STATEMENT OF FAITH

We believe in the Holy Scriptures, consisting of the Old and New Testaments as the divinely inspired, infallible, and entirely trustworthy self-revelations of God. The scriptures principally teach us what we are to believe about God and what duty he requires of us. The Holy Spirit who inspired sixty-six authoritative books, thirty-nine in the Old Testament and twenty-seven in the New, has preserved the Scriptures for his Church in all ages and bears witness in our hearts that this is the Word of God, the supreme authority for all matters pertaining to God’s worship and glory, our salvation, faith, and life.

 

We believe in one God who is spirit, infinite, eternal, independent, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. There are three persons in the godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.

 

We believe that God created all things out of nothing in the space of six days and all very good. He also upholds and governs all things by his eternal providence and infinite power for his own glory and our good, to the end that we may serve, glorify, and rejoice in him.

 

We believe that God made human beings, male and female, in his own likeness and image. When God created Adam, he made him good, upright, and holy, but man did not continue in the condition in which God created him. He sinned by disobeying God and eating from the tree from which God told him not to eat. When he did this, he fell into sin and brought death into the world, and from that time until now, all of Adam’s descendants are subject to the curse, misery, and punishments of sin, both in this life and in the life to come.

 

We believe that God sent our Lord Jesus Christ into the world to redeem sinners from the curse and punishment due to sin. Being the eternal Son of God, he was conceived in the womb of the virgin, Mary, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and became man. Christ continues to be both true God and true man, in two distinct natures, and one person, forever.

 

We believe that our Lord Jesus Christ freely gave his life up to death in our place to appease God’s wrath for sin, and having died, he was buried in the grave for three days. On the third day, he rose again from the dead in his own glorified body. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, where he rules, reigns, and intercedes for the saints before the Father. All who believe in him will have eternal life, and Jesus himself will raise them up on the last day, as he has promised.

 

We believe that the Holy Spirit applies the merits of Jesus’s death and resurrection to believers by faith, unites us to Christ, makes us one in the church, dwells in and among us, and empowers us to die to sin and live a holy life. By the power of the Spirit, we are made witnesses in this world to our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

We believe that Jesus Christ calls all believers to unite themselves to his Church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. The Church throughout all time in the whole world is one, universal, and holy, founded on the Word of God and prophetic testimony of the Lord’s apostles. The local church is a visible manifestation of the body of Christ, and we are called to love and serve Christ and one another in the church all the days of our lives.

 

We believe that our Lord Jesus will come again at the end of the age to judge the living and the dead. At that time, the dead will be raised bodily, the righteous to eternal life and the wicked to eternal punishment. He will make all things new, and his kingdom shall have no end.