Show Notes
In this rich and reflective episode, host Derek Vreeland walks us through the final lines of the Jesus section of the Nicene Creed—unpacking what it means that Christ suffered, died, rose again, ascended, and will come again in glory.
From the historical reality of the crucifixion under Pontius Pilate to the promise of Christ’s return, Derek helps listeners grasp how these core beliefs are more than theological statements—they are the heart of the Christian hope. You’ll hear insights into why Jesus had to truly die, how the resurrection fulfills Scripture, and what it means to live with joyful anticipation of Christ’s kingdom that has no end.
Whether you’re new to the Nicene Creed or looking for deeper reflection, this episode offers clarity, comfort, and challenge.
Key Takeaways
The crucifixion of Jesus rescues us from sin and reveals the love of God.
Mentioning Pontius Pilate grounds Jesus’ death in history—it really happened.
Jesus descended into death not to suffer, but to defeat it for our sake.
“He rose on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” connects the resurrection to the entire Old Testament story.
Jesus’ ascension means He now reigns with authority from the “control room of heaven.”
Discover the answer to when Jesus will return in Revelation 22:20.
His kingdom is both present and coming—and it will never end.
🎧 Listen now to discover the heartbeat of Christian hope through the Creed’s most powerful promises.
Scriptures mentioned in this episode:
1 Corinthians 15:3-4 Job 19:25–27 Isaiah 26:19 Daniel 12:2 Hosea 6:2 John 3:17 Matthew 24:36
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
To another episode of Peaceable and Kind.
I am your host, Derek Vreeland, leading you along the way that promotes peace and kickstarts kindness.
So glad that you have joined me for this episode.
Make sure you subscribe if you haven’t already and leave a rating and review.
Every once in a while I check those reviews, and if I come across one I really like, I might read it in a future episode.
But thank you so much for your support.
We are working our way through the Nicene Creed, and so today we’re back to the Creed, and we are at the end of the Jesus section.
So remember the Nicene Creed is the fundamental essentials of the Christian faith.
This is what all Christians believe.
And when I say all Christians, I mean
all branches of the Christian family.
So Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and all the variety of Protestants
All believe these things.
So the Nicene Creed, which is a gift to us from the fourth century,
So this thing, we’re like 1700 years into this thing.
It is a gift that helps us understand what is really, really important about the faith.
One way to think about the Nicene Creed is that it’s sort of the DNA of our faith.
So everything we believe is packed into this
very small creed so that as we reflect on the creed, as we use the creed devotionally or in worship,
We are putting within our hearts, within our soul, the very DNA of our faith, so that everything that we believe really grows out of these words.
But remember there are three sections.
There’s an opening section about God the Father.
There’s this large middle section.
about Jesus and then a final section about the Holy Spirit, about the church, which is nurtured by the Spirit and sort of end things.
And so we’re at the end of the middle section, the Jesus section.
And the Nicene Creed devotes most of its attention to Jesus because that is the origin story of
There were creeds in the ancient church that were used around baptism
Now we call that creed the Apostles’ Creed.
But there wasn’t an exact version of that creed in different places of the ancient world the church would use
different phrases, uh some of these baptismal creeds were longer than others, but in the early fourth century the church was faced with a dilemma.
There was a bishop by the name of Arius, and he was teaching that Jesus as the Son of God was created by God the Father
Arius taught that there was a time in history past when Jesus did not exist.
So to say that Jesus was the Son of God meant that God gave birth or that God the Father created Jesus.
The problem that this created for the early church was it began to work in people’s imagination if they were listening to Arius.
That Jesus was a separate God, a different sort of God than God the Father.
And so there were a number of Christian voices, Irenaeus, the church father in particular, Athanasius and others
who were working to establish what is the true apostolic ancient witness of Jesus
Who exactly is Jesus?
Because Arius was creating this problem because we would no longer be a monotheistic religion.
If we followed Arius’ teaching.
Monotheism, mono meaning one, theism meaning God, the early Christian movement grew out of the soil
of ancient Judaism, which taught and confessed the belief in one God
And so Christians had always believed in only one God.
But if Arius was right, there are actually two gods
And if you want to throw the Holy Spirit in there, possibly three gods shifting Christianity from its Jewish background into more of a pagan religion that would be polytheistic.
So the Council of Nicaea was called in 325 A.
D.
, in part to deal with
This problem created by Arius, and to establish once and for all what Christians believed about the God that we worship
And so we have been looking at the Nicene Creed at the Jesus part over the last couple episodes.
Let me recap just a little bit.
In episode 56, we talked about Jesus being the one Lord, Jesus Christ, and we talked about Jesus
eternal nature and his one being with the Father.
The Greek word is homoousius
So the creed says that we believe Jesus is true God from true God, very God from very God.
One being or one essence or one substance with the Father.
So this becomes the foundation for what Christians believe about the Trinity.
So the creed doesn’t use the word Trinity, but this is what we have believed at least from the third century forward, even before the Council of Nicaea.
That God is one in God’s essence and being.
There is only one God, and this one God has been revealed in three persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
So the creed establishes that the Son and the Father are of the same essence, the same spirit, the same substance.
In episode 57, we looked at Jesus coming for us and for our salvation.
So we talked a little bit about salvation and what that means.
You can go back and listen to episode 57 if you want more.
We also talked about the incarnation that Jesus took on real human flesh, human flesh and blood that he received from his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
And and don’t be a hater.
We talked about this in episode 57.
Don’t be a hater if you’re a Protestant.
It is good and Christian to honor Mary.
She is certainly blessed.
But if you want to hear more of that.
Go back to episode 57.
On this episode, we want to look at what else the Creed says about Jesus.
So let’s walk through the lines of the Creed
The next thing it tells us about Jesus is that for our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.
He suffered death and was buried.
At the heart of our faith is a crucified God.
King Jesus was enthroned not on a golden throne, but a wooden cross.
Now you can go back and listen to previous episodes because there are six episodes, including an interview with my friend Brad Jerzak, where I’m discussing with great detail the meaning of the crucifixion.
And I’m not necessarily going to rehash all of that here, but at the heart of our faith is the cross.
And maybe I can sum up some things like this.
The crucifixion of Jesus, the death of Jesus upon the cross, both rescues and reveals
The death of Jesus rescues us from sin, from the devil, rescues us from death itself.
And so there is a saving and redeeming aspect of the death of Jesus.
His death rescues us, but it also reveals.
The death of Jesus reveals to us the true nature of God, which is self-giving love.
So when we see Jesus upon the cross, this is what God is like.
God is co-suffering and that he joins us in human suffering.
The cross reveals the nature of God to be self-giving love, because Jesus gave his life, his very flesh for the life of the world
And so we see what God is like, but the cross also reveals to us who we can become
We can become a cruciform people, a people of self-giving love, people who willingly bear the burdens of others and join in the suffering and help those around us.
So the death of Jesus, it both rescues and it reveals.
And the creed also mentions Pontius Pilate, that Jesus was crucified under
the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.
Now Pilate is a bad guy in the story, in the Gospels.
I mean he’s the one that seals Jesus’ fate.
So why is his name mentioned in the Creed?
I think there’s a lot of reasons, but the primary reason that I see is that
Mentioning Pilate roots the death of Jesus in history.
The incarnation, that is, the birth of Jesus, his life
His death, his resurrection, and ascension are events that took place in history
Christians don’t believe these are metaphors, but these are literal.
If Jesus did not literally die and rise on the third day, then there is no
security or confidence in our faith.
These aren’t just fairy tales or stories to inspire us
These are events that took place in history.
And that’s why I think the Roman governor is mentioned, because it it grounds the death of Jesus in real history.
Now, the Creed, the Nicene Creed, says that he suffered death, which is a little bit of an interesting line.
The way it’s written here, he suffered death.
And one of the things I find interesting is that the word death is not used in the Eastern Orthodox version of the Nicene Creed
It’s only in Western churches, which would be Catholic or Protestant.
In the Orthodox East, when the creed is translated from Greek into English, they will say he suffered under Pontius Pilate
It is Western churches that add death, that he that he suffered death.
