I Will Build My Church | Sunday, August 24, 2025

We believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Why does a creed about God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit suddenly say "we believe in the church"? Because the church is the overflow of who God is—and you need it more than you know.

A Providential Change of Schedule

Sometimes you don't recognize how things are working together until you've gone through them. A couple of weeks ago I adjusted my teaching schedule and moved the portion of the creed about the church from last week to this week. I didn't realize at the time that the Lord may have been involved in that decision. The message I would have given last week would have been decidedly different than the one I'll give today, because of some things that happened this week connected to this very idea of being part of the body of Christ. That will make more sense in a moment.

We're near the end of this series, using a creed that came together 1,700 years ago when the bishops of the Christian church gathered in 325 AD in Nicaea, in what is now northern Turkey. They came together to put forward, from the Scriptures, what the church believes about the nature of God. We've looked at what the creed says about God the Father, God the Son, and last week God the Holy Spirit. Today we turn to the fourth "we believe" statement, which teaches us important truths about how the nature of God—Father, Son, Holy Spirit—applies to us, his people.

The Shema and the Oneness of God

Ancient Judaism also has a very old creed, the first one every Jewish child learns, found in Deuteronomy 6:4:

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.

Jews call this the Shema, after the first word, translated "hear." But that word means more than to casually listen; it means to hear, heed, and obey. It's the same thing parents mean when they ask their kids, "Are you hearing me?" Among the things God commands here is that his people teach this to their children:

And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your children. (Deuteronomy 6:6–7)

There's an apparent grammatical puzzle in the Shema. The word for God is the Hebrew Elohim, and its ending makes it plural—so woodenly it could read, "the Lord our Gods is one Lord." But in Hebrew, when a plural noun stands in a singular context, it emphasizes majesty and grandeur. God the Lord is awesome, beyond comprehension, infinite while we are finite.

For the Christian, that plural takes on deeper meaning, because by revelation we understand the nature of God expressed in the Nicene Creed: there is one God, but God exists in three persons. This is the Trinity—one God, three distinct persons who are co-equal, co-eternal, and co-existent. My finite brain cannot fully comprehend it, but it is taught throughout the Scriptures.

Modalism, Tritheism, and the Trinity

Because we try to grasp the infinite with finite minds, Christians have produced misunderstandings. Some illustrate the Trinity with water—ice, steam, and liquid—all still H2O. But that illustration teaches modalism: the idea that God exists in the mode of Father, then the mode of the Son, then the mode of the Spirit, not all at once. That's not what the church believes. Others fall into tritheism, the idea of three gods existing in a divine council. That's not what we believe either. We believe in the Trinity: one God who exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

You might wonder whether any of this matters practically. My aim this morning is to show you why it matters for your actual life, and the fourth statement of the creed is where it all comes together. It also contains a speed bump for American Protestants—a word that catches people off guard.

The Word "Catholic"

The fourth statement says, "We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church." That word catholic has caused problems; more than a few people have asked me over the last twelve weeks why we don't change it. But this creed was established by Christian bishops 1,700 years ago, and changing a single word once caused a massive split in the church. So no, I'm not changing it.

Words change meaning over time. My kids say someone is "sick" when they mean cool; my parents would have heard "cool" and asked if I was cold. Catholic in 2025 means something different than it did 1,700 years ago. There was no Roman Catholic Church then; that came about with the great schism between East and West in 1054, and the Protestant Reformation didn't come until 1517, when Martin Luther posted his 95 theses in Wittenberg.

The word catholic comes from the Greek katholikos, meaning "about the whole," or universal. Universal itself has Latin roots meaning "turned into one." So the holy catholic church is the universal church—we who are individuals, turned into one. And church comes from the Greek ekklesia, meaning gathering, assembly, or congregation. We are the turned-into-one gathering.

Made as Individuals, Designed for Oneness

God made you an individual. Psalm 139 says God knit you together in your mother's womb. In Jeremiah 1:5 God says, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." Paul says in Galatians that God called him forth from his mother's womb unto a purpose. God has done the same for you. But God never designed or desired that you live in isolation. He desired that you be turned into one, brought into unity with others.

This is where the triune nature of God applies to us. There is perfect oneness between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which we can't fully comprehend—yet God graciously gave us an illustration in marriage. From the beginning he made them male and female, and a man shall leave his father and mother and the two shall become one flesh. They remain individuals—every married couple here knows their spouse is an individual who doesn't share all their views—yet a real spiritual, physical, and soulish union has taken place. They are united body, soul, and spirit.

There's another helpful unity: you yourself. Where does the conscious part of you—your soul—end and your body begin? We can't separate them. Some Christians say we're a dichotomy, body and soul; I'd say we're a trichotomy, body, soul, and spirit. There is a unity, a oneness God designed, that we can't fully comprehend. In the same way, God exists as three persons in inseparable oneness and love.

