“I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth…”
We believe there is one true God who has revealed himself in nature and in his holy Word. Every human being can look at the universe we live in and see God’s handiwork. We did not create ourselves, we were made by the invisible and eternal God.
We believe what God tells us in Scripture that he created all things good, and that in the beginning our first father Adam was given dominion and a mandate to be a kind of sub-regent under God over all creation. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, were commanded not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Tempted and deceived by Satan, Adam ate the fruit. By disobeying God, he plunged humanity into a state of sin and misery.
This is the reason each of our lives and our world are marred by our own sin and the sins of others. War, hatred, racism, rape, theft, lying – all of these God hates and they came into our minds and our world because of sin. Praise God, he has provided the only One who can will save us, Jesus Christ our Lord.
We believe what Christians have believed for 2,000 years: that God is one God in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are not three Gods but one, equal in power, substance, and glory. We believe every human being is guilty before God and needs Christ Jesus to intervene for him to be saved. Every man, woman, and child who has ever lived owes perfect obedience to God. Because our hearts and minds are broken by sin though, we can never keep God’s law perfectly. We needed Christ Jesus, the Son of God, to be born into this world and live, die, and rise again for us.
We believe the Christian faith consists of essential truths which do not change as time passes. We believe the Church is a “pillar and buttress of truth” but no Truth itself. The Church can fall into error, but God’s Word cannot. We do believe the historic creeds of the church accurately communicate what the Bible reveals about God, Christ, Man, and Salvation. We refer to what we believe as doctrine. Everyone, Christian or not, has doctrine – what you believe about God, good, evil, and salvation.
What we believe as Reformed and Presbyterian Christians can be traced to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries. We hold to the statement of the Christian faith known as the Westminster Confession of Faith with its Larger and Shorter Catechisms. These documents summarize what we believe the Bible teaches. They are not perfect like the Bible, but they are extremely useful and clear. They are the product of deep learning and study of God’s Word and theology.