The Apostles Creed 7 He shall Judge the Living and the Dead

The Apostles’ Creed — foundational to our Apostolic Christian faith

The Apostles’ Creed

We believe JESUS will JUDGE the living and the dead.

The Quick and the Dead

Death becomes a more serious matter IF WE consider an inevitable after-life of our lifeless flesh and blood and in a prepared place of our created soul.

This failing flesh, weakening sinews, crumbling of bones, flow through our heart and quickness of brain will not endure…

nor will the very breath of our brief mortal life.

And yet.. this created soul will remain…

What then?

Redemption OR Judgment?

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Structure of Christian CREEDS

Here’s a brief outline of the fundamental objects of our faith found in The Creed:

1. God
2. Jesus Christ
3. the Holy Spirit
   • and the Virgin Mary
4. Jesus was crucified
   • and was buried
5. He rose from the dead
6. He ascended to heaven
7. Siteth at the right hand of the Father (ye olde English)
8. Whence He cometh to judge the living and the dead
9. more…

source: apostles-creed.org

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We believe Jesus will judge the living and the dead

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During His incarnation as the Son of Man and prior to His crucifixion Jesus had confessed:

ἐγὼ καὶ ὁ πατὴρ ἕν ἐσμεν

“I and the Father are [*] one.”

* One in substance, one and the same.

John 10:30 LSB

As Scripture states:

GOD IS ONE IN ESSENCE,

and as the Gospel reveals,

THREE IN PERSON.

More on Trinity from R.C. Sproul

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In our last look at the Apostles' Creed we reminded you of these Scriptures: 

So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them,
was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.

Gospel of Mark 16:19 ESV

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From the Olde English of the King James Version of the Creed:

and sitteth at the right hande of the father: and he shall come again with glory, to judge both the quicke and the dead.

The Book of Common Prayer – 1549

Quicken me

It’s an olde concept (so to speak) found mostly in the Psalms.

My soul cleaveth unto the dust: quicken thou me according to thy word.

Psalm 119:25 KJV

Great are thy tender mercies, O LORD: quicken me according to thy judgments.

Psalm 119:156 KJV

Quicken me, O LORD, for thy name’s sake: for thy righteousness’ sake bring my soul out of trouble.

Psalm 119:11 KJV

From the Hebrew:

to live – ḥāyâ – חָיָה

But more importantly in the Apostles’ Creed:

to revive, be quickened

• from sickness
• from discouragement
• from faintness

• from death.

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The Apostle Paul helps us with this look at the judgment of the quick and the dead:

And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you,

he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.

Paul’s epistle to the Romans 8:10-11 KJV

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He raises the dead! (that is, quickeneth)

We know it and recognize the the Apostles borrow this from the Gospel of what Christ has taught during His incarnation.

from the Greek [ζωοποιέω] it more specifically means:

• to produce alive, begat or bear living young
• to cause to live, make alive, give life

and as Jesus used it in a parable pointing to death:

• of seeds quickened into life, i.e. germinating, springing up, growing

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For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.

Gospel of John 5:21 KJV

Think of the implication of this to a mortal like us as we look toward the dust.

An the Lord Jesus assures the faithful:

It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing:

and you believers with ears to hear, listen to this:

the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

Gospel of John 6:63 KJV – the word of Jesus, the son of Man and Son of God

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from Christ to the Apostles to Christian Creeds

The Apostle Paul writes to the church in Ephesus — a worldly cosmopolitan city with the temple of the Greek goddess Artemis (the goddess Diana of the Romans) — in about AD 60, quoting the Prophets:

“Awake, you who sleep,
Arise from the dead,
And Christ will give you light.”

See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

Ephesisans 5:14b-16 NKJV

And the risen Christ speaks a warning against turning back from sins and heresies leading to hell, which had seduced many of the Ephesian ‘christians‘:

“Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent.

Revelation of Jesus Christ to John 2:5 NKJV

Their great falling from grace in Ephesus having taken place in the AD 90’s, a mere three decades after the Apostle Paul had pastored their church.

The historical record of the Church beyond the first century AD points to both firm doctrine and similar falling away from Christ.

Augustine of Hippo on the Apostles’ Creed

Born: AD 354, Augustine lived an early 'willfully, decadent, pagan life' in Carthage, even taking a mistress who bore him a bastard son.  

Source: The Confessions of St. Augustine, Rosalie DeRosset – intro

In Carthage, Augustine’s knowledge.. he admits, made him, “swollen up with vanity” (Bk 3, chap. 6). — probably made him prey for the Manichean religion. The chief characteristic of this sect was Gnosticism, an extreme dualism that claimed evil and good as equal.

ibid. pp 13-14

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In just four centuries heresies had encompassed and seeped into the churches. Later after after St. Augustine and the fall of Rome, considerable idolatry and various heresies would invade the Catholic Church and later after Luther, the Protestant Church. 

READ what Augustine later taught about THE APOSTLES’ CREED:

The Bishop’s text here is taken from the Gospel of Matthew 25:

“Thence He shall come to judge the quick and dead.”

The quick, who shall be alive and remain;

the dead, who shall have gone before.

It may also be understood thus: The living, the just; the dead, the unjust.

For He judges both, rendering unto each his own.

To the just He will say in the judgment, “Come, ye blessed of My Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world.” For this prepare yourselves, for these things hope, for this live, and so live, for this believe, for this be baptized, that it may be said to you, “Come ye blessed of My Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

To them on the left hand, what?

“Go into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

Thus will they be judged by Christ, the quick and the dead.

We have spoken of Christ’s first nativity, which is without time;

spoken of the other in the fullness of time,

Christ’s nativity of the Virgin; spoken of the passion of Christ; spoken of the coming of Christ to judgment.

The whole is spoken, that was to be spoken of Christ, God’s Only Son, our Lord. But not yet is the Trinity perfect.

Source: BibleHub.org –

“Thence He Shall Come to Judge the Quick and Dead. …

Next: A second glace at The Holy Spirit

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