I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins: What the Apostles' Creed Teaches

Near the end of the Apostles' Creed, after affirming the Holy Spirit and the holy catholic church, Christians confess belief in 'the forgiveness of sins.' The placement is significant. Forgiveness does not stand alone — it is an act of the Triune God, accomplished through the Son, and applied by the Spirit within the community of the church. To understand why early Christians included this phrase in the creed is to understand the very logic of the Christian gospel.

Why Forgiveness Belongs in a Creed

Creeds are not ethical checklists but confessions of what God has done. The early church organized its baptismal questions — the origins of the Apostles' Creed — around three divine Persons. Under the third article, concerning the Holy Spirit, believers confessed not only the church and the resurrection but also the forgiveness of sins. This connection is crucial: forgiveness is what the Spirit applies as he brings sinners into the body of Christ. Baptism, into which the creed was spoken, was understood as a washing of sins and an entry into the forgiven community (Acts 2:38).

The Greek word used in early formulas — aphesis hamartion — means literally a release or remission. Sin is understood not merely as moral failure but as a debt, a bondage, a weight that binds the human person. The forgiveness proclaimed in the creed is a divine act of liberation. This is why Luther called the forgiveness of sins the article by which the church stands or falls — not in isolation from justification, but as its experiential and communal expression.

Forgiveness and the Church

The phrase 'the forgiveness of sins' in the third article links the church — holy catholic church, communion of saints — with forgiveness. The church is not a community of the spiritually advanced but of the forgiven. Its members come together not because they have conquered sin but because they have been declared free of its guilt and are being set free from its power. This shapes everything about how the church gathers — in worship, in confession, in the Lord's Supper, and in the exercise of mutual care.

Historically, the church's practice of absolution reflects the conviction that the church is authorized to proclaim what God has accomplished in Christ. Jesus gives this authority to his disciples in John 20:23: 'If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.' Whether expressed sacramentally in Catholic and Orthodox traditions or declaratorily in Protestant worship, the creed's confession of forgiveness anchors the church's ministry of proclamation and reconciliation.

Living as the Forgiven

To confess forgiveness of sins in the Apostles' Creed is not a passive statement but a formative one. Communities that regularly speak these words together are reminded that their identity is shaped by grace, not achievement. This shapes how they treat one another — extending mercy because they have received it (Ephesians 4:32), refusing to weaponize guilt against those who have already been released from its power. The creed's mention of forgiveness is brief, but its implications run through the entire moral and relational life of the church.