You Sunk My Battleship!

NICENE CREED

and the life of the world to come. Amen.

In continuation of our previous meditation about the Nicene Creed, we must remind ourselves that this statement on heaven as the life of the world to come is to be conjoined to our previous mediation and devotion of the “looking for the resurrection of the dead.” This is to be our comfort (as believers only) in the judgment where it is to be (at the same time) the torment of the present world reserved for the lake of fire in the judgment of the Day of the Lord separated by the removal of the glue that holds the world together by the peace of Christ (2Pet.3:10-13; Rev.19:19-21; 20:10, 14-15). For those who could endure it this far, in the deeper meditation of the Creed (Mk.13:13), there is present hope for those of you who believe (Rom.8:24-25), for “the life of the world to come” is life outside of the economy of sin (Heb.9:28). Even as believers, we presently live under the economy of sin through the currencies of faith and hope with Christ as the standard of love (1Cor.13:13), but the life that is to come is absolute liberty outside the limitations of our present judgment in the body of death (Rom.7:24-25; 2Cor.3:17-18), where love is the absolute standard and exclusive currency and where faith and hope is no longer accepted currency because we will see God abiding in God as God is (1Cor.13:4-12), in the absolute perfections of His holy love and grace (1Jn.3:1-3, 6, 9, 13-16; 4:7-5:4; Jn.8:42-47).

Hell, also, will see Him in the absolute perfections of His holy hatred and wrath (Rom.1:18-19; Ps.2), where there is, also, neither hope nor faith but death unto death as the only currency that adds to the standard wage of the sin that continues in the second death of its final stage and condition of separation (Rom.2:1-16 emphasis: vs.4-5; 6:23), not only from the image of God planted in the garden of God (Gen.3:22-24; Matt.15:13), but from the image of God in man in the creation and institution of the church baptized for the dead (1Cor.15:29, 45-49; Jn.8:12; 9:5; 11:9-10; Matt.5:14). Therefore, there is no spiritual life in “the world to come” for those who die outside of the image of Christ in his death and life as the standard of spiritual life in the world to come (Rev.13:8-9, 15-18; 14:9-13). All this was said so that we can understand the right interpretation of the meaning of the economic “life” of the world to come exclusively for those who believe that Jesus is the Christ Whom the Almighty Father sent to deliver us from the evil one and his judgment in the second death (Rev.2:11; 20:6; Jn.3:16-21, 34-36; 6:28-29, 45-47, 51-58, 61-65), where sin and death continue to abide in those who hate God and the Holy Spirit that God gave believers (Lk.16:22-24; Rev.20:14), by giving them eternal life in the joy of heaven’s fellowship (Rev.20:7-8; Lk.13:28-30).

Therefore, we presently “look for the resurrection of the dead” under the currency of hope and faith standardized by the gift of grace in the pursuit of knowing the assurance that comes with knowing the Author of life and the Judge of death (Eph.2:8-10; Heb.10:28-30; 11:1-2, 6), in the work of Jesus Christ the Lord (Heb.12:1-2; Rom.14:1-9). This is the unity of the saints who believe in the hope of the resurrection that nothing of this present world or the world to come can separate them from (Rom.14:10; 8:31-39; Phil.3:10-11, 20-21). This is the gold standard of our currency of faith (1Cor.15:3-8), for if there is no resurrection (Mk.12:18-27; Acts 23:6-8), our faith is vain, and our hope is futile, and we above all peoples should be the most pitied because sin remains as the testimony of our present existence in death (1Cor.15:12-19). But we do have hope and faith when we understand that our purpose is to suffer in the pursuit of the happiness of knowing the power of His resurrection and the assurance of the forgiveness of our sins (Heb.5:8-10). And that is why we can also ascribe our agreement with the “Amen” of the Creed among the myriads of saints who meditate with us in the roots of the Creed (Heb.12:1-11; Jude 14; Rev.5:11).

The Creed offers us a starting point to ask this question: what is “the life” of the world to come and “the world” of the world to come? Jesus said, “If I go to prepare a place for you, and where I go, I will receive you to Myself,” which implies that the world to come is not of the same material of dust that makes up our present weaknesses (Jn.14:1-4), and that it is not yet revealed what that world will be except that it will be glorious in a nature far superior to the present (1Jn.3:1-3). But the foundation for it has been laid in the death of this world (1Cor3:10-11; Gal.2:18), in the death of the Beginning and the End in Jesus Christ (Rev.1:8; 21:6; 1Cor.15:45; Rom.6:6; Gal.2:20; 5:24; 6:14), and in the resurrection and the life of Jesus Christ (2Cor.13:4; 1Cor.1:25), Who is the life of the glory of God the Father (Jn.1:1-2, 14), but is the image of Jesus of Nazareth Who is that life of very life (Jn.14:6; Heb.1:1-4), for He who came from above is above all in the world to come (Jn.3:30-36), all who are born of Him are born from above as the foundation of that world to come (Jn.3:6-13; 11:23-27; Lk.9:26; Matt.25:31; Rev.19:14; Rom.6:4; 8:18).

