We believe the awesome God who created this universe has incredible love for every human being who now lives or who will ever live on this earth. He demonstrated this love by coming into the world in the Person of Jesus Christ, and humbled himself by dying on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins (John 3:16, Romans 5:8).
Because of His love for us, He desires each of us to love Him with all of our hearts, all of our souls and all of our minds (Matthew 22:36, 37).
The only way we can love Him as He desires is through the transformation that we can experience after we receive the gift of eternal life which He offers though Jesus Christ (Romans 3:23, 6:23).
Once we have received this transformation through Jesus Christ, He enables us to demonstrate our love for Him by loving each other and our neighbors with the same type of love He has for us (Matthew 22: 39).
What we say about specific topics
1. The Bible: God loves us so much that He gave us a detailed manual that tells us what we must do to have an abundant and blessed life in this world and in the world to come. This amazing book, the Holy Bible, consists of 66 divinely inspired booklets written by many believers over a span of several centuries. Our Creator guided these writers so that the Bible is an accurate record of what God knows we need to please Him, love Him, and carry out His program of redemption on this earth. And, He guided the believers who have transmitted these books to us so that we have confidence that we have the essential instructions His Holy Spirit uses to inform us and equip us to carry out the wonderful plan He has for us, His Church, and this world.
2. The Meaning of Sin: God revealed His loving nature and His program to redeem this world when He came to earth in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Every human being needs redemption because Adam and Eve, our ancestors, disobeyed God and thereby rejected His love. The Bible calls this act of disobeying God “sin.” They died spiritually because their sin became a barrier to any relationship with God. Eventually, they also died physically. As their descendants, we not only died spiritually when they died, we also inherited their sinful natures. Now, our sinful natures and our disobedience separate us from God. The problem of sin also disrupts God’s original loving plan for this world and causes the evil and discord that now dominates much of the world.
3. The God-Man Jesus Christ: Jesus is God’s unique Son and He came into this world to restore our love relationship with Him. Jesus was fully God and fully human. Unlike every other human being, He lived a sinless life. He was able to do this because He was supernaturally conceived by the Holy Spirit of God. As a result, He did not deserve to die spiritually or physically because of His own sin.
4. The Gift of Eternal Life: The greatest demonstration of His love was His willingness to die to pay for our sins and the sins of all humanity. Now, we can be forgiven and have our relationship with God restored if we will accept by faith the gift of eternal life Jesus Christ paid for on the cross. Accepting this gift means we must also trust Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.
5. The Call to Become a Disciple: Once we have trusted Jesus Christ to be our Lord and Savior, our gratitude should motivate us to become His followers under the loving guidance of spiritually mature believers in biblically-based local churches . We should passionately study and obey God’s written Word and especially everything the Lord Jesus did and taught during His recorded time on this earth.
6. The Goal of Discipleship: The major work carried out by Jesus was calling men and women to become His disciples and lovers of God and their fellow men. The last instructions Christ gave his followers in the synoptic Gospels has become known as the Great Commission:
And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always , even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20 NASB)
Our major calling is to fulfill this command given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ.
7. The Person of the Holy Spirit of God: The Holy Spirit of the living God gave Jesus Christ His authority, power, and direction while He was on this earth. This same Holy Spirit indwells everyone who receives Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. He directs the work of building the Church of Jesus Christ and endeavors to enlist every sincere disciple of Jesus Christ in this high calling. Therefore, we believe that all Christ followers should fully respond to the last recorded command Christ gave His disciples in the Bible:
He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches! (Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 29, 3:6, 13, 22 NASB)
This means that we must analyze our churches just as Jesus did in Revelation chapters 2 and 3. Then, we must communicate what the Spirit is saying to the leaders of the churches being evaluated. We must also communicate the essence of what we learn from these analyses to the entire Church of Jesus Christ.
8. Additional Beliefs Vital to the Christian Life: Here are additional statements that clarify what we believe:
- We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
- We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory.
- We believe that for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is essential.
- We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.
- We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.
- We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.