The Nicene Creed And Why It Matters Today

My Sermon At Lakeside Church This Sunday

Jesus, Justice & Joash is based on the work of Rev. Joash P. Thomas - global human rights leader, international speaker, and theologian. Joash’s first book, The Justice of Jesus (releasing TOMORROW, September 30) is available for pre-order here or wherever you buy your books. Anyone ordering before September 30 via Baker Book House gets the book for 40% off + free shipping! You can also register for a 5-week live, online cohort on Decolonizing the Western Church taught by Joash here starting in October if you’d like to process the book’s content deeper in discussion with Joash and a small group of other justice advocates.

Good morning! If we haven’t met, my name is Joash Thomas. I serve on the teaching team here at Lakeside Church.

And today, I get to kick us off in a brand new series called ‘This Is Us’. And I’m going to start us off with what we believe as a church. Now, I don’t know if you know this but about 18 months ago, our church moved to a new statement of faith and practice. Well, I say new statement of faith but it’s actually the most ancient Christian statement of faith we have today – this thing called the Nicene Creed.

So we just wrapped up our series on the book of Acts. Throughout Acts, we see the early church working through some pretty messy disagreements – sometimes even holding councils to resolve divisive issues.

So today, we’re going to fast forward about 250 years from the book of Acts to what is perhaps one of the most important moments in the history of the Global Church – the moment that gives the Global Church its very first statement of faith – the Nicene Creed. Here at Lakeside Church, the Nicene Creed binds us all together. In fact, it’s the Nicene Creed that binds the Global Church together – even if we don’t always act like it.

Now yes, Jesus is sufficient to bind us together. But as we all know, and as we say here all the time at Lakeside Church, theology matters. Theology matters. Because our theology shapes the way we love God and love neighbour. Our theology shapes the way we treat each other. And our theology shapes the way we prioritize justice.

I don’t know if you’re aware of this but we western Christians care a LOT about our beliefs. Churches split all the time in the west over slightly different beliefs. New denominations are formed all the time because of different beliefs.

But what if I told you that there was one ancient early church statement of faith that has survived the test of time – a statement of faith that is actually celebrating its 1700 year anniversary this year! A statement of faith that is accepted by evangelicals, protestants, Anglicans, Catholics, Baptists, Pentecostals, Methodists, United Church Christians, Orthodox Christians and every major Christian denomination across the world.

So here’s the Nicene Creed – here’s what we at Lakeside Church consider our true doctrinal north. I’m going to read this for us first and then we’ll unpack it:

We believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.

Creator God is the maker of heaven and earth. And the same God who created heaven and earth created YOU to join him in his work of creation – of things visible and invisible. This is where we get our creativity from!

And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
begotten from the Father before all ages,
God from God,
Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made;
of the same essence as the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven;
he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary,
and was made human.
He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered and was buried.
The third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures.
He ascended to heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again with glory
to judge the living and the dead.
His kingdom will never end.

At the very center of the Nicene Creed is the center of our faith: Jesus - the light of the world. God is light! But Jesus tells us, his disciples that WE are the light of the world. Everyone and I mean EVERYONE (even the people who piss you off on Facebook this week), EVERYONE who bears the image of God bears the light of God who came down from heaven, lived among us to show us this light within us and to show us how to walk in the light of the God who created us. If God is light, and if God created us in his image, we are born with his light in us. And this is why Jesus came - to remind us that WE are the light of the world. The Creed goes on to say:

And we believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life.
He proceeds from the Father (and the Son),
and with the Father (and the Son) is worshiped and glorified.
He spoke through the prophets.

The Holy Spirit is the giver of life. And the Holy Spirit invites us to create life with God. Here’s my favourite part of the Creed:

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.
We affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look forward to the resurrection of the dead,
and to life in the world to come. Amen.

Now I was raised evangelical. And many of us who are raised evangelical are conditioned to be triggered anytime we see the word “catholic”. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being Catholic. I spent most of this week on a retreat with my Jesuit Catholic friends in Guelph. But the ‘little C’ word “catholic” here doesn’t mean “Roman Catholic” – it means the global, universal church!

