What We Believe

What We Believe

We believe in Jesus Christ, who said,

  • “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)
  • “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11)
  • “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” (John 11:25)
  • “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6)

While our faith in our great Redeemer is most central, there are many important topics to consider. The statement of faith below outlines our beliefs on a number of vital topics.

We understand that no statement of faith should be regarded alongside the Bible in authority, and that no concise statement of faith can say everything that could be said about every doctrine. Nonetheless, from the time of the early church to the present, concise statements of faith that are grounded in and guided by the Bible, have served to teach, unify, and guard the church. The pastors of Redeemer Community Church gladly affirm the following statement of belief, which is based on the Statement of Faith of the Crossway Association of Churches, who in turn drew from the Confessional Statement of The Gospel Coalition. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Statement of Faith

 

God

We believe in one, and only one, true God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This God is infinitely perfect both in His love and in His holiness. He is the Creator of all things and is therefore alone worthy to receive man’s highest worship, his full allegiance, and his whole-hearted love. God perfectly and exhaustively knows the end from the beginning, sustains and sovereignly rules over all things, and providentially brings about His eternal good purposes to redeem a people for Himself and restore His fallen creation, to the praise of His own glorious grace. While the three persons of the Godhead are equal in every divine perfection, they execute distinct but harmonious offices in the work of creation and redemption.

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The Scriptures

We believe that God is the originating author of the words preserved in the Scriptures, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, which are both record and means of His saving work in the world. These writings alone constitute the verbally inspired Word of God, without error in the original writings, complete in its revelation of His will for salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do, and final in its authority over everything to which it speaks. We admit that both our finiteness and our sinfulness preclude the possibility of knowing God’s truth perfectly, but we affirm that, enlightened by the Spirit of God, we can know God’s revealed truth truly. The Bible is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it teaches; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; and trusted, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises. As God’s people hear, believe, and obey the Word, they are nurtured in their faith and equipped as disciples of Christ and as witnesses to the transforming power of the gospel.

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Man’s Creation and Fallen Condition

We believe that God created man—male and female—in His own image. Adam and Eve belonged to the created order that God Himself declared to be very good, serving as God’s stewards to care for and govern creation, living in holy and happy fellowship with their Maker. Adam and Eve were made to complement each other in a one-flesh union that establishes the only right pattern for sexual relations for human beings. In God’s wise purposes, men and women are not simply interchangeable, but rather they complement each other in mutually enriching ways. In marriage, God ordains that they assume distinctive roles which reflect the loving relationship between Christ and the church, the husband exercising headship in a way that displays the caring, sacrificial love of Christ, and the wife submitting to her husband in a way that models the love of the church for her Lord. In the ministry of the church, both men and women are encouraged to serve Christ and to be developed to their full potential in the manifold ministries of the people of God. The distinctive leadership role within the church given to qualified men is grounded in creation, fall, and redemption.

We believe that Adam, by disobeying God and falling into sin through Satan’s temptation, forfeited his original blessedness, both for himself and all his descendants. As a result, all human beings are born into sin, alienated from God, corrupted in every aspect of their being (physically, mentally, volitionally, emotionally, socially, and spiritually), personally opposed to God, and condemned finally and irrevocably to death—apart from God’s own gracious intervention. The one great and universal need of all human beings is to be reconciled to God, under whose just judgment we stand; the only hope of all human beings is the undeserved love of this same God, who alone can rescue us and bring us back into a life-giving relationship with Himself.

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God’s Gracious Provision: Jesus Christ and the Gospel

We believe that from eternity past God determined in grace to save a great multitude of guilty sinners from every tribe and language and people and nation. We believe that God will perfectly accomplish this purpose through the incarnation, sinless life, substitutionary death, resurrection, and victorious return of Jesus Christ. We believe that Jesus Christ, being fully God from all eternity, became flesh, being born of the virgin Mary, and thus became fully human without relinquishing His full deity in the least. He lived a sinless life, thus perfectly fulfilling, as a human, all the requirements of God’s law. Moved by love, He voluntarily offered His life on the Cross. Christ bore in our place the punishment due us for our sins, to bring us to God. This is the heart of the gospel. By dying on the Cross for our sins, Christ satisfied God’s justice and reconciled to God all those who believe. In His resurrection, Christ was vindicated by the Father, broke the power of death and defeated Satan who once had power over us in death, and brought eternal life to all His people. We believe that salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved.

