one of those naturally gentle people who let stuff roll off. Y’all, He hasn’t. And I’m starting to suspect the thorn is doing something the removal never could. Because every single time I forgive I have to do it from weakness. I have to crawl back to grace. I can’t forgive out of my own sweetness. I checked. The account’s empty. I can only forgive out of His, borrowed fresh every single time. My anger keeps me a beggar at the cross, and the cross it turns out, is the only place forgiveness has ever come from anyway.

So this is me imploring you from inside the same fight, shoulder to shoulder: whoever it is, that name that floated up while you were reading this, start today. Start with a decision. The feelings can catch up whenever they feel like it. Say the name to God. Tell Him the truth about how mad you are; He can take it. He’s seen worse from David. Then open your hands, even if you have to pry your own fingers back one at a time, and hand the debt to the only One qualified to hold it.

You’ll probably have to do it again tomorrow.

Do it again tomorrow.

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).

He went first. He always goes first. Our forgiving is only ever an echo.

If this found you mid-fight with your own coals, come tell me about it in the comments. Bring the real version, ash and all.

Leave a comment

The Lie That Sounds Like Wisdom

Sarah Willis — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:29:31 GMT

Action Office II (1968)-Herman Miller, USA.

Self-sufficiency is easily one of the most respectable lies we believe because rarely does it march into our lives waving a flag of rebellion. More often, self-sufficiency sounds wise. It sounds responsible, mature, disciplined, prepared. It tells us to make the plan. Build the résumé. Keep our options open. S…

The Light Still Shines

Sarah Willis — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:07:52 GMT

A small thing, holding something eternal. The light hasn’t gone anywhere.

I revisit the first verses of John more times than I can remember. It’s one of those passages I never grow tired of reading. I think because it speaks so directly to the foundation of everything.

Last Christmas, I found myself making ornaments with this verse written on them—in Gree…

He is Risen

Sarah Willis — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 14:07:20 GMT

He is Risen!

Today is one of the high holy days. It’s an amazing morning of triumph over sin, death, and the grave. Today is the day that gives life to our bodies, gives life to our hopes. Today is the day that changes everything. Easter is an amazing moment to remember that Jesus is our hope and our stay.

But take a moment with me to remember that the fi…

Staying in the Conversation | Suicide Prevention and Awareness

Sarah Willis — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:58:42 GMT

If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out. You are not a burden.

I’ve been thinking about the last two episodes of my podcast Willis Unscripted. I sat down with Gene Fought from Grapple; 4 Life, and then with Adina Welker from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Both conversations were powerful, and both kept circling back to…

Everyone Is a Theologian

Sarah Willis — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:27:32 GMT

Most theology happens on ordinary Tuesdays, not just Sunday mornings.

When most people imagine a theologian, they picture a scholar tucked away under a dim library lamp with yellowed note cards and a mug of coffee that went cold four hours ago.

they imagine professors leaning over desks with stacks of yellowed papers at 2 a.m. Maybe there is a Greek Bible…

The Quiet Strength of Showing Up

Sarah Willis — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:48:26 GMT

Growth takes time, layer by layer.

Sometimes seasons of life come when showing up is the spiritual thing to do. I didn’t think that was true for a long time. When I was younger, I thought Christianity was supposed to be about inspiration and big moments and the journal-filling type of faith where you have tons of revelations. One of my friends said God o…

Are We Living the Faith We Proclaim?

Sarah Willis — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 14:52:33 GMT

The Prophet Amos (engraving) from “The Bible” by Gustave Dore

Sometimes when reading scripture, it seems as if God chooses the least qualified or most unimpressive candidate in the room. This is true for the prophet Amos.
Every time I revisit Amos, his words seem very relatable and uncomfortable.

I can hear him while I’m driving by three churches on my way…

When God Enters the Mess

Sarah Willis — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 14:41:23 GMT

Matthew 1:18–25

4th Sunday of Advent

Reading from the Revised Common Lectionary.

The Dream of Saint Joseph, Philippe de Champaigne, 1642

Matthew tells the story of Jesus’ birth in a way that feels almost understated. There is no manger scene yet. No angels singing to shepherds. Matthew doesn’t describe Jesus’ family making a long trip. Instead, he shows us …

Life Comes from Above

Sarah Willis — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 14:26:27 GMT

Readings: Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; 2 Samuel 7:23-29; John 3:31-36

All readings come from the Revised Common Lectionary.

