Our Statement of Faith
  1. GOD.  We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He is the Creator and Sovereign Ruler of all things, visible and invisible, worthy to receive all glory and adoration. 
  2. REVELATION.  God has revealed his existence and power in the created order, and has supremely revealed himself in the person of his Son, the incarnate Word. God, by his Spirit, has graciously disclosed himself in the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, which alone constitute the verbally inspired Word of God. The Bible is utterly authoritative and without error in the original writings, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do.
  3. CREATION OF MAN.
    We believe that God created human beings, male and female, in his own image, to serve as God’s agents to care for, manage, and govern creation, living in holy and devoted fellowship with their Maker. Men and women, equally made in the image of God, enjoy equal access to God by faith in Christ Jesus. Adam and Eve were made to complement each other in a one-flesh union that establishes the only normative pattern of sexual relations for men and women, such that marriage ultimately serves as a type of the union between Christ and his church. The distinctive leadership role within the church is given to qualified men and must not be sidelined by appeals to cultural developments.
  4. THE FALL OF MAN.  We believe that Adam, made in the image of God, distorted that image and forfeited his original blessedness — for himself and all mankind — by falling into sin. As a result, all human beings are sinners, alienated from God, corrupted in every aspect of their being and spiritually dead. Our only hope is the undeserved love of this same God, who alone can rescue us and restore us to himself.
  5. THE PLAN OF GOD.  We believe that from all eternity God determined in grace to save a great multitude of guilty sinners. God commands and implores all people to repent and believe, having set his saving love on those he has chosen and having ordained Christ to be their Redeemer. God justifies and sanctifies those who by grace have faith in Jesus, and he will one day glorify them.
  6. THE GOSPEL.  We believe that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ and the power of God to save. The gospel is christological, centering on the cross and resurrection: the gospel is not proclaimed if Christ is not proclaimed, and the authentic Christ has not been proclaimed if his atoning death and historic resurrection are not central. This good news is also personal; where it is received, believed, and held firmly, individual persons are saved.
  7. THE REDEMPTION OF JESUS CHRIST.  We believe that the eternal Son of God became human:  the Word became flesh, fully God and fully human being, one Person in two natures. The man Jesus, the promised Messiah, was conceived through the miraculous agency of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He perfectly obeyed his heavenly Father, lived a sinless life, performed miraculous signs, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, arose bodily from the dead on the third day, and ascended into heaven. As our mediatorial King, he is seated at the right hand of God the Father, and is our High Priest and righteous Advocate. By his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus Christ acted as our representative and substitute. We believe that salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved, and that no human being can ever boast before him.
  8.  THE JUSTIFICATION OF SINNERS.  We believe that Christ, by his obedience and death, fully discharged the debt of all those who are justified. By his sacrifice, he bore in our stead the punishment due us for our sins, making a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God’s justice on our behalf. By his perfect obedience he satisfied the just demands of God on our behalf; his obedience and punishment were accepted in place of our own. This justification is solely of free grace.
  9. THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.  We believe that this salvation is applied to his people by the Holy Spirit, who glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ, and, as the other Paraclete, is present with and in believers. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and by his powerful and mysterious work regenerates spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance and faith. In him, they are baptized into union with the Lord Jesus, and renewed, sanctified, and adopted into God's family. In the Spirit we participate in the divine nature and receive his sovereignly distributed gifts. The Holy Spirit is himself the down payment of the promised inheritance, and he indwells, guides, instructs, equips, revives, and empowers believers for Christ-like living and service.
  10. THE KINGDOM OF GOD.  We believe that those who have been saved by the grace of God through union with Christ by faith and through regeneration by the Holy Spirit enter the kingdom of God and delight in the blessings of the new covenant:  the forgiveness of sins, the inward transformation that awakens a desire to glorify, trust, and obey God, and the prospect of the glory yet to be revealed. Good works constitute indispensable evidence of saving grace. Because we are citizens of God’s kingdom, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, doing good to all, especially to those who belong to the household of God. The kingdom of God is an invasive power that plunders Satan’s dark kingdom and regenerates and renovates through repentance and faith the lives of individuals rescued from that kingdom. It therefore inevitably establishes a new community of human life together under God.
  11. THE CHURCH.  We believe that the universal church is manifest in local churches of which Christ is the only Head; thus each “local church” is, in fact, the church, the household of God, the assembly of the living God, and the pillar and foundation of the truth. The church is the body of Christ, the apple of his eye, graven on his hands, and he has pledged himself to her forever. The church is distinguished by her gospel message, her sacred ordinances, her discipline, her great mission, and, above all, by her love for God, and by her members’ love for one another and for the world. Christ Jesus is our peace: he has not only brought about peace with God, but also peace between alienated peoples. The church serves as a sign of God’s future new world when its members live for the service of one another and their neighbors, rather than for self-focus. The church is the corporate dwelling place of God’s Spirit, and the continuing witness to God in the world.
  12.  BAPTISM AND THE LORD'S SUPPER.  We believe that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ordained by the Lord Jesus himself. The former is connected with entrance into the new covenant community, the latter with ongoing covenant renewal. Together they are simultaneously God’s pledge to us, divinely ordained means of grace, our public vows of submission to the once crucified and now resurrected Christ, and anticipations of his return and of the consummation of all things.
  13.  THE RESTORATION OF ALL THINGS.  We believe in the personal, glorious, and bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ with his holy angels, when he will exercise his role as final Judge, and his kingdom will be consummated. We believe in the bodily resurrection of both the just and the unjust — the unjust to judgment and eternal conscious punishment in hell, as our Lord himself taught, and the just to eternal blessedness in the presence of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb, in the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness. Everything will be to the praise of his glorious grace.