Show Notes
In this theologically rich episode of Peaceable and Kind, host Derek Vreeland continues his series on the Nicene Creed by reflecting on a pivotal line: “For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven.”
Derek unpacks what it means for Jesus to come “for us”—not just for individuals, but for a collective us—and why the incarnation is the starting point of salvation. Along the way, he offers thoughtful insights on salvation as transformation (not just a ticket to heaven), evangelism as discipleship, and why honoring Mary, the Blessed Virgin, deepens our understanding of the gospel.
This episode blends humor, biblical depth, church history, and personal storytelling to help listeners grasp the beauty of Jesus’ incarnation—and the revolutionary truth that salvation begins not at the cross, but in a manger.
Key Takeaways
Salvation isn’t a status we possess—it’s a lifelong process of healing, transformation, and becoming like Jesus.
Jesus didn’t come to make better citizens—He came to make disciples who embody His kingdom.
“For us and our salvation” reminds us that the gospel is personal, but never private—it builds a new us called the church.
Mary’s “yes” to God marks a turning point in salvation history—her obedience undoes Eve’s disobedience.
Honoring Mary isn’t worship—it’s recognizing her vital role in the incarnation of Jesus.
Salvation begins with the incarnation: God becoming flesh through the Virgin Mary to live among us, rescue us, and remake us in His image.
Scriptures mentioned in this episode:
Luke 1:39-45
Luke 1:38
John 1:14
If you’ve ever wrestled with what it means to be “saved,” or wondered how ancient creeds connect to modern faith, this episode will deepen your understanding of God’s saving love.
🎧 Listen now and be reminded: Jesus moved into our neighborhood—for you, for me, and for all of us.
Preorder Derek’s new book, Incarnation: 8 Lessons on How God Meets Us here: https://amzn.to/42jSZAs
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Transcript
Welcome back to
Another episode of Peaceable in Kind.
I am your host, Derek Vreeland, and I’m glad you’ve joined me for this episode as we work our way through the Nicene Creed.
Well, before we get to the Creed, let me invite you
you to subscribe and leave a rating or review.
And if you are enjoying these episodes, if you would share it with a friend.
I just talked to two
people at our church, two moms, two working moms at our church last night, and they said, hey, we just found out you have a podcast.
How long have you been doing that?
And so I was talking to them about some of the previous episodes that we have done.
And so if you have people in your life who you think, wow, they would really like this episode, feel free to share it with them.
That helps us grow and expand what we’re doing here at Peaceable and Kind.
And tomorrow is 4th of July, which is a day set aside for
Eating food outside and blowing things up.
And I don’t know about you, but I, as a kid, loved fireworks.
Now, not so much these days, you know, I’m getting a little bit older.
I’d rather just go to bed uh than stay up and watch fireworks, if you know what I mean.
But as a kid
I loved fireworks and I liked the simple fireworks when I was a kid.
I liked firecrackers and bottle rockets.
I never wasted my money with the big
missile looking fireworks or the super expensive ones.
I just like bottle rockets and firecrackers because as a kid I just love blowing things up.
It’s probably good I became a pastor, because I could have went down a different kind of path.
But now that I’m an adult, I still I like fireworks, I guess, as much as the next person I really enjoy
uh watching my kids shoot off fireworks, but when it comes to the big fireworks displays, I’m more like, you know, if I’ve seen one firework display, I feel like I’ve seen them all
And I know that makes me sound old and grumpy.
I know it drives my wife crazy because she loves fireworks.
So I’m like, yeah
You know, the fireworks from this year looked like the fireworks from last year.
As a matter of fact, make sure that you go to the photo section of your phone.
and scroll back to last 4th of July and go ahead and delete those pictures and videos so that you can make room
for the same pictures this year.
We always do that.
And I’ve done it too.
I’ve taken video of fireworks and I save it on my phone.
And then the next year I do the same video and they look exactly the same.
Well, I don’t want to be a buzzkill because I know people love Fourth of July and fireworks.
The tradition that I
Appreciate the most about Fourth of July is my wife Jenny.
She makes these red, white, and blue rice crispy treats.
Yo!
This is what I live for.
