What We Believe

We have one main cornerstone: The Cross of Christ.

Knowing Jesus called us to “Deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me,” we start from the foundation truth that we all died with Him at the cross, and in fact we must “die daily” in order for God’s love and Christ’s resurrection life to be expressed through us.

The beliefs listed below all flow from this context, and should be interpreted through that lens.

WE BELIEVE there is only one living God. He reveals Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit with distinct personal attributes but without division of nature, essence or being. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:4).

“There is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Corinthians 8:5). (Mth. 3:16-17; Mth. 28:19; I Cor. 12:4-6; II Cor. 13:14; Eph. 2:18; Eph. 4:4-6)

WE BELIEVE that the Bible was written by men divinely inspired, and is a record of God’s revelation of Himself to man. The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ, the Word of God. (Psalm 119:89; II Pet. 1:20-21; Mth. 4:18; Luke 21:33; II Tim. 3:16; John 1:1; Rev. 19:13)

WE BELIEVE that man has fallen through sin from his original innocence as created by God, and that only God’s grace can bring man back into fellowship with Him. (Gen. 1-3; Rom. 5:12-21; Rom. 1:19-32)

WE BELIEVE that God sent His Son, Jesus Christ — conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of a virgin, partaking of the nature of both God and man but without sin — to redeem mankind from his fallen state through his death and spilled blood on the Cross, in which He took all the sin of the world on Himself and paid the penalty. His resurrection from the dead and Ascension to the Father completed that redemption. “It is finished.”
(Isaiah 7:14; Mth. 1:23; John 19:30, II Cor. 5:21; I Cor. 15:1-8; Rom. 4:25; Colossians 1:20-22; Heb. 9:12, 22, 24-26)

WE BELIEVE that salvation comes through faith in Christ and his finished work on the Cross, a free gift rather than a reward for effort or worth. As Christ’s Body, believers have union with God, “Who alone hath immortality.” (Rom. 3:23; 6:23; 5:8; 10:9-10,13; Eph. 2:8,9, I Timothy 6:16)

WE BELIEVE that believers are to be baptized by immersion in water as a symbolic testimony to their experience of the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord, and that they are to partake of the Lord’s Supper as a reminder of Christ’s sacrifice of His body and his blood, and His indwelling in us. (Mth. 28:19; Luke 22:19-20; Mth. 26:26-29; Acts 2:41; I Cor. 11:23-34)

WE BELIEVE in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit operating in His Church and the power of the Spirit maintaining the believer in the daily walk of faith. The fruit of the Spirit, Christ’s character, is expressed in our lives when we get out of the way. (Luke 11:11-13; Acts 2:1-4, 38-39; Acts 8:14-17; Eph. 5:18; I Cor. 12-14; Rom. 8:5-11; 14-17, 26-27; I Pet. 2:24; James 5:14; Acts 4:29-31)

WE BELIEVE the love of God expressed and fulfilled in Christ on the cross compels us to return that love to him, to our brethren and to our neighbor, despite all risk. In fact, the believer has no other agenda. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.” (Luke 10:27) “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” (I John 4:8)

WE BELIEVE that Satan, the father of lies, is real and exists to attack the saints and the church–mainly through the deception of our own thoughts– and that we resist him through the truth of the scriptures as Christ did, abandoning ourselves to God in the certain knowledge that the adversary and “accuser of the brethren” was defeated at the Cross; through confession and the exhortation of the brethren; and the promise that “He who hath begun a good work in you will perform it.” (Philippians 1:6; Job 1:6-12; Mth. 4:1-11; Col. 2:15; Heb. 2:14)

WE BELIEVE that Christ will return personally and visibly at the end of time to bring the world to its appropriate end. The unrighteous will be consigned to hell, a place of destruction, and believers will share in eternal life with the Lord in heaven, “who alone hath immortality.” (I Timothy 6:16; I Thess. 4:13-18; John 5:24; Mark 9:43-48; Rev. 22:12-15)

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