"We Believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church"

In the second paragraph of the Nicene Creed, we confess our faith in the Son of God and his saving work. In the third paragraph, we confess our faith in the Holy Spirit and his ministry. When we confess that “we believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church,” we are confessing something about the ministry of the Spirit in the Church. 

In subsequent notes, I want to consider each of these marks of the Church: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. In this note, I want us to see that it is by the Holy Spirit that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. 

The Church is one. We are the one body and bride of Christ, “for in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free” (1 Cor 12:13). We must be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” because “there is one body and one Spirit” (Eph 4:3-4). 

The Church is holy because we are anointed, filled, and sealed with the Holy Spirit: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” (1 Cor 3:16-17)

The Church is catholic. The one body of Christ comprises many members, “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev 7:9). The catholicity of the Church is manifest in the gift of the Spirit to the nations. As the Apostle Peter testified to the council in Jerusalem: “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.” (Acts 15:7-9)

Finally, the Church is apostolic. Jesus said to his disciples at the Last Supper: “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.” (John 15:26-27) The Spirit’s witness to the Son is communicated through the apostolic witness. The Church is planted and nourished by the Gospel witness of Jesus’s Spirit-empowered apostles.

By the Holy Spirit, the Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. In my next note, I will consider our confession that the Church is one: “there is one body and one Spirit” (Eph 4:4).