ABOUT

God the Father rules over His creation with loving and wise care. He is in control of the universe, His creatures, and human history, working everything according to His gracious purposes. He is completely powerful, completely knowledgeable, completely loving, and completely wise. Through faith in Jesus Christ, believers become His true children, and He shows fatherly care toward all people.

Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God. He became human when He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born to the virgin Mary. Jesus perfectly revealed God and obeyed His will. He became fully human, experiencing the needs and limitations of humanity, yet He never sinned. Through His perfect obedience and His sacrificial death on the cross, He provided the way for people to be redeemed from sin.

Jesus rose from the dead with a glorified body and appeared to His disciples. He then ascended into heaven and is now exalted at the right hand of God. Jesus is the one Mediator between God and humanity—fully God and fully man—and through Him God and humanity are reconciled. Jesus will return in power and glory to judge the world and complete His work of redemption. He also lives within every believer as their living and ever-present Lord.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, fully Divine. He guided the writers of Scripture so that they could communicate God's truth in His Word. He helps people understand that truth and always points people to Christ.

The Holy Spirit convicts people of sin, righteousness, and judgment, calls them to Christ, and gives them new life. When a person becomes a believer, the Holy Spirit unites them with the body of Christ. He develops Christlike character in believers, comforts them, and gives them spiritual gifts to serve God through the church. He seals believers as belonging to God and guarantees that God will ultimately bring them to full maturity in Christ.

The Holy Spirit gives believers and the church understanding and power to worship God, share the gospel, and serve Him.

Man is the special creation of God, made in His own image. He created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation. The gift of gender is thus part of the goodness of God’s creation. In the beginning man was innocent of sin and was 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 inherit a nature and an environment inclined toward sin. Therefore, as soon as they are capable of moral action, they become transgressors and are 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 in that Christ died for man; therefore, every person of every race possesses full dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love..

Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man, and is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the believer. In its broadest sense salvation includes regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification. There is no salvation apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.

A. Regeneration, or the new birth, is a work of God’s grace whereby believers become new creatures in Christ Jesus. It is a change of heart wrought by the Holy Spirit through conviction of sin, to which the sinner responds in repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Repentance and faith are inseparable experiences of grace.

Repentance is a genuine turning from sin toward God. Faith is the acceptance of Jesus Christ and commitment of the entire personality to Him as Lord and Saviour.

B. Justification is God’s gracious and full acquittal upon principles of His righteousness of all sinners who repent and believe in Christ. Justification brings the believer unto a relationship of peace and favor with God.

C. Sanctification is the experience, beginning in regeneration, by which the believer is set apart to God’s purposes, and is enabled to progress toward moral and spiritual maturity through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in him. Growth in grace should continue throughout the regenerate person’s life.

D. Glorification is the culmination of salvation and is the final blessed and abiding state of the redeemed.

The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation..