Our ultimate and only authority is God’s word, the Bible. It governs what we believe and do.
Since there are so many different interpretations of what the Bible teaches, we believe it is necessary to have a clear and systematic summary of the Bible’s main doctrines. We have therefore adopted the following statements of faith.
1689 Baptist Confession of Faith
We believe that the teaching of the Bible is most accurately and helpfully summarised in the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, and this is the fullest statement of what we believe.
Summary of doctrine
The following serves as a briefer and convenient summary of the doctrines we believe:
- There is one God, the maker of all things, to whom all creatures owe the highest love, reverence and obedience. God is revealed to us as one God in three persons: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
- The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the inspired word of God and are an infallible guide and final authority on all questions of what man is to believe and how he is to live.
- All men have sinned against God by breaking his commandments, and being guilty before God are subject to his judgement and wrath. Sin has so affected man’s nature that he can, in his own strength, neither live as God requires nor turn to God.
- God, in his great love and mercy, sent his Son into the world to be a mediator between sinners and himself. The Son being truly God took a real human nature and lived a sinless life in obedience to God the Father. God gave the Lord Jesus Christ to die on the cross as the substitute for his people, bearing the full penalty for their sins. Christ rose from the dead and he ascended into heaven where he now lives and reigns.
- To make the death of Christ effective for individual sinners, it is necessary for the Holy Spirit to work in them. The Spirit renews their natures, makes their souls alive, giving them the desire and the ability to repent and believe in Christ as their Saviour and Lord.
- God justifies sinners by faith and adopts them to be his sons. The Holy Spirit indwells God’s people and further works in them to strengthen them so that they may be enabled more and more to glorify God in their lives and to overcome temptation and sin within themselves. True believers are kept and preserved until they enter into the joys of heaven.
- The church of Christ is instituted by God for his worship and service and for the encouragement and building up of his people. The local church is a fellowship of believers in Christ. Christ has instituted two special ordinances for the local church: baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
- The Lord Jesus Christ will return personally, visibly and bodily and in power and glory. The bodies of men after death return to dust but their spirits return immediately to God – the righteous to rest with him, the wicked to be reserved under darkness until the judgement. The bodies of all the dead, both just and unjust will be raised.
- God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world by Jesus Christ when everyone will receive according to his deeds. The wicked will go into everlasting punishment in hell with the devil and his angels. The righteous in Christ with glorified bodies, will live and reign with Christ forever.