And I think it can be a little bit confusing.
Because people ask, w why did Jesus fully die?
Why couldn’t he just shed some blood and then
be restored and and then be ascended.
Why did he have to actually literally die?
I think the Apostles’ Creed
Is very helpful in this regard.
In the Apostles’ Creed, we confess that Jesus descended to the dead
And I think that’s helpful language.
The Nicene Creed in English, in Catholic and Protestant churches, using this language of suffering death.
I think can get us off on the wrong foot because Jesus didn’t suffer in death.
He did descend into the abode of the dead.
older English versions of the Apostles’ Creed say that he descended into hell.
But it’s not so much that Jesus descended in order to suffer, because Jesus did all of his suffering on the cross.
When Jesus said from the cross, it is finished, he was declaring that his suffering on our behalf, in our place, it was finished
Jesus didn’t suffer when he died and went into death, but Jesus did descend into real
Human death.
Whatever it means for a human being to die, Jesus experienced that.
Not to suffer in death, but to defeat death.
Remember for Christians, death is an unwelcome guest in God’s good creation.
Christians don’t long for death.
I I think that that is very morbid.
I think people who fixate on death
uh need need help because death is not good.
Death is this unwelcome guest in God’s good creation
Hey friends, I wanted to pause for just a second to let you know that my next book, Incarnation, 8 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.
Now, we all know that we are going to die.
And so I think to acknowledge that, yes, I’m not going to live in this world forever, I think is sobering and good.
But I always warn people we don’t want to fixate on death, we don’t want to long for death that because death has always been portrayed throughout the scripture as an enemy.
And so while it is inevitable that we are going to die, we still rightly fight against death.
Because death is the enemy.
And I challenge you to look through the scriptures where death is talked about.
It’s always a bad guy wearing a black hat.
Death is always an enemy.
So Jesus descending into death was not to suffer there, but the suffering ended when Jesus breathed his last.
So maybe that’s what the creed is trying to refer to, that death was the very ending of Jesus’ human suffering.
But when he descended into the dead, he did so to liberate those that were captive there, and then ultimately to defeat death, to take away the sting of death.
So for us to die now is not a fearful thing because we know that for us to enter into death is to encounter Jesus who defeated it.
So we do want to continue to fight against death and celebrate that Jesus has defeated death for us.
Okay, let’s continue to work through the creed.
The next lines say this.
On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures.
While the death and suffering of Jesus is heavy and foreboding, at least that’s the way I read the Creed and when I recite.
the Apostles’ Creed, which I do as a part of morning prayer, so I do that every day.
When I am saying out loud the words about Jesus’ death and suffering,
descending to the dead.
It’s always heavy.
It’s always dark and foreboding.
But when I get to the resurrection part, on the third day he rose again, that line feels to me to be
light and joyful.
That’s that’s how I read it.
On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures, brings such joy after the crucifixion
and death part.
Now I have spent time exploring the resurrection in six episodes.
So again, just like with crucifixion, you can go back and listen.
to all that I say about the resurrection of Jesus.
Spend a lot of time there.
But I do want to hone in on this one phrase in the Nicene Creed about the resurrection of Jesus.
where it says, in accordance with the scriptures.
This is drawn from 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4.
In fact, if you read through the Nicene Creed, if you know the Bible well, you can begin to see that the Creed was drawing upon language from the Scripture.
And this line in accordance with the scriptures is in 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4.
Let me read those verses to you.
1 Corinthians 15, beginning with verse 3, says.
For I handed on to you as of first importance that in turn that I had received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.
and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.
So that phrase, which appears in the Creed, accordance with the Scriptures, doesn’t mean that Jesus rose from the dead according to the few Bible verses.
that hint at resurrection.
That is in the Old Testament.
There are only a handful of verses in the Old Testament that talk or or foreshadow resurrection.
It’s interesting when Christians really want to emphasize the death and resurrection of Jesus is so that we can go to heaven when we die and that we can be rescued from hell.
