Where are we going? At the end of life is there a destination? What’s our hope at the end of all of this? For many it’s a question they’d rather not think about, but for us who are in Jesus, who have put our faith in him, it should be something we dwell on, that drives us onwards.
What is the Church? We talk about coming to Church, sometimes we might even talk about being part of a Church of the Church. But what is the Church, what are we actually talking about when we use that word.
In some ways the end of the Creed feels a bit like an add on. A bit like the list of items at the end of the Apostle’s Creed but expanded a little. To me it’s always felt a bit like ‘oh, and all these other bits too’. But in studying it the past few weeks I’ve realised it’s part of a cohesive whole, it’s not just tacked on.
Who is the Holy Spirit? And how does the Spirit draw us into the life of God?
We’re on the sixth part of our series on the Nicene Creed and we finally come to the Holy Spirit. And in the original version of the Creed, as agreed at the Council of Nicea in 325, it ended like this ‘and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit’… That’s it. It ended there. But a generation later, with things slightly settled down on the person and role of the Son, new errors were popping up, these to do with the person and role of the Holy Spirit.
If God is just why is there so much injustice in our world? If God is good, why is there so much evil in our world? These are questions we are often faced with, and as we come to this next part of the Creed we come to at least something of an answer.
What is the Gospel? What is the good news at the heart of Christianity? That’s the question before us as we turn in our series on the Creed to what Jesus did, his actions. What did Jesus do, and how has he changed the world forever?
I wonder, what do you make of Jesus? Last week we considered how God the Son is eternal just as God the Father is, so this week we come to consider his becoming human, incarnate, in the person of Jesus and some of what that means for us. What do you make of Jesus?
We’re in the third part of our series on the Nicene Creed and the second part of four looking at the person of Jesus. And today we’re wrestling with the question of what it means for God to become human.
Jesus is fully God, when you look at Jesus what you’re seeing is God revealing himself to us. In Jesus what you’re seeing is the God who made the universe made flesh, the image of the invisible God. It’s quite the statement isn’t it, where do we even start with that? But more importantly, what does this truth mean for how we relate to God?
What does it mean that God is Father? What does it means about him, and what does it mean for us?
We’re at the start of our series on the Nicene Creed. And the first section is remarkably short. ‘We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen’.