Today went enter into the last third of the Creed, that which concerns the Holy Spirit. While the Holy Spirit is only given relatively small mention (one small sentence in the Apostles' Creed, a couple more in the Nicene), in reality, the entire final portion of each creed, headed by belief in the Holy Spirit, is actually all about him. "The Holy Catholic Church," "The Communion of Saints," "One Baptism for the Remission of Sins," "The Resurrection of the Dead," and all the others are really an ongoing commentary on what the Holy Spirit does for the people of God. In this lesson, we look specifically at the Holy Spirit's divinity, and how the ancient church's reflection on the ministry of the Holy Spirit--uniting us to God the Father through the Incarnate God the Son--led inexorably to the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. The Creeds, then, ought to be understood as structured around the Trinity.

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This is a talk I gave to Hillsdale College's InterVarsity chapter during the regular Thursday night worship gathering "Soma." Using Luke 2:52 as my starting point, I explore the obscurity of Christ's life in the thirty years before he began his public ministry, and what that teaches us about the presence of God's glory in the mundane day-to-day grind of our lives. On this basis, I encourage the students to continue to be faithful and grow in love and obedience regardless of whether or not they "feel" God's presence, because they can be assured that's he's there.

Today we look at the second half of Christ's work for us. He died to take away sin, but he was raised to bring us in the glorious presence of his eternal Father. The exaltation of Christ in his resurrection, ascension, and promise to come again secures for the human race a gloriously immortal future which they could never have on their own. In these lines of the Creed, we explore his work for us in rising again and ascending to the right hand of the Father.

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In this lesson we explore the central plank of the Christian religion, the passion and death of Jesus Christ on the cross. In a word, we are looking at "atonement." In our study, we will focus on the various metaphors used by Scripture to describe the work of Jesus on the cross.

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