I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth.
In a court of law, the opposing attorneys are allowed to make stipulations that are facts they agree upon as true. For the early believers, they all agreed upon the existence of God as it is in Scripture, so the purpose of this first part of the Apostles’ Creed wasn’t so much to establish the belief in the one, true God. This part of the creed speaks to the character and nature of God.
The key words in this section are:
Father Almighty
Creator heaven earth
Throughout the New Testament it tells us that God is the Father of both Jesus Christ and the believers. Ephesians 4:6 states:
one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
While the apostle Paul clearly places God as the Father of everyone, including Jesus, in the Gospel of John, Jesus also refers to God as his Father:
Jn 14:2 In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.
This aspect of God as a Father establishes His character as a loving, caring, and accepting entity, and that we matter to Him. The knowledge that He is also the Father of Jesus confirms His love for His Son as well as connects God with the redemption provided by Jesus and points to the enormous sacrifice He made for us.
Not only is God the Father of all, He is also Almighty. Webster defines almighty as:
Having absolute power over all
The Early Christian leaders considered the Old Testament writings a valid part of the faith and the God of Israel was Almighty.
Isa 44:6 “This is what the LORD says—Israel’s King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God.
So, our Almighty Father is a God with absolute ability and righteous power over anyone and anything who loves, cares, and accepts us. “But wait. There’s more!” Not only is he an Almighty Father, God is also the Creator of both heaven and earth. Everything draws its existence from God. Both the Old and New Testaments bear truth to this fact:
Ge 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Ac 14:15 “Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them.
There is a lot of foundational truth packed into these first two lines of the Apostles’ Creed. To summarize, we can look at it this way:
To the early believers, one of the reasons that it mattered to believe that creation was good was because there were Gnostics who viewed creation as evil and knowledge as the key to salvation. The Apostles’ Creed makes no mistake about who and what God is:
We believe in a powerful God of good character
We matter to God as a father who loves his children
Since God is powerful, the creator, and good, we can be assured of His providential care of the world and His people.
If God is good and God is the creator, then creation is good as well
In a broken world of both physical and moral destruction, touting God’s creation as good can be a tough sale. As I am writing this, the US government is coming off a long budget crisis with another on the near horizon, there is record breaking cold weather in the midwest and eastern part of the country, and terror attacks are sadly a common segment in the news cycle. It’s a little difficult to smile and say, “Creation is good,” but really, it is. Dr. H. Ray Dunning points out that it is tempting to abandon this tenet amongst difficult or evil circumstances, but that is where our faith reminds us that the God of Creation is also the God of Redemption. He is in charge. He is working out His purpose in our lives.
“God is good, all the time.
All the time, God is good.”
This mantra may seem corny or trite, but it truly serves to remind us, the faithful, that even when life seems to be falling apart all around us, God… is… here…, He is powerful. He loves us.