When Christians state the Apostles Creed when they gather.
It is a simple act of will to say the words.
It is a supernatural event when we mean the words.
It is a distinction worth reflecting upon; if you mean the words of the creed it is not so much a demonstration of your belief, if is a praiseworthy evidence of God’s grace at work.
From Garry Williams at Evangelicals Now.
The very act of saying the Creed, of being able to declare the Christian faith before God, the angels, the demons, and the world, is possible only by the grace of God. It is not we who have brought ourselves to this point where we can say ‘We believe’, nor is it we who keep ourselves here. It is all of God. Our mouths declare God’s praise only because He opens our lips. It is bad enough to think that we come to profess the faith under our own steam. It is even worse to think that it was the church that created the realities described in the Creed. Everything the Creed speaks of is real only because God is who He is in eternity and because God has done what He has done in history. We are not the ones who constitute the ‘Christ of faith’ when we say the Creed: the Christ of faith is the previously-existent Jesus of history.
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