What We Believe
The Journey: Where We Begin
We find it helpful to describe faith as a journey, and we value conversation and dialog as vehicles for travel. That being said, we also recognize that it is often helpful for churches to define their beliefs in relation to other churches, other faiths, and other philosophies. There are a variety of approaches that churches will take in this endeavor, each with its own benefits and drawbacks. At Redeemer, we choose to define our beliefs by the premises, or assumptions, that we hold. We will describe them here, and readily admit that they are visible in our mission statement and core values. In the narrative portion of this section, some explanation is given, but those looking for a detailed defense of our positions will be disappointed. We intentionally choose not to defend all of the details of our convictions, and we hope that this fosters the conversation and dialog upon which we place great value.
The Apostles’ Creed
For many centuries, the Church has relied upon creeds to encapsulate its core convictions. At Redeemer, we embrace and adhere to the Apostles’ Creed, which states:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.
He descended into hell. On the third day He rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father.
From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
In addition to affirming the Apostles’ Creed, we find it helpful to use a narrative form to describe what we believe about God, ourselves, and the world.
The Creation of the World
We believe the world was created by God, who created because he valued community and relationships, rather than out of any need within himself. The world he created was the beautiful world we long for, filled with harmony, love, and peace. It was a good world and perfectly suited for people to pursue deep relationships with each other, with the world itself, and ultimately with God.
The Collapse of Humanity
In order for these relationships to be authentic, there needed to be an element of freedom: freedom for people to choose whether to love God, or to reject him. Tragically, people chose not to love God, leading to isolation from him, and a severing of the spiritual bond which held the world together in harmony. As a result, all of our relationships have fallen apart. God describes this as a curse, and it is the reason we struggle psychologically, socially, and spiritually. The reason we long for a world without death, pain, suffering, and injustice is that things are not the way they are supposed to be, and this is not the kind of world we were made for.
The Promise of Redemption
God, however, is a God of redemption. Immediately after the world fell apart, he promised to walk through the pain and brokenness with us, ultimately pledging to restore and transform the world into what it was always meant to be. He chose to reveal his plan for redemption primarily through the prophets and holy men of the ancient nation of Israel, teaching them about the life that had been lost, and relentlessly vowing to undo the curse.
God Becomes a Man
In the course of his redemptive plan, God chose to enter physically and existentially into our brokenness and become a person. He was the God-man known to us as Jesus of Nazareth, a first century Jewish carpenter. In Jesus, God revealed to us on a whole new scale what his plan for redemption looks like and how he intends to overcome and defeat the brokenness. Being the embodiment of God, Jesus powerfully healed diseases, caused blind people to see, deaf people to hear, and the paralyzed to walk. He healed broken lives, transforming prostitutes, traitors, religious leaders, and many others from the inside out into the people they were meant and always longed to be. He stood for justice and defended the oppressed.
The Redemptive Work of Jesus
Above all, Jesus defeated death itself, which is the ultimate consequence of our brokenness and isolation from God, who is the source of our life. We were made to live forever, plainly seen in our obsession with youthfulness and our desperation to avoid death at all costs. Death is not the way it’s supposed to be, and Jesus showed us that even death can be defeated and destroyed. As the God-man, he lived a life that displayed the world God always intended for us to experience and enjoy. In doing so, he subverted and challenged the reigning power structures of his time, and thereby found himself falsely accused and unjustly executed, experiencing the worst that this broken world has to offer. However, it was in his execution that his greatest triumph came. Because he was the God-man, and because he had spent his life overcoming evil and the curse, when he was crucified and killed, death could not hold on to him. He spent three days in hell – the place where death reigns, but then broke free, returning to life in a physical, tangible, and existentially new kind of way. We call this event his Resurrection, we celebrate it at Easter, and we see in it the ultimate picture of God’s mission to transform the world that is into the world that ought to be. Jesus’ Resurrection was the event in which he broke the power of death not just momentarily, but for all time. He did this by restoring his physical body to the condition it was always meant to have: unafflicted by death or decay. Thus, the Resurrection and all that it signifies is at the core of what we believe to be God’s mission for the world today, and it is central for our commitment to and faith in Jesus Christ. The Resurrection means that the whole world can be reborn out of its current state of decay and brokenness: if Jesus can be brought back to life in a way that death never again wields power over him, then so can we. The psychological, social, and spiritual breakdown we suffered in the loss of our relationship with God can now be undone. The constant and ongoing struggle of Good vs. Evil remains, but we see in Jesus’ Resurrection the promise and the hope that Good is far stronger and will ultimately prevail.
The Choice We are Offered
Jesus is the Redeemer who transforms the world into what it ought to be. He offers us the opportunity to choose to connect with him by entrusting ourselves to him. This means we recognize his superiority over us by virtue of his identity as God, and ours as those whom he has created. It further means that we look to him to heal our brokenness, transform our weaknesses, and empower us to be the people we were always meant to be. We entrust ourselves to him with authenticity, which means we resist any urge to view our relationship with him in contractual terms. Instead, we give him permission to diagnose our condition while showing us the life he meant for us to live, and we choose humbly to believe that he knows and desires what is best for us. When we make the choice to connect with Jesus, we are at last empowered to connect fully and deeply with each other as well.
Our Hope for the Future
Just as God promised throughout the ages to send a Redeemer, he continues to pledge that one day all the wrongs will be made right, everything that is sad will come untrue, and all the pain and suffering will come to an end. The future he promises is a physical and existential reality, introduced and defined by Jesus’ own Resurrection. The vision he delivers is not one of people escaping this world to a disembodied spiritual afterlife, as is often portrayed via cultural assumptions, or even through some Christian depictions, but rather it is a vision of God coming down to Earth at the end of time. In this vision God reveals to us his attitude toward the world. He does not see this place as worthless or broken beyond repair, and he does not intend to destroy it. Rather, he intends to restore it, bringing back the spiritual power and sustenance that the world desperately needs. This world matters deeply to God, and so it matters deeply to us. While we wait for the day when we are reunited fully with the God who made us, we join him in his mission to transform the world that is into the world that ought to be.
