Few phrases expose the confusion and contradiction of our time more than “self-identifying.” Many today assume that anyone can assign to themself any identity they wish, and no one can question it. Even if that chosen identity runs counter to every observable, biological reality. But what about as a Christian? Is it enough to simply identify yourself as a Christian to make it so?

Scripture teaches that you become a genuine Christians, not by assigning yourself the label, but by the Spirit, whose work is observable in a personal confession of faith in Jesus as Lord. Paul wrote, “no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3). Christianity’s fundamental message is “Jesus Christ as Lord” (2 Cor 4:5), so Christians are those who have received Him as Lord (Col 2:6) and confessed Him to be the same. Memorably, Paul wrote in Romans 10:9:

… if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Christians believe that their salvation from judgment is based on Jesus’ vicarious life and substitutionary death, being assured of this by the fact that He rose from the dead. And that faith includes the public testimony and confession that He is Lord. We could say that “Jesus is Lord” is the most succinct creedal summary of Christianity and the very basis of our creedal heritage.

The word creed comes from the Latin, credo, which means, “I believe.”[1] And confession comes from Greek and Latin words referring to a public testimony or agreement. In other words, Christians can be identified objectively as those who confess with their mouths the creed of their hearts, that Jesus is Lord. But how can we determine whether someone means by their confession the same thing that the Bible does? How can we be sure they agree on the Bible’s teaching on who Jesus is and what it means to say that He is Lord?

Christians can be identified objectively as those who confess with their mouths the creed of their hearts, that Jesus is Lord.

Since the days of the Apostles, there have been distorted understandings of our Lord based on the misuse of His revelation. Take, for example, the claim of Hymenaeus and Philetus, that “the resurrection already happened” (2 Timothy 2:17). Truly, Christians “are alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom 6:11), but these men were distorting the biblical teaching on the resurrection. A common characteristic of false teaching is that it takes God’s words but uses the devil’s dictionary. In the second century, Tertullian observed, “They put forward the Scriptures, and by this insolence of theirs they at once influence some.”[2] In the 19th century, James Bannerman said the same:

A man may accept as the rule of his faith the same inspired books as yourself, while he rejects every important article of the faith you find in these books.  If, therefore, we are to know who believes as we do, and who dissent from our faith, we must state our creed in language explicitly rejecting such interpretations of Scripture as we deem to be false.[3]

So to preserve the Scripture’s teaching on the future, bodily resurrection, and Christians are to persevere in the hope of it, Paul cited a “trustworthy saying” (vv. 11-13).[4] It is a short synthesis of what the Bible taught so that Timothy could use it as a standard to train other teachers (v. 14) and to guide his own teaching, “rightly handling the word of truth” (v. 15). This is how the church was to follow “the pattern of sound words” (1:13) that the Apostles had given.

Scripture itself assumes that it reveals a coherent body of doctrine that may be summarized and then used to evaluate any specific claim or teaching. This is why we find references to “the faith” (Jude 3) or “a standard of teaching” (Rom 6:17), or that elders are to “hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught” (Titus 1:9). Scripture prods us to synthesize its teaching to discern whether doctrinal claims or confessions of Christ are true or false. Failing to use such creedal summaries of the Bible is simply unbiblical, as Carl Trueman has said:

To claim to have no creed but the Bible, then, is problematic: the Bible itself seems to demand that we have forms of sound words, and that is what creeds are.[5]

The early church obeyed this biblical imperative and followed the apostolic example by using credal summaries that they called “the rule of faith” or truth. Irenaeus articulated the rule of faith in the second century like this:

“One God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and all things therein, by means of Christ Jesus, the Son of God; who, because of His surpassing love towards His creation, condescended to be born of the virgin, He Himself uniting man through Himself to God, and having suffered under Pontius Pilate, and rising again, and having been received up in splendor, shall come in glory, the Savior of those who are saved, and the Judge of those who are judged, and sending into eternal fire those who transform the truth, and despise His Father and His advent.”[6]