What Christ Came to Restore

Something horrific happened on the cross 2,000 years ago when, because of sin, the Son experienced separation and cried, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" That same separation happens to us through death, when body and soul are torn apart—which is not the way God intended it. There is a yearning in the soul to be reunited with the body. Sin brought separation, beginning with Adam and Eve, and all of us have experienced it. But Jesus came to redeem sinners, to restore and reconcile them back together as one, and to reconcile them to God. Listen to Paul in Ephesians 2:

For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works... (Ephesians 2:8–10)

Therefore remember, that you, once Gentiles in the flesh... were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation... so as to create in himself one new man from the two, thus making peace... For through him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. (Ephesians 2:11–18)

Notice the Trinitarian language: through him (Jesus), by one Spirit, to the Father. Point one: within the church, we are brought together as one in Christ, by the Spirit, to the Father. The church appears in this creed because it is the overflow of the triune God's perfect oneness of relationship and love. God desires that we, his image-bearers, be united together in oneness with one another and with him—and that happens in the church.

"I Will Build My Church"

Jesus came up with the church; the church didn't come up with this. He's the first to use the word, in Matthew 16:18: "On this rock I will build my church." That was in response to Peter's Trinitarian declaration, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus said, in effect, on this declaration I will build my assembly, my gathering—and here individuals will be united in oneness of relationship with one another and with God.

Why? Because in the opening chapter of the Bible, as God creates, he says seven times, "It is good." The first negative comes in Genesis 2:18: "It is not good that man should be alone." Not evil—incomplete, out of order. So God fixes the aloneness. He causes deep sleep to fall on Adam, fashions woman from his side, and brings her to him. The two become one flesh, joined in marriage, so they might be fruitful and multiply—the first command of the Bible—filling the earth with a great community, because it's not good for man to be alone.

Then Genesis 3 brings the devastating entrance of sin, separation, and death. The division we see between families, individuals, ethnicities, language groups, and continents is not the way God intended it. And Jesus, in the gospel, comes to redeem, restore, and reconcile us, that we might experience oneness in the body of Christ.

"All About Me" Versus "All for Y'all"

We Americans have a problem: we love individuality. In our folklore and fiction we exalt the rugged individual—Paul Bunyan, Davy Crockett, Huck Finn, Han Solo, Johnny Appleseed, John Henry, John Wick. In real life we celebrate Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk. We're inculturated to exalt the individual—and so we individualize everything, even the Bible.

When we read "by grace are you saved through faith," we internalize it as just me. But so often in Scripture the word "you" is plural. The hard part is that in Southern California we don't have the plural "you." In Georgia they do: it's "y'all." Maybe we need a Bible that says "y'all." Point two: we have made it all about me when God meant it all for y'all.

Whatever your opinions of him, Rick Warren wrote The Purpose-Driven Life, which sold millions of copies, and its very first heading is, "It's not about you." That was revolutionary, because in American culture it's all about you individually. He writes, "If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose."

You Don't Need the Church—Until You Do

Why does this matter? Honestly, it doesn't matter until it does. This Wednesday at 7:55 in the morning, driving home from dropping my kids at school, my mom called me. I knew immediately something was wrong. She had received a call from a sheriff's deputy in Snohomish County, Washington. Two weeks ago my brother Danny was here, and he and I talked right out by the table after the service. He said, "I'm going to Washington to do this base jump." Danny was doing a wingsuit base jump off Mount Bearing. He had an accident Tuesday night and died.

You never know when your last conversation will be. Mine with Danny was out there by that table. Why do you need the church, the body of Christ? You don't think you need it until you realize you do. Point three: God designed us for, and desires, that we be joined together as one in his body, the church. That's why the church belongs in a statement about the nature of God—it is the visible expression of the body of Christ.

We Americans tend to be loners; some of us are perfectly fine alone. I'm one of those people—I can spend long periods by myself. But God made you to live in connection with him and with one another. It actually makes us emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically sick to be isolated. We are the most technologically connected culture in history, and yet we have a loneliness epidemic. People are sick because of it, and there is a lot of science bearing this out—because we were not made to live alone.

"Just Me and Jesus"

In the last twenty years of American Protestantism there's been a push for "just me, Jesus, and my Bible—I don't need the church." Much of this is a reaction in my generation against late twentieth-century evangelicalism that produced the megachurch—the one-stop shop for spirituality, the Costco of Christianity, with bookstores, coffee shops, even 24-hour gyms, programs running seven days a week. In reaction, many in Gen Y and Gen Z say, "I just need Jesus and me and my Bible."

