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As a
Presbyterian and Reformed Church, we ground all we believe upon
the inerrant, infallible, inspired Word of God—the Holy Bible,
our only rule of faith and life. We hold without reservation to
the truth of that Word as expressed in the historic creeds of
the church (e.g., the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed), and
the great truths and confessions/catechisms of the Reformation
(e.g., the so-called Doctrines of Grace,
the Five ‘Solas,’ the
Five Points of Calvinism, the Three Forms of Unity, the
Westminster Confessions and Catechisms). Below are summaries of
some of these truths and links in particular to the
Westminster
Confession of Faith and Westminster
Larger and
Shorter
Catechisms, which are the official doctrinal standards of the
family of Presbyterian churches worldwide.
A Brief
Summary of Our Beliefs
God’s will,
not human opinion, culture or tradition, must govern all our
thoughts, words, and actions.
God’s will is
perfectly revealed in the Bible and defines what we are to
believe about Him and how we are to live before Him.
The Bible
teaches that there is only one true God—Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit—Who has existed from all eternity as three persons.
God created
the universe out of nothing in six literal days and governs
every detail of His creation according to His unchangeable plan.
Man, male and
female, was directly created by God in His image but through
Adam’s fall all of us are sinners, justly deserving Hell, and
powerless to achieve our own salvation.
Jesus Christ,
God’s eternal Son, became man through the virgin birth, lived
sinlessly, died sacrificially, and rose bodily, to atone for the
sins and accomplish the salvation of all whom God has chosen for
salvation.
Man is saved
by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone—He is the
exclusive way to God. Good works are necessary evidences of true
faith but contribute nothing to salvation.
God the Holy
Spirit applies salvation to all who repent and believe, working
true faith, equipping and keeping every Christian unto eternal
life.
Jesus Christ
shall return personally, visibly, and bodily to judge all
mankind, put an end to all God’s enemies, and perfect His people
in resurrection unto final glory.
"For the Word of God and for the
testimony of Jesus Christ"
- Revelation 1:9
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What are the Doctrines of Grace?
The Doctrines of Grace are a summary
of the great teachings of the Bible regarding God and His ways
with man, centering in the truth of the Gospel of God’s saving
grace in Jesus Christ, and taught in the great creeds and
catechisms of the Reformation. They have been expressed in a
variety of ways:
The Five ‘Solas’ of the
Reformation—the five truths that where at the heart of the
Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century when men
such as Martin Luther, John Zwingli and John Calvin lead the
church in revival and reformation as it recovered the great
truths of biblical faith:
· Sola Scriptura—Scripture
Alone. The Bible is our only
infallible rule of faith and life (not Scripture plus Papal
authority, church tradition, or creeds and confessions). It
alone can bind man’s conscience.
·
Sola Fide—Faith Alone.
We are justified (declared and accepted as righteous) before a
Holy God by the righteousness of Christ alone, received solely
through the instrumentality of faith.
· Sola Gratia—Grace Alone.
We are saved through faith alone in Christ alone by grace
alone—our own works contributing nothing. The gospel is not a
product for health and wealth, or self-esteem, or something that
is true because it works. It is the message of rescue from the
power and curse of sin and the wrath of a holy God, and the gift
of forgiveness and eternal life and adoption by a loving
Father—because of sheer, unmerited grace!
· Solus Christus—Christ Alone.
In contrast to the secularization of the church in our day, the
Christ and the cross are central! Salvation is accomplished by
the mediatorial work of Christ alone—His sinless life and
substitutionary atonement alone are sufficient for our
justification and reconciliation with the Father.
· Soli Deo Gloria—God’s Glory
Alone. God alone saves; for His
glory; and the great purpose and the great good for man is to
know just that (Rom. 11:36: For of Him and through Him and to
Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.)!
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The Three Foundational Truths of
the Doctrines of Grace:
·
God’s Absolute Sovereignty Over
Everything. This is the fundamental
tenet of the Doctrines of Grace, teaching that all things exist
by, through, and for the Triune God; that nothing happens apart
from His plan and purpose; and that man, uniquely created in
God’s image, is responsible to confirm all aspects of his life
to the purposes and commands of God.
·
Man’s Utter Depravity and
Lostness in Sin. This is man’s
fundamental problem—though created perfectly good, his first
ancestors (Adam and Eve) fell from their innocence through their
own sinful act, and brought sin, guilt, corruption, ruin, and
sin, upon the whole human race. As a result, all men by nature
are morally and spiritually dead, unable to do anything to save
themselves, and justly under sentence of God’s wrath, eternal
punishment and condemnation to Hell.