But this is also why I love the Nicene Creed – it doesn’t end with us escaping the troubles of the earth and going to heaven. It ends with Jesus coming back to earth to resurrect the dead and to fix everything that is broken here because of our sin. And this is what makes the Gospel good news. And THIS is what the Global Church has always believed.

So now that we know what the Nicene Creed is, I’m going to help us unpack two things today:

1. Where did the Nicene Creed come from?

2. Why does the Nicene Creed matter?

So, where does the Nicene Creed come from?

For the first 300 years of the early church, just as we saw throughout the book of Acts – the early church was a persecuted minority on the margins. Christianity was mocked all over the world as a religion for the poor and the oppressed; not a religion of the rich and the powerful. Paul and Peter were killed by the Roman Empire – just like Jesus. To be a Christian was to be a threat to Empire.

But everything changed in the year 312 when a powerful Roman Emperor named Constantine announced that he had become a Christian. Now there are mixed accounts of whether or not Constantine’s conversion was a true conversion but here’s what we know – everything changed for the church from that moment. Because in the Roman empire, when the Emperor becomes Christian – everyone starts identifying as Christian. Even if their lives look more like the Emperor and nothing like Jesus, they identify as Christian. This by the way would never happen today. Christians today would NEVER act more like the Emperor than like Jesus of Nazareth. We don’t have to worry about that stuff anymore. History never repeats itself.

But around this same time, there were a bunch of different teachings about the Trinity that started popping up. And one such teaching that said that Jesus was not fully divine started to spread across the church in the Roman Empire.

And it became quite divisive across the church. But Emperor Constantine wanted uniformity. Because that’s what Empires do – they want uniformity. And the Roman Empire was famous for enforcing uniformity.

If you don’t believe me – go to Europe sometime. And just go to a city that still has Roman gates preserved today – I’ve seen Roman gates in England, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany. And let me tell you - they look EXACTLY the same. Because this was the way of the Roman Empire – to enforce unity through uniformity.

Now many church historians will tell you that when it came to Christianity, Constantine wanted uniformity across the Roman Empire and even across the world – outside the Roman Empire. He wanted the Church to look the same everywhere – Roman.

Now Christianity came from the Roman Empire’s lands in the East to the Roman Empire’s lands in the West. But Christianity back then wasn’t just in the Roman Empire. It was also present all throughout the Eastern world in places like Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Iran. And it was also present in southern India – where my ancestors had received the Gospel from St. Thomas in the year 52.

So what does the Emperor Constantine do? He tells the bishops of the Church to do a Global Church council in this city called Nicaea in modern day Turkey. And he tells them – we can’t have this division in the church. Christianity is now the religion of the Empire and your division is bad for the Roman Empire. So YOU get together in a room and YOU come up with a unified statement of faith.

So these bishops of the Global Church – ranging from Egypt and North Africa, to Palestine and Syria, to Turkey, Iraq, Iran, India, to Greece and the Balkans, to Italy, Spain, and France – all came together to debate theology. And they all came out with this statement called the Nicene Creed where they basically agreed on the basic beliefs of Christianity, and where they also agreed that Jesus is both fully human AND fully divine.

So from the Council of Nicaea in 325, we got the Nicene Creed.

Well…for the most part. Because even though the bishops of the Global Church got together and agreed on a statement of faith. It wasn’t a perfect statement of faith.

And that’s the thing about statements of faith – they’re written by imperfect human beings, so they’re never going to be perfect. Here’s the thing – we western Christians expect perfection in our theology. We expect doctrinal purity. And these are helpful things to want – but they’re not realistic expectations.

The empires of this earth condition us to look for all truth in one place. We think we’ll find all truth in one place – so we start to expect a perfect statement of faith, a perfect church, a perfect translation of the Bible. Now, as Christians, we believe that the truth of God’s love is found in the person of Jesus. And Scripture points us to this truth – Jesus!

But Scripture also teaches us this in Romans 1:20 – “Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been seen and understood through the things God has made.”This is why many of us experience God’s presence in creation. Or in a good cup of coffee or chai.

When I went to Dallas Theological Seminary, one of the top conservative evangelical seminaries in the world, I had a professor teach us about Jesus from the music of U2 and Switchfoot and Linkin Park and he would quote this verse from Proverbs 6:6:

“Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise.”

