Statement of Faith

God has spoken, and the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments are His word written. Every word of them was breathed out by God through the men who wrote them, so that what they affirm, as first written, is true and without error.

Scripture is enough. It needs no completing by church tradition, by fresh revelation, or by anyone's experience, and it is the final court of appeal on every question of what to believe and how to live.

It is to be read for what it says. The teacher's task is to draw the meaning out of the text in its setting, not to bring a meaning to it and find it there.

There is one living and true God. He has always existed as three Persons — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — who are one in being, equal in power and glory, and never to be confused with one another.

He rules over all things and answers to no one. He is holy, righteous in all His judgments, and rich in mercy, and He does not change: what He has purposed He carries out, and what He has promised He keeps.

God made mankind, male and female, in His own image, to know Him and to show His likeness in the world He had made. Adam turned from God by a free and deliberate act of disobedience, and through him sin, and death with it, entered the whole human race.

Every person since is born with a nature turned away from God, and no part of it — mind, will, or affections — has escaped the damage. No one can put himself right with God by effort, by morality, or by religion, or earn His acceptance; left to ourselves, we stand under the sentence of death that sin deserves.

The eternal Son of God took our nature to Himself. He was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit, and so He is fully God and fully man: one Person in two natures, neither mixed with the other nor made less by the union.

He lived without sin, keeping the law of God in every point. He is the one mediator between God and men, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.

At the cross Christ stood in the place of sinners. He bore the penalty their sins deserved, and His blood, shed once for all, is the sacrifice that satisfies the justice of God and turns away His wrath from everyone who believes.

On the third day He rose bodily from the dead — the body that was crucified, now glorified. He ascended into heaven, and there He lives to intercede for His people and to plead their cause before the Father.

Salvation is God's gift from first to last. It is received through faith alone, in Christ alone, and never by any work of ours, so that no one who is saved has anything to boast of except the Lord.

Justification is God's verdict, not a process. The moment a sinner believes, God declares him righteous, crediting to him the righteousness of Christ and not any righteousness of his own.

Everyone who receives Christ is born again by the Holy Spirit and brought into God's family as His child. Those whom God saves, He keeps by His own power to the end.

The Holy Spirit is God — a Person, not a force — equal with the Father and the Son, and eternal as they are. He convicts the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; He gives new life to those who believe; He comes to live in every believer and does not leave; and He is the seal that marks them as God's own until the day of redemption.

Every believer has the Spirit. By one Spirit all who belong to Christ are baptised into one body, so the Spirit's baptism is the common possession of the whole church and not the mark of an inner circle within it. Whoever lacks the Spirit of Christ is not His; whoever has Him is not waiting for the Spirit, but is called to walk by Him.

The Spirit gives gifts to the members of Christ's body, distributing them as He wills, to build up the church and to carry the gospel. The gifts are for serving, not for ranking, and no one of them is the required sign that a believer has received the Spirit. Scripture asks whether all speak with tongues, and the question expects the answer no.

The evidence Scripture chiefly looks for is the fruit of the Spirit, and His own witness within that we are children of God: a changed life, and a heart that cries, Abba, Father.

Every believer is called to be holy. By the Spirit, and not by willpower, he puts to death the deeds of the old life and puts on the character of the new, being renewed in mind and changed, little by little, into the likeness of Christ.

Good works are the fruit of salvation, never its foundation. They follow from being accepted by God and do not secure it, and a believer's standing with Him does not rise and fall with how well he is doing. God, who began the work, will finish it.

The Church is one body, made up of everyone, in every place and every age, whom Christ has redeemed and the Spirit has brought to new life. Christ alone is its Head.

That body is meant to be seen in local congregations, and every believer is called to belong to one — to sit under its teaching, to accept its care and discipline, and to serve its members — because no one grows to maturity alone.

Christ gave His church two ordinances to keep until He returns: baptism and the Lord's Supper.

Baptism is for those who have believed. The believer is immersed in water, and in doing so declares before others that he has died with Christ, been buried with Him, and been raised with Him to walk in newness of life.

At the Lord's Supper the church eats the bread and drinks the cup, which set forth Christ's body given and His blood shed, in remembrance of Him, and so proclaims His death until He comes.

Neither of them saves. Both are kept in obedience to Christ, and as a public witness, by those who have already been saved.

The Lord Jesus Christ will come again — in person, in His body, and in plain sight, in the same way He was seen to go.

His coming is certain, and its hour is not ours to know. Scripture gives the promise not to feed speculation about dates but to make believers holy, watchful, and urgent about the work He has left them to do.

All the dead will be raised, the righteous and the unrighteous alike. Those who belong to Christ will live in God's presence and blessing for ever; those who have refused the salvation He offered will be shut out from His presence for ever.

Believers, too, will stand before the judgment seat of Christ, to give account of how they have served. That judgment weighs their work, not their standing: the verdict on their persons was given when they believed and is not reopened, for there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.