Show Notes
In this foundational episode of Peaceable and Kind, host Derek Vreeland dives into the heart of the Nicene Creed—the bold, ancient declaration that Jesus is “one Lord… true God from true God.” As we continue our journey through the Creed, Derek unpacks the opening lines of the Christ section, exploring what it really means to say that Jesus is Lord, King, and the eternal Son of God.
With theological insight, personal reflection, and a bit of humor, Derek traces the biblical and historical roots of key phrases like “begotten, not made” and “of one being with the Father,” while making space for mystery, awe, and wonder.
Whether you’re exploring the Creed for the first time or revisiting familiar words with fresh eyes, this episode will anchor your faith in the person of Jesus—fully God, fully man, and King of all.
Key Takeaways
The Nicene Creed affirms Jesus as fully divine and fully human—the foundation of Christian belief about who He is.
Saying “one Lord Jesus Christ” boldly proclaims that Jesus, not Caesar or culture, holds ultimate authority in our lives.
The title “Christ” means King—Jesus is not just Savior but Ruler, deserving our full allegiance and trust.
Jesus is the eternal Son of God—He was not made but shares the same divine essence as the Father.
Through Jesus, all things were made—He is both the Word of creation and the King of the cosmos.
🎧 Listen now and explore how the Nicene Creed helps us see Jesus clearly and love him more deeply.
Scriptures mentioned in this podcast:
John 3:16
Genesis 1:1
John 1:1
Books mentioned in this podcast:
_What’s a Christian, Anyway?_by Glenn Packiam
_The Creed_by Luke Timothy Johnson
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.
Back to another episode of Peaceable and Kind.
I am your one-man host, Derek Vreeland, and let me invite you to subscribe if you haven’t already, wherever you’re listening to this episode.
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That will spur you on to live a life of peace and kindness.
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Take a moment wherever you’re listening to this episode.
And if you would like to leave
A rating or review.
I’d appreciate that.
On this episode, we’re going to continue walking through the lines of the Nicene Creed.
Based on my friend Glenn Pacquia’s new book, What’s a Christian Anyway?
This is the
1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed.
So this book from Glenn came out at the perfect time, and this is a good time on the podcast to spend some time
with the Nicene Creed, which was originally ratified in three twenty-five A.
D.
1,700 years ago at the first council of Nicaea.
And this is a a really big deal.
The version of the creed that we have now was expanded in 381 A.
D.
at the Council of Constantinople.
But the the original Nicene Creed, 325 AD, was really, really important.
And so it’s good to recognize that we belong to an ancient Christian faith.
Like, we don’t get to make Christianity up.
We have received this tradition.
We received a tradition of faith that speaks of
Who God is and what God has done in the world.
And as I’ve grown in my faith, I have grown to appreciate
Ancient traditions and values from the past.
So I was baptized when I was 11 years old, when I was in high school.
Sophomore in high school, I had this encounter with Jesus in the midst of a of a youth revival.
We were
a Baptist youth group that had outgrown the youth room and then we were meeting in the fellowship hall.
We outgrew the fellowship hall.
We started meeting at the local Christian school gymnasium
And while we were a church of about, I don’t know, 300 people, we had a hundred to a hundred and fifty students coming every Wednesday.
And our our youth pastor would do all the games and the pizza parties and all that fun stuff.
But
What he did that’s most memorable is at the end of our youth group meetings, he would he would open up his Bible normally to the Gospels, and he would just talk to us about Jesus.
And so I I came to this like resurgence of my faith in a youth group of teenagers that we were really serious about following Jesus.
We
We wanted to be Jesus people.
And so we love Jesus and we love the church.
But it was a traditional church that in the early 1990s was experimenting
with contemporary forms of worship.
Do we bring guitars into the church?
We only had a piano and organ.
Do we bring
God forbid, drums into the church.
And as a teenager who grew up on rock music and pop music, like I was like, yes, let’s do this.
And as a as a young person, young in my faith, I wanted all the new contemporary stuff.
Like I would wear jeans to to church and
I remember one time on a Sunday night uh around the Christmas season, I wore a Santa hat uh to to the worship service and got chastised by the music minister.
He was shocked.
Uh but I wanted everything to be new and hip and contemporary.
Well now 35 years later, as I’ve gotten older, I’m now a grandparent.
I still value contemporary expressions, but there’s so many treasures in the ancient church that helps to anchor us and to root us.
And so I think the Nicene Creed is one of those anchors, one of those ancient tools that can help us.
And the bulk of the Nicene Creed is about Jesus.
You can see, at least in
one sense, three different sections to the Nicene Creed.
The opening section about God, Almighty, Creator, that’s God the Father, but then this very, very large section about Jesus.
And that was because the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.
D.
was convened to answer an important question about who Jesus is.
