The Seal of the Light of Life

NICENE CREED

And I Believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life

Wow! This creed is fearless to expound further on the person of the Holy Spirit. “It,” if I may say, goes beyond the Apostles’ Creed, which merely identifies with the Spirit through faith according to paper and ink (Heb.4:12-13). But this creed grows bolder to ensure our identification with the Spirit recognizes His equality with God according to authority and with the power to demonstrate that authority (1Cor.11:26-32; 2Tim.4:1-5). Therefore, the Holy Spirit is rightly called the Lord according to the same likeness as the Lord Jesus Christ (2Cor.3:17; 1Cor.15:45). So this is a great leap of faith compared to the first known historical, traditional creed titled the Apostles’ Creed. Surely, more minds of the Scripture were brought to bear in the ordering of this statement of faith than the previous order as the universal church continues to become more sanctified in that universal mind of Christ by the Spirit (1Cor.2:10-16; 2Cor.13:11; Phil.1:27; 2:2; 1Pet.3:8; Rom.15:6; 1Chr.12:38). Therefore, the Nicene Creed is not ashamed to call the Holy Spirit the Lord and Giver of Life on the same throne as the Lord Jesus Christ and the Father of Lights. There is no distinction of authority in this co-equal Lordship, according to the nature and essence as one Divine Being, united in one substance of every perfection of Almighty God.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one God in whom Yahweh is made known as the Author of Life (Isa.45:7; Col.1:15-20). All that is created in the light of Christ’s life is created in the life of God (1Cor.14:33; Heb.5:9; 12:2; Jn.8:12). But not all things created by Christ are created in His life (Job.3:20; 33:30), for God is light and in Him is no darkness at all (1Jn.1:5-2:2). Therefore, to have the light of life, this life has to shine in the darkness (Ps.36:9; Pr.6:23; 16:15; 2Tim.1:10; 2Cor.4:6). Therefore, in the beginning God divided the light from the darkness to demonstrate the necessity of the Spirit of Life to illuminate our darkness and enter the demonstration of this distinction by conceiving this enteral Word in the darkness of the waters of the creation where there was no light (Gen.1:1-5; Jn.1:1-5, 14; 3:5-7, 19-21; Matt.1:20; Lk.1:31). Therefore, the light of life is not according to the nature of the light that was created to sustain the natural order that God called the darkness of the spiritual order of the material world (Eph.2:2-3; 5:8; Col.1:13; Lk.11:34-35).

Therefore, the Holy Spirit is the giver of the light of life by abiding as the light in the darkness of the material order of the natural creation (Heb.4:12-13; 1Jn.2:8; 1:6; Ps.51:5-6; 2Pet.1:19; Jn.9:5; 12:35; Matt.5:14; 2Cor.3:17-18; 1Cor.15:45-46). This light comes to us by the regeneration of the soul that was lost in the fall of Adam to the total influence of the domain of the father of lies (Jn.8:44; 1Jn.5:18-19), who has corrupted the whole being of the man given to represent the whole world (Isa.1:6; Matt.12:33; Jer.13:23; Matt.12:34; Ps.14:3; 53:3; Rom.3:9-20), by which he passed onto us the spiritual guilt and condemnation of the likeness of his sin (1Cor.15:22; Ps.51:5). In Adam, every natural-born creation was made a sinner by nature under the wrath of God (Eph.2:1-3), which is the alienation of the presence of the light of life according to the likeness of the Spirit (Eph.4:18; Rom.1:18-25; 1Jn.5:12). Therefore, through Adam’s “choice,” we are made partakers of the fruit of his spiritual death and rendered illegitimate children of the fallen race (Heb.12:8, 18-21; Rom.5:12-14, 19-21). Therefore, it was the Father's “choice” to save some of this fallen race and make them partakers of the life of the Spirit of Grace through the incorruptible Seed of the gospel of Jesus Christ (Heb.12:9-10, 22-24; 1Pet.1:23; Jn.3:3-8).

Therefore, in this belief of the Holy Spirit according to this Creed and by which the prophets spoke into existence the prophetic Scriptures (Rev.19:10; 2Pet.1:16-21), we also believe and speak by the same Spirit to the saving of the soul (2Cor.4:13-14), calling on the Lord Jesus Christ through the confession of our sins and with the believing of the whole man (Rom.10:8-13; Mk.12:29-31; Matt.22:36-40), by turning from those sins with the perseverance to endure with hope to the very end (Mk.13:13), being carried along by the Spirit of Grace as the seal of the eternal inheritance (Eph.1:13; 4:30; 2Tim.2:19; 2Cor.1:20-22).

When we turn to the famous description of baptism given by St Justin about the middle of the second century, our doubts regarding the declaratory form of the confession demanded are reinforced. Plainly St Justin’s church had orderly arrangements for instructing converts in Christian doctrine and for satisfying itself that they had properly absorbed it. But in spite of the frequent attempts which have been made to reconstruct one, there is no unambiguous allusion here to a declaratory baptismal creed.

  The suspicion is unavoidable that what St Justin had in mind was a series of interrogations about belief similar to those which we observed to be a regular feature in later baptismal rites.

J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, Third Edition. (London; New York: Continuum, 2006), 43.