We believe it is God’s Word. It is the written record of God’s progressive revelation of Himself to us in time and history. Both the Old and New Testaments reflect eyewitness testimony of God both speaking and acting in history to reveal Himself to us. And, of course, we believe it centers on Jesus Christ; the Old Testament points forward to Christ and the New Testament provides the eyewitness account of His life, death, and resurrection, proving He is the fulfillment of everything written in the Old Testament (Luke 24:44).
As God’s Word, we also believe it is true; the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, clear, sufficient, and authoritative Word of God:
Inspired
God-breathed; that is, written by God through human authors (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20-21)
Inerrant
Because God is the author, we believe the Bible is without error in the original language and manuscripts. Although the original manuscripts are no longer available due to the perishable nature of the materials on which they were written, in God’s divine providence, thousands of ancient manuscripts representing copies of the original were preserved and are available (far more than any other ancient document) from which scholars have been able to identify the original document with more than 99.75% accuracy. As a result, we believe that the texts used to produce our modern English translations represent materially accurate, reliable, and trustworthy reproductions of the original text.
Clear
It can be understood. The very fact that God has chosen to reveal Himself to us means that He wants us to know Him and, as a result, we can trust that He reveals Himself clearly to us. This doesn’t mean we won’t need help interpreting or understanding it – that’s why God gave the gift of teaching. But it isn’t a code that we need to decipher.
Sufficient
God’s revelation to us was made complete in Jesus Christ. As a result, we believe the Canon of Scripture is closed, and that God does not continue to speak to us using others today. That doesn’t preclude God from appearing to people in visions or dreams, but only with the goal of pointing those people to His Word. Any vision a person claims to have should be tested by what’s already been revealed in the Bible. There is no new revelation (Hebrews 1:1-2).
Authoritative
As God’s inerrant, clear, and sufficient Word, it has absolute authority over us. We submit to it in every way in obedience to God.
As the inspired, inerrant, clear, sufficient, and authoritative Word of God, we believe life should be approached according to a Biblical Worldview. In other words, the ways in which we think, speak, and interact with the world and the people in the world around us should be entirely informed by the truth revealed in Scripture. This ultimately means we believe God created us and the world around us with a divine purpose, and we seek to live our lives in fulfillment of that purpose in obedience to Him to the praise of His glory.
First and perhaps most importantly, we believe He is the only God. There are no other gods; He is the sole, eternal creator of the universe.
Among other things, He is:
o All-knowing (omniscient)
o All-powerful (omnipotent)
o Omnipresent (not limited by time and space)
o Unchanging (immutable)
o Sovereign (He holds control over the entire universe)
o Holy – He is set apart
o Righteous/Just – He sets the standard
o Faithful to His promises
o Merciful, gracious, patient, forgiving
o Loving
He exists eternally as one essence in three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (which we call the Trinity), who are equal in glory, majesty, authority, and divinity. Although various analogies have been presented to explain this mystery, all such analogies are inadequate and many have led to dangerous heresies that distort the truth of Scripture. Because God is unique and transcends His created order, there is nothing in all of creation that can be used to explain or better comprehend Him. As a result, we simply embrace the truth of the Trinity as a divine mystery that ultimately points us to the unequivocal beauty of God and even helps us better understand Him as a loving and relational God who eternally exists in a loving relationship as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
We believe all humans are created in God’s image and are the only of God’s creatures given that privilege. And while this means that we do share in some of God’s attributes (for example, our ability to create and to be relational), it ultimately means He created us to reflect Him; that is, to reflect His presence by co-ruling the earth as His representatives (Genesis 1:26).
We often rightly connect this idea to treating all human beings with dignity! But what we don’t often think about is what it means for how we should live our lives. It ultimately means that we should live in a way that seeks to glorify God in everything we do; that is, that seeks to point the rest of creation to His infinite worth and beauty. We weren’t created to seek glory for ourselves, but for God, our Creator. Being created in God’s image has practical implications for how we both treat others and live our lives.
We also believe that God intentionally created humans as male and female (Genesis 1:27). In other words, being male and female is intricately connected to being created in God’s image. And, of course, this too has practical implications for how we live our lives and think about issues concerning sexuality and marriage.
At its core, sin is a deviation from God’s purpose or design. This is essentially what we see in the account of the very first sin committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: they choose to disobey God’s command to abstain from eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because they believed Satan’s lie that by eating the fruit they could be god themselves. They chose NOT to trust or obey God, and instead put their trust in Satan. By doing so, they rejected the purpose for which God had created them and instead chose to live for themselves – and ironically, as a result, chose to subject themselves, perhaps unwittingly, to the rule of Satan.
What this teaches us is that sin is much more than simply doing bad things or violating the Ten Commandments. Today, every human follows in the footsteps of Adam and Eve; we all, in some way or another, want to live for ourselves and our own glory, rather than to live for God’s glory. And this is what Paul affirms when he says “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
As a result of rejecting God, all humanity, beginning with Adam and Eve, face the judgment of death: this includes the physical death of our bodies as well as the spiritual death of our souls/spirits, which will be eternally separated from God in hell.