That's the "it" thing in our culture, except that it's foolish, because it doesn't fit with what Christ came to accomplish—to restore us back to one another. This is what Jesus prayed the night before his crucifixion:

I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word; that they all may be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you; that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me... that they may be made perfect in one, that the world may know that you have sent me, and have loved them as you have loved me. (John 17:20–23)

Point four: the church is Christ's plan for oneness and the gathering of his people as one in him. Jesus borrowed the term ekklesia—congregation, assembly, gathering—and called his people the church. But in our culture we hear "church" and think of buildings, organizations, bylaws, and budgets. "Here's the church, here's the steeple." That's wrong at its core. The church is the body of Christ. Like marriage—which God created as a spiritual union but which society now wraps in licenses and legal rights—the church is something majestic and spiritual that God has done. We who were not a people have been made a people; we who had not received mercy have now received mercy (1 Peter 2:9–10).

"Church Hurt" and Imperfect People

The "it" thing is to say, "I don't need the church, just me and Jesus." I pulled some real examples off social media this week: "You don't need a worship team, a pastor, or a church to worship Jesus." "You don't need a priest, a church, good works, rituals, confessions—you need a personal relationship with Jesus." The words are true, but the sentiment is false. It's not how God intended it.

Why do people land there? Because in every generation, people get hurt in church—and there's a lot of this right now. There are whole TikTok and YouTube followings of "church hurt." I'm not glossing over genuine abuse; sometimes that should be prosecuted and people should go to jail. But most of these stories amount to, "I got my feelings hurt." What made you think church would be perfect? It's filled with broken, imperfect people, and broken people around each other do broken and dumb things. Sometimes you repent of it; sometimes you call people on it.

Interestingly, the only other times Jesus uses the word "church" are in Matthew 18, in the context of being hurt at church. His instruction isn't to run to the next church or post a video; it's to go to the person who hurt you and say so—and often the response is, "I didn't realize I hurt you. I'm sorry. Can you forgive me?" That's how the church is supposed to function. The church is filled with imperfect people saved by grace, seeking mercy and forgiveness from God and one another. Yes, you'll be hurt by Christians—but you'll be hurt by people in general.

If you came to Cross Connection thinking you found a perfect church: number one, you didn't, because we're full of imperfect people; number two, you made it less perfect by coming, because you're not perfect either. You're forgiven. Jesus loves you. So do we. I've been part of this church for more than 35 years, since I was a kid. I have church-hurt stories—and I'm still part of the same church, because God put me here, and put you here, to grow us and change us. We need one another, and we don't realize how much until we need one another.

For 48 hours they couldn't get Danny's body off the mountain. During that time I had to put my phone on do not disturb because it was too much—people reaching out, calling, showing up, praying. It was overwhelming and wonderful. This is what the body of Christ is supposed to be. Now I see why God didn't have me talk about the church last week.

Plan A, With No Plan B

Point five: the church is God's plan A for redeeming and reconciling the lost and broken unto himself—and there is no plan B. Is it flawed? Yes. Is it perfect? No. Is it saved by grace and experiencing mercy and forgiveness? Yes. Will you be hurt around other hurt people? Yes—and that is where we learn to forgive and be forgiven, to extend and receive grace and mercy, growing into the likeness of Christ. You'll be hurt anywhere in a broken world, but it's far better to be within the church, where people pray for you, share with you, and care for you, fulfilling the "one anothers" of Scripture. Like it or not, we'll spend eternity together; we'd better get used to each other.

Two more things. First, there are many lost and broken people in this world who need the body of Christ, and you are the ambassadors of his church. Second, Jesus said, "I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against her." The plans of the enemy will not prevail; the church will endure. It has withstood the most tyrannical, persecuting regimes in history, and it thrives in places like Iran and China where it is restricted. The challenge is that where the church has the most freedom, it often becomes the most dead.

If you are not known at this church, I can guarantee it's not the church's fault—we want to give you the opportunity to live life in connection. That's why our life groups are starting in a couple of weeks. They may seem trivial, but they aren't; that's where you develop relationships with people who know who you are, so when something bad happens, they're there. So often someone leaves hurt because "you didn't visit me in the hospital," when we never knew they were there. You have to be vulnerable and say, "I want to be part of the body." If you don't know how, Mark will teach a class next week after the third service on hosting a life group. I hope you'll come. It seems strange that it's so hard to get people into community when so many are living in isolation and loneliness—but it is. God help us.

Closing Prayer

God, thank you for your church. This is your creation, your purpose, your plan; you put this together. I pray you would help us learn more what it is to be your people gathered together as one in Christ—that we would experience grace and mercy and forgiveness, and extend grace and mercy and forgiveness to others. It is certain that someone in this room will say or do something that offends us in the next six to ten weeks, and we'll have every reason in our flesh to say, "I'm out." But Lord, you called us to be part of this body. Help us to know, experience, and express grace and mercy and forgiveness as you enable us. We ask this in Jesus' name, and all those that agreed said, Amen.