·
The Glory of Sovereign
Grace. This is the great, amazing,
Good News of the Gospel—that God, out of sheer love and mercy,
has sent His only Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to do what man
cannot do—to save dead, lost sinners from Hell; to accomplish
the salvation of His people through His substitutionary death
and perfect life; to sincerely offer His saving grace to any and
to all undeserving sinners who will repent of their sins and
trust in Jesus Christ as He is offered in the Gospel; and to
actually and eternally confer the grace of forgiveness and faith
by the effective working of the Holy Spirit through the
proclamation of the Scriptures to forever save all appointed
unto eternal life.
What Is Reformation?
Reformation, by definition, is a
formation over again, a matter of returning something to its
original form or condition. In the case of the church,
reformation involves restoring beliefs and practices which have
drifted away from the norms of God’s authoritative Word—the Holy
Scriptures—back into conformity with the teachings and practices
God intends us to follow as He revealed them in the Bible.
Implications of the Doctrines of
Grace
There is not an inch in the whole
area of human existence of which Christ, the sovereign of all,
does not cry, ‘It is Mine.’ —Abraham Kuyper
When we truly understand the
comprehensiveness of God’s sovereignty over all things, the
abiding weakness and wickedness of fallen man, and the glory and
wonder of God’s sovereign grace in the Gospel of Christ, our
understanding and application of God’s Word will be affected in
every area of our lives. For example:
·
The Authority and Sufficiency of
Scripture. Since God is absolutely
sovereign, we will allow God to speak to us His way—we will come
to understand that Scripture alone, not Scripture plus something
else (reason, tradition, dreams, tongues, so-called revelations
of the Spirit, etc.), is God’s infallible and sufficient rule to
direct every aspect of our faith and life (the Christian life,
worship, church government, male/female roles, family,
evangelism, ethics, etc.). Our great task, and often our great
failing, is to understand, teach and preach, and order our lives
and churches and culture, by the principles taught in this great
gift of God to His Church. When individuals and churches truly
do come to fully embrace the Scriptures, reformation and
transformation results as worldliness, superstition, false
doctrine, and poor teaching are exposed and expunged. In
addition, tender consciences are delivered from the abuse of the
unscrupulous, and help captive by the liberating authority of
God’s Word, the sixty-six books of the Scriptures of the Old and
New Testaments.
·
The Worship of God.
No longer will we see worship as entertainment or an
evangelistic event to reach the lost. God and His glory will
become central, and what pleases and glorifies Him as revealed
in the Holy Scriptures will be our great passion. Awe and
reverence, coupled humble but exuberant faith, will become our
delight in praise, prayer, the reading and preaching of God’s
Word, and the sacraments, as God is worshipped in the fullness
of His attributes and centering in His Son, Jesus Christ. Also,
we will be loath to include in God’s worship elements or
practices not sanctioned by the Scriptures.
·
The Gospel and Evangelism.
We will no longer see the Gospel as a message about what I must
do to get saved, or how we get right with God through religious
rites, but rather see it as the Good News of what Christ did on
behalf of sinners through His perfect life, atoning death, and
death-conquering resurrection. Gospel proclamation will include
exposing human sin and guilt by teaching God’s law, highlighting
the futility and worthlessness of human effort and religious
practices, and pointing the way to true forgiveness and eternal
life through repentance of sins and faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ, plus nothing else on our part. We will be freed from
manipulative techniques, insistence on instant decisions,
dispensing premature assurance, and the like; and freed to
fulfill our responsibility in evangelism—to proclaim the gospel
to the lost and adorn it with personal godliness, and to trust
God to His part in evangelism—to sovereignly and graciously open
the hearts of those He has appointed unto eternal life to hear,
believe, and obey the truth and obligations of the Gospel.
·
The Christian Life.
God’s glory will become our passion. Humility will become our
clothing. Prayer; knowing God through His Word; worship and
fellowship with other Christians in a Bible-believing church;
witness through holiness and evangelism; fulfilling our
obligations in home, vocation, and community; heads of families
nurturing family members in the ways of Christ; these matters
will be our life-long ambition and pursuit. Heaven will be seen
as our home and the world our place of pilgrimage and service.
Loving God and loving others; hating sin and denying self; will
be our hallmarks. Personal peace, prosperity, health, wealth,
and worldly success will be seen as less important than honoring
and obeying Christ. Suffering and adversity we will count “pure
joy” because we know they are from the hand of a sovereign God
Who works all things for the good of His people.
