The church needed a way to sum up what it believed. And there was this guy named Marcian who had completely wrong ideas about God. He thought all matter was evil. So Jesus couldn’t have actually been human, couldn’t have been born, couldn’t have died. He was just some spiritual being delivering nice messages.
The church said no. That’s not what we believe. So they wrote the Apostles Creed to push back against that heresy. And if you look at the middle part of that creed—the part about Jesus—it’s all about him being real. Conceived. Born. Suffered. Crucified. Dead. Buried. Because if Jesus wasn’t actually human, he couldn’t have suffered. He couldn’t have paid the price for our sins.
Here’s what matters: Jesus came in flesh. He walked on earth. He bled. He died. And that’s how he saved us. Not as some ghost, not as some idea, but as a person. A real person. That changes everything.
A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope