Week 19 Day 3
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Finding God in the Mysteries of every day
Romans 15: 7 Honor God by accepting each other, as Christ has accepted you. (ESV)
The verb in this verse from Romans is fraught with all manner of potential implications and interpretations. If we were to adhere strictly to the intent of the verse in the context to which it was written it was an admonition prideful Jews in Rome and stand-offish gentiles both of whom were dividing the church.
Rocket forward to modern times. The divisions between Christians seems to be even more pronounced today than when Paul wrote to the Roman Christians. The upshot of all of the controversy is to give the world more ammunition to marginlize Christin faith and to denigrate the Lord Jesus. One of the few things Jesus commanded of the disciples was to be “in unity” to be one with Him, the Father, and between themselves.(Esp. John 13:34-35) Paul admonished the Ephesian Church to “…keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Ephesians 4:3.
The early church in an attempt to codify and normalize Christian belief in the midst of many heretical teachings developed statements such as the Nicene Creed. As early as 390 AD the term Symbolum Apostolicum is found in a letter from Ambrose the the sitting pope. The symbol. Or creed of the apostles is a distillation of apostolic thought and commentary that is to derived from the Gospels and a collection of writings called The Didache, the teaching of the apostles.
The apostle creed can help us to brdge the gaps in our understanding of one another as we journey together toward our heavenly home.
The Creed
I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth
And in Jesus Christ His only Son -Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
Born unto the Virgin Mary -Suffered under Pontius Pilate
Was Crucified, Dead and buried, Descended in to Hell
On the third day he Rose from the dead, Ascended into Heaven
And sitteth at the right hand of God the Father
From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy catholic (universal) Church
The communiom of the saints, the forgivenes of sins, and the resurrection of he body
and the life everlasting
Larry M Lawrence- Mysteries 