There was a church leader from Alexandria named Arius, and he taught that Jesus was the Son of God who was created by God.
And thus Jesus was not the same kind of God as God the Father.
He was a different kind of God, not the one eternal creator, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
And so the early church was trying to figure out how to respond to Arius because that didn’t seem what Arius was saying about Jesus
Being a God who was created by God the Father didn’t seem to line up with the Scriptures, the Gospels.
What those original followers of Jesus were testifying to about the nature of Jesus.
And so the origins of the Nicene Creed is trying to flesh out
Who is Jesus as this hundred percent God, hundred percent man?
And so I’m going to take three episodes.
to cover the Jesus section of the Nicene Creed because there’s so much here.
So on this episode, I want to talk about
Just the the first four lines about Jesus, I want to talk about these words.
This is what the Nicene Creed says about Jesus
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.
begotten not made, of one being with the Father.
Through him all things were made
So let’s take a moment to think about the words of the creed here.
We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ.
And it opens with, we believe.
The creed is something that all Christians believe
So it’s not just this is not just my individual faith, but this is something that we all believe
In the interview I had with Glenn Paccium, you can go back a couple episodes to find that one, my conversation with Glenn Pacquiaum.
In his book, What’s a Christian Anyway, he uses this great analogy of the faith, the Christian faith being a team sport.
It’s like we’re a rowing team
And some Christians think that the faith is like being in a one-person kayak where you have to do all the rowing, all the believing, you have to have all the answers.
But in the Nicene Creed, we don’t say I believe or I think or I’m of the opinion.
We say we believe.
So when you have moments of doubt, when you have moments of suffering, of despair, it’s okay to let other Christians believe for you.
Because you can put your faith paddle down for a little while.
You don’t have to have all the answers.
You don’t have to figure everything out.
And I love what Glenn says in his book: you don’t have to get out of the boat.
So, what is it that we collectively believe about Jesus?
Well, he’s one, he’s the Lord.
His name is Jesus, and he has been given this title, Christ.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ.
So think about each of those four words for just a moment.
One
We believe in one God.
There is one God who is our Father and one Jesus.
Notice that they
The Creed uses this singular language, one God our Father, and one Jesus.
And as the Creed is going to explain to us.
We believe this oneness is shared.
So the creed will go on to say we believe in that Jesus is one being with the Father.
And we’re going to go through that with some depth.
And that’s going to
Put us in the deep weeds, but just hang on.
So we only believe in one God who has been revealed in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Lord.
So we believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ.
Lord is first the name for Israel’s God.
So in the Old Testament, God reveals God’s own self to Moses, saying, go to the Pharaoh.
Moses says, who
Shall I say, sent me?
And God responds with God’s own personal name, which is recorded in four Hebrew characters.
which we have interpreted to be Jehovah or Yahweh.
This is God’s personal name.
But in the Jewish tradition,
God’s name, God’s personal name, is so holy that whenever a Jewish person comes across God’s personal name, Yahweh,
What they read is the Hebrew word Adonai, which means Lord or the Lord.
So throughout the Old Testament, you’ll see God speaking and saying, I am the Lord your God.
So the Lord, the Hebrew words Adonai, is what is used in replace of God’s very personal name that’s so holy in the Jewish tradition it’s not spoken.
And again, we think that that holy name is Yahweh.
But for early Christians to call Jesus Lord is to give Jesus the title of Israel’s God.
Now, Lord also means ruler or leader.
The Caesar, the emperor over the Roman Empire, was also called Lord
Now, Lord in English is a kind of an archaic term.
We never use the word lord unless we have a landlord, right?
So if you’ve ever rented an apartment or a house, you have a landlord, right?
So you gotta write your rent check.
uh to the landlord.
Probably now we we Venmo it or whatever, but back in the day we’d we’d write a check to the landlord and and the house or the apartment we were renting, we don’t own that.
It’s owned by the landlord.
So Lord has some political overtones in the first century world because the political leader, the Roman Emperor, the Caesar, was called Lord.
Now, what about Jesus?
So his name, Jesus, means God saves, the Lord saves, Yahweh saves.
And the angel spoke to Joseph.
And said, Mary is pregnant by the Holy Spirit.
She’s going to give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus, for he will rescue his people from their sins.
So Jesus is his name, and Christ is not Jesus’ last name, but Christ is a title.
And just personally for me, when I am writing or preaching or teaching, I like to use the personal name Jesus more than Christ.
Other writers, and even in the scriptures, Jesus is referred to as Christ or the Christ.
But just personally, I like to use Jesus’ personal name in talking about him.
Christ, again, is not his last name, but it’s a title, and it means king.
It means the Jewish king.
The ancient people of God believed that there was a coming king that they called Messiah.
So in Rome they had Caesars, Egypt had pharaohs, but ancient Israel had a king they called Messiah.