And actually every year I take a picture of my red, white, and blue rice crispy treat with this rolling field behind me because our family
For 14 years now, we have been going to the same farm in Kansas every 4th of July
And I love it.
We hang out with friends, we play games, we play croquet.
We have a croquet set, and the only time it gets used is 4th of July in the front yard of this farmhouse.
But we have such great memories there.
We cook out, play games, the kids shoot off fireworks.
But if you’re not following me on social media
You need to do so.
Go to my Instagram on Fourth of July, and you will see a picture of this beautiful red, white, and blue rice crispy treats.
I get more excited about the snacks than the fireworks, to be honest with you.
So be safe tomorrow.
Have fun.
Celebrate America.
But don’t, you know, celebrate too much.
I mean, it’s okay, and I’m speaking seriously now, it’s it’s okay to love the nation that you are a part of.
But remember, patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings.
Steal a little money and they throw you in jail, steal a lot, and they make you king
That’s a Dylan line.
That’s from Bob Dylan.
But patriotism, in terms of feeling pride about the place that you were born in, it’s really a good thing.
I’m not saying it’s it’s a bad thing altogether.
It’s not.
But patriotism can become a cover for scoundrels to do bad things in the name of I love my country.
And so, my encouragement for you is to celebrate America, but don’t worship America.
Don’t let the love that you have for your country become an idol.
Now, idols are not just gold statues.
An idol is anything you love in the place of God that is not God.
So as followers of Jesus, our love for God is first, followed by our love for neighbor, and then our love for country is a different third or fourth or fifth.
Jesus did not come to make good citizens of the empire.
Jesus came to make disciples.
He didn’t say, go therefore and make good citizens.
Jesus, when he met with his disciples for the final time, this is at the end of Matthew’s gospel.
Jesus says, All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me.
Go therefore and make disciples.
So Jesus didn’t come to make us good citizens, though I would argue that if you’re a faithful disciple of Jesus, it will make you a good citizen.
Because we’re commanded to love our neighbor as ourself, and this affects our citizenship, right?
But Jesus didn’t come simply to make good citizens.
In the words of the Nicene Creed, Jesus came for us and our salvation.
So we’ve been walking through the Nicene Creed, and here’s the next section of the Creed that we’re going to look at on this episode.
The words of the Creed go like this.
For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven.
By the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.
Jesus came for us and for our salvation.
And this makes the gospel good news.
That Jesus, the eternal Son of God, saw humanity in the situation we were in
And God and Jesus didn’t choose to stand far off and be all aloof and unconcerned and uncaring, but in Jesus, God came to us.
And Jesus came out of heaven from heaven to earth for us.
He did come
to rescue us.
He came for our salvation.
And in a sense, he did come for you as an individual.
But in the words of the creed, what we say is he came for us.
Not just me as an individual, but Jesus came for an us.
We have a very individualistic view here in the modern world.
We tend to evaluate things
Based on how it affects us as an individual.
But it’s important to see that the work of Jesus in salvation
is not simply about saving individuals so that they can have a private relationship with God
Our relationship with God is certainly personal, but it’s never private.
Jesus came to save
not isolated individuals, but an us, and to build that us into an alternative society that is called the church
Now the word salvation, it’s an interesting word in the sense that it has almost become a cliche.
We have used it so much in the church world, particularly those of us who are from an evangelical background.
You know, I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in a Baptist context, and growing up, I remember hearing the language of getting saved.
So when we talked about salvation, sometimes we would even report, we had 17 salvations on Sunday.
The idea of salvation or getting saved or going out in the world and get people saved really meant have you accepted Christ
And do you know that you’re going to heaven when you die?
Which really makes me take a deep breath.
Honestly, it makes me want to sigh.
Because I think it is a mistake to assume that the salvation
That Jesus came to enact for us and for our salvation.
He came down from heaven.
That salvation is much, much more
Than taking people to heaven when they die.
So we have a little bit of work to do
Because the salvation talked about in the Creed has very little to do with going to heaven
So let’s think about it like this.
First, remember that Jesus never told us to go into the world and get people saved.
He said, go into all the world and make disciples of the nations.