Anyone familiar with the later creeds will recognize their origin here in this rule. To explain the purpose of the rule of faith, Christian leaders likened it to the plans that were given along with tiles for the mosaics that were popular on floors and walls in the Roman empire. The plan showed how the tiles were to be installed to create the intended mosaic design. Similarly, the rule of faith showed how Christians were to properly arrange the teachings of Scripture to truly confess Jesus as Lord. Irenaeus put it this way: “he also who retains unchangeable in his heart the rule of the truth… though he will acknowledge the gems [mosaic pieces], he will certainly not receive the fox instead of the likeness of the king.”[7]

Yet as the church grew, “foxes” continued to crop up as biblical “mosaic pieces” were misassembled and disfigured the glory of Christ. This was especially concerning in respect to the fundamentals of the faith, the unity of God and the Lordship of Jesus. God’s people have always confessed “the Lord is one” (Deut 6:4). With the appearing of Jesus, the Lord revealed Himself to be God the Father, and the Son, Jesus (1 Cor 8:5-6), and the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 3:17). So, when we confess Jesus as Lord, we are baptized into the singular name of three persons – “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt 28:19). How would the church confess that the Lord is one and that the man, Christ Jesus, is Lord? The spread of unbiblical answers to this question demanded clarity on the being of God and natures of Jesus Christ.

By focusing on such questions, the early church was not majoring on minors, much less was it being seduced by Greek philosophy. Rather it understood that being precedes doing, and that what God has done to save us by faith in Jesus depends entirely on who God is as Father, Son, and Spirit and what it means for Jesus to be Lord. If Christ is not truly God, then He could not have endured eternal judgment on our behalf nor secured eternal righteousness as our everlasting Intercessor. And if God is not Triune, then He cannot be seen or explained by the Son who assumed our nature and walked among us as a man, nor bring us to Himself through faith in Jesus by the Spirit.

When we confess Jesus as Lord, we are baptized into the singular name of three persons – “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”.

So by the fifth century, the rule of faith had been sharpened by trial and consensus into what we now know as the ecumenical creeds, the Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed, along with the Definition of Chalcedon.[8] Though the history is detailed and complicated at many points, the motivation to compose and affirm these creeds was the same as Paul’s “trustworthy sayings” in the New Testament. They were standards to keep men from rearranging scriptural truth to depict a fox rather than our Savior. Far from adding to Scripture, creeds were preserving its meaning and attempting, as R.C. Sproul put it, “to show a coherent and unified understanding of the whole scope of Scripture.”[9] That was the explicit understanding in the early church, while the creeds were still young. Basil, for example, while arguing for the unity of the Father and the Son said:

That it is the tradition of the Fathers, though, is not sufficient for us, for they followed the meaning of the Scripture and had as a source the very proof-texts that I presented to you from Scripture a little earlier.[10]

As concise summaries of scriptural truth, creeds were used to prepare candidates for baptism and to give the church standards to examine their public confession of Christ. Of all people, credobaptists ought to appreciate this! And, of course, Baptists have.

The cry for sola Scriptura in the Reformation in no way diminished the Reformers’ regard for the tradition received from the early church. John Calvin, for example, in the preface to his Institutes argued, “If the contest [with Rome] were to be determined by patristic authority, the tide of victory—to put it very modestly—would turn to our side.”[11] Later he wrote:

… we willingly embrace and reverence as holy the early councils, such as those of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus I, Chalcedon, and the like, which were concerned with refuting errors—in so far as they relate to the teachings of faith. For they contain nothing but the pure and genuine exposition of Scripture.[12]

As the Reformational churches wrote confessions to expound and distinguish their positions, they remain rooted in the credal heritage of the earlier centuries. The confessions of the Particular Baptists are no exception. The First London Confession of Faith reflects classical, creedal language, following the Athanasian creeds.[13] While the Second London Confession of Faith (2LCF) follows the Nicene creed in describing the Trinity with as “of one substance” and the Son as “begotten” (2.3). It also follows Nicaea and Chalcedon on the person of Christ (2LCF 8.2) even more closely than its predecessor, the Westminster Confession.[14] So Tom Nettles is right to argue:

Baptists are orthodox. That is to say one must first be a Christian before he can be a Baptist. Orthodoxy includes knowledge of God as the triune God and knowledge of Christ as Son of God and Son of Man.… The language [of 2LCF 2.3] derives from the vocabulary and concepts of the early church councils and reflects the decisions expressed in the creeds of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon. It even affirms the filioque clause, that is, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father ‘and the Son’. These Baptists would not find credible any sense of spiritual security or knowledge of God that did not conform to the ‘doctrine of the Trinity’. Any doctrines of the faith not consistent with and dependent on this doctrine had no proper foundation.[15]

One of the early Particular Baptist pastors, Hercules Collins, published a revision of the Heidelberg Catechism, consistent with Baptist convictions, which he titled An Orthodox Catechism. To Question 22, “What are those things which are necessary for a Christian man to believe?” Collins gave as an answer:

All things which are promised us in the gospel. The sum of this is briefly comprised in the articles of the catholic and undoubted faith of all true Christians, commonly called the Apostles’ Creed.[16]

Here Collins reflects the same conviction as the Reformer, Martin Luther, who once said of the Apostles’ Creed, “Christian truth could not possibly be put into a shorter and clearer statement.” Collins further included the full text of the Apostles’ Creed, along with the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds in an appendix, offering this explanation in his preface:

I have proposed three Creeds to your consideration, which ought thoroughly to be believed and embraced by all those that would be accounted Christians, viz, the Nicene Creed, Athanasius His Creed, and the Creed commonly called the Apostles; the last of which contains the sum of the Gospel; which is industriously opened and explained; and I beseech you do not slight it because of its Form, nor Antiquity, nor because supposed to be composed by Men.[17]

The Baptists rejected magisterial church polity because of what Scripture taught, and they affirmed the historic creeds for the same reason. The historic Baptist view is “The creedal baby must not be discarded with its ecclesial bathwater.”[18] Baptists today must hold the same conviction.

The church needs the creeds if we are to proclaim Jesus is Lord to the world with biblical clarity and receive only those into our number who confess it truly with us.

We are called to minister to a generation convinced of an individual’s ability to construe reality however they see fit. So, the danger of misconstruing the fundamental pillars of Christian faith is as present today as it was in earlier centuries. We see it in the spread of novel doctrines, like “eternal functional subordination” (EFS), which claims the Son is subordinate to the Father in God Himself.[19] The arguments underlying EFS mimic the way that Arians interpreted passages of Scripture.[20] And they disregard the teaching of Nicaea on the Son, as “of one substance with the Father,” and the Athanasian Creed, “in this Trinity, none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another.” If such an approach to Scripture is adopted, churches are left vulnerable to any number of heresies. B.H. Carroll, the first President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, recognized this more than a century ago:

The modern cry, ‘less creed and more liberty,’ is a degeneration from the vertebrate to the jellyfish, and it means more heresy. Definitive truth does not create heresy – it only exposes and corrects. Shut off the creed and the Christian world would fill up with heresy unsuspected and uncorrected, but nonetheless deadly.[21]

Of course, merely formal creedal affirmations are always possible. Some may ascent to them with a knowledge that is little better than a demon’s (Jas 2:19). But this is not avoided by avoiding the creeds. Rather we expect and disciple others to sincerely and personally embrace the scriptural truth they summarize. Creeds are not a hindrance to a personal, sincere profession of faith in the Lord Jesus. C.H. Spurgeon argued the same:

To say that ‘a creed comes between a man and his God,’ is to suppose that it is not true; for truth, however definitely stated, does not divide the believer from his Lord.[22]

In recent surveys, nearly three-fourths of America identifies itself as Christian. But we would be justly skeptical of that reflecting reality. Self-identified “Christians” and wide-spread confusion about the truth of our God and His Son, Jesus, has sadly muddled the testimony of the gospel in our nation. In this day, God still calls the church to be “a pillar and buttress of the truth,” so what “we confess” has eternal significance (1 Tim 3:15-16). The church needs the creeds if we are to proclaim Jesus is Lord to the world with biblical clarity and receive only those into our number who confess it truly with us. It would not be biblical, Christian, or Baptist, to fulfill our calling without them.