And then he would tell us, “The Bible tells you that sometimes, you need to shut your Bible and go take a walk in creation to learn divine wisdom there. Because truth and wisdom can also be found outside the Bible. Because Jesus is everywhere in his creation – if we have the eyes to see him there.”

But when we’re shaped by the empires of this earth, we’re conditioned into thinking that all truth can only be found in one place: One society. One culture. One political party. One belief system. One statement of faith.

But this kind of Empire-shaped expectation of capturing all truth is unrealistic. Because truth isn’t found in just one place – truth, God’s love for us is found in all of creation. And Jesus is found in all societies and cultures and religions – if we have the eyes to see him there. Ancient Celtic Christians believed that there were two books to learn about Jesus – the big book and the small book. The small book to them was the Scriptures, which they held as very important. But the big book to them was creation because God’s creation is so vast. They also believed that both books, Creation and the Scriptures needed to be interpreted through the lens of Jesus; because both books have violence.

Here’s what the Apostle Paul says in Colossians 3:11:

“In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved and free, but Christ is all and in all!”

Christ is all and in all.

The image of God is found in all of humankind. In all societies and cultures. And this is why we’re called to love our neighbour. This is why we’re called to love our enemies as Christians. Because when we love our neighbours and our enemies, we just might learn to see Jesus through their eyes.

Instead of seeing people with different beliefs as threats, as “heretics”, what if we just saw them as people who understand God differently because of their trauma? Instead of seeing people with different politics as our enemies, what if we just saw them as people who understand the world differently because of their trauma and life experiences? But if we’re being real, that way of looking at God and humanity terrifies Empire because it brings humanity together. Because ultimately, Empires divide and conquer; but the Gospel of Jesus unites to heal.

Here’s a shocker: We will never attain perfect theology on this side of eternity. We will never have a perfect understanding of God on this side of eternity. Because the more we walk with God as creation, the more the Holy Spirit teaches us about God. And this is exciting. But it can also be really scary – especially to Empire.

Because in 381, 56 years after the Council of Nicaea, a new Roman Emperor came to power. And this new Roman Emperor noticed that there were now more divisions in the church. More different ways of seeing God. More different ways of understanding the Holy Spirit.

So this Emperor did the exact same thing as Constantine – he pulled together the bishops of the Church from all over the world, made them get in a room and made them clarify this Statement of Faith for a more clarified Nicene Creed. For more unity in uniformity. And this is the Nicene Creed that the entire Global Church holds onto today! This is the earliest agreed upon statement of faith by the entire Global Church today: Protestants, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Catholics, Orthodox, etc.

Now I can tell that many of you are a bit terrified by this history of how we got the Nicene Creed. And I share this full history for a couple of reasons. I share this history so that we can hold it in tension with our current context. Because the world and empires work very much in the same way today.

But I also share this history to make this point – a point I want us to hold in tension: God’s way of operating is to take the brokenness of humanity and to create beauty from it.

Yes, the Nicene Creed comes from a broken human history – an Emperor forcibly pulling church leaders from all over the world (all dudes by the way) to debate, declare heretics, and come up with imperfect statements of faith, sure. But this history also points to God’s redemptive purposes for his church and through his church, for all of creation. Because despite the factors that led to its creation, despite the division in the Church and the hand of Empire in bringing about clarity - the Nicene Creed is perhaps one of the most beautiful church documents we have today. Because it is perhaps one of the most beautiful examples of unity in diversity in the Church today.

Here’s why I say that: The Nicene Creed is the one other church document, apart from Scriptures, that has stood the test of time. The Nicene Creed is the one ancient church document that every branch of the Church can agree on today. And for me personally, as a St. Thomas Indian Christian, the Nicene Creed is the one ancient church document that my St. Thomas Indian ancestors contributed to and held to for centuries before their Portuguese and English colonizers showed up – also holding to the same Creed.

But here’s something else I love about the Nicene Creed – no one gets everything they want. I know many evangelical Christians who have an aversion to the Nicene Creed because they think its too Catholic. But guess what? If you ask Catholics, they’ll tell you that its not Catholic enough. For example – Catholics believe that everyone has a guardian angel. But you don’t see that in the Nicene Creed.

