What We Believe
In addition to the statement of faith posted here, we also hold to the Affirmations and Denials of Together for the Gospel.
HOLY SCRIPTURE:
We believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God. We believe in the inerrancy, sufficiency, authority, clarity, and necessity of Holy Scripture. We believe that the Bible contains 66 books and reject the Apocryphal writings.
THE HOLY TRINITY:
We believe there is one God whose attributes are glorious and manifold and who is worthy of all our devotion, love, worship, obedience and praise. This God is a Holy Trinity, existing eternally as three Persons: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
GOD THE FATHER:
We believe in God the Father and that He orchestrates all things, whatsoever comes to pass, in His sovereignty according to the decree of His providence and secret will. He dwells in inapproachable light and infinite holiness and no man has ever seen Him in the fullness of His glory, except the Son.
GOD THE SON:
We believe in God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is fully God and fully Man and the one and only Mediator between God and men. We believe in His Deity; His eternal Godhead; His virgin birth; His sinless life; His miracles; His vicarious and atoning death on a Roman cross; His bodily resurrection; His ascension to the right hand of the Father; His effectual High-Preistly ministry on behalf of His people; His personal return to earth in power and glory; His eternal reign at the right hand of the Father for ever.
GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT:
We believe in God the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of Truth and the Counselor, Comforter and divine Helper of the Church. He takes the things of Christ and reveals them to men; His chief function is to glorify Christ; He has been sent in His fullness to the earth upon the glorification of Christ in Heaven; He regenerates all those who the Father has chosen to save; He indwells all true believers; and He empowers the saints to serve Jesus Christ and worship God.
MANKIND:
We believe that mankind was created in the image of God in a state of innocence for the purpose of glorifying God and enjoying Him forever. Yet the first man, Adam, chose to sin against God along with his wife, Eve, and through that one man, sin and death have passed upon all of mankind. Consequently, all are conceived in sin and born with a sinful nature. Sin has corrupted every part of man including the will. Since all have inherited sin, and since all have sinned, all are deserving of the just, eternal wrath of a Holy God. Yet God in His mercy has provided a way of salvation that is offered freely to all men without distinction through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
REDEMPTION:
We believe that the work of redemption accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ is finished completely and forever. His blood paid the full price God demanded to make full atonement for the sin of all who believe once and for all time. Christ bore our sin, our curse, and the wrath of God which we deserved, so that we could receive His righteousness, His blessing, and the eternal favor of God which we don’t deserve. Man has nothing of his own merit to attribute to Christ’s finished work in salvation. We believe that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone according to Scripture alone to the glory of God alone.
ELECTION:
We believe that God has chosen in His great mercy, in eternity past, to save an exceedingly great multitude of individuals from among fallen mankind not based on any conditions foreseen in the creature, but solely on the basis of His own glory and grace, and has decreed to make those individuals the recipients of His eternal favor and fellowship. He will effectually draw them to Christ and they will come willingly and Christ will not lose a single one of them. However, this does not destroy the truth of the responsibility of man, and all those who refuse to believe the Gospel will be justly condemned because of their own sin. God does not actively orchestrate the reprobation of the condemned, nor does He cause it, but rather, in His justice He leaves them to suffer the consequences of their own sin and rebellion. Thus those who are saved must attribute all of their salvation entirely to grace, and those who are condemned must attribute all of the cause of their condemnation entirely to their own sin.
REGENERATION:
We believe that regeneration is a supernatural miracle of the Holy Spirit within a man and is entirely the work of God. It is essential to salvation, imparts to man a new nature, and is our divine initiation into all the graces which accompany salvation.
CONVERSION:
We believe that the biblical manner of conversion is repentance and faith. Repentance is a divinely enabled grace by which a person renounces and turns from sin with their whole heart, and is itself a gift of grace with which the sinner cooperates and exercises. Saving faith is also a gift of grace and not a resident in the stony, wicked heart of fallen man, but must be imparted by the Holy Spirit, upon which receiving, the sinner exercises and lays hold of Christ Jesus by means of a wholehearted trust in Him alone to save them. Both repentance and faith never are found alone, but are both always received and exercised simultaneously. Also, from the point of conversion at which initial saving faith and repentance are exercised, the child of God is to continue in a lifestyle of repentance and of continual faith in Jesus Christ, walking in the light as He is in the light.