[1] Burk Parsons explains the etymology as “Dating back to the late twelfth century, the word credo likely emerged from the compound kerd-dhe, which can be translated ‘to put one’s heart,’ pointing out the nature of a creed as that which we believe from our hearts and confess with our mouths.” In Why Do We Have Creeds? (P&R, 2012), p. 7.

[2] The Prescription against Heretics, 15.

[3] James Bannerman, The Church of Christ [1868], 1:298.

[4] See Fesko

[5] Carl Trueman, The Creedal Imperative (Crossway, 2012), p. 76

[6] Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.4.1-1; cited by Justin Holcomb, Know the Creeds and Councils (Zondervan, 2014), p. 12.

[7]  Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.9.4; see Kathyrn Greene-McKreight, “Rule of Faith,” in Dictionary for the Theological Interpretation of the Bible (Baker, 2005), pp. 703-04.

[8] Technically, what we typically call the Nicene Creed is the “Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed,” as the Nicene Creed of 325 was expanded and finalized at Constantinople in 381. For an accessible and brief introduction to the history of the creeds and councils, see Holcomb, Know the Creeds and Councils (Zondervan, 2014). For a longer, more detailed survey, see Donald Fairbairn & Ryan Reeves, The Story of Creeds and Confessions (Baker, 2019).

[9] R.C. Sproul, “Norma Normata – A Rule that Is Ruled,” Tabletalk (Ligonier, April, 2008), cited by Parsons, Why Do We Have Creeds?, p. 19.

[10] On the Holy Spirit, 7.16; Stephen Hildebrand, trans (SVS Press, 2011), p. 44

[11] Institutes of the Christian Religion, Prefatory Address, 4 (McNeill, Ed.; F. L. Battles), 1:18.

[12] Ibid., IV.9.8, 1:1171–1172

[13] Malcom Yarnell, “Baptists, Classic Trinitarianism, and the Christian Tradition,” in Baptists and the Christian Tradition (B&H, 2020), p. 61; James Renihan, For the Vindication of the Truth: A Brief Exposition of the First London Baptist Confession of Faith (Founders Press, 2021), pp. 36-40.

[14] James Renihan, To the Judicious and Impartial Reader: An Exposition of the 1689 London Baptist Confession (Founders Press, 2022), 219–220.

[15] Tom Nettles, The Baptists, vol. 1, (Christian Focus, 2005), p. 37

[16] Thomas Nettles with Steve Weaver, Teaching Truth, Training Hearts (Founders Press, 2017), p. 64

[17] Ibid., pp. 58-59, 100-01.

[18] Rhyne Putnam, “Baptists, Sola Scriptura, and the Place of the Christian Tradition,” in Baptists and the Christian Tradition, p. 45.

[19] EFS has also been labeled Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission (ERAS) and the Eternal Submission of the Son (ESS). Its main proponents include Bruce Ware, Grudem, and Owen Strachan. For an overview of their teaching and citations of their publications, see Matthew Barrett, Simply Trinity, pp. 213-59. See also Steve Meister, “You Need One to Count to the Trinity,” Credo (15/1, 2024), available: https://credomag.com/2024/06/you-need-one-to-count-to-the-trinity/.

[20] See, for example, Matthew Emerson, “The Role of Proverbs 8,” in Sanders & Swain, eds., Retrieving Eternal Generation (Zondervan, 2017), p. 65, n. 66.

[21] Cited by Parsons, Why Do We Have Creeds?, p. 24

[22] C.H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 34 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1888), iii.