We believe that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ—God’s very wisdom. Utter folly to the world, even though it is the power of God to those who are being saved, this good news is christological, centering on the cross and resurrection: the gospel is not proclaimed if Christ is not proclaimed, and the authentic Christ has not been proclaimed if His death and resurrection are not central (the message is “Christ died for our sins . . . [and] was raised”). This good news is biblical (His death and resurrection are according to the Scriptures); theological and salvific (Christ died for our sins, to reconcile us to God); historical (if the saving events did not happen, our faith is worthless, we are still in our sins, and we are to be pitied more than all others); apostolic (the message was entrusted to and transmitted by the apostles, who were witnesses of these saving events); and intensely personal (where it is received, believed, and held firmly, individual persons are saved).

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Man’s Response to the Gospel: Repentance and Faith

We believe man’s fall into sin rendered him spiritually dead and therefore completely unable to initiate any reconciliation with God and completely unable to contribute anything to his own salvation. However, God graciously initiates by regenerating human hearts, enabling man to respond to God’s call to salvation with repentance and faith. In repentance we turn away from both our sin and any confidence we might have in our own goodness, and in faith we entrust ourselves completely to Jesus Christ and what He has done on our behalf.

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The Free Gift of God: Justification

We believe that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone and that when God’s grace is met by faith a person is justified—that is, his sins have been imputed to Christ and he is therefore completely forgiven, and the righteousness of Christ is imputed to him and he is thereby declared righteous and fully accepted by God. This justification simultaneously puts on glorious display the perfect justice and the great love of God.

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The Christian Life: Empowered by the Spirit

We believe that the Holy Spirit indwells believers as a pledge of their promised inheritance. While all genuine believers are indwelt by the Holy Spirit at conversion, the New Testament indicates the importance of an ongoing, empowering work of the Spirit subsequent to conversion which the believer is encouraged to pursue. The Holy Spirit desires to fill each believer continually with increased power, acting in the believer to encourage, guide, and ultimately effect growth in Christ-likeness and Christian witness. We believe this sanctification is a progressive work that begins at conversion, and, though it is carried out by the presence and power of the Spirit, it is a work with which the individual believer cooperates especially by means of engagement in active obedience, prayer, meditation on Scripture, worship, and true fellowship with other believers. Those who have been saved delight in the blessings of the New Covenant: the forgiveness of sins, the inward transformation of heart that awakens a desire to glorify, trust, and obey God, and the prospect of the glory yet to come. Good works constitute indispensable evidence of saving grace. Though indwelling sin remains, actual growth in holiness is the expected fruit of the Spirit in a believer’s life.

We also believe the Holy Spirit is active in the church corporately. He empowers the church for witness and service, and He imparts His supernatural gifts for the edification of the Body and for various works of ministry in the world. The gifts of the Holy Spirit at work in the New Testament church are available today, are vital for the mission of the church, and are to be earnestly desired and practiced.

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The Christian Hope: Glorification

We believe all Christians are exhorted to persevere in their faith to the end. Nevertheless, the believer’s ultimate confidence to persevere is based on the sure promise of God to preserve to the end those who truly belong to Him. When Christ comes again, all believers will be radically and completely transformed into perfect Christ-likeness.

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God’s New People: The Church

We believe the Church is made up of all those who have by faith received the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ. This universal church is manifested in local gatherings of believers of which Christ is the only Head. The church is the corporate dwelling place of God’s Spirit and the ongoing witness to Christ in the world. We believe the church should neither hide from the world nor blend in with the world but should be distinctively engaged in the world as both “salt” and “light.” The church is distinguished by her faithful gospel preaching, her faithful worship of God, her faithful observance of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, her faithful engagement in Christ’s mission, her faithful obedience, and above all, by her love for God and by her members’ love for one another.

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Baptism and The Lord’s Supper

We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ has committed two ordinances to the local church, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. We believe that baptism is the immersion of the believer in water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This water baptism is a visual sign of a person’s union with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. It signifies that one’s former way of life has been put to death, that one is released from the mastery of sin, and that one has entered into a new life of obedience and faith. The Lord’s Supper is to be observed only by those who have trusted Christ for salvation, and is to be observed regularly throughout the Christian life as a commemoration and proclamation of Christ’s death and as a sign of continued participation in the atoning benefits of that death. In the observance of the Lord’s Supper we anticipate Christ’s return, we are strengthened in our faith, and we also signify our unity with other members of Christ’s body.

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The World to Come

We believe in the personal, glorious, and bodily return of the Lord Jesus Christ when He will exercise His role as perfectly righteous Judge and fully establish His perfect kingdom forever. We believe in the bodily resurrection of all people. For those who have not been justified there will be judgment and the eternal punishment of hell. For those who are justified there will be eternal joy in the presence of God in the new heaven and the new earth. All sin will be purged away, and its wretched effects forever banished. On that day the eager longing of all creation will be realized, and the whole earth will proclaim the glory of God who makes all things new.

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