JUSTIFICATION:
We believe that justification is by faith alone apart from works. God justifies the ungodly by remitting their sin and imputing to them the perfect righteousness of Christ. All those justified will be glorified. Justification is positional and is not anything wrought within an individual or earned by them. However, it is never found alone, but is always accompanied by all other saving graces.
ASSURANCE:
We believe that it is the privilege and right of those who are regenerated and justified, having become children of God, to enjoy the sweet assurance of their salvation. The indwelling Spirit produces in the children of God the assurance that they are accepted by God allowing them to rejoice with joy unspeakable. True believers may be robbed of their assurance from time to time due to lack of faith or to personal sin, however, it is the normal Christian life to walk in the whole hearted conviction of the full assurance of the security of our salvation.
SANCTIFICATION:
We believe that sanctification is both positional and progressive. It is by virtue of our union with Christ and He is our sanctification. In its positional sense it is closely related to justification and is perfect. In its progressive sense it is not completed or perfected until a believer enters glory. All those truly saved will live a life of perfecting holiness in the fear of God and growing in grace. A true believer may stumble into sin but will not practice and continue in sin, and those who stray into sin are chastised by God and brought back into obedience. Yet, there is no such thing as sinless perfection this side of eternity and anyone who claims such is deceived. The flesh and the spirit are at war until glorification takes place, but thanks be to God we have provision through the Gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit to walk in victory over sin.
PRESERVATION:
We believe that those who God has been pleased to save will be kept by the power of God through faith for the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time, that of all those given to the Son by the Father He will lose none, and that no one can pluck the sheep of Christ from His hand nor from His Father’s hand nor can anything separate us from the love of Christ. We believe God is able to keep us from falling and to present us blameless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. We believe that when God gives an individual a new heart in regeneration, He puts His fear in their hearts and they do not depart from Him according to His promise. Thus those truly regenerated by the Spirit will be divinely enabled by the Spirit to persevere in faith until the end, and will not totally nor finally fall away from a state of grace because of God’s preserving power. However, Scripture does teach such a thing as falling away from the faith and apostatizing, giving us many warnings which are designed to prevent us from doing so, showing us that even though we can rest secure in the assurance of our salvation, we must never presume upon God and be careless about the state of our souls. We must be diligent to make our calling and election sure by growing in grace and holiness.
THE CHURCH:
We believe that the Church is a divine assembly built by Christ Himself and that the gates of Hell never have and never will never prevail against it. Christ alone is the Head of the Church. We believe that the true Church is universal and consists only of the true people of God and the membership role of this Church is the Lamb’s book of life. It transcends denominations, peoples and cultures and its’ saints are united by the Holy Spirit who dwells in each one of them. We further believe it is the Lord’s will for His universal Church in every culture and place to manifest itself visibly in established local churches to practice the means of grace ordained by God and established by the traditions of the Apostles as recorded in Holy Scripture. The preaching of the Word of God must be given a prominent place of honor amongst the local assemblies. It is the duty of every believer to gather together and to be a part of a local church. Furthermore, we believe there is a distinction between the universal and visible church in that while the universal church consists of only true believers, the local churches almost always consist of both wheat and tares.
GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT:
We believe in the continuation of the miraculous manifestations of the Holy Spirit recorded in the New Testament. While the Apostles had a much more powerful endowment of miraculous gifts than anyone following them due to the necessity of confirming their ministry and completing the Canon of Scripture, we believe there is no Scriptural basis to teach that all such miraculous gifts have completely ceased. We believe that we should earnestly desire spiritual gifts, especially those which most edify the church, and that the practice of such gifts should be encouraged. However, we do reject manifestations which are not found in Scripture recognizing that the Devil often counterfeits the genuine gifts of God. We also recognize that the fruit of the Spirit is more important than the miracles of the Spirit.
