We Christians who confess faith in God the Father Almighty also confess faith in Him as Maker (Creator) of heaven and earth. The one true God is before creation, eternal, far above time and space. He is other than the world; the world—“the Universe” as it is sometimes personified these days—is not God, personal or impersonal. Before the world came to be, there was only God and nothing else, and it is He who created the world from nothing.

The twelve articles that make up the Apostles’ Creed are extraordinary anchors to the historic Christian faith, even if we recognize that they are not the rule of faith and practice that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are. Yes, it will be crucial to understand that the Holy Spirit speaking in the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testament Scriptures is our final authority, the supreme judge of all controversies of religion and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and claims to private revelations. We are taking the Apostles’ Creed, then, as a help and a tool, not as a rule, to help us organize our reflections on what the Scriptures teach us in regard to faith and practice. Then we can use what we gain to evangelize our family and friends and to defend the Christian faith against its detractors.

We begin where the Creed begins: with our confession concerning God the Father and creation. Scripture and history show us that no individuals, families, churches, or nations can ever rise above the faith that they have in the God of their worship. When some declare, “In God we trust,” we must ask, “Who is the God in whom you trust?” Their answer and ours determines everything in our lives. If the object of our trust is wrong, we’ll get the whole world—ourselves included—wrong. There is scarcely any falsehood in our faith or any failure in our practice that doesn’t go back to false and faulty thoughts about God. The importance, then, of right beliefs about God simply cannot be overestimated. Who, then, is your God: the God revealed in Scripture, or the God envisioned in your imagination? Don’t shrug off the question: we cannot just “believe in God” and be saved. No, we must believe in the one true God: that is, as the Creed expresses it, the God who is God in three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

With questions and realities like those above, we take up the first article of the Creed, wherein we Christians confess faith in God the Father Almighty. We realize, first, that to confess faith in God the Father Almighty is to confess faith that God can and will do all that He intends. Whatever the Lord pleases He does (Ps 135:6). He is the one and only omnipotent Being (Deity) who reigns over His world. By contrast, man cannot do whatever he pleases. Man’s power to do what he intends is conditioned by creatureliness and sinfulness; his power is limited, dependent. God’s power to do all that He intends is not limited, not dependent, not conditioned by anything or anyone whom He has made. As the Apostle Paul declares, He works all things according to the counsel of His will (Eph 1:11). And note well: God’s almightiness extends to His power over evil and sin. Because He is most holy and righteous, He is not and cannot be the author or approver of evil and sin.

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