Open Triune God

Triune God

We believe that there is one God, infinitely great and good, the creator and sustainer of all things visible and invisible, the one true source of light and life, who has life in himself and lives eternally in glorious light and sovereign love in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – co-equal in nature, majesty, and glory.

We believe everything God does in creating, sustaining, judging, and redeeming the world reflects who God is, the one whose perfections, including love, holiness, knowledge, wisdom, power, and righteousness, have been revealed in the history of salvation. God has freely purposed from before the foundation of the world to elect and form a people for himself to be his treasured possession, to the praise of his glory.

Open Holy Scripture

Holy Scripture

We believe that God has spoken and continues to speak in and through Scripture, the only infallible and sufficiently clear rule and authority for Christian faith, thought, and life. Scripture is God’s inspired and illuminating Word in the words of his servants, the prophets and apostles, a gracious self-communication of God’s own light and life, a means of grace for growing in knowledge and holiness. 

We believe the Bible is to be believed in all that it teaches, obeyed in all that it commands, trusted in all that it promises, and revered in all that it reveals.

Open Human Beings

Human Beings

We believe that God communicates his goodness to all creatures, but in particular to human beings, whom he has made in his own image, both male and female, and accordingly that all men, women, and children have been graciously bestowed with inherent dignity (rights) and creaturely vocation (responsibilities).

Open Fallenness

Fallenness

We believe that the original goodness of creation and the human creature has been corrupted by sin, namely, the self-defeating choice of the first human beings to deny the Creator and the created order by going their own way, breaking God’s law for life. 

We believe that through disobedience to the law-giver, Adam and Eve incurred disorder instead of order, divine condemnation instead of approval, and death instead of life for themselves and their descendants. Additionally, each and every natural descendent of the Adam and Eve has also sinned, individually earning God’s wrath, and is incapable in his or her own power of attaining righteousness.

Open Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ

We believe that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God become human for us and our salvation, the only Mediator between God and humanity, born of the virgin Mary, the Son of David and servant of the house of Israel, one person with two natures, truly God and truly man. 

We believe Jesus Christ lived a fully human life, having entered into the disorder and brokenness of fallen existence, yet without sin, and in his words, deeds, attitude, and suffering embodied the free and loving communication of God’s own light (truth) and life (salvation).

Open The Atoning Work of Christ

The Atoning Work of Christ

We believe that God who is rich in mercy towards the undeserving has made gracious provision for human wrongdoing, corruption, and guilt, provisionally and typologically through Israel’s Temple and sin offerings, then definitively and gloriously in the gift of Jesus’ once-for-all sufficient and perfect sacrificial death on the cross in the temple of his human flesh. 

We believe that by his death in our stead, Jesus revealed God’s love and upheld God’s justice, removing our guilt, vanquishing the powers that held us captive, and reconciling us to God. It is wholly by grace, not our own works or merits, that we have been forgiven; it is wholly by Jesus’ shed blood, not by our own sweat and tears, that we have been cleansed.

Open The Gospel

The Gospel

We believe that the gospel is the good news that the triune God has poured out his grace in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that through his work we might have peace with God. 

We believe Jesus lived in perfect obedience yet suffered everything sinners deserved so that sinners would not have to pursue a righteousness of their own, relying on their own works, but rather through trust in him as the fulfillment of God’s promises could be justified by faith alone in order to become fellow heirs with him. 

We believe Christ died in the place of sinners, absorbing the wages of sin, so that those who entrust themselves to him also die with him to the power, penalty, and (eventually) practice of sin. 

We believe Christ was raised the firstborn of a renewed and restored creation, so that those whom the Spirit unites to him in faith are