ORDINANCES:
We believe that God has ordained two ordinances to be practiced in the Church: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These ordinances are not be viewed as some sort of sacraments which impart any type of saving grace, and the errors of Catholicism on these points is heretical. However, they are more than just vain rituals or empty symbols, since they were instituted and commanded by Christ Himself and practiced by Apostolic tradition in the early church. Though the exact nature of these ordinances is a divine mystery, we believe them to be symbols which confirm our faith in the grace that has already been received. They are of no benefit whatsoever to the one who lacks saving faith. Thus baptism is to be of believers only, and that by immersion in water, and the Lord’s Supper is to be done in remembrance of Christ’s atoning death and in anticipation of the coming Kingdom by all those who, having repented and believed the Gospel and having been baptized upon confession of faith, have been added to the number of the local church.
DEATH AND RESURRECTION:
We believe that when a believer dies and is absent from the body, they are immediately present with the Lord to experience conscious happiness and life everlasting. When the wicked die, they immediately find themselves in Hell in conscious torment. Both then await the resurrection of the body and the final judgment, where the righteous will be rewarded on the basis of their faith and works of faith and love, and the wicked will be punished on the basis of their unbelief and their wicked works. The righteous will eternally dwell on the new earth in the midst of the new heavens with God and with the Lamb, and the wicked will eternally suffer in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone forever and ever.
SECOND COMING:
We believe in the imminent, personal, visible, bodily return of the Lord Jesus Christ on the clouds of heaven with great power and glory. Every eye will see Him, and He will gather together His elect from the four winds, and He will tread down the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God. He will then reign as King forever and every knee will bow to Him and every tongue will confess that He is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
THE GREAT COMMISSION:
We believe that it is the duty of the people of God to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to everybody everywhere. The Gospel must be taken to all nations and all peoples must be taught to believe in and obey Jesus Christ. The Great Commission is not an option to be considered, but a command to be obeyed.
We believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God. We believe in the inerrancy, sufficiency, authority, clarity, and necessity of Holy Scripture. We believe that the Bible contains 66 books and reject the Apocryphal writings.
THE HOLY TRINITY:
We believe there is one God whose attributes are glorious and manifold and who is worthy of all our devotion, love, worship, obedience and praise. This God is a Holy Trinity, existing eternally as three Persons: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
GOD THE FATHER:
We believe in God the Father and that He orchestrates all things, whatsoever comes to pass, in His sovereignty according to the decree of His providence and secret will. He dwells in inapproachable light and infinite holiness and no man has ever seen Him in the fullness of His glory, except the Son.
GOD THE SON:
We believe in God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is fully God and fully Man and the one and only Mediator between God and men. We believe in His Deity; His eternal Godhead; His virgin birth; His sinless life; His miracles; His vicarious and atoning death on a Roman cross; His bodily resurrection; His ascension to the right hand of the Father; His effectual High-Preistly ministry on behalf of His people; His personal return to earth in power and glory; His eternal reign at the right hand of the Father for ever.
GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT:
We believe in God the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of Truth and the Counselor, Comforter and divine Helper of the Church. He takes the things of Christ and reveals them to men; His chief function is to glorify Christ; He has been sent in His fullness to the earth upon the glorification of Christ in Heaven; He regenerates all those who the Father has chosen to save; He indwells all true believers; and He empowers the saints to serve Jesus Christ and worship God.
MANKIND:
We believe that mankind was created in the image of God in a state of innocence for the purpose of glorifying God and enjoying Him forever. Yet the first man, Adam, chose to sin against God along with his wife, Eve, and through that one man, sin and death have passed upon all of mankind. Consequently, all are conceived in sin and born with a sinful nature. Sin has corrupted every part of man including the will. Since all have inherited sin, and since all have sinned, all are deserving of the just, eternal wrath of a Holy God. Yet God in His mercy has provided a way of salvation that is offered freely to all men without distinction through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
REDEMPTION:
We believe that the work of redemption accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ is finished completely and forever. His blood paid the full price God demanded to make full atonement for the sin of all who believe once and for all time. Christ bore our sin, our curse, and the wrath of God which we deserved, so that we could receive His righteousness, His blessing, and the eternal favor of God which we don’t deserve. Man has nothing of his own merit to attribute to Christ’s finished work in salvation. We believe that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone according to Scripture alone to the glory of God alone.
