Faith

The Creed means more than that, however.  It begins “I believe in God”, and that means not only that “I believe about God”, but “I put my trust in him, I have confidence in him”.

We may compare ourselves in this life with people climbing a snow-covered mountain.  The one who goes first is the guide and all the others follow in single file.  The guide knows the best and safest way to the top, and that is why the climbers trust him completely.  They are confident that as long as they follow him and do as he says, they will reach the summit.

So when we say in the Creed “I believe in God”, we mean “I take God as my Guide through life”.  And when we do that we may be sure that he will lead us safely through this world to the life beyond so that, when we come to die, we shall be with him still.

Belief in God, therefore, means both belief in the truths about God and also trust in God himself, and all of this is summed up in the one word ‘faith’.  Faith is something God gives us.  All the truths of the Christian religion are reasonable, otherwise they would not be true, but none of them are so obvious that they force us to believe them.  For example, it is a truth in arithmetic that two and two make four, and you cannot help believing that.  But the truths of the Christian religion (e.g. the truth that Jesus is God as well as Man) are different – they are not so obvious that they force us to believe them, although it can be shown that there are good reasons for doing so.

What happens is this.  We begin by deciding that these things are reasonable and that we ought therefore to accept them.  Then God gives us the gift of faith and we become certain that they are true, not just because they are reasonable but because it is God who had made them known to us.  In other words, faith is a gift from God by which we trust him and believe without doubt the truths he has revealed to us.  Coming to trust and believe in God doesn’t happen all at once – we all grow into our Christian faith and there may be times, especially if life is very difficult, when we simply say to God “I believe; help my unbelief” (NRSV, Mark 9:24).

SUMMARY

1. There are three Creeds or Beliefs – the Apostles’, Nicene and Athanasian – but they all put the same truths in different words.

2. What we do and how we behave depends on what we believe.

3. Believing in God means trusting God, having faith in him.  Faith is a gift of God by which we trust him and believe without doubt the truths he has revealed to us.