·
The Government and Ministry of
the Church. We will see the importance
of God’s church in His plan of redemption and support its
worship and work to the best of our ability. We will submit to
His plan for governing and instructing His church by Holy
Spirit-qualified male leaders and preacher/teachers. We will see
the Church as a Spiritual institution where all are called to:
serve according to their gifts and calling; promote its peace
and unity through godliness and adherence to sound doctrine; be
willing to reform or abandon any traditions, beliefs, or
practices not sanctioned by the Scriptures.
·
The Family.
God’s will that husbands, wives, and children have distinct but
interrelated God-given roles and responsibilities will be
received with gladness and obedience. Family goals, jobs,
education, leisure, discipline, and relationships will come to
center on Christ and His honor and will. Worship and service,
love and hospitality, order and peace, stability and respect,
will displace the angst, confusion, disharmony, and brokenness
of the typical modern family.
Perhaps B. B; Warfield, the great
teacher and defender of these doctrines in the early 20th
century, put it best. The Doctrines of Grace are “just religion
in its purity.” They encapsulate the “attitude of mind and
heart” that is expressed “when we kneel before God [in prayer],
not merely with the body, but with the mind and heart … the
attitude of utter dependence and humble trust.” He is the person
“who is determined to preserve the attitude he takes in prayer
in all his thinking, in all his feeling, in all his doing… Other
men [embrace the Doctrines of Grace] on their knees; the [person
who fully holds to the Doctrines of Grace] is the man who is
determined that his intellect, and heart, and will shall remain
on their knees continually, and only from this attitude think,
and feel and act.”
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The Five Points of Calvinism (T.U.L.I.P.)—a
response by the Churches of Holland by its
internationally-delegated Synod of Dordt (1618-19) to a
five-pronged doctrinal protest (a ‘Remonstrance’) by followers
of Jacob Arminius, to establish biblical and confessional
doctrines of the Protestant (Evangelical) Church:
1. Total
(Radical) Depravity (Corruption; Inability).
The totality of man’s nature—body and soul, including the
faculties of mind, heart, will—is so corrupted by sin that he is
unable to do anything spiritually or morally good or contribute
anything toward his salvation.
(Gen. 6:5;
Ps. 14:1-4; Jer. 17:9; John
3:5-7, 6:65; Rom. 5:12; Eph. 2:1-3)
2. Unconditional
(Gracious; Sovereign) Election. God
has, by sheer grace and solely in His own sovereign will (not
based upon anything in, or foreseen to be in or done by, man),
chosen certain individuals for salvation from the foundations of
the world. (Ps. 33:12,
65:4; Matt. 11:27; Rom. 8:28-30, 9:10-24; Eph. 1:4, 12, 2:10; 2
Thes. 2:13-14)
3. Limited
(Definite) Atonement (Definite Redemption). Christ’s substitutionary death on Cavalry’s cross atoned for all the sins
and actually secured (not just made possible!) the salvation of
all those God has chosen to be saved, giving the gift of faith
to for whom He died and thus to all who believe unto everlasting
life. (Mat. 1:21; John
6:35-40, 10:11,14-18,24-29, 17:1-11, 20, 24-26; Rom.
5:8-10,12,17-19; Eph. 1:3-12; 1 Pet. 3:18)
4. Irresistible
(efficacious) Grace. God’s grace to call sinners to repentance,
faith and everlasting life through the proclamation of the
Gospel is a sovereign, always effective, invincible work of the
Holy Spirit by which He alone enable those who hear to believe,
repent, and come freely and willingly to Christ.
(Deut. 30:6; Ezek. 36:26-27;
John 1:12-13, 3:3-8, 5:21, 6:37,44,45,64,65; Acts 5:31, 11:18,
13:48, 16:14; Rom. 8:30, 9:16, 23,24; 1 Cor. 12:3; Eph.
2:1,5,8,9; Col. 2:13)
5. Perseverance
(Preservation) of the Saints. All those who are chosen by God to
be redeemed by Christ and given the Holy Spirit, are eternally
saved, kept in faith by the power of almighty God, and persevere
in godliness and a lively faith in Christ.
(Isa. 43:1-3, 54:10; Jer. 32:40;
John 3:16,36, 6:35-40, 10:27-30, 17:11,12,15; Rom.
8:29,20,35-39; Eph. 1:5,13,14; Col. 3:3,4; 1 Pet. 1:3-5)
"For the Word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ"
- Revelation 1:9
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