How do we imagine this coming glory from the perspective of a world that is full of pride and sin, that such a world could be empty of pride and sin? It is impossible to conceive in our fallen minds (Matt.19:26), which is why so little is said of it in comparison to the present and future judgment of the world of sin that we created (Rom.1:18-19; 2Cor.12:1-4), which the idols of historical paganism testify on behalf of this truth that our imaginations of it are vain (2Pet.1:16-21; Acts 17:22-32). But when we look to Jesus Christ as the Author of eternal life, we can imagine (to a small degree) a world without pride and sin according to the reasoning that descended from above (James 1:5-8, 16-18; 3:13-18; 4:1-6). Beholding the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, gives us an image of the glory of God in the likeness of Christ’s life (Jn.1:29-36). Pride and glory are often confused as the same thing, but the glory of the resurrection in Jesus Christ is emptied of the pride of human life (Phil.2:5-11/ emphasis: v.8; Lk.9:23). Therefore, the life of that world to come is the glory of divine life (1Jn.5:11-13), which required humility on God’s part to conquer and defeat the glory of the pride of life (that is in us) as well as in those who walk after the lusts of the flesh and of the natural eye (1Jn.2:15-17), for it was this sinful likeness Christ took upon himself to be the substitute for us to take on the glory of divine life (Rom.8:3-4; 2Pet.1:4).

Therefore, while we are in the world as the image of its glory given over to the pride of its life and the product of its fall (Rom.7:24-25; 1Cor.1:28; 7:31; 15:22), we are not of its glory because we are of the glory of the Father who glories in us who are in the glory of Christ (2Cor.3:17-18; Rom.12:2; Jn.1:14; Gal.1:24; Jude 8). Therefore, there is a glory of the flesh according to the pride of life (1Cor.15:38-42; 1Jn.2:15-17), which has its power in the life of sin but its eternal wage is death (1Cor15:56); and there is a glory of the grace of life (1Pet.3:7), which has its power in the Spirit of holiness as the gift of Christ (Rom.6:23; Gal.5:16-26; Heb.12:14-16). Therefore, the Creed calls for unity in the gift of Christ using the currency of this hope, faith, and love (in Jesus) as we abide together in the glory of Christ under the economy of sin until that which is perfect comes in the glory of His resurrection life (Jn.1:51; Lk.2:34-35; 1Cor.13:8-13).

Therefore, the life of the world to come is life in the fellowship of the Triune life of God (Jn.17). This is why the Creed’s fundamental focus and practical purpose is upon the knowledge and submission to grow up into the fellowship of the headship of God as the center of the Christian life (Eph.4:7-16), for this is the image of our worship as the Creed is sent out like a naval destroyer to blow out of the water all that is false because it neither knows the Father nor the Son according to the Spirit that the Father has given to the church for her unity (Jn.4:21-24), for this is the spirit and the image that the Father seeks to receive in the worship of His only Son as the reward for His perfect work in reconciling the world redeemed out of the water to the world that is promised to come (Gen.1:2; 2Pet.3:5-7 Acts 8:39; 2Cor.5:17-21).

Therefore, this Nicene Creed is not a warning shot over the bow of the battleship of the flesh’s resistance of the Spirit of life but is a direct hit that sinks her shipwreck of the spirit of his flesh’s resistance to the bottom of the deep blue sea of the eternal abyss of Adam’s glory (1Tim.1:18-20; Acts 7:51), which is the pride of his life in the flesh (Gal.5:17-21). Now, the Scripture illustrates this in the purpose of the marriage of the husband and his wife as the negative result of Adam’s lust for the forbidden fruit (Gen.3:5; 2:18; Matt.16:26), for she is called the glory of her husband (Gen.2:23; 1Cor.11:7; Jn.3:6), which was the glory Adam chose exchange for her shipwreck of the grace of his life, according to the image of the fellowship of God (Rom.5:14), in the glory of the economic freedom of the garden of God (Gen.2:8-9, 15-17), for the glory of his wife was the substitute for his loneliness in the lack of fellowship with God according to his life in the flesh (Gen.3:17; 2:20, 24; 1Cor.6:16-17). In other words, Adam chose the glory of the flesh over the glory of God to become a law unto himself as his own god to cultivate his own garden according to his own standard of discernment in rejection of the knowledge of God (Rom.1:21-24; 2:14-16).

Therefore, she was created as the glory of man’s flesh, his weakness in the absence of divine life (Rom.4:15; 5:13; Gen.3:7-11); but Adam was created for the glory of God in life and death (1Cor.15:22; Rev.13:8; 17:8; 20:15), His perfection in redeeming Adam for the display of the divine perfections in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ ordained from before the world began (Rom.9:20-24; Matt.25:34). So as he chose the glory of the flesh over the glory of God, she is tested by the standard of the glory of her husband’s worship, for if the headship of her husband is the humanism of Adam, then she rises no higher than pride of his life, the lust of his flesh, and glory of the lust of his eyes as the love of this world and his idolatry of it (1Jn.2:15-17; Lk.9:25). The illustration of this is in the test given to the Samaritan woman, who had five husbands and chose to go tell the whole town to the exclusion of Christ’s command to redeem her present husband by bringing him to Jesus for the sanctification of his headship of her liberty and grace of life in his flesh (Jn.4:10-18; Mk.8:36; Heb.10:5; 1Cor.7:15-17). She chose to ignore Christ’s command in the imagination of His tolerance and grace of the spirit of her worship (Jn.4:19-29/emphasis: vs.28-29; Rev.2:20-23). In this, she chose to ignore God’s choice for her headship when she chose to establish her own in her unbelief of Christ as the Lawgiver, the King of Judah and all of Israel (Jn.19:21-22; Gen.4:1, 25; Heb.12:22-24).

Again, this illustrates that God truly made “the” man upright, but “they” each chose to go their own way and to establish a scheme for their own headship outside of the protection of the garden of God (Gen.3:4-5; Ecc.7:26-8:1), which was created according to the economic image of the likeness of eternal life in the fellowship of God (Gen.3:22-24; Rom.5:14). Therefore, it takes a power greater than the power that created world and all that is in it to uphold the marriage of two sinners who promise to have and to hold unto death parts them in the life of the body of their death (2Cor.5:1-5, 12-21). That power would be the grace of life that is given to overcome the power of sin in the spiritual bond of uniting death unto death in their pride of life (Jn.3:3-8), which transforms the lowly body of their spiritual union into life unto life in the glory of God in the face of Christ’s death as the substitute for the glory of the two sinners bound by God in the promise of eternal life through the standard of Christ’s resurrection life as the head of the spiritual body of their present union according to their faith in God to hold them accountable to each other’s promise to give life and love one to another as He commanded for the grace of life (1Pet.3:1-7/emphasis: v.7).

Therefore, the “test” of that life to come is represented in the manner of love we are commanded to have for one another as Christ’s body in the present body of our death as the result and wage of the pride of life but is being Providentially preserved in the grace of life for the day that we put off the economic limitation of the judgment permanently and to put on the economic liberty of the body of His glory without end (Rom.6:8-14, 18-23; 7:24-25), where there is neither male nor female in the life of the world to come (Mk.12:23-25; Gal.3:26-4:9), for the Apostle speaking under the male gender of the Spirit’s liberty (according to his own adoption) is addressing the females of the local fellowship as sons of that promise of life to come yet are still bound as slaves to present economy of faith until the time appointed by Father (Rom.7:1-2; 8:12-17; 1Cor.7:10-24). In this, each sinner has hope in the body of death according to the promise of the life to come in the grace of our present life (1Jn.5:14-17, 20-21).

Two important passages of Tertullian have usually been hailed as anticipating Rufinus’s line of thought. In his De praescriptione2 he makes a point of the bond uniting the Roman and the African churches, coining the term contesserare to describe it. This verb, like the noun contesseratio which he improvises in his second passage (here his theme is the unity of the Catholic churches generally), is derived from tessera, which in this context stands for the tally or token which guest-friends living far apart might rely upon as a means of recognizing each other. Here the token conceived of as uniting the churches and expressing their mutual relationship is their common apostolic faith, or what he calls “the unique tradition of one and the same mystery (eiusdem sacramenti una traditio).” But though the ideas involved are not dissimilar and tessera and symbolum to a certain extent overlap, Tertullian is not thinking precisely of a creed or creeds: indeed, in the former passage what he has in view is the common faith and practice of the Church in the widest sense, including Holy Scripture, the sacraments and martyrdom.

J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, Third Edition. (London; New York: Continuum, 2006), 54–55.