What We Believe

We believe in one God. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:4), and Jesus called that confession the first of all the commandments (Mark 12:29). God is not three persons sharing one essence. He is one divine Being, and beside Him there is no other God and no other Savior (Isaiah 43:11; 44:6). He has made Himself known in different ways: as Father in creation, as Son in redemption, and as Holy Spirit in regeneration. Father, Son and Holy Ghost are not three who together make up God. They are the one God, revealed to us, and we confess Him as the prophets and apostles did.

We believe that Jesus Christ is the one God manifested in flesh. “In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). The Word who was God was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:1, 14), and the child Isaiah foretold is called “The mighty God, The everlasting Father” (Isaiah 9:6). He is fully God and fully man: as a man He prayed, suffered and died, and as God He forgave sins and raised the dead. The title Son refers to the incarnation, deity joined to real humanity, not to an eternally begotten second person. So Jesus could say, “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9).

We believe the Bible, Old and New Testaments, is the inspired Word of God and the final authority for faith and practice. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16), and its writers spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost (2 Peter 1:21). Scripture interprets Scripture: we read each passage in its context, in its own languages, and in harmony with the whole. Creeds and councils answer to the Bible, not the other way round. “The scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35), and “the word of our God shall stand for ever” (Isaiah 40:8). We test every doctrine by it, our own included.

We believe salvation is by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8), and that saving faith obeys the gospel. Jesus said a man must be “born of water and of the Spirit” (John 3:5), and at Pentecost Peter told the crowd how: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38). The new birth is repentance, water baptism in Jesus’ name, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost, with the initial sign of speaking in other tongues (Acts 2:4; 19:6). None of this earns salvation. It is how God gives it.

We believe God calls His people to be holy because He is holy: “Be ye holy; for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16). Holiness begins inside. It is not a list of rules that earns favor but the work of the Spirit, who makes the believer a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17) and transforms the mind (Romans 12:2). Sin no longer has dominion over those who live under grace (Romans 6:14). That inward change shows outwardly, in speech, conduct, dress and what we love. We pursue holiness as grace teaches it, “denying ungodliness and worldly lusts” (Titus 2:12), because without it “no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).

We believe the church is the body of those who have been born again, built by Jesus Christ on the revelation of who He is (Matthew 16:16–18). He commissioned it to teach all nations, baptizing them in the name (Matthew 28:19), so that “repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations” (Luke 24:47). The apostles obeyed, baptizing in the name of Jesus, and the first believers “continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine” (Acts 2:42). The mission has not changed: preach the gospel, make disciples, baptize in Jesus’ name, and “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3).

We believe Jesus Christ is coming again, personally and visibly. The angels told the disciples that “this same Jesus” would “so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). “The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,” the dead in Christ shall rise, and the living shall meet Him in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17). The church looks for “the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). The One who returns is the one God we have come to know in the face of Jesus Christ. That hope keeps the church watchful, holy and at work until He comes.