ELECTION:
We believe that God has chosen in His great mercy, in eternity past, to save an exceedingly great multitude of individuals from among fallen mankind not based on any conditions foreseen in the creature, but solely on the basis of His own glory and grace, and has decreed to make those individuals the recipients of His eternal favor and fellowship. He will effectually draw them to Christ and they will come willingly and Christ will not lose a single one of them. However, this does not destroy the truth of the responsibility of man, and all those who refuse to believe the Gospel will be justly condemned because of their own sin. God does not actively orchestrate the reprobation of the condemned, nor does He cause it, but rather, in His justice He leaves them to suffer the consequences of their own sin and rebellion. Thus those who are saved must attribute all of their salvation entirely to grace, and those who are condemned must attribute all of the cause of their condemnation entirely to their own sin.
REGENERATION:
We believe that regeneration is a supernatural miracle of the Holy Spirit within a man and is entirely the work of God. It is essential to salvation, imparts to man a new nature, and is our divine initiation into all the graces which accompany salvation.
CONVERSION:
We believe that the biblical manner of conversion is repentance and faith. Repentance is a divinely enabled grace by which a person renounces and turns from sin with their whole heart, and is itself a gift of grace with which the sinner cooperates and exercises. Saving faith is also a gift of grace and not a resident in the stony, wicked heart of fallen man, but must be imparted by the Holy Spirit, upon which receiving, the sinner exercises and lays hold of Christ Jesus by means of a wholehearted trust in Him alone to save them. Both repentance and faith never are found alone, but are both always received and exercised simultaneously. Also, from the point of conversion at which initial saving faith and repentance are exercised, the child of God is to continue in a lifestyle of repentance and of continual faith in Jesus Christ, walking in the light as He is in the light.
JUSTIFICATION:
We believe that justification is by faith alone apart from works. God justifies the ungodly by remitting their sin and imputing to them the perfect righteousness of Christ. All those justified will be glorified. Justification is positional and is not anything wrought within an individual or earned by them. However, it is never found alone, but is always accompanied by all other saving graces.
ASSURANCE:
We believe that it is the privilege and right of those who are regenerated and justified, having become children of God, to enjoy the sweet assurance of their salvation. The indwelling Spirit produces in the children of God the assurance that they are accepted by God allowing them to rejoice with joy unspeakable. True believers may be robbed of their assurance from time to time due to lack of faith or to personal sin, however, it is the normal Christian life to walk in the whole hearted conviction of the full assurance of the security of our salvation.
SANCTIFICATION:
We believe that sanctification is both positional and progressive. It is by virtue of our union with Christ and He is our sanctification. In its positional sense it is closely related to justification and is perfect. In its progressive sense it is not completed or perfected until a believer enters glory. All those truly saved will live a life of perfecting holiness in the fear of God and growing in grace. A true believer may stumble into sin but will not practice and continue in sin, and those who stray into sin are chastised by God and brought back into obedience. Yet, there is no such thing as sinless perfection this side of eternity and anyone who claims such is deceived. The flesh and the spirit are at war until glorification takes place, but thanks be to God we have provision through the Gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit to walk in victory over sin.
