Final sermon in series on the Nicene Creed

This is the final sermon in the series on the Nicene Creed. Today we look at the last part of the Creed. You may find it helpful to have the text of the Creed open.

The last few lines of the Creed read as follows:

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins,

We look for the resurrection of the dead,

and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Notice the key words: ‘ forgiveness of sins’, ‘resurrection of the dead’, and ‘the world to come’.  We also find related words and phrases earlier in the Creed. At the end of the section about Jesus we read that,

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,

and his kingdom will have no end.

This adds to our list of key words the word ‘judge’.

All these things at the conclusion of the Creed are about ‘The End’ – captial T, capital E. The End. What is being talked about here is the final state of the world, the universe, and any other universes that there may be; the end of all that God has made in heaven and earth, things ‘seen and unseen’; everything that the ‘one Lord, Jesus Christ’ came to save.

So what have we here? First, Jesus as judge of the living and dead, which is related to one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Sin (and especially ‘sins’, I notice) is not a fashionable word in parts of the Church today. And certainly ‘judgement’ isn’t. These words and ideas don’t seem to sit comfortably with ‘welcoming Church’.

So, is talk of sins and judgement out of date in today’s church? After all the Creed is 1700 years old. Perhaps we need an update? Does it matter whether we do good or evil? Will I be judged? Will the world be judged according to some standard in the end?  Does morality have relevance any more? After all ‘virtue signalling’ is a bad thing isn’t it? Do good and evil really exist? Does it matter in the long term if I, or anyone else for that matter, do good or do evil? Let’s think about this using the Creed.

This part of the Creed is under the overarching belief in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.  Revd Michelle explored this in particular last week. God is the creator of life and the giver of life. God creates the possibility of our sharing in the life of God’s own self. ‘Sin’ is the Church’s word for everything that blocks us off from sharing in that life. If we opt for Christ in our lives we opt to reject ‘sin, the world and the devil’ as we say when someone is baptised. So when we say ‘we acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins’ we acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord of our lives and, as members of his body, the Church, we reject all that is evil. We know that evil turns up in our lives and we collude with it through ‘weakness or our own deliberate fault’. That is why the Church always gives time and space for confession and absolution in her main services. 

If we hold on to this way of looking at things we will learn to long for that final state that God has promised to bring in, The End, when ‘Christ will come again’ and evil is finally overcome, both the evil in our own lives and in the world around. Painful though it will be, we will want to see our lives and the life of the world exposed to the light of Jesus. When we confess our sins in Church we are rehearsing what will need to be done when Jesus comes to judge the living and dead at the end of time. Our prayer must be that we may place ourselves unconditionally in the hands of Jesus our Saviour.

The hymn ‘Jesu, grant me this I pray’ puts it well:

If the world or Satan lay

tempting snares about my way, 

I am safe when I abide

in thy heart and wounded side.’

In Jesus, truth and love are one. We will not have to lurk in the shadows of shame and guilt any more.

The other word that our culture finds so difficult, even to say, is death. We so often use other words and phrases. ‘Passing’ seems to be popular at the moment. ‘He passed peacefully’. Similarly, in the Church ‘funeral’ has dropped out. The saying goes that only two things are certain: death and taxes. We try to avoid both. The Creed says nothing about taxes but it speak of death. It talks about ‘the resurrection of the dead’. Notice also that this is something ‘we look for’. We look for, expectantly, hoopefully, the resurrection of the dead. Suely this casts a different light of death.

Christian faith, as always, roots itself in the one Lord, Jesus Christ. Christ died, and is risen, risen from the dead and alive for evermore. St Paul talks about Jesus as the first fruits of a great harvest. What God has shown us in Jesus is prepared for us all. ‘I am the resurrection and the life’, says Jesus.  Just as sin blocks our sharing in the life of God so does death.  But Jesus, the man who is also ‘true God from true God’ is fully alive with the life of God, and has conquered death, rising on the third day.

We cannot escape our dying, but death is not the end if Christ is raised from the dead. As with our sinfulness, so with our mortality, we place ourselves unconditionally in the hands of Jesus our Saviour. The dying Jesus prayed on the cross, ‘Into your hands I commend my spirit’. This can become our own dying prayer. Just as in Christ we learn to live well, so in Christ we learn to die well.

Again, our hymn  ‘Jesu, grant me this I pray’ puts it well

Death will come one day to me;

Jesu, cast me not from thee:

dying let me still abide

in thy heart and wounded side.

Raised from the dead we enter, in the final words of the Creed, ‘the life of the world to come’. This is the life that the risen Jesus now lives as he meets us in this Eucharist. That life consists, in the words of  today’s Collect, of ‘such good things as pass our understanding’. In that life everything in heaven and earth is drawn together in Christ, and God is all in all.

A verse from another hymn that we sing expresses this great Christian vision:

Changed from glory into glory

till in heaven we take our place,

till we cast our crowns before thee,

lost in wonder, love and praise.

Service: Canon Bill Croft 27th July 2025. (St John The Baptist Church Peterborough UK)

Readings: Genesis 18:20-32, Psalm 138, Colossians 2:6-19, Luke 11:1-13