Because the Nicene Creed only focuses on the basics of Christianity – and everything else is up for grabs. And everything else is up for peaceful disagreement.

Let’s move on to the second part of my sermon this morning: Why does the Nicene Creed matter?

1700 years after it was drafted, why does the Nicene Creed still matter to us in the Global Church today?

Here’s the first reason why it matters:

1. The Nicene Creed teaches us that we need each other. The Nicene Creed teaches us that we need each other.

And perhaps, this is the beauty of the two church councils that were so beautifully diverse. The Councils and the Creed is proof that no one church has the right theology. No one denomination has the right theology. No one church leader has the right theology.

We all need each other. And we all need each other’s eyes to see truth – God’s love made known to us through Jesus, from unique perspectives. Even the Trinity teaches us this. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit live together in community but they’re three distinct persons in one. They all have different vibes to them – but they’re all united in the same objective – the resurrection and renewal of all of creation, from a posture of love.

2. The Nicene Creed reminds us that we’ll never get everything right.

I just walked us through the history where the Global Church thought it got everything right in the year 325 but ultimately came back 56 years later because they apparently missed some things. There’s great beauty in acknowledging that we don’t have everything right. We don’t have it all figured out. We don’t have God all figured out. So we just do the best we can with what we know and with what we have. And we act in humility, curiosity and love recognizing that God is so vast that we’ll fully understand the divine. And we’ll constantly be learning new things about God.

3. The Nicene Creed pushes us to unity in diversity.

Here’s the thing – all statement of faiths are ultimately reactions to the politics of the Empires we live in. There have been DOZENS if not hundreds of theological statements written by councils of church leaders since the Nicene Creed of 381 – all inspired by the politics of their day. Catholics have their own statements, Lutherans have their own statements, Reformed Christians and Anglicans have their own statements, global evangelicals and American evangelicals have their own statements. But none of these statements have been as global and as theologically diverse as the Nicene Creed. None of them.

1700 years later, it’s beautiful to have a common set of super basic early Christian beliefs to ground us and remind us that as Christians, regardless of our denominational or political differences, as long as we hold this in common, we have way more that unites us than divides us. I find it beautiful, that even though these words were introduced by an Emperor to enforce unity by uniformity, 1700 years later, these words today are actually used to inspire unity in diversity. Because the empires and emperors of this earth fade away. But the kingdom of God, ushered in by the Holy Spirit is always here to stay.

The Nicene Creed matters because it anchors us. It keeps us from remaking God in our own image, from trimming the faith down to whatever fits the moment or whatever empire or political party is in power. It tells us that Christianity is not just my personal experience of God but a historic, global confession shared by believers from India to Africa, from Rome to Beijing, and from Guelph to Gaza.

Before I close this morning, I want to read from my book, The Justice of Jesus that gets released into this world this Tuesday. And I want to read what I write about our church, Lakeside Church in this book:

“Instead of focusing on the many important issues that can divide believers (the mode of baptism, political opinions, LGBTQ+ inclusion, colonization, and so on), Lakeside Church has focused on uniting around the most basic, shared beliefs of the Christian faith, beliefs found in the Nicene Creed, one of the oldest creeds of the global historical church, affirmed by the overwhelming majority of Christian traditions globally. To Lakeside Church, the Nicene Creed is the doctrinal true north.”

To hold to the Creed is to remember this truth: we are not alone. We are not alone. As followers of Jesus, we stand in a long line of witnesses who across empires and cultures, across history and geography have declared these words together…

We Believe…

Drawing from his ancient, St. Thomas Indian Christian roots and a decolonized, justice-centered understanding of Scripture, Joash helps audiences reimagine a faith that unites rather than divides—and that stands firmly with neighbors on the margins. Through speaking engagements, teaching, and advocacy, he calls Christians to a more contemplative yet courageous activism, motivated by the grace-filled, non-violent way of Jesus. To directly support Joash’s ordination into the priesthood and upcoming PhD costs, you can upgrade to be a paid Substack subscriber today. We’ve also just launched monthly virtual hangouts as a paid subscriber perk! Thank you for your partnership in this work of awakening the Western Church to prioritize justice through the reimagination of our faith in ancient, Jesus-centered, justice-oriented, and decolonized ways.