On this episode of the Denison Forum Podcast, Dr. Mark Turman is joined by Dr. Glenn Packiam for a timely and thoughtful conversation about the enduring significance of the Nicene Creed. In a cultural moment marked by confusion and instability, they explore how this ancient declaration of faith offers clarity, grounding, and hope.
Dr. Packiam—a pastor, theologian, and author—unpacks the creed’s rich theology, the role of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives, and why the communal nature of belief matters more than ever. Their discussion also reflects on the themes of Easter, pointing us toward the resurrection of Christ and the unity of the global church.
If you’re looking for deeper understanding and encouragement in your walk with Christ, this conversation is a meaningful place to start.
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Topics
- (00:41): Introducing Dr. Glenn Packiam
- (01:24): Cultural reflections and the need for clarity
- (05:45): The role of the Nicene Creed in modern faith
- (09:05): Historical context and significance of the Nicene Creed
- (20:23): The communal aspect of faith
- (25:47): Understanding the Trinity and the supremacy of the Father
- (30:10): Jesus’ kingship and our allegiance
- (33:49): Declining awareness of sin
- (37:49): The nature of Jesus
- (41:29): The Holy Spirit: The giver of life
- (48:54): The church: One, holy, catholic, and apostolic
- (58:03): The resurrection and our future hope
Resources
- What’s a Christian, Anyway? by Glenn Packiam
- Glenn Packiam
- The Intentional Year by Holly & Glenn Packiam
- The Resilient Pastor: Leading Your Church in a Rapidly Changing World
- Blessed Broken Given: How Your Story Becomes Sacred in the Hands of Jesus: Packiam, Glenn
- Glenn Packiam (@gpackiam) / X
- How has Denison Forum impacted your faith?
- 2025 04 Who Am I? Identity • Denison Forum
- Subscribe to The Daily Article by Dr. Jim Denison
About Dr. Glenn Packiam
Glenn Packiam, ThD is the Lead Pastor of Rockharbor Church in Costa Mesa, California. Glenn is the author of several books, including The Resilient Pastor, Blessed Broken Given, and the most recent title, co-authored with his wife, Holly, The Intentional Year. He earned a Doctorate in Theology and Ministry from Durham University, and is a Senior Fellow at Barna Group, a Visiting Fellow at St. John’s College at Durham University, and an ordained priest with the Anglican Church of North America. Glenn has written over 65 worship songs published with Integrity Music, including “Your Name”, co-written with Paul Baloche. Glenn and Holly have four children and live in Orange County, California.
About Dr. Mark Turman
Mark Turman, DMin, serves as the Executive Director of Denison Forum, where he leads with a passion for equipping believers to navigate today’s complex culture with biblical truth. He is best known as the host of The Denison Forum Podcast and the lead pastor of the Possum Kingdom Chapel, the in-person congregation of Denison Ministries.
Dr. Turman is the coauthor of Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters. He earned his undergraduate degree from Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, and received his Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He later completed his Doctor of Ministry at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco.
Before joining Denison Forum, Mark served as a pastor for 35 years, including 25 years as the founding pastor of Crosspoint Church in McKinney, Texas.
Mark and his high school sweetheart, Judi, married in 1986. They are proud parents of two adult children and grandparents to three grandchildren.
About Denison Forum
Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, The Denison Forum Podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited.
Dr. Mark Turman: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Denison Forum Podcast. I’m Mark Turman, the host for today’s conversation. First, John tells us that faith in Jesus particularly is the thing that gives us victory. I love this word in the Greek language. It’s the word Nike that we know so well. That’s what victory means from that word.
And first, John is telling us that our greatest earthly and eternal victories are going to come because of our relationship to Jesus. That’s what we want to do in our podcast conversation to do today. We want to help you. Find clarity and hope through the current cultural fog, so that you will live by faith and not by fear.
And my conversation partner today is Dr. Glenn Packiam. Lemme tell you a few things that are maybe obvious but important for you to know. He is a passionate Christ follower, and that’s the reason we want to talk to him. But he is also husband to Holly, a father pastor of Rock Harbor Church in [00:01:00] Costa Mesa, California, a theologian and a really wonderful speaker and author.
And so we’re gonna talk to him today about navigating the uncertain, confused, and corrupt times. So Glenn, welcome to the podcast. We’re glad to have you.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Thanks so much, mark. What a delight to sit down and talk to you
today.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. So we wanna set up the need for this new resource that you created called What’s a Christian, Anyway?
Anyway so lemme tell you the story that kind of sets up our conversation today. Last night I was recovering from a small medical procedure that required me to lay down for a bunch of hours, which was an interesting thing in and of itself and doing what all good Americans do. I was looking for something good to watch or listen to, and I came across a YouTube video of the Johnny Carson show, circa 1970.
So the interesting thing that caught my eye was that Johnny Carson had a lengthy conversation with his guest Billy Graham, [00:02:00] amazing. Who had just come back from his crusade in Korea. Now what what part of what got my attention here, Glenn, was as they talked about their current cultural moment, huh?
They talked about several things: broken sexuality and a lot of cultural confusion. They talked about teenage despondency and suicide rates, and I thought, sounds like they’re living with me now. Right? 50 years later. So your book is subtitled navigating uncertain, confused, and Corrupt Times.
Do you think it’s worse now or how is our moment unique? I. For you to respond with this new resource.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: I think we’re living in a moment where we’re kind of standing between two crosswinds, you know, the crosswind of corruption and the crosswind of confusion. And I think you could name a couple of ways to, you know, a couple of ways to describe each of those things.
So think about the crosswind of a confusion I’m hearing in Southern California. You know, [00:03:00] people are more spiritually open than they have been, and the data reflects that. I do some work with Barna people who, you know, a lot of Americans are reporting their higher degree of spiritual openness, more open to God than they were before.
Dr. Mark Turman: Particularly Gen Z right?
Exactly. Particularly Gen Z. And then after the pandemic, you know, so there’s this high degree of spiritual openness, but there’s a low degree of. Pastoral or institutional trust. And so there’s this data from Barna where only 45% of churchgoing Americans consider a pastor to be a trustworthy source of wisdom on spiritual things.
Wow. So you, you, you have 71% of Americans who are o spiritually open, believe in a supernatural realm and are not yet practicing Christians. And yet even. Practicing Christians, only 45% think of a pastor. So you, you, you have this confusion in that there’s spiritual openness, but you, they’re open to everything, you know?
So here I am in Southern California, it’s oh yeah, let’s have a little Buddhism, a little bit of Jesus’s teaching, and maybe some crystals and maybe some, you know, microdosing on this or that. And, and you go, yeah, wow, [00:04:00] people are open, but they’re too open and they don’t know who to trust. And so there’s this confusion about what’s true on the other crosswind, the crosswind of corruption.
I think people have kinda looked at the church and said, look, man, we’re seeing, you know, more and more stories or headlines, or maybe we’re just seeing ’em more because of, you know, the internet or the connected age mm-hmm. That we’re in. But we’re reading stories of scandals and failures, but not just that.