To emphasize that, I find interesting because if you go into the Old Testament and look for verses that talk about going to heaven,
You will find that there are zero, in fact.
If you look at verses that talk about going to hell, well, it depends on how you define what hell is.
The Old Testament does talk about the Hebrew word Sheol, which is similar to the Greek concept of Hades.
And that’s not hell as a place of punishment.
Sheol was simply abode of the dead, the destination for departed souls.
And it was a scary place.
But Sheol will appear a few times in the scriptures, depending on what translation you use, and sometimes in reference to these hints of resurrection.
So let me give you just.
The handful of verses.
.
It’s not all the verses, just some of the verses that are in the Old Testament that hint towards resurrection.
One is Psalm 16, 10, For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful ones see the pit.
This is quoted in Acts about the resurrection of Jesus.
It’s a hint that maybe Sheol, the abode of the dead, is not final.
Then there’s Job 19, starting with verse 25.
For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth.
and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God.
So Job, which is one of the oldest verses, one of the oldest books in the Old Testament
has this hint of the hope of seeing God embodied in flesh.
Then there’s a few verses in Isaiah.
One is Isaiah 26, 19.
Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise.
Another picture of resurrection.
Then there’s Daniel 12, 2.
Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
Jesus draws upon this kind of language when he talks about a resurrection of life and a resurrection of judgment.
And then the other verse in the Old Testament that’s good to mention is Hosea six two.
After two days he will revive us, on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.
So there are some verses that hint at resurrection, but the phrase according to the scriptures means all of the Old Testament scriptures.
Jesus came not to abolish, but to fulfill the law and the prophets.
He is the long-awaited conclusion to the story of Israel that’s recorded in the Old Testament.
So the scriptures, the Old Testament scriptures, are telling this story, but at least in our Protestant Bibles, it ends with Malachi.
There’s no ending, there’s no conclusion
And so Jesus comes in accordance to the scriptures to be the finale of the Old Testament.
So Jesus comes to fulfill all that the law and the prophets would say, which culminates in his death and resurrection according to the scriptures.
Let’s go back to the creed.
The next line about Jesus is that he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
We celebrate the ascension of Jesus 40 days after Easter.
So it’s towards the end of Easter tide.
And ascension is not Jesus going upward.
It’s not Jesus turning into Superman and flying through the air and into outer space.
Ascension doesn’t mean that Jesus went up, literally.
It means that Jesus was promoted to this place of authority.
This seat at the right hand of the Father speaks of a place of authority.
So you can think about Jesus this way: that Jesus existed
with the Father and the Spirit in heaven, and then descended from heaven to earth, then through his
Suffering and passion and crucifixion, Jesus descended from humanity into suffering humanity
He then descended as far down as a human being can go.
He descended all the way into death itself.
The resurrection of Jesus is then Jesus’ first step of ascension.
He has lifted up out of death back into restored humanity.
And then ultimately ascended back to the right hand of the Father.
So in our imagination, we see this descension and ascension as going down and going up.
But Jesus literally didn’t fly through the atmosphere, rather, he was absorbed back into heaven.
and heaven is not a faraway, distant place.
Heaven is just a different dimension.
Heaven and earth are closer than we often imagine.
There’s just a a veil right now between heaven and earth.
So here on earth we can’t see heaven, but it’s just on the other side of the curtain.
It’s just on the other side of the veil.
Heaven is as close as the other side of the wardrobe
And through faith in Jesus, we here on earth can connect to heaven.
So Jesus in his ascension was promoted back.
to that place of authority where he reigns and rules from the control room of heaven
Then the final lines of the Jesus section in the Nicene Creed say this.
He will come again in glory.
to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
All Christians believe
in the return of Jesus.
We all believe that Jesus will come again and he is coming to judge
Now Jesus said, and this was recorded in John’s Gospel in John chapter 3, that he came not to condemn the world, but that the world might have life.
through his name.
This is John 3.
17, the verse that appears right after the most famous Bible verse of them all, John 3.
16
So Jesus in his first coming did not come to condemn but to save.