PRESERVATION:
We believe that those who God has been pleased to save will be kept by the power of God through faith for the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time, that of all those given to the Son by the Father He will lose none, and that no one can pluck the sheep of Christ from His hand nor from His Father’s hand nor can anything separate us from the love of Christ. We believe God is able to keep us from falling and to present us blameless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. We believe that when God gives an individual a new heart in regeneration, He puts His fear in their hearts and they do not depart from Him according to His promise. Thus those truly regenerated by the Spirit will be divinely enabled by the Spirit to persevere in faith until the end, and will not totally nor finally fall away from a state of grace because of God’s preserving power. However, Scripture does teach such a thing as falling away from the faith and apostatizing, giving us many warnings which are designed to prevent us from doing so, showing us that even though we can rest secure in the assurance of our salvation, we must never presume upon God and be careless about the state of our souls. We must be diligent to make our calling and election sure by growing in grace and holiness.
THE CHURCH:
We believe that the Church is a divine assembly built by Christ Himself and that the gates of Hell never have and never will never prevail against it. Christ alone is the Head of the Church. We believe that the true Church is universal and consists only of the true people of God and the membership role of this Church is the Lamb’s book of life. It transcends denominations, peoples and cultures and its’ saints are united by the Holy Spirit who dwells in each one of them. We further believe it is the Lord’s will for His universal Church in every culture and place to manifest itself visibly in established local churches to practice the means of grace ordained by God and established by the traditions of the Apostles as recorded in Holy Scripture. The preaching of the Word of God must be given a prominent place of honor amongst the local assemblies. It is the duty of every believer to gather together and to be a part of a local church. Furthermore, we believe there is a distinction between the universal and visible church in that while the universal church consists of only true believers, the local churches almost always consist of both wheat and tares.
GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT:
We believe in the continuation of the miraculous manifestations of the Holy Spirit recorded in the New Testament. While the Apostles had a much more powerful endowment of miraculous gifts than anyone following them due to the necessity of confirming their ministry and completing the Canon of Scripture, we believe there is no Scriptural basis to teach that all such miraculous gifts have completely ceased. We believe that we should earnestly desire spiritual gifts, especially those which most edify the church, and that the practice of such gifts should be encouraged. However, we do reject manifestations which are not found in Scripture recognizing that the Devil often counterfeits the genuine gifts of God. We also recognize that the fruit of the Spirit is more important than the miracles of the Spirit.
ORDINANCES:
We believe that God has ordained two ordinances to be practiced in the Church: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These ordinances are not be viewed as some sort of sacraments which impart any type of saving grace, and the errors of Catholicism on these points is heretical. However, they are more than just vain rituals or empty symbols, since they were instituted and commanded by Christ Himself and practiced by Apostolic tradition in the early church. Though the exact nature of these ordinances is a divine mystery, we believe them to be symbols which confirm our faith in the grace that has already been received. They are of no benefit whatsoever to the one who lacks saving faith. Thus baptism is to be of believers only, and that by immersion in water, and the Lord’s Supper is to be done in remembrance of Christ’s atoning death and in anticipation of the coming Kingdom by all those who, having repented and believed the Gospel and having been baptized upon confession of faith, have been added to the number of the local church.
DEATH AND RESURRECTION:
We believe that when a believer dies and is absent from the body, they are immediately present with the Lord to experience conscious happiness and life everlasting. When the wicked die, they immediately find themselves in Hell in conscious torment. Both then await the resurrection of the body and the final judgment, where the righteous will be rewarded on the basis of their faith and works of faith and love, and the wicked will be punished on the basis of their unbelief and their wicked works. The righteous will eternally dwell on the new earth in the midst of the new heavens with God and with the Lamb, and the wicked will eternally suffer in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone forever and ever.
SECOND COMING:
We believe in the imminent, personal, visible, bodily return of the Lord Jesus Christ on the clouds of heaven with great power and glory. Every eye will see Him, and He will gather together His elect from the four winds, and He will tread down the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God. He will then reign as King forever and every knee will bow to Him and every tongue will confess that He is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
THE GREAT COMMISSION:
We believe that it is the duty of the people of God to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to everybody everywhere. The Gospel must be taken to all nations and all peoples must be taught to believe in and obey Jesus Christ. The Great Commission is not an option to be considered, but a command to be obeyed.
Copyright 2010. You are welcome to use this statement of faith for your ministry and/or post it on your ministry website, however, you must not alter it to change the doctrine it teaches.