We’re also hearing pastors and church leaders speak on behalf of Jesus or on behalf of the church, but. But they’re using their voice in some really particular issues or agendas that you’re like, okay, that’s fine. But it feels like Christianity’s being co-opted by some of those things. And so I think for, for an average Christian, or really for a person outside the church, they go, what’s a Christian?
Anyway, you know, like I, I turn on my, I pick up my phone and I hear somebody yelling about this thing, and then I hear someone offering, you know, enlightenment through these other pathways. And so between the confusion in the world and the corruption of the church people are left a little bit [00:05:00] lost out in the cold.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And in that vacuum there’s no telling what comes into that conversation because of that, you know? Yeah, they’re hungry. Yeah, but they’re gonna maybe start eating and drinking from places that do them more harm than good.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: That, that, that’s just it. Because we have to fix our, you know, we have to hold onto something.
You know, it’s sort of like in the book, I say everybody has a theology. The only question is if it’s a good one or a bad one. And in a similar way, everyone has a creed. You’re living bias, a particular belief system. The, the only question is, is it a trustworthy creed? Is it a true creed? Is it good and beautiful?
Will it actually result in good things for your life?
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And many of us don’t even recognize that we’re doing it, but we’re doing it just intuitively and, and organically, mm-hmm. Tell us a little bit about the backstory of how God led you to this ancient thing called the Naim Creed, which some may or may not be familiar.
I grew up first decade of my life in a Roman Catholic church with a very devout family. And [00:06:00] somewhat familiar. When I later came into the Evangelical and Baptist Church I was told that they used to recite the creed in the early seventies, but they weren’t doing that anymore. So I learned about it in other ways.
But what’s the story of how. God kind of led you to say, okay, this could be a great anchor point for us.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: When we moved to Southern California about three years ago and took over, you know, this role here to serve Rock Harbor as the lead pastor it, it was a church coming through a difficult season, coming through a difficult time and we spent a lot of that first year or so kind of relaying the foundations and focusing on health and unity and all of that.
And during a year in, I did a series teaching through line by line the nice seeing creed. And what I discovered was it gave people the solid thing that they were searching for. And I think when churches go through transitions or when people are, are living in confusing times, you, you, you know, the tendencies to go, okay, so what’s, who’s the sort of captivating figure that I can trust [00:07:00] and follow?
Or who’s the personality? But, but people who’ve been around a little while go, you know what, I’ve done that and I’ve been burned by that. I need something that’s bigger than an individual, bigger than the name of a church. And so the thing about the creed that began to be the answer for our church here for Rock Harbor was this is an ancient confession of faith.
This is bigger than our story. This is bigger even than our moment. And so it helped people kind of recognize, I I, I, you know, I live and work with a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners, and so I have said that the creed in one sense is the minimum viable product, if you will, of Christianity. It’s, you can’t reduce it any more than this.
It, this is the essence of it. It’s about the father, the son. And the Holy Spirit. But the truth is, mark, I had preached a series on the Creed about 10 years prior when I was in Colorado Springs, and when I lived there it, it was a church that was reeling after a pretty public moral failure of the founding senior pastor.
So that scandal happened in 2006, and then I began moving away from worship leading and began teaching and preaching. [00:08:00] And I, I could feel it, I could feel this, the cynicism from people or this lack of trust again, is. Somebody else on the stage, but goodness, you know, how do, how do we know? Mm-hmm. And so we began saying the Creed Weekly in worship.
And then after that, a few years after that, we did a series on the Nice Creed in 2014. And there again, I saw something similar. And so it kind of hit me after I did the series a second time here in this, in California. I thought, you know what? I’ve done a series on the creed now twice, 10 years apart, two different cities.
One was a church after a scandal, the other was a church in a confusing cultural context. And I thought in both times, these ancient words have been a guide to us. And the more I started to reflect on it, you know, you refer to the Billy Graham 1970s thing. The more I started to reflect on it, the creed is 1700 years old.
It also came out of a time of great confusion and, and, and voices vying for our attention that were gaining popularity, but lacking credibility. And I thought, here we are again. And so these [00:09:00] ancient words can help us find our way.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, it’s really a, a great way of framing the context. So give us a little bit more about the history of the creed.
There may be some people like what do you mean by creed? Yeah. And why do we call it the Nicene Creed? And who wrote this thing? And give us, for those that are less familiar, give us a little bit of that historical framework.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Yeah, it’s all very important question. So it, it was written at a council in the year 325, so yeah, 1700 years ago.
And this council was convened in the city of Nicea, which is in modern day Turkey. Over 300 church leaders came, and this was a time, you know, 325, Christianity was spreading rapidly. And so you had, you know, the missionary activity of the apostles in the book of Acts in the New Testament era was really bearing fruit.
So you had, you had Christian communities in North Africa. In East Asia. It was even pushing upwards into what we would call today, Europe. But there were a couple of loud voices, a few prominent voices that. We’re gaining popularity in their teaching, but we’re not [00:10:00] actually holding fast to the teaching of the apostles.
And so there was a need to, to sort of codify and to say, hang on, let’s set the record straight. Now, sometimes if you talk to your, you know, an antagonistic, atheistic friend, they might say, oh yeah, you know, Christians didn’t, they believed all kinds of weird things, and Rome kind of forced this. You know, this council, that’s not true.
The majority of Christian leaders already knew the faith of the apostles. They. Great with great care. They had preserved what? What was true about the father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They already knew which books should be counted as Christian scripture in the New Testament. And so this council that was convened, it was convened by Constantine, but it was to sort of say, you guys kind of, you know, figure this out.
And so what they did, they did two things, two, two notable things at this council. The first was they confirmed which books belong in the New Testament. And then the second thing they did was they wrote down this confession of faith. Now I’m a songwriter, mark and, and I can’t help but see the Creed as kind of [00:11:00] like an ancient hymn.
It’s got three, it’s got three stances in it. You know, stanza one is all about poetic, about the father. Poetic. Yeah. Very poet, very poetic. It’s all about the Father. Stanza two is all about Jesus. Stanza three is about the Holy Spirit. And each of these Stan is, there’s phrases that are lifted from the Bible.
So they weren’t just trying to come up with human words, they were using the words of scripture as much as possible. And they designed the creed, I think, to be like bumper lanes for our Bible reading. So it doesn’t replace the Bible. It’s not on par with the Bible, but it is a lens with which to read the Bible to keep us in bounds, you know?
So you can’t read the Bible and come up with a funny view about the, the incarnation or about the resurrection, you know? And, and so the, the creed is meant to be this bumper lanes for Bible reading, and that’s why the council, you know, affirm both things.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And it’s, it’s just really interesting how you help us understand that even in their cultural moment when, like I said, the, the faith was advancing very strongly, particularly because finally being endorsed by Constantine and, [00:12:00] and persecution doesn’t dissipate completely, but kind of takes on different forms.
Yeah. It’s interesting that in their cultural moment they needed some sense of clarity. Yeah. They were looking for something that was concise, that
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Yeah.
Dr. Mark Turman: You know, most of the people at this time in history are illiterate. Mm-hmm. And so putting it in this form became something that hopefully many of the quote unquote average Christians could get their heart and mind and understanding around in a big way.
I’m gonna, I wanna read the creed in just a second. So I’m gonna give you a, a break from talking to take a couple of moments to do that. But before we do, you talk about at the beginning of your, of your work. Just there is this huge responsibility and opportunity for us as Christians to make the gospel credible in a fresh way.
When I, when I was thinking through that, Glen, I was like, okay, he’s, he’s not telling me that it’s my responsibility to make it true. Because it is true. That’s right. In its own right.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: That’s right.
Dr. Mark Turman: But you also call out toward the end [00:13:00] that the percentage of Christians in the, in the United States is likely to drop significantly over the next 25 years unless God brings some kind of renewal, revival, awakening, which is something we’re very passionate about and praying for.
Yes. That seems number one, in some ways it seems like an overwhelming responsibility but in it also, I guess, can be this incredibly honorable opportunity that God is putting before the American church. Can you kind of frame that a little bit better than I did?
Dr. Glenn Packiam: No. I love the way you set, you set that up, mark, because you’re right there.
Maybe someone who encounters that phrase, or, or reads the words that I wrote about that the church, you sort of makes Christianity credible, feels oh my goodness. What? No, we don’t make it true. And I love that you, you, you made that distinction. We don’t make it true. The gospel on its own is good and beautiful and true.
I think what we are called to [00:14:00] do is live like that. Live like it is good news. Live like it is beauty, beautiful. Live like it is true and, and put, put that on display for the world to see. And you know, the, the, this premise comes from a British missionary named Leslie Newgen. He spent a lot of his life in ministry in India as a missionary there.
And when he returned to the UK, he discovered that his own country was becoming very pluralistic. That the influence of Christianity was just there in the trappings. But actually the faith of pe of of people had gone cold. And there were other religious influences. And so Christianity wasn’t even take as taken as the one thing that was true.
And so new begin, began to say, okay, how does the gospel work in a pluralistic society where o there’s other competing narratives, other competing truth claims. And he said, the only way. Is is by a congregation of men and women who live like, who believe it and who live. Like these words are true. And I think that’s the, that’s the challenge for us as the people of God is [00:15:00] we ought to not take this creed and say, oh yeah, checklist of doctrine.
It’s not a checklist of doctrine. It’s a call to worship and it’s a call to transformation because when we start to believe that there is only one God, the father, the Almighty, he’s the source of everything. All of a sudden we put our material pursuits in its proper place. When we start to believe that there’s one savior who came down for us and for our salvation, we start to give him our allegiance.
He’s king Jesus. When we start to live like there’s one spirit, who’s the giver of life who has spoken through the scriptures, then we start to tune our hearts to his voice and to his work. And so our whole lives are meant to change because of the truth of these words, and that is the compelling witness to the world around us.
Dr. Mark Turman: And Yeah. And it’s so beautifully put, and I love the, I love the use of the word beauty which has for me become a synonym of holiness. Mm-hmm. That we talk about that God is love and he is, we also need to talk about that God is holy and he is a lot more than that, but. When [00:16:00] we start to allow ourselves to be daily transformed that he, we take on his character.
And I’ve always had a hard time, Glen, putting my mind around or getting my mind around holiness. Yeah. And you do a good job of talking about that. But I’ve just kind of substituted the word beauty. I like that a lot, that, that in the most, in the most profound ways, holiness is everything that we can really think of and value as being beautiful.
So let me take a moment and just familiarize everybody again by reading the Creed. It is 218 words in the English language, which is not very many by the way. And it sounds very much like a song, like a poem, but I am not gonna sing it because my wife does not allow that. Here we go. Here’s the ENE Creed from 3 25.
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, [00:17:00] begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, light from light, true God, from true God begotten, not made of the same essence as the Father.
Through him, all things were made for us and for our salvation. He came down from heaven. He became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made human. He was crucified for us. Under Pontius Pilate, he suffered and was buried. The third day, he rose again. According to the scriptures, he ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. His kingdom will never end, and we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life. He proceeds from the Father and the Son and with the Father, and the son is worshiped and glorified. He spoke through the [00:18:00] prophets. We believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic church.
We affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and to life in the world to come. Amen. Amen. That. Is incredible and there’s no it’s, it’s just obvious in so many ways why it has stood the test of 1700 years. Yeah. In so many ways. Alright I could spend the next two or three hours just diving into this, but that would be more than you or our listeners gonna take.
I’m gonna try to guide us through this so that people will have their appetite wet and they will want to get this resource that you’ve created. And it would, if I, let me just say there at The Bean, it is an absolute jewel of a resource for you to use this month in the celebration of Easter.
Hmm. As we move toward the celebration of the death and resurrection of Christ, as we look toward the [00:19:00] ascension. And the celebration of Pentecost, the birth of the church. I, I don’t know of any better resource that I could recommend other than the Bible that you would spend time with in this particular spring season.
So that’s my endorsement and
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Oh, that’s fair. That’s very kind Mark. And maybe it’s a good time for me to mention to folks that there are some really great bulk deals here. Sure, yeah. Church. Church source is selling bulk you know, bulk units at 40% off. So if there are churches that wanna buy, you know, bulk copies, but then and the links to that are from my website.
What’s a Christian anyway, dot com. And then if people buy five or more, you’ll get several things. You’ll get, actually, you’ll get my sermon notes so that you could preach a seven week series on this. You’ll, and you may use some of my notes, you might make your own, but you, you get, you know, I know how hard it is as a pastor to put these sermon series together, so you get all my notes from, from this sermon series.
And then there’s also small group discussion guides for every chapter in the book. And so people wanna do small group studies on it. So I just want people to know, I’m trying to resource you as much [00:20:00] as possible. Make it easy for you if you’re a pastor, a church leader of people who wanna do this in groups.
And I do think it’s wonderful after Easter to go, yeah, what if we did this little study Yeah. On what it means to be a Christian. That’d be lots of fun.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And so if you hear it from your pastor, you know, you heard it here first. All right. I love it. But yeah, and I, and I would encourage you to do it in a small group.
I is a great opportunity for discussion. And Glen, one of the places I just wanted to start is how you kind of call out at the beginning, just the importance of the word we as a confrontation to this hyper individualism that so many talk about. And I love, there’s one particular phrase in this part that really stuck out to me, which is.
That together we step toward the mis, the mystery of faith. Talk about this very strong emphasis, the communal aspect of our faith, and the reason that the word we is important here.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Yeah, I mean, I think if we were writing this, if this council is convened today in [00:21:00] America or in the West, we would most certainly start with I, because we are so radically individualistic Now, I, I, I’m an evangelical in, in all of the ways that classical evangelicalism is defined, you know, the authority of scripture, the centrality of Christ, the importance of the atonement and the belief in evangelism, all of that.
But I and I, and I think one of the gifts of the evangelical movement is the emphasis on personal faith, but one of the unintended consequences is it’s taken personal into individual or individualistic. And so we sort of imagine that the weight of our faith. Depends on us. And I think what we have to remember for the church for the centuries, you know, before us and for the church all around the world, a faith is a community project.
It requires a community to sustain faith. You come to faith, yes, you come to faith with personal faith, a personal trust in Jesus, but you don’t sustain the life of faith alone. It requires a community. And so even when we say the words of the creed, all three of those stanzas of those sections [00:22:00] begin with those same three words we believe in.