In his second coming, when Jesus comes again, he will come to judge
There will be at the return of Jesus a sorting out of the weeds and the wheat
of the goats and the sheep, of the wise virgins and the unwise virgins
Jesus tells many parables about his second coming, how he’ll come at a surprising time, like a thief in the night.
When Jesus returns, though, there will be this sorting out.
We will be held accountable for what we have done in this life.
So Jesus is returning, and all Christians believe that.
In the Anglican tradition, they have this bit of liturgy called the mystery of faith.
It’s a part of my morning prayers.
I say it towards the end of my prayer time.
The mystery of faith is: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.
And again, all Christians believe this: that Jesus will return, but when Jesus returns,
And what are the factors and what’ll happen around his return, uh that’s kind of up for debate.
And actually, I’m I’m glad that you are listening to this podcast episode and that you’ve made it this far because I’ve been doing some work on this for a while.
And I don’t want to shock you, but I have found the answer to the question, when will Jesus return?
Now, I know in the past that people have used the Bible to chart out the end of the world, and they’ve, you know, named times and dates that Jesus will return, and they’ve all been wrong.
But I have been doing some serious biblical work, and I think I found it.
I I think I’ve really cracked the code.
And I think I have the biblical answer to when Jesus will return.
And honestly, friends, it’s been hiding in plain sight.
It’s been in the scriptures all along.
And I don’t know why so many so-called Bible prophecy experts have missed this.
And I know everyone else who says they know when Jesus is going to return.
They’ve all been wrong, but I got it.
I got the answer.
And the answer is found in the second to last verse in the Bible.
The answer to the question, when will Jesus return, is found in Revelation 2220.
Write that down.
By the way, we put a list of all scripture references in the show notes, so you can get it right out of the show notes.
The answer is Revelation 2220.
Are you ready for it?
Here’s what it says.
Revelation twenty-two twenty The one who testifies to these things says, Surely I am coming soon.
Amen.
Come Lord Jesus.
There’s your answer.
When is Jesus coming again?
Answer.
Soon
He’s he’s coming soon, that’s the answer.
And what’s funny about that is that it begs the question, what does soon actually mean?
Because Christians for 2,000 years have been saying that Jesus is coming soon.
And I’m not going to be the one to
Actually, give a date because Jesus made it really clear in Matthew 24, 36 that no one knows the day or the hour.
So please do not give any attention to so-called Bible prophecy experts on the internet
Even if they’ve written a book telling you, promising you they can tell you when the end of the world’s happening, don’t believe any of it.
If someone asks you, do you know when Jesus will return?
You can say, I listened to the peaceable and kind podcast.
I know that answer from the Bible, and the answer is soon.
And yes, we’ve been saying soon for 2,000 years.
And I think part of the mystery here is that every generation
ought to be living with the expectation of the return of Jesus.
That’s why I include the mystery of faith bit of liturgy in my morning prayers.
Every morning I confess Christ will come again.
When?
He’s coming soon.
So let’s wrap up the final line here in the Jesus section of the Nicene Creed.
It says, and his kingdom will have no end
This is one of the things that I love about the Nicene Creed because the Apostles’ Creed doesn’t mention the kingdom of God.
And for Jesus, the kingdom of God, that is God’s rule and reign, it’s a big deal.
Jesus came to announce the kingdom, to demonstrate the kingdom, to teach us about the kingdom.
And so I appreciate that the Nicene Creed reminds us that his kingdom will have no end.
And the mystery surrounding the kingdom of God is that Jesus brought the kingdom, so the kingdom is here among us.
God is ruling and reigning now.
But the kingdom is also future.
In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray, let your kingdom come, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
So the kingdom is here, but the kingdom is coming, and the promise that we get in the Nicene Creed is that his kingdom will never end.
So earthly politicians with their rule and reign will let you down at some point.
But King Jesus, who is ruling and reigning over a kingdom that never will end, he will never let you down.
Alright, so that’s a good wrap-up for the Jesus section of the Nicene Creed.
And yes, now you know when Jesus will return.
At least you know how to answer that
I hope this episode was helpful for you.
Thank you for joining me.
Go in peace and be kind.
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.