Jesus: Eternal Word, Not Created Being

This June marks seventeen centuries since 318 bishops gathered in Nicaea to forge words that would echo to today. As an English teacher, I’ve studied how language shapes meaning, and these ancient phrases—hammered out through debate, prayer, and divine inspiration—continue to speak to the modern heart. For years, I attended a church where we regularly recited the creed, feeling the air shift as individual voices merged into something larger. When a room full of people speak these words in unison, it is as if the veil between past and present grows thin, and we’re suddenly part of an unbroken chain stretching back through centuries of believers who needed these truths as desperately as we do.

What strikes me most is how the creed begins—it says, “We believe,” not “I believe.” In our increasingly isolated world faith often feels like a solo journey conducted through screens and personal devotions. This declaration reminds me that Christianity was never meant to be a private affair. Standing in church, hearing voices rise together—some confident, some barely whispering—I’m reminded that we’re all in this together, doubts and certainties mingling in sacred space.

The creed honors a God who is both cosmic and intimate. We’ve photographed black holes and mapped the human genome, yet these ancient words expand our vision beyond what we can measure or fully understand. The same God who spins galaxies also knows our hidden anxieties, our unseen fears. There’s deep comfort in trusting that the creator of quarks and quasars is also concerned with the details of our ordinary lives.

Then the creed becomes truly radical: it proclaims that this cosmic God didn’t stay distant. The movement is always downward—God coming to us, not waiting for us to somehow climb up to God. For anyone standing at the edges of faith, wondering if there’s room at the table, the creed’s message is clear: God has already made the first move, and it was toward you, toward all of us in our beautiful, messy humanity.

The incarnation—God becoming human—transforms how I see everyday life. Stuck in traffic or washing dishes, navigating difficult conversations or facing mundane Tuesdays, I remember that God chose to enter precisely this world. Not some sanitized, spiritual realm, but this one, with all its complications and contradictions. God has touched every human experience, no matter how ordinary.

The creed doesn’t flinch from darkness. Our culture often wants to rush past pain to find the happy ending, yet these ancient words force us to acknowledge that sometimes hope dies and gets buried. There’s a Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday—a space of waiting, of not knowing, of sitting with loss. I’ve found strange comfort in a faith that doesn’t pretend suffering isn’t real but instead faces it fully.

Yet the story pivots on three words that have carried believers through centuries of persecution, plague, and personal catastrophe: “He rose again.” Not as metaphor or wishful thinking, but as the deepest pattern of reality—that somehow, impossibly, death doesn’t get the final word. Life breaks through. Hope resurfaces. The story continues.

The creed speaks of the Spirit as the giver of life–not just biological existence, but real, abundant life. In a world running on empty, where burnout is epidemic and cynicism masquerades as wisdom, this promise resonates deeply. I’ve felt this life-giving Spirit in unexpected moments of joy, in the courage to forgive when I thought I couldn’t, in the activists and artists and ordinary people who reveal God’s ongoing work in the world.

Maybe most challenging in our divided age, the creed insists on one universal Church. Not a building or denomination, but a family that includes the banker and the barista, the skeptic and the saint, all of us who stumble through these words together. When I’m tempted to create a comfortable faith that mirrors my own preferences and prejudices, the creed calls me to a bigger table, a wider embrace.

The creed ends by looking forward, not to escape this world but to see it transformed. Every act of kindness, every pursuit of justice, every moment of beauty becomes a preview of what’s coming. When despair whispers that nothing matters, that all things fall apart, these ancient words insist we’re part of a story heading somewhere good.

You may be in any number of places spiritually. Perhaps you’re a lifelong believer seeking renewed meaning. Perhaps you’re hovering at the threshold, curious but uncertain. Perhaps you’re returning after years away, wondering if these old words still carry power. Wherever you are, know that these words have been meeting people in their questions for seventeen centuries.

The Nicene Creed isn’t a museum piece or a theological checklist. It’s a living story that continues to shape lives, bridge differences, and open hearts. When we recite these ancient words together, we join with millions across time and space—all of us imperfect, all of us searching, all of us declaring together that despite everything, we believe.

In a world of constant flux, there’s something profoundly anchoring about this continuity. The same words that strengthened believers in catacombs sustain believers in cathedrals and living rooms today. They remind us that we’re part of something larger than ourselves, older than our doubts, and more enduring than our circumstances.

Seventeen hundred years later, we’re still saying them. Still needing them. Still finding in them a truth worth sharing: We believe.