And the we is so important. You know, I I, a metaphor that I use sometimes is we, we live. In a city that’s not far from the water and we can drive, you know, 10, 15 minutes and see you know, out in the bay there, there’s people out in these kayaks and you go, oh yeah, maybe faith is like a one person kayak.
You know, you just kind of row, yeah. And then when you get tired, maybe you gotta go in. And I think that that illusion gives us this impression that when we’re struggling with faith, maybe you’re going through a difficult time, you’re going through some doubt, or you’re going through a, you know, some pain and you’re, you’re not sure if you, if you can believe every specific thing, even in the creed.
And so if, if you think faith depends on you, then you’ll, and you go through that difficult time, your conclusion will be I guess I just need to get out of the boat. Maybe I need to take a break from church and take a break from God. But faith is not like a one person kayak. Faith is like a giant.
Rowing ship, you know, like one of those old galley ships. And you think about the billions and billions of Christian [00:23:00] Christians around the world today and throughout history, and you think in some way we are being carried by the witness of the church, by the faith of the church. There are days when I think, boy, do I have to personally verify each line of this and say, no.
I’m so grateful that Paul says this in one Corinthians 15. That which I received, I also pass on to you. Yeah. And so there’s something here about the we that stretches backwards, a historical we and a global we that connects us to the wider church.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And so helpful and, and that idea that that metaphor of a, of a ship, you know, I think about it not only having guys rowing in the galley, but also sails so that the ship sometimes move by wind.
We might liken to the Holy Spirit sometimes it moved by the, the collective work of I like that. The horseman. I like that. So it’s kind of both. And and,
Dr. Glenn Packiam: and the exhortation is to stay in the boat, you know, yeah. Like doubt is part of the journey of faith. You know, wrestling with discouragement, [00:24:00] disappointment with God, that’s part of the life of faith.
Stay in the boat and one day you might be the person whose faith is strong and you are rowing on behalf of somebody else for a season.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, absolutely. Other, you know, ’cause isolation is just one of the devil’s most favorite tools right behind discouragement in some ways. Mm-hmm. But also really just call this out for folks.
There’s a great conversation in this part of the book about the difference between knowledge and belief. And I just, I touched on that this morning, working my way for a few minutes through James chapter two that there is such a thing as a demonic faith, the faith that. Knows the facts, but refuse to align with them and to become trusting in those.
And that’s that’s something, you know, you could have written this as we know, but instead they put it as we believe, and there’s a reason for that. And that’s important.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: It’s so true. I, I sometimes joke that if it was written, say in the East Coast and Ivory Tower, Harvard or whatever it might be, we know, or I know, you know, individualistic and then sort of, I know it’s kind of this propositional truth that’s [00:25:00] distant from you.
If it was written in California, maybe we’d say, I feel like, you know, it’d be some more subjective. And, and this is where we find ourselves. It’s either certainty or subjectivity and faith is different than that. Faith is a mystery that we’re meant to enter into and give our life to. It’s much more like love in that way.
It’s a complete commitment of allegiance and devotion to another person. It’s supposed to cost you something.
Dr. Mark Turman: And that, that’s a really important call out. The difference between faith in terms of, as compared to knowledge or feeling, it’s just, like you said, subjectivity. It’s just so important that people think deeply about that and they understand the nature of faith and, and the Bible will help you do that.
This book will help you to do that. The creed helps you do that. Mm-hmm. Let’s dive in and, and look into the verses a little bit. We’ll start with the father. Obviously as Christians, we have this very unique reality that we believe in a trinity, a Trinitarian God who is one yet [00:26:00] three, which is kind of mind boggling and just mm-hmm.
Every conversation I get into is, is you know, you’ll either. You’ll lose your mind trying to explain the trinity. But the Bible never even uses the word. Mm-hmm. Which is an interesting thing In the last few years when I was pastoring the church that I helped here in McKinney every time I saw the Trinity in a passage that I was teaching from, I would call it out, Hey, this is unique to us.
Talk about what might be comforting and helpful to us about. The Trinity, but also particularly just about the father and about his supremacy.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: The thing about, you know, when we name this section here on the Father, we believe in one God, the Father, the almighty, the maker of all that is seen and unseen, and a couple of things stand out.
One, just that word one. He’s the only one. And, and when, when we say we believe in one God. This is, again, think of the ancient world where there was a plethora of gods, the Roman empire was littered with deities [00:27:00] for different things. So if you needed help with this, you went to this, God, if you needed help with this, you went to that God.
So Gods with different specialties and gods of different regions of, or lo or locations. Mm-hmm. And what, what the Christians were saying along with their Jewish, you know, sort of ancestors is they were saying you only need one. And so the singularity of God points to the sufficiency of God. A simple way to say it is, he’s the only one you need.
He’s he’s, he’s, he’s the source and he’s the only one you need because he’s sovereign. Yes. But also because he’s the source of everything. And I think this is, this is so beautiful. It’s so comforting. You know, I live in a, in a environment that is very materialistic and people are chasing image and stuff, and they think material things is the source of their joy or their happiness.
And I love that the creed says. All that is seen and unseen. What’s the unseen stuff that the father is the source of? You go, oh is it gravity? Is it the maybe, but, oh, I mean, yes. But [00:28:00] also, how about unseen things like joy, peace happiness, freedom, and, and you think if the father is the source of all of those things, he communicates those gifts to us through relationships, through meaningful work, through yes, you know, a safe and secure housing provisions, all of those things.
But we make this major mistake when we think that those things or those people or those relationships are what joy comes from. They’re not where, what joy comes from. They’re what joy comes through. The father is what joy comes from. And so right out, out of the gate, we’re reorienting our heart to the only God you need.
The only one who’s sovereign and the only one who’s the source of every good, imperfect gift.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And so helpful to help us see through those things that can never really satisfy us or bring us joy, but also in some ways kind of confronted me with the idea of challenging our efforts to gain power and control.
Yeah. That he does have a supremacy [00:29:00] that we need to recognize and respect and revere because so many in our culture are not only pursuing pleasure, but many are also pursuing power and control. So true. And they, they think that’s the way that they’re going to be satisfied. Yeah. And the reality is we’re never, we’ve just never been equipped.
To run the world. We’re not really good at it.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: That’s right.
Dr. Mark Turman: That’s right. You know, that’s so true. I, I mean, LA last few years I’ve come to recognize more and more, you know what, God was running this thing a long time before I showed up. Probably will run it a long time after I’m gone. He doesn’t really need my help, even though he invites me to help.
There you go. But that’s pretty, pretty profound because I think all of us in some ways are control freaks. Yeah. And that goes all the way back to the garden, you know? We absolutely, we didn’t trust him to run things, you know?
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Yeah, absolutely. And being made in his image means, like you said, we get to participate in it, but in the right order of things, you know, he is the sole supreme and we are his vice Viceroy.
We are his representatives. We’re supposed [00:30:00] to reflect his wi wise and loving rule, not compete with it.
Dr. Mark Turman: Exactly. All right. So let’s, we, we could stay a long time right here. Let’s move on. Jesus as you say, gets the most time, he gets the most words for obvious reasons. Mm-hmm. Wanted to talk to you just a moment about just and honestly, I sometimes I have a hard time getting my, my mind and heart around this idea of Jesus’s kingship.
