What We Teach and Believe
What We Teach and Believe
God…
There is one and only one living and true God. He is an intelligent, spiritual, and personal being, the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe. God is infinite in His Holiness and all other perfections. To Him we owe the highest love, reverence and obedience. The eternal God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.
The Trinity…
God the Father:
God as Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history according to the purpose of His grace. He is all powerful, all loving, and all wise. God is Father in truth to those who become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. He is fatherly in His attitude toward all men.
God the Son:
Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation as Jesus Christ, He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Jesus perfectly revealed and did the will of God, taking upon Himself the demands and necessities of human nature and identifying Himself with mankind, yet without sin. He honored the divine law by His personal obedience, and in His death on the cross He made provision for the redemption of mankind from sin. He was raised from the dead with a glorified body and appeared to His disciples as the person who was with them before His crucifixion. He ascended into heaven and is now exalted at the right hand of God where He is the One Mediator, partaking of the nature of God and of man, and in whose Person is effected the reconciliation between God and man. He will return in power and glory to consummate His redemptive mission. He now dwells in all believers as the living and ever-present Lord.
The Holy Spirit:
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God. He inspired holy men of old to write the scriptures. Through illumination He enables mankind to understand the truth. He exalts Christ. He convicts of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. He calls men to the Savior and effects regeneration. He cultivates Christian character, comforts believers, and bestows the spiritual gifts by which believers serve God through His church. He seals the believer unto the final day of redemption. His presence in the Christian is the assurance of God to bring the believer into the fullness of the stature of Christ. He enlightens and empowers the church to worship, evangelism, and service.
Man…
Man was created by the special act of God, in His own image, and is the crowning work of His creation. In the beginning, man was innocent of sin and endowed by his creator with freedom of choice. By his free choice, man sinned against God and brought sin into the human race. Through the temptation of Satan, man transgressed the command of God and fell from his original innocence; whereby his posterity inherited a nature and an environment inclined toward sin. As soon as man is capable of moral action, he becomes a transgressor and is under condemnation. Only the grace of God can bring man into His holy fellowship and enable man to fulfill the creative purpose of God. The sacredness of human personality is evident in that God created man in His own image, and that in Christ, died for man; therefore, every man possesses dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love.
Salvation…
Involves the redemption of the whole person. We believe that the salvation of sinners is wholly of grace through the life, death, burial and resurrection of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.
We believe that the great Gospel blessing Christ secures to such as believe in Him is justification; the justification includes pardon of sin and the promise of eternal life, based not upon any works of righteousness which we have done but solely through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We believe that the blessings of salvation are made free to all by the Gospel. It is the duty of all to accept them by penitent and obedient faith. There is nothing to prevent the salvation of the greatest sinner on earth except the voluntary rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Baptism…
Christian baptism is the immersion in water of a believer in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer’s faith in a crucified, buried and risen Savior, the believer’s death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus.
The Family…
God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. It is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption.
Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race.
The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.
Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to their children God’s pattern for marriage. Parents are to teach their children spiritual and moral values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving discipline, to make choices based on biblical truth. Children are to honor and obey their parents.