And in Hebrew, because Messiah is an English word, in Hebrew the word was Mashiach.
Meshok was translated into Greek as Christos, which is where we get the English word Christ.
So Christ or Messiah, this comes from Greek or Hebrew, refers to Israel’s king
again a political title.
So sometimes in the New Testament you will see the order reversed.
You’ll see Christ Jesus
because Christ Jesus is King Jesus.
And as King, Jesus receives not only our faith, our belief, our trust and our confidence,
but Jesus also is worthy of our allegiance.
Glenn talks about that in his book
And it’s been described by other scholars, included Scott McKnight and Mike Byrd, N.
T.
Wright, me, I’ve written.
and published in in my book, By the Way.
I have a chapter on the gospel and I I talk about this.
But really it’s Matthew Bates, who’s a professor.
at Northern Seminary, who has done the most work in this area, that in preaching the gospel in its fullness, we have to talk about the kingship of Jesus.
Again, because Christ Jesus is King Jesus.
I have to pause this episode for just a moment to tell you that I have written a new book
Incarnation, 8 lessons on how God meets us.
This eight-week Bible study uses the uniqueness of the message translation to explore God’s presence with us.
Link to pre-order is in the show notes.
So what Matthew Bates and others, myself included.
have wanted to emphasize about the centrality of the gospel is that the gospel is how God came to us in Jesus.
as the saving king through his life and death and resurrection and ascension.
So the gospel
if it’s faithful to the scriptures, must include the inauguration of Jesus as king.
So if Christ Jesus is King Jesus, if Jesus is King over God’s kingdom
then the proper response to the gospel, part of our faith to believe, is a kind of allegiance or loyalty to the king
So to say we believe that Jesus is Lord, that Jesus is God’s only son, that Jesus is king.
Is not only to trust in his work for our salvation, but to also give him our heart, to give him our loyalty and allegiance.
Alright, let’s get back to the creed.
The next line says that Jesus is the only Son of God
And there, the creed contains a reference to the most famous Bible verse of them all.
If you say you don’t know much about the Bible or you’ve never memorized any lines from the Bible, I bet you know John 3.
And let me read it here in its traditional form in the King James Version.
John three sixteen.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
I love the the beauty and the nostalgia of the King James Version, but I’ve noticed that some more modern translations
Modern translations like the New Living translation, the NIV, the Christian Standard Bible, and Eugene Peterson’s The Message.
use the phrase one and only, that Jesus is the one and only Son of God
Now, along with King Christ and Lord, this phrase Son of God is also a political title
Yes, son of God refers to Jesus’ relationship to God.
God is his father, and he is the one and only Son of God.
So Son of God does connect Jesus to the Father in terms of their relationship, but Son of God is also a political title.
So let’s take a moment here and talk a little bit about politics.
I understand this makes some people uncomfortable because they want to divide their theology, their beliefs about God from their politics.
But in the ancient world, politics and religion all blended together.
And honestly, for most people, their faith
For Christians that I know at least, their faith in Jesus is connected to their politics.
So take a deep breath.
We’re going to talk a little bit about politics.
So, Son of God was a political title like Lord because it was a title used by the Emperor, the Roman Caesar.
It was right there on Roman coins.
So every Roman citizen walking around with coins in their pocket
had a coin and on the front it had the profile of the emperor and then it had this phrase in Latin divi filius which means son of God
So, the titles used by the earliest Christians for Jesus were political titles used by the Caesar
Because again, in the ancient world, politics and religion were all mixed up and had become one thing.
So for Christians today
Our first allegiance is to King Jesus, the true Son of God
So in the first century world, Caesar wasn’t Lord.
Jesus was Lord.
Caesar, he wasn’t the Son of God.
Jesus was the true Son of God.
So let me kind of put this plainly.
What I see in this political title, Son of God, for us today.
is that our political allegiance is first and foremost to King Jesus.
That we take our political cues and we form our political opinions from Jesus
We are not following elephants or donkeys, but a lamb.
His name is King Jesus.
and all of our political opinions must bow down to him and be judged by him.
Now I know you have your political opinions.
I have my political opinions
The question is what is shaping our political imagination?
Now, I know it is popular for both the political right and the political left
To sort of bring Jesus in to be the mascot of their political opinions, right?
They want to use some select Bible verses to prop up their political platform
And both sides do it.
And all I’m saying is that Jesus is a king on his own
He has plans of his own to set up his throne.
Jesus has a political platform
And our political opinions, our political perspective as followers of Jesus, have to be shaped by Jesus if our first allegiance is to him, and not elephants or donkeys.
Okay, that’s enough politics on this episode.
Let’s get back to the creed.
It goes on to say that Jesus is eternally begotten of the Father.
God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father
And again, this is the language from John 3.
16, again, from the King James Version, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.
Now, in understanding these lines of the creed, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, one being with the Father, it is going to require us to take a bit of a deep dive.
So we’ve already taken a little bit of a rabbit trail talking about politics.
Now we’re going to do a little bit of theology and philosophy.
So take a deep breath.
Come with me, let’s let’s wrestle with the lines of the creed here.
So when it speaks of Jesus as being begotten of the Father,
It is not that the divine son of God was born out of God, because that’s what begotten means.
Begotten, again, is very archaic language.
To beget is to be a part of the birth.
So beget and begotten is often spoken of men.
So a father begets his son.
But when the ancient Christians in the Creed use that language of begotten, eternally begotten.
It’s not so much that the son was born of the father, but that the father and the son have this eternal relationship.
Jesus came from God in a very unique way.
As Luke Timothy Johnson writes in his book entitled The Creed, a book about the Nicene Creed, he writes,
that Christ came from and returned to God in a way that no other human has or will or could, because when he came from God he remained what he had been
And when he returned to God, he returned to his own place.
So again, pause for a second.
Because I know we’re we’re getting into the the depths of the mystery of God.
Jesus is eternally begotten
of the Father in the sense that Jesus is eternally related to God the Father
Jesus, the eternal Son of God, became human, took on human flesh, but never ceased to be God.
This is a mystery.
So I appreciate Luke Timothy Johnson here because Jesus, as the only begotten Son of God, came from God in a way that no one else did, and then returned.
to God in a way that no one else has, which makes him the one and only, the unique Son of God.
So then the creed continues saying that Jesus is God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made
So God did not make the Son.
There was never a time that the Son didn’t exist.
And that the Father and the Son, according to the Creed, have and share one being.
Jesus is one being with the Father.
So Jesus is God.
Now, the Father is God, but the Father is not Jesus.
Jesus is not the Father.
They are distinct in their personhood.
They are distinct in how they have been revealed to us.
but they share one being.
Now this requires a little bit of philosophy.
We’re talking about metaphysics or ontology here.
Jesus and the Father are of one divine essence, one divine being, one divine nature, one divine substance.
The creed in English has one being, and it’s a very, very important Greek word.
It’s the Greek word homoousius.
homo meaning same and ousia which in Greek means substance or essence
These are important concepts for understanding the Trinity.
Now, the Creed doesn’t use the word Trinity, but Trinity is shorthand for what we believe.
About the unity of God’s being and essence, only one divine essence and being
And in the diversity of this one God revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, this is a mystery to be explored
So take some time and just sit with it.
The Trinity is not a mathematical problem to be solved.
How does three equal one?
Rather, this is a mystery to be explored.
So sit with it.
That Jesus, who said, the Father and I are one, they’re one in their essence, nature, and being, Homousius.
Yet when Jesus on earth was praying to his father, he was not praying to himself.
This is a mystery to be explored.
Then the last line of the creed says this about Jesus: through him all things were made.
So if we go back to the beginning of our story, the beginning of the Bible to Genesis, in the opening lines we can see
Images of the Trinity.
So in the beginning was God, and God created.
The Spirit of God was hovering over God’s creation.
And how did God create, according to Genesis?
God created through his word.
God spoke and there was light.
God spoke and there was dry land.
God spoke and there were plants and animals, then ultimately through God’s
Word, humanity was created.
Well, what does John tell us about Jesus?
In the book of John, in the very opening,
John writes that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, distinct, and the Word was God, one essence, nature, and substance.
Jesus is the word of God.
And so the Father is the creator, and the Son is the Word of God that is the means of that creation
And the Spirit of God hovered over it all.
So, because all things were created and made through Him,
Jesus truly is Lord and King over it all.
Well, that’s enough for today.
We’ll pick up the creed in the next episode.
But we’ve taken some deep dives both into a little bit of politics and a little bit into theology and philosophy.
Take some time and sit with it.
Because again, the tensions that we feel, it’s good to wrestle with that, to sit with it
Again, you may not fully understand it.
And again, I’ve been working on these things for 35 years.
I don’t fully understand it, and that’s okay.
The idea here is not just that we learn information about God to be smarter, but that through reflecting.
And meditating on the words of the creed and the mystery that’s presented to us, we might grow in our hearts to love God, to worship God.
To stand in God’s presence in awe and wonder and mystery.
Because if God is transcendent, if God is holy and separate and other,
If God is different than his creatures here on earth, then shouldn’t we expect there to be mystery?
that God and God’s nature is more than we can fully understand.
And again, this is not God keeping secrets.
It’s not like God doesn’t want to reveal everything about God’s nature.
But it’s a mystery that beckons us to explore.
So let me invite you to come back to the next episode as we continue to explore the mystery of God as revealed in Jesus.
Well, that’s all that we have for today.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode.
Go in peace and be kind.
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.