Mm-hmm. I think, obviously being Americans obviously having the enormous privileges of a democratic republic. Mm-hmm. And, and, you know, we kicked out the authority of the king. That’s right. That’s right. And, you know, and then this guy came along and made a play that has just, you know, mesmerized everybody.
That’s right. About the fact that we kicked out the king, so that That’s right. We wouldn’t have to have a king. Do you think in some ways that this is particularly hard for people in the west and people in democracies. To really embrace this idea of [00:31:00] Jesus’ unique
Dr. Glenn Packiam: kingship. Yeah. And the kingship of Jesus in the creed.
You, you know, maybe someone who says, wait a minute, where does it say he’s the king? Twice in naming him as Lord and then as Christ there’s, there’s a funny joke that Nt Wright would always say that Christ is not Jesus’ last name. You know, his parents were not Joseph and Mary Christ, you know, little Baby Jesus Christ is a title.
And it’s a title. It means the Messiah, the Anointed one the true son of David, the one who, who deserves the throne, the ultimate throne. So in naming him, Lord, that’s a reference back to sort of Yahweh Adonai, his, his, his divinity. But it’s also a reference, a play on the, the title that Caesar had used.
You know, Caesar was called Lord. And in both instances, in connecting Jesus on either end of the name, Jesus Lord, and Christ, is a way of saying he’s king. And all of us in the West, you’re absolutely right. And I think about even our friends in the uk, they don’t like the idea of a king either. You know, a couple years ago when, when, when King Charles was you know, being sworn in or, or, or, you know, being his [00:32:00] coronation as king there was this great stir because the archbishop wanted to add a line in the ceremony.
And it’s so fascinating to me because I guess traditionally there would be, they called it the homage of his peers. So the other Dukes and Duchess or whatever would swear their, their honor and their allegiance, and the archbishop wanted to add a line where the people actually pledge their allegiance to the king and the people refused.
And there was this huge uproar and they were like, no, we’re not. Don’t add that line. We’re not gonna say it. You know? And so it, it got watered down and watered down, and. Finally the line, instead of saying, we, we, we swear our allegiance to the king and to his ancestors or to his descendants, it got switched to simply saying, God, save the king if you wanna say that, you know, and, and I thought, thi this is like us today.
Like we love the idea of yeah, Jesus, you are the king. And we’ll sing these great songs and we’ll say these poetic, powerful statements. When it comes to, but will you pledge your allegiance to him? We’re like, Hmm, I don’t know if I actually want to do that.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. We want, we want to, [00:33:00] we want a king that entertains us, not one that requires alignment and allegiance, right?
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Yes, yes, absolutely. Or, or does favors for us. But that’s an errand. Devo not a king, you know? And, and, and so to really have a king is to have someone who demands your allegiance and your surrender. And, and I know, you know, I don’t wanna turn faith itself into another kind of works righteousness, but surely faith has to be much more than mental agreement.
It has to be a, a turning over of your life. Surely faith has to be something like surrender and allegiance to this king.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, absolutely. There’s this beautiful, powerful line that is really kind of confronts us in some ways with the reality of our lives for us and for our salvation. He came down to heaven.
Mm-hmm. I remember Glenn, when I first started as a pastor in my twenties, I read a quote that said that modern man is not worried about his sin or its consequences. Mm-hmm. Do you think [00:34:00] that in our current cultural moment that we really in, in the American church and in the American culture, do we really believe in our own need for a savior?
Dr. Glenn Packiam: I think that the awareness or willingness to talk about sin is definitely declining. And I think, I think it’s really interesting to me that the creed starts by saying for us and for our salvation, and it’s only later on when it talks about baptism, that it names the forgiveness of sin. And I, I wonder, I don’t know this, but I wonder if it’s because salvation is a wide, all-encompassing rescue and redemption of the whole world, including the forgiveness of sins.
Yes. But the reordering of the world and the renewal of creation. And, and I think it has worked really well for a lot of years in the West to start with personal forgiveness and then work our way outwards into reordering the world. So we say, Hey, come to Jesus. He’ll forgive your sins. And then by the way, join Jesus in his mission in the world.
Tell others about [00:35:00] forgiveness. Also make their conditions of life better. And this is why Christians go and dig wells and build orphanages and hadn’t have for 2000 years. And then we continue to work our way outwards and go, and one day he’ll renew all of creation. I wonder, mark, if we’re living in a moment where we actually might be more fruitful, starting from the outside in and saying, you know, like the words of that, that song that Andrew Peterson wrote, do you feel the world is broken?
And, and people go, yes, yes, I see that. I see injustice, I see poverty. I see. Do, do you, do you see rulers that are, are exploiting people in other countries and Yeah. So the brokenness of the world is almost easier to name and then you work your way in and you go and actually you part of the problem too.
And so am I. Yeah. And, and that’s the, the whole drama of salvation is both dimensions, whether we begin from the inside out or from the outside in.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And it gets really frustrating to me to get into these debates about, you know, social justice versus personal evangelism. It’s like both, you know, but mm-hmm.
You know, but [00:36:00] you’ll, I think you get a much more res, warm reception right now as, Hey, does the world look messed up to you? Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then at some point, okay, what could you do to make it better? And how are you contributing to its brokenness On a personal level, it’s, can we have conversations about all of that?
You know, it reminds me of that kind of mythological story about Rudy Kipling being asked, what’s the most biggest problem in the world? And he wrote back to the newspaper and said, I am, I am. Yeah.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Yeah. It’s funny, it’s funny that it must be mythological. ’cause I’ve heard it as it was GK jester, but I guess it was, again, maybe it was Kipling.
Yeah, yeah. Maybe I I could be, I could be citing it wrong. I’m not sure. No, no.
Dr. Mark Turman: It’s just one of those good preacher stories that
Dr. Glenn Packiam: floats around. It’s around for decades. It’s a, it’s a great preacher story, mark. You know, and I, I think, I think also about our cancel culture kind of stuff. And I think there, there is.
There is an awareness of something like sin. We just don’t use the word sin, but we know when a person has violated or transgressed our, our codes and they [00:37:00] deserve to be exiled from the community. What’s that? That’s sin and death. That’s exactly what the Bible names is. Sin and death is when you transgress, then you are sent out.
That’s what the, the Bible talks about that with sin and death. So cancel culture actually does understand sin. We just have to connect the dots for people. But, but what cancel culture does not have is redemption. And that’s why this line in the creed is, is as you said, one of the most stunning lines because so far we’ve said, yeah, we believe in, in God, you know, the father, we believe in Jesus, this eternal son of God.
And then now the whole, focus sort of pivots and it’s like now God is doing something for us up until this point. It’s we, you know, believe in God. Now it’s God has come for us and it’s a stunning, beautiful
Dr. Mark Turman: moment in the creed. Yeah. And it just, and so much, I mean, it’s so much rich theology here, you know, I just think about how in the early church they had great, great debate and [00:38:00] discussion, argument and disagreement about the actual nature of Jesus.
Mm-hmm. Was he actually a human being or was he just pretending? Mm-hmm. And it’s not something that we can comprehend. How can we, how could we ever comprehend on this side of heaven anyway that God could actually be one of us? Mm-hmm. I remember standing in Israel the first time I ever got to go.
And as is often the case, you know, we had a a really, really intellectual tour guide, but he was not a Christian and he was not a practicing Jew. And so everybody on the bus did what they always do. They wanted to convert him, which is great. But I, I heard him say to one of the people talking to him, he said, God would never get that close to us.
He would never stoop that low. And it just again, pointed to the incredible miracle of God’s love and grace that he would he would become one of us. I think it was Oz Guinness who said recently, or at least I heard it recently, only our God has [00:39:00] wounds. Mm. He, he, he’s the only one that would get that close love five.
To share in our suffering. I’m not gonna give everything away here, you know, I want people to read the book and so I’m not reading the book to them. But take a moment, just give us a little bit of understanding about how these two people, Mary and Pilate, are named in this creed. I was gonna go there and I’m so glad you got, I was thinking that, I was thinking that this must have been a really big debate when they were trying to figure out how to write this.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Isn’t this wild? I mean, there are only two human names. Here is this whole confession about Father, son, and Holy Spirit, and somehow two human names get worked into this. There’s something beautiful to me because it happens in the paragraph that began, the paragraph that begins the way you said, for us and for our salvation.
He came down from heaven and then it starts to, to, to say what he did. So he’s born of this virgin named Mary, and then he’s crucified under Pontius Pilate. So something beautiful with Mary and something horrible with pil. And the more I started to reflect on it, I [00:40:00] thought, you know, you could, you could place Mary and Pilate at opposite ends of a few different spectrums.
You might say the lowly peasant girl and the powerful politician, or you might say the picture of human purity and the Mary, and then the picture of human corruptness. This politician, however you mark this, the highest of the high to the lowest of the low. I think it’s meant to say. This is who Jesus came for.
Jesus came for all of us. And maybe someone’s listening to this and you’re like I don’t, you know, I’m, I’m more like Mary. I’m, I’m a pretty good person. You go actually Jesus came for you and for your salvation. Or you go, you know what, I I, you, you have no idea what I’ve done. I’ve done some horrible things.
And you go Pilate oversaw the crucifixion of the Son of God. You know, it’s hard to imagine something worse than that. Yeah. Yep. And, and Jesus came for him. And that’s the beauty of, of the salvation that God offers us, is it’s for all of us.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Yeah. And yeah, and just the connection to all of us as people the, the naming of those two people and just how [00:41:00] it brings.
The divine nature of God and the divine plan of God and connects it. So yeah, intimately with where we are, what we are, and what we need. It is just remind me, it’s just so profound. You hear, and you hear this in intuitively in our prayers. Every time you get in church and somebody prays, they always say, God, be with us.
God be with us. Mm-hmm. Because we intuitively know that if God is near, then everything can change. And, and as some people say, anything is possible, right? Yes, exactly. Yeah. Alright, let’s talk about our weird uncle for a little bit.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Yes. You,
Dr. Mark Turman: you, you talk about sometimes the Holy Spirit being con considered maybe a weird uncle.
So you have a very a, a very unique faith story and and spiritual formation story. You can talk about that to whatever degree you want, but Sure. Having been in, in several different parts of the church, the global church, as a part of your story. I, you know, I, like I said, I came up in the first decade or so of my life in a Roman Catholic [00:42:00] environment.
Had no spiritual influence for a number of years coming into my teens. Then just happened to bump into a Baptist Christian in the high school parking lot. Hmm. Just, it could have been anything. It just happened to be a Baptist. Okay. This probably wouldn’t be a fair way of saying this, but it’s the best way I know how to say it.
If we, if we were to say the charismatic movement as it’s so described of the last a hundred years or so, do you think that’s really helped us to understand the Holy Spirit? And if so, maybe how?
Dr. Glenn Packiam: You know, the gift of the charismatic movement is that it helped us recognize that God is active now. God is at work in the world here and now.
And you know, I’m getting ready to do a series on the book of Acts later this year. And as so many commentators have PO pointed out, it’s not the acts of the apostles, it’s the acts of the Holy Spirit and, and it working in and through the church. And so the charismatic movement, in a way helped us reclaim that and to say, this is the Holy Spirit.
He, he’s not given up on us. He’s not sort of said, good luck [00:43:00] fellas. You know, sort this out. And so the nearness of God the power of God the, the activity of God. But of course, you know, the, some of the really, really difficult things from the charismatic movement is it’s. Given the Holy Spirit, a kind of strangeness it’s been mixed in with our western theatrics and hype and, and manipulation and crowd work.
And so, and a lot of people see this stuff and they go, oh, I don’t know if I want any of that. And, and, and they kind of set it aside. And it’s tragic to me because the Holy Spirit is the third person of the trinity. Not a force, but, but a. The work and activity of the Holy Spirit is to convict the world of sin, is to remind us of everything Jesus taught us is to bear witness to Jesus, is to build up the church.
You know, there’s all of these things, the New Testament says about the work of the Holy Spirit. And so I love that the creed, you know, they don’t, they don’t say too much, but they add this one phrase, we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life. [00:44:00] And they chose to, to put the word in the present, continuous tense.
He’s the giver, not simply the one who gave. And that fits what Paul wrote in, in Ephesians five, where he says, go on being filled. So if the Spirit is the giver of life, then we want this very life of God. We want to be daily in a position of receiving and welcoming that. One of the great words in the New Testament for the Spirit, PMA is breath or wind.
And a couple metaphors worked there. You mentioned one of them, wind in the sailboat. If you’re a sailboat, you, you don’t want wind. One time. You want wind continuously, right? And, and if, if you’re a human and you’re alive, you don’t want breath one time, you want breath ongoing. And so this ongoing vitality of, of the scripture say the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, you know, Paul says he blesses them the with the love of God, the Father, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Nia of the Holy Spirit.
That’s what is on offer to us, is this fellowship, this [00:45:00] communion with the Holy Spirit.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And it, it, it is just you know, it just makes me think that how, how moment by moment that is. Mm-hmm. You know, and I, I kind of going back and make, make, maybe, maybe the title of the sermon series needs to be something like the acts of the Holy Spirit and his people.
Yeah. Or with his people or through his people. Yeah. It’s really both and not, you know, yes. Maybe it’s both and, but. Just, just coming into a you know, sometimes unfairly, right? Mm-hmm. People who come out of the charismatic tradition get kind of criticized for their overemphasis on feeling. Yeah.
And it is, as you said at the beginning of our conversation, it’s not about feeling it’s something mm-hmm. It’s something different from feeling and subjectivity. Yeah. There there is boundary and there is mm-hmm. And, and there is truth that clarifies this. Mm. But just that understanding of on a day by day moment by moment basis, if, if you’re alive, it’s because of the Holy Spirit.
Yeah. Yeah. If, if you experience anything beautiful, anything wholesome, [00:46:00] anything joyful, anything loving, you know, all that, peace, joy self-control, gentleness. Mm-hmm. None of that happens in your life on any given day without the activity of the Holy Spirit making it happen.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Yeah.
Dr. Mark Turman: And you know, my pastor used to say to people who would complain about the state of the world, he’d say if you think it’s bad, just imagine what it would be if you took the church and the Holy Spirit out.
Exactly right. That exactly right.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Yeah.
Dr. Mark Turman: And we, we long for it to be better and we mm-hmm. Pray for it to be better and we ought to be working with the spirit for it to be better. But it, it just that. If there is ever going to be an answer to that prayer, God be with us. It happens because, and through the spirit, right?
That,
Dr. Glenn Packiam: that that’s exactly right. And so well said. I mean, I, what a powerful way to kind of, you know highlight the, the, the, the work of the spirit through the church in and through the church. And I, you know, I, I grew up, yeah. My parents initially began their faith journey in the, in an Anglican church.
And then they had this real strong born again experience, continued at the [00:47:00] church. And then they started, started attending a midweek bible study with a Baptist pastor. And you know, I just loved that. And they were really, they, they were taught the word of God and how to know God through his word, and then separates one another.
They encountered, they had an encounter with the Holy Spirit. Something happened as they received prayer. And so they wanted to pray for others. They wanted to, you know, minister and move and kind of gifts of, of, of healing and prayer. And eventually we found our way into a, a Pentecostal church. And I saw the good, bad, and ugly of all of that.
And I think, you know, for, for my own life, I think I’m so grateful for the church. And I think if we could hold together the gifts of all of the streams, you’d see the Holy Spirit at work in all of it. It’s the Holy Spirit that illuminates the word of God to us and makes us love His word. It’s the Holy Spirit that empowers us outward into mission and it’s the Holy Spirit that does help us encounter and experience God and that experience of God.
You know, it’s not only emotions, but it’s, it certainly does often [00:48:00] affect and involve our emotions. And I, you know, I would say to a person. Don’t be afraid of that. You know, again, if we’re talking about an interaction or a, or a relationship with a person, it’s gonna involve our whole being, you know, our, our minds, our bodies, our hearts, our emotions.
And no, we’re not chasing emotional experiences at the same time, the Holy Spirit is the creator, is the, is the, he’s the giver of life. And so he created our brain chemistry. He created our logic, and he created our emotions and our feelings. And so proximity to God through the Holy Spirit will affect us in our whole beings at different ways, at different times.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And like I said, holding on to all those streams. There’s a, a Canadian theologian I came across a few years ago, he wrote, wrote a little book called Pentecostal, evangelical and Sacramental. Why Can’t We Be All Three?
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Gordon Smith, isn’t it? Yeah. That’s very good.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Yeah, I resonate with that.
Why can’t we just be all three? We got just a few minutes before I let you go, but we gotta, we started kind of talking about the [00:49:00] opportunity, responsibility of Christians to make the gospel credible by believing it in not only word and, but also in action. Let’s land in some ways back with the church under this section.
I love the way that you call this out, that. The, the church is under this umbrella of the activity of the Holy Spirit as he oversees and works in it, in the book of Acts and beyond. But as, as you say, I totally agree that this is kind of the most, when you think about it, the most startling, disappointing, maybe then and now, the most disputed part of mm-hmm.
This beautiful confession about the church. Very briefly, we could spend a lot of time, but briefly, Glen, tell us what does it mean when it says we believe in one holy, Catholic and apostolic church? As a Baptist pastor, I tried to have this recited one time in my church a decade or two ago, and somebody said, I can’t say the word Catholic.
Can’t say the word
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Catholic. Yeah, I know, I know. I, I honestly, mark, this is a true story. When we would recite it at my previous church in Colorado, I just translated that word and put worldwide, because [00:50:00] it’s the only, it’s the only word that we keep, we keep in Latin there, Catholic, it just means worldwide.
Yeah. So there’s four words there. One holy, worldwide, and apostolic. Apostolic just means faithful to the, the witness and the preaching of the apostles. So that’s New Testament faith. Catholic again, just means worldwide. Those are not controversial. It’s the first two words, one and holy. Yeah, and I think, I think this is where it’s difficult when you say we believe in one God, or when we say we believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, or we even, you know, when we believe in the Holy Spirit.
Those are transcendent words and those are words we know are true. We know we’re saying something true. We get to this phrase and we say, we believe in one holy church. You go excuse me, the church is not one. Look at the divisions and the church is certainly not holy, and this is it. It it is a shift in, in a sense, when we say these words, because I think we’re saying it now as a prayer.
If when we say the words about Father, son, and Holy Spirit we’re saying words of worship, I think when we say these words about the church, we’re saying them as a prayer. [00:51:00] We’re saying, Jesus, make us one. As you prayed in John 17, and Lord, make us holy. And there’s also so many kingdom realities.
There’s a now and not yet ness about this in Christ. We actually are one, Paul says it in first Corinthians. He’s there’s only one Lord, one faith, one baptism. You know, Ephesians make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit. So it’s already true of us. We just don’t live like it’s true. And similarly to our holiness.
You know, I, I chuckle as a pastor that Paul calls the Corinthians Saints. He opens his letter to the saints in Corinth and then goes on to say, by the way, you’re doing things that even the world would blush, you know, to, to know about. You know, so they’re not living up to their true identity. And I think that’s what the words here in the Creed are trying to highlight.
We are in Christ one, and we are in Christ holy, and we need God help us to live. That’s actually true.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And it, it points it back, right to spiritual formation, spiritual growth. Yes. Sanctification, [00:52:00] whatever word you wanna talk about. Yes. That and, and that’s, that’s where these two words can connect to the other two, right?
Mm-hmm. That in many ways these are aspirational and the ongoing pursuit of what we do personally and collectively with the Holy Spirit and through the Holy Spirit. Yeah. That we, we, we know that certain things are right, positionally, but we have to pursue them daily. Yes. To be, for them to become reality in every generation.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Yeah. And just to, just to, to highlight something that you’ve already said, mark, I wanna make sure our listeners catch this. There are only three stanzas or three sections in the creed. Sometimes they’re called three articles. This, these lines about the church are tucked into that third section, which is on the Holy Spirit, which is a way of saying the spirit has the sovereignty or, or, you know, agency within the church.
And even in this prayer, for the church to be one and holy, it’s the Holy Spirit’s work to, to keep us as one. Again, Paul calls it the unity of the Spirit. And [00:53:00] it’s the Holy Spirit’s work to, to form us into the image of Christ. So our job is to cooperate with the spirit’s, work in all of that.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah.
And, and you know, and it’s certainly, it’s always discouraging and you know this better than I do because of what your experience has been when Christians stumble, when they fail, when they disappoint us at whatever level of leadership and influence they may have. At the same time, there’s something good about the fact that they are being held accountable.
Yes. Yes. And that the church is recognizing when something or someone is unholy and that there is accountability to that. Mm-hmm. And, and we, we are always gonna be sad and rightfully so disappointed by it, but we should also believe in the redemption that we all claim. Yes. And that, that involves accountability in healthy ways.
And so the church is always, you know, reformed and and needing to be reformed.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: That’s right. That’s right. Always reforming. Exactly.
Dr. Mark Turman: That’s right. So one of the things you call [00:54:00] out here toward the end. Is just how some great words about people that have been hurt in the context of the local church.
