While I am not at all immune to making mistakes I do try to be careful with my words. I ask my readers to show care with my words as well. I don’t pretend to have the capacity to see into anyone’s heart. Nor does my library card give me access to the Lamb’s Book of Life. I don’t know for certain who will go to heaven and who will not, who is currently a believer and who is not. I do know, however, that the Bible does provide us some standards by which we are called to make tentative judgments. Among those standards is this- confessing the faith.
Our faith confesses, remember, that it is not our confessing the faith that wins us eternal life. Jesus did that. His life, death, and resurrection are the cause of my redemption. I, by His grace, rest in Him alone. But those who have been redeemed by Him confess Him. As such, I would argue that one cannot have a credible profession of faith while denying what His church has said about who He is. To deny the Trinity, to deny the incarnation, to deny His birth of a virgin, His perfect, obedient life, His substitutionary death, His bodily resurrection, His future return, His deity, His humanity is to deny Him.
The great bulk of the ecumenical creeds in church history gave themselves to hashing out these sticky issues. They deemed their work as involving an exposition of essentials to the faith, and I concur. The best summary the church has come up with, in my judgment, is found in the Apostles’ Creed. It’s very function was to summarize as clearly and as succinctly as possible the essentials of the faith, that without which the faith would no longer be. The Creed, of course, is not infallible. No one suggests it was breathed out like the Scripture was. It could, hypothetically, be in error.
That said, I don’t believe it is in error. It may, however, have not quite covered all that should have been covered. What is missing from the Apostles’ Creed is a clear exposition of penal, substitutionary atonement and the necessity of resting on that work alone for salvation. It is possible to find these glorious truths in the creed, but it is certainly not easy. At the end of the day these two, the penal substitutionary atonement of Christ and the necessity of resting on that work alone, can themselves be summarized even more simply- only those who look to Christ as their one true sacrifice and cry out, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner” have a credible profession of faith.
No, one doesn’t take a theology exam proctored by Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates. And certainly one might be ignorant of the history of these theological debates. The man that Jesus spoke of, who cried out, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner” knew nothing about Jesus, His suffering for us on the cross, or His resurrection. These things hadn’t happened yet. Yet, according to Jesus, he went home justified. There is a yawning gap between Apollos who knew nothing of the baptism of the Holy Spirit until he was instructed and the Pharisees who positively affirmed that He did His works by the power of the devil. Apollos was reborn, indwelt by the Spirit that he knew precious little of. The Pharisees knew the Spirit and hated Him.
I am, as always, open to opposing arguments. I don’t think anything above would be any different from that which the true church has always affirmed. Nothing controversial there. If I have erred, my only response is this, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”