The Holy Night (The Nativity), Carlo Maratta, 1655

In my college days, I’d sit in front of the creek behind the house I lived in and simply enjoy watching the quiet flow of the water. But after a downpour, it would suddenly swell, carrying w…

The Weight of God’s Kindness

Sarah Willis — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 14:06:30 GMT

Readings: Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; 2 Samuel 7:18-22; Galatians 4:1-7

All readings come from the Revised Common Lectionary.

Simeon’s Song of Praise, Arent de Gelder, c. 1700

When I cleaned out a drawer that I hadn’t opened in years, I found old notes, half-used notebooks, and receipts folded in thirds. Things I had once believed to be urgent and couldn’t bear t…

God’s Faithfulness in Thin Seasons

Sarah Willis — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 14:42:19 GMT

Readings: Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; 2 Samuel 7:1-17; Galatians 3:23-29

All readings come from the Revised Common Lectionary

Nativity scene from a 15th-century Flemish Book of Hours. Glencairn Museum collection, Bryn Athyn, PA, 07.MS.639a.

There are times when life feels thin, when everything seems to touch a nerve. Mornings seem to arrive too early, and the flo…

When God Moves Toward What Is Broken

Sarah Willis — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 14:52:27 GMT

Readings: Psalm 42; Zechariah 8:1–17; Matthew 8:14–17, 28–34

All readings are from the Revised Common Lectionary.

The Adoration of the Kings, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1564

I still recall waking to the first warmth of the heater in my room and hearing the creak of the wooden floorboards as my husband walked to let the dog outside. I held a cup of tea, it w…

Sarah M Willis

“On the Third Day He Rose Again”

“On the Third Day”

“He Rose”

What the First Christians Put Forward

A formula older than the gospels.

Women discovered the tomb.

The opponents of Christianity acknowledged the empty tomb.

The wrong people converted.

Monotheistic Jews changed the day.

What the Resurrection Secures

It’s the Father’s verdict on the cross.

It’s the vindication of who he claimed to be.

It’s the firstfruits of a harvest.

It’s the beginning of the new creation.

Where This Lands in the Ordinary

At the graveside.

In the middle of a failure.

Read More on This Line

“He Descended to the Dead”

The Translation Problem

Where the Line Came From

What the Bible Gives Us

Peter’s sermon at Pentecost

Paul on ascension and descent

Peter’s passage

Revelation

Three Ways Christians Read It

One: he was really, truly dead.

Two: he suffered the reality of judgment on our behalf.

Three: he entered the realm of the dead in victory.

My honest read on all three.

What All Three Agree On

He went all the way down.

Death is occupied territory now.

He holds the keys.

Saturday

Read More on This Line

“Suffered Under Pontius Pilate, Was Crucified, Died, and Was Buried”

“Suffered Under Pontius Pilate”

How Sure Can We Be This Happened?

“Was Crucified”

The Servant Isaiah Described

“Died, and Was Buried”

The Place Where It Was Finished

What Does It Mean to be Serious About This Line?

Read More on This Line

“Conceived by the Holy Spirit, Born of the Virgin Mary”

“Conceived by the Holy Spirit”

“Born of the Virgin Mary”

Why Eleven Words Hold So Much Importance

The Second Adam

Which Makes Him a High Priest Who Understands

What Does It Cost to Be Serious About This?

Read More on This Line

“And in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, Our Lord”

“Jesus”

“Christ”

“His Only Son”

“Our Lord”

What It Looks Like Today

Read More on This Line

Scripture

Ancient sources

Modern scholarship and commentary

“I Believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth”

“I Believe”

“The Father Almighty”

“Creator of Heaven and Earth”

What It Costs to Mean It

Read More on This Line

Scripture

Ancient Sources

On Faith as a Gift (Reformed Tradition)

Modern Scholarship and Commentary

What Is the Apostles’ Creed? A Beginner’s Guide to the Oldest Thing Christians Say Out Loud

The Creed

So Did the Twelve Apostles Write It?

The Actual History (I Promise This Is the Fun Part)

It started at the water.