One of the things you say is that it’d be great for American believers to experience the global church to get a better perspective. How do you think just the average church goer could do that?
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Yeah, I mean, I, I think I think for, for one, if your church does overseas trips or has partnerships with churches around the world, you should absolutely go.
A a another way to do that is, you know, participating in, in some of the great ministries that have activity in other parts of the world, whether that’s, you know, world vision, world relief, compassion, there’s so many ministries that, that connect your heart to Christian communities and other side sides of the world.
I think the other part of it is, you know, there are ways of, of reading the stories of of Christians, the, the work of Christians from the other, other parts of the world. But I think, I think, you know, there’s a [00:55:00] great reminder here in saying our, we tend to see the world through the prism of our own experience, the prism of our own experience.
And I think it’s important to say my local church, yeah, it matters and it’s flaws and all that have hurt me. If that, if that’s the case, but it’s not the, the sum total of the whole church. There’s a friend of mine who says, what is it, you know about the church that Jesus doesn’t? And you go nothing.
You know? And then, then you flip the question around and you go, what is it that Jesus knows about the church that you don’t? And you go, okay, alright. There’s probably more that Jesus knows that I don’t. And so in prayer, in relationships, in experience, in reading, in, in so many ways and more, we need to widen the horizon of our vision to see a global family that, that helps put our community in, in its context.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Yeah. And, and will help us again, have better understanding and hopefully a greater appreciation that God really. He really is in charge of this. Yeah. He’s gonna, yeah. [00:56:00] All right. Yeah. All right. So two questions. One short, maybe one a little bit longer. The last one I’m gonna say I’m saving for I just want to hear a word from hope a, a word of hope because you’ve done a lot of work around hope.
Mm-hmm. It’s Easter time. This podcast is gonna land. Mm-hmm. About the beginning of holy week. And so the last question I’m gonna warn you now is about, a little bit about what the creed and what you wrote about relative to resurrection. Yeah. Ascension, future Hope. But before we do that, I wanted to, I wanted to see if I could throw you a curve ball by saying, if you were riding a creed today, is there anything that you would leave out or add to what’s here?
I mean, when you think about it, Glen, you’re like, there’s, there’s none of work dangerous you. Yeah. I mean, when you think about it, you’re like, okay, they don’t mention the greatest commandments that Jesus gave. Sure, sure. As an evangelical, there’s not a statement about the authority and authenticity of the Bible.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Yeah. That, that one the Bible one is tucked in a little bit in the Holy Spirit. He has spoken through the prophets, but that’s less clear to Oh, he’s talking [00:57:00] about the Bible. They’re talking about the Bible. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think, I think you’d wanna make a few things a little clearer for our day.
I, I, I would want to say the work would be clarifying and, and pulling out more. So yeah. That, that scripture would certainly be one. I think. Man, it could be so great to say a bit more about how the spirit gives life through gifts and fruit. I think there would be something about the mission of the church, you know, but again, the creed is not meant to be exhaustive.
It’s the other way around. It’s the irreducible minimum, you know? And, and, and I think you, Christianity includes more than these things in the sense of when we work our way outward from these things, we will come in into more things that we have to grapple with, but it cannot be less than this. And so that’s kind of the, the design there.
Dr. Mark Turman: That’s a good word. I, and I, I apologize for taking you out where angels with fear tread. Exactly. I was like,
Dr. Glenn Packiam: I don’t know if I’m gonna do this. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Mark Turman: You know, but, you know, I wanted to find some way to ask something that somebody hasn’t [00:58:00] asked you already, that you’re very clever. Yeah, that’s good.
I like it. All right. All right. So let’s talk about Easter for a moment. Um mm-hmm. In this. Incredible, incredible, incredible promise that we are, we are people who get to always be forward facing. Yes. Yes. And forward looking and forward hoping because of the resurrection. Yeah. And the ascension. I take a moment talk about this is something not, it’s not return and it’s not resuscitation.
Yeah. What do you, what do you let me do, let me put it this way. We’re, we need to land this conversation. So say what you feel led to say, but let it be your Easter blessing to our audience.
Dr. Glenn Packiam: The resurrection changes everything. The resurrection was not coming back to life. The resurrection was not you know, someone just sort of going through something difficult and then making it through.
Resurrection is the paradigm of our hope as Christians, it’s a true event. And because of that true event, everything about our [00:59:00] future and everything about our present can now be different. The early Christians ended the creed with that phrase. We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.
What they were saying is what happened to Jesus will one day happen for us and in, in some ways for the world, the created order, the creation will be made new. So I, I think, let’s think about this. Resurrection is not progress. It doesn’t mean we’re gonna figure this out. Resurrection’s not return back to Eden.
Resurrection is the defeat of death and the remaking of of life. And it, it, it comes from, it doesn’t come from our own potential. Resurrection does not emerge from possibilities that are somehow latent. In a corpse, a resurrection is a voice from beyond calling us to life. And I think that’s really good news because if you’re listening to this and you go I don’t know how I’m gonna make it, the answer is, but God does.
And if you say I don’t know how, if I could ever make it, how, how this situation will ever resolve, and I can’t see my way out of this. God does, and God has a way of having the last word. And resurrection [01:00:00] means that God gets the last word, sin and death have their sway. And they, they still, we still grapple with the consequences of sin in a fallen world.
Death disease, all of the things we don’t like. And yet, God gets the last word. And his last word is life. His last word is a word of resurrection. So the creed points us forward to a return of Christ a reign of Christ. A great, a great judgment or reckoning, if you will, our future resurrection and the renewal of creation.
And all of that means God gets the last word.
Dr. Mark Turman: No, what a great, great, great word. All right. I’m, I’m gonna do what I don’t often do, which is I’m gonna invite you to just offer a closing Easter prayer for us. Would you do that?
Dr. Glenn Packiam: Yeah.
Dr. Mark Turman: I
Dr. Glenn Packiam: would love to. Thank you so much, mark, for having me on. It’s been great to talk to you.
It’s been a joy. A joy, an absolute joy. Thank you. Let’s pray. Father, we are so grateful that you are the source of every good and perfect gift. And Jesus, thank you that you came for us and for our salvation and Holy Spirit, thank you that you are here [01:01:00] giving life to us even now. And so I pray for my brothers and sisters who are listening.
Lord, would you bring life to their hearts even now? Would you give them an awareness of your love for them, of your grace that abounds toward them? Would you help them to know and receive in a fresh way today, the presence and power of God at work in their lives? Would you fill them with hope? Would you empower them to love their neighbors as themselves?
Would you send them out into the world full of your joy, full of your life to put on display the good and beautiful and true news about who you are? We pray these things in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Dr. Mark Turman: Amen. Amen. Thank you Glenn. So good. Get the book if you would, by Glenn Packham.
What’s a Christian? Anyway, subtitle, finding Our Way in an Age of Confusion and Corruption. Glenn, thank you for this work. Happy Easter. Happy Resurrection Day, [01:02:00] and thank you to our audience for being a part of our conversation. If this was helpful to you, please rate review us on your podcast platform, share it with others.
That’s how they find us, and we hope you have an awesome and blessed resurrection celebration. God bless you. We’ll see you next time on the Denison Forum Podcast.
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