So evangelism
which is the proclamation of the gospel, and discipleship, which is forming people into fully devoted followers of Jesus, are not two different things
Our proclamation of the gospel and our call to make disciples are actually two sides of the same coin.
It’s really the same thing.
Making disciples is a part of the response to the proclamation of the gospel.
The way we respond to the gospel is not by asking Jesus into our heart.
That was popular language I remember hearing growing up in a Baptist church.
You gotta ask Jesus into your heart.
You’ll be surprised to learn that that phrase doesn’t appear anywhere in the Scriptures.
Neither does it appear anywhere in the history of the church.
It’s a very modern way of thinking about responding to the gospel.
The biblical response to the gospel isn’t asking Jesus into your heart or into your life, but believing in Jesus.
Believing in repentance is how we respond to the gospel.
And believing in Jesus is not just making up in your mind
What you think about Jesus, believing is not only intellectual, though it includes that.
Believing in Jesus means pledging your allegiance to Jesus
That is giving your full confidence and trust and loyalty to Jesus, choosing to follow him
Learning to do life his way and ultimately becoming like him.
So evangelism and discipleship are not two different things.
They’re really one and the same.
We proclaim the gospel, we proclaim the good news about Jesus, we tell people about Jesus and what he has done, and the response is become a disciple.
Repent, believe, follow Jesus.
Second, salvation or to be saved is not a ticket to heaven
It’s not a get out of hell free card.
Though I will admit going to heaven upon death and not going to hell is a
part of this deal, right?
Don’t get me wrong.
Going to heaven beats the alternative.
So I’m not trying to take heaven away here.
But some people will go through the motions of saying yes to Jesus so that they are assured they’ll go to heaven and not hell.
And that is not the way the Bible talks about salvation or being saved at all.
Salvation
Is not so much a status, but it’s a process.
See, some people see salvation as that ticket to heaven.
It’s something we possess.
But salvation isn’t something we hold on to.
Salvation is a process that we enter into.
Salvation for some Christians becomes a status.
I am saved
But really, as we look at salvation through the scriptures, it’s much more of a process of healing and transformation.
This is why the question about whether or not you can lose your salvation is really a silly question in my opinion.
And Christians will debate it, and some Christians will say, no, you can’t lose your salvation, you can’t send it away.
Once you’re saved, you’re always saved.
Other people say, well, when you’re saved, you enter a covenant, you can choose to leave that covenant and lose your salvation.
I think the entire question
is built on wrong assumptions about what salvation is.
If salvation is a status that you possess, then it’s something you can gain or lose.
But if salvation is a process
If salvation is something that God gives that you enter into, it’s harder to lose
And so for me, you you cannot lose your salvation because salvation is not something you possess.
You cannot lose your salvation because salvation is a work of grace and mercy, and the mercy of God endures forever.
Now, some Christians say, well, salvation is this process, and you can choose to leave that process, which is true.
You can choose not to follow Jesus
But for me, I think when that work of grace begins in your heart, it’s really up to God to choose to leave you or not.
And I don’t think God ever leaves us.
Hey friends, I wanted to pause for just a second to let you know that my next book, Incarnation, Eight Lessons on How God Meets Us, is available for pre-order.
This Bible study is for individual devotional use or for small group discussion.
Link to pre-order is in the show notes.
But we’ll set that question aside, because in looking at the creed, the central purpose for which Jesus came was for us and for our salvation.
And sometimes I do think it’s better to hear the word transformation when you hear the word salvation.
The Greek word that’s translated saved or salvation really speaks of rescue.
But it’s not a one-time rescue, but an ongoing rescue from sin and death.
So we are.
Forgiven of our sin through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and we’re justified.
That is, that we are made right with God, and we’re brought into God’s covenant family.
But justification is just the beginning of the work of salvation.
We’re also being sanctified.
that is set apart.
That is, we’re in this process of becoming holy.
We’re being healed up from the corrupting power of sin.
and made more like Jesus.
And this is the ongoing work of salvation.
And so I feel like once we’re in the family of God, we can choose to walk away from relationship with the family of God.
But we’re still connected to that family.
You responded to the gospel, and when grace flooded your heart, you have now come into
The presence of God and this new family.
Salvation requires not just your personal one-on-one interactions with God, but it includes what happens among this family that we call the church
And salvation is possible because Jesus became a human being, a real flesh and blood human being.
Here’s the next part of the Nicene Creed.
By the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.
The early creed talks about the Virgin Mary, and it seems to me that Protestants get really nervous any time we start talking about the Virgin Mary or
the honorific title, the Blessed Virgin Mary, because they wrongly assume that Catholics worship Mary
But in official Catholic doctrine, they say they venerate or honor Mary, but they worship God alone.
Now, I know some pop level Catholics do worship Barry.
I’ve had Catholics tell me that.
They say, well, I pray to Mary because she’s a woman and I’m a woman and I think
she’ll understand me more than Jesus.
So I’m not interested in Jesus.
I’m just trusting in Mary.
But that’s not consistent with the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching.
on who God is and how we relate ourselves to God.
I had a church member catch me after church one time and really rushed up to me and seemed pretty agitated
And I didn’t know what to expect.
It happened so fast.
He came right up to me and with this perplexing look, he said, What do you believe about the Virgin Mary?
I mean
Are we becoming Catholic with all this talk about Eucharist and Sacrament?
What do you believe about the Virgin Mary?
And he was sort of pointing at me
And it it caught me off guard.
And I was like, oh she’s blessed.
She’s the mother of Jesus.
Like, what are you getting at?
This is a man who was raised Catholic, uh, but left the Catholic Church to join our non-denominational church, and I think he had a little bit of an axe to grind.
I think he had a negative experience in the Catholic Church.
And so I w I really wasn’t prepared to answer that question.
For me, I have grown to appreciate the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church
Now, I’m a Protestant.
I am not Roman Catholic.
I am not Eastern Orthodox.
I am Protestant.
Our church is non-denominational, and we’re really influenced by many different
traditions.
Um, but we’re we’re certainly in that kind of Protestant realm, but I’ve I’ve learned to appreciate
the Roman Catholic tradition, the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and I view Catholicism and Orthodoxy sort of like grandma and grandpa at the family reunion.
You know, if you go to a family reunion, you’re going to respect grandma and grandpa.
They have earned our respect as a family.
Now, you might not agree with grandma and grandpa.
You’re probably not listening to the same music as grandma and grandpa.
You’re not dressing like grandma and grandpa.
Uh, but you still respect them.
And I like to see Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy as a part of the family, but they’re grandma and grandpa.
So I want to respect them, even though I’m not always going to agree with them
And honestly, Protestants and Catholics, though there are bitter divisions, historical divisions,
over the role of Mary in the church, in worship, in devotion.
We actually share a lot more in common than you might not even know.
In fact, a lot of Catholic tradition about the Blessed Virgin Mary comes right from Scripture.
And so I have no problem with the title.
Now, in the Nicene Creed, she’s called the Virgin Mary, but in the Catholic tradition, she’s the blessed.
Virgin Mary.
And I don’t have any problem with that title because did you know that comes right out of Scripture?
So in Luke chapter 1, we see this encounter with Mary and Elizabeth.
when they’re both pregnant and they meet up.
So let me jump into the scriptures here.
This is Luke 1 starting in verse 39.
When she married entered the house of Zachariah, she greeted Elizabeth, and when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb.
And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
And why is this granted to me that the mother of our Lord should come to me?
For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.
So you see the word blessed or blessed used three times in this passage, Luke 1, 39 through 45.
It is Elizabeth who says, Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, because Luke says she was filled with the Spirit, and she exclaimed, Blessed are you among women.
And so when Roman Catholics speak of Mary as the Blessed Virgin Mary, and in their prayer to Mary, the Ave Maria, the Hail Mary,
There’s that same kind of blessed are you among women, blessed is the fruit of thy womb.
All of that comes from Scripture, from Luke chapter 1.
Now, Protestants and Catholics will disagree over the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Protestants don’t believe she remained a virgin.
I don’t.
But all Christians, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestants, believed that she was a virgin at the time of the birth of Jesus.
So we all believe the words of Elizabeth that Mary is blessed in her humble acceptance of what the angel spoke to her regarding her virgin conception.
And it was important for Mary to be a virgin because Jesus’ origins were not in the seed of a man, but from God, the Holy Spirit
The line before this section, speaking of Jesus, speaks of him as eternally begotten of the Father
Jesus was fully God, remained God.
When Jesus took on the flesh that he received from Mary, he never ceased to be God.
So Mary conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and became incarnate.
That word incarnate means to take on flesh.
Jesus became human.
He became real flesh and blood
And so because Jesus came into the world through the virgin womb of Mary.
We recognize that Mary deserves a certain kind of honor, and Mary has been honored in the church from the very beginning.
Irenaeus is a second century church father.
He was a very influential church father.
He lived in the
Second century was the Bishop of Leon in modern day France.
His book Against Heresies.
took down the false Christian group known as the Gnostics.
This is one of the early Christian heresies.
They said, well, Jesus didn’t have a real body.
Jesus didn’t die on the cross, Jesus didn’t raise from the dead, because really he just appeared to have a body.
He was actually a ghost or a phantom.
And that salvation is not through the death and burial and resurrection, but salvation, according to the Gnostics, was receiving the secret knowledge that Jesus possessed.
Well, Irenaeus wrote this book against heresies, where he theologically dismantled that.
And showed why the scriptures revealed the truth that Jesus had a real physical body, and that real physical body was necessary for our salvation.
So Irenaeus says that Mary is the cause of our salvation, both to herself and the whole human race.
Irenaeus typifies the church fathers who gave honor to Mary, who said that her words of consent to God’s message through the angel Gabriel
Mary’s own.
uh conceive and give give birth to a son, she said, let it be to me according to your word.
and her act of faith became the mainspring by which salvation came.
And Irenaeus in Against Heresies has this beautiful line
Because he describes Mary as the new Eve.
Just like Jesus was a new Adam, Mary was a new Eve
And Irenaeus writes this about Mary.
He writes, The knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosened by the obedience of Mary.
For what the Virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the Virgin Mary set free through faith
I love that reference back to Eve.
What Eve did by disobedience
Mary, a new kind of Eve, a new representation of humanity, did by obedient faith
So Mary came to undo Eve’s tragic mistake.
So Mary is the blessed virgin and the new Eve.
She isn’t our Savior, but she gave birth to the Savior.
And so we don’t worship Mary because we worship God alone, but we do honor Mary by imitating her faith
Without Mary, there would be no incarnation of Jesus.
He took on human flesh from his human mother,
so that he could be our human representative, being both the sacrificial lamb, giving his life and his blood to forgive our sins,
And then Jesus also became our human representative as a high priest, offering that blood to God for our salvation.
So salvation is not only about the cross.
It doesn’t begin at the cross.
The work of God in salvation
And again, the creed tells us this is the reason Jesus came for us and for our salvation.
The work of God in salvation through Jesus begins with his incarnation.
That is his birth, when Jesus, the eternal word of God, took on flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.
That’s John 1.
14 from the message.
I love that translation.
The entire Bible study series I’m writing is based in that one verse.
And it’s really just half a verse.
It’s the opening lines of John 1.
Other translations will say Jesus, the word, took on flesh and blood and dwelt among us or tabernacled among us.
But I love the imagery of the message translation of John 1.
14, that Jesus, the Word of God, takes on flesh and blood, and he moved into the neighborhood.
Jesus has moved into our neighborhoods and he doesn’t plan to move out.
He moved into our neighborhoods.
To rescue and to transform and to renovate our neighborhoods.
Jesus moved into our neighborhood for us and for our salvation
That’s what we see in this section of the Creed.
Well, I know that was a lot of content.
We covered a lot of ground in talking about Jesus coming to us, the role of Mary, his incarnation, but all of this is important.
So I hope it’s
helped you to grow in your appreciation for what God has done.
Because yes, God does love you.
Jesus, the great shepherd, would leave the ninety nine to save the one, to save just you.
But don’t forget, it’s not you alone.
He has come for us to save us and to rescue us, to transform us and to remake us into his image.
So I hope you receive encouragement and maybe grow in your understanding a little bit.
Well, that’s all we have for today.
Thank you for joining me for this episode.
Go in peace and be kind.
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.