What You Believe Matters

Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

John 8:58

It didn’t matter what you believe, as long as you believe . . . something.  I wish I could say that kind of thinking is rare and unusual, but unfortunately it’s not.  Contrast that statement to what we will confess in the Athanasian Creed this Sunday on Trinity Sunday,  “Whoever desires to be saved must believe this.”   So yes, it matters what we believe. And so do all those things included in the Athanasian Creed – and there is quite a list. One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. Equal in glory and majesty. Uncreated, infinite, eternal, almighty. The Son not created but begotten. The Holy Spirit neither created nor begotten, but proceeding.

And then Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born a son of man, who suffered, died, and rose for our salvation, ascended into heaven, and will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. That’s the truth, we confess and live by 24/7.  Yes, it really matters. But why does it matter?

That’s a question many are asking these days. And, some would say, it doesn’t matter!  To many in the world – cold, hard facts like the Athanasian Creed don’t matter when the rubber of faith meets the hard road of life. The Church needs to be more loving and less doctrinal, some would say.

Love and doctrine aren’t opposites (or at least they shouldn’t be!). For if the Scriptures are right (which, of course, we know and believe) when they tell us that God is love (1 John 4), then to know God is to know love. And to know what God has done for us is to know what love does and to be drawn into that love – real, true love.  Real love is based on knowing the Beloved. That’s why real love lasts beyond the warm and fuzzy feelings. That’s why real love grows stronger over time, even when looks fade and skin grows wrinkly.

And so when the Athanasian Creed says whoever desires to be saved must believe this, it says that not because you have to be able to pass a test and have all the right knowledge in order to get into heaven – though that’s probably how it sounds sometimes. No, it matters because to know who God is – is to know who that Man on the cross is. To know that the Man hanging on the cross isn’t just a man, but the God-Man, fully God and fully Man. To know that God died – in love – for you and me.

For Christianity isn’t about good people doing good things in good ways for a good life. It’s about God dying on the cross for sinners like you and like me. It’s about a good God doing good things. It’s about the Father giving His Son who gives us the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit joining us to the Son who takes us to the Father. That’s who God is and that’s what God alone does. The two go together. And you either have both or you have neither.

That’s why it matters, and why we cannot give up this Christian, Trinitarian faith. It’s not just a matter of life and death, like so many other things in this world – it’s a matter of eternal life and eternal death.   It’s something (as the Athanasian Creed says) to keep – to guard, to treasure, to hold onto tightly and not give it up. No matter what you’re facing right now – it matters because you matter to God – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – who delights in you to pursue you to save you so that you may live forgiven, free, forever in His grace. Yes, believing in Him matters.