We are saved from sin and death through Jesus Christ, the Son of God – the second person of the Trinity – and His life, death, and resurrection. When He came to earth, He lived exactly how we were created to live – in perfect, sinless obedience to God the Father. As a result, He did not deserve death, but yet willingly chose to suffer death by crucifixion to offer Himself on the cross as a sacrifice for the death we deserved. But because He did not deserve death, death was not able to hold Him, and He resurrected on the third day. As a result, He is now able to rescue all who come to Him from the penalty of death – He forgives them of their sin, reconciles them to God, and grants them the gift of eternal life with Him.
To “come to Him?” means that you repent of (or “turn away from”) your sin – from following the ways of the world – and instead turn to follow Him in obedience. When you do that, you are then sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit, by which you are not only declared to be both righteous (the biblical term is “justified”) and holy (which means “set-apart;” the biblical term is “sanctified”) but you are also continually being made righteous and holy – you are continually being made into the image of Christ.
There are a handful of important implications to this:
We cannot save ourselves.
There is nothing we can do on our own to overcome sin or the penalty of death. Unlike the theology of Home Alone, a good deed does not erase a bad deed. We cannot do enough good deeds to earn favor with God. He grants the gift of salvation by His grace, and as a result, we can only receive it as a gift by faith (Ephesians 2:1-10).
Jesus is the only way to be reconciled to God.
John 14:6: Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Acts 4:12: And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
It matters how we live.
We are saved to do good works, which God prepared beforehand for us to walk in them. In other words, even though our works (or fruit) do not earn the favor of God, our works (or fruit) DO reveal whether or not we have received it; our works demonstrate the genuineness of our faith (James 2:18). Now, in Christ, we are being RESTORED into the image of God – we are being made like Christ, the perfect image of God. And so, just as Jesus lived in perfect obedience to God the Father, we have been saved to also live in obedience to God – and, as a result, to once again reflect His presence and glory. We were originally created for good works, and now we are saved for good works.
We believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, God incarnate (that is, God in the flesh), conceived by a virgin, both fully God and fully man, who came to dwell among us. We also believe that, as God, He exists eternally, with God the Father, and that He was actually the agent of creation.
John 1:1-3: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Colossians 1:16: “For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”
We believe that the Holy Spirit is God, the third person of the Trinity. We also believe that He is given as a gift to ALL who have “heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Christ” (Ephesians 1:13-14) – as promised by Jesus in John 14-17 and foretold in Ezekiel 36. In other words, we believe that every believer is baptized with the Holy Spirit the moment he/she makes a credible profession of repentance and faith in Christ; salvation and baptism of the Spirit occur simultaneously. The reason for that is that Scripture teaches that the Holy Spirit is the One who not only empowers us for ministry, through varying gifts given to each believer, but is also the seal that guarantees our ultimate salvation (Ephesians 1:13-14).
The Bible affirms that God intentionally created humans as male and female (Genesis 1:27). In addition to that, in Genesis 2:18-24, the phrase "helper fit for" literally means, “that which corresponds to something to make up for what is lacking in the other.” When applied to this passage, it means that God created the female to compliment and complete what was lacking in the male; together, male and female reflect the image of God more perfectly than either can alone. They are like the wings of a bird, which though opposite, compliment each other and enable them to accomplish together what neither can accomplish alone.
Then, in verse 24, God intentionally joins the male and female (Adam and Eve) together as one – the Hebrew word translated, “hold fast,” describes a bonding together in an intimate, committed, inseparable relationship. This, of course, is the first marriage.
This teaches us two important principles. First, it teaches that God intentionally designed humans as male and female according to His good purpose. Second, it teaches that marriage is not a human institution, but is specifically created by God to be a loving, lifelong covenant commitment between one man and one woman that reflects the loving and relational nature of God Himself.
We believe and affirm that gender is a good and natural part of God’s created order. Further, we believe that marriage is a lifetime covenant relationship between one man and one woman. God designed sexual intimacy as the seal and symbol of the marriage covenant and, as such, it is to be enjoyed and experienced solely within the boundary of that covenant.
Jesus defines the church as a people, not a building. It first derives from the meaning of the biblical word itself. The word translated church in our English Bibles is the Greek word ekkleisa. It literally means “those who are called out” or “the called-out ones.” The church represents those who are called out to reflect the presence of Christ on earth. Now that Jesus has resurrected and ascended into heaven, it is through His church that He continues to reveal Himself to the world in tangible and visible ways (1 Corinthians 12:12-13; 27).
If Jesus defines the church as the physical manifestation of His presence to the world, then it makes sense that those who comprise the church are those who have chosen to identify with Him – that is, those who have “heard the word of truth, the gospel of salvation, and believed in Him” and have, thus, been regenerated (or “born again”) by the gift of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13-14). The church is not only comprised SOLELY of those who have chosen to identify with Christ by faith, but it is also comprised by ALL who have chosen to identify with Christ by faith. So as soon as you made the decision to repent of sin and follow Christ by faith, you were “called-out” by Christ and immediately became part of His church; your choice to identify with Christ inherently means you choose to identify with His body, the church.
The primary role Jesus assigns to His church, as His body, is to reflect His presence on earth. This is essentially a call to point others to Him. It is a call to bear witness about Him and make disciples – to testify to the truth of who He is and what He came to do, and to call those who hear to turn to Him in repentance and faith, teaching them how to live their lives in obedience to Him. The role of the church is to continue the ministry Christ began when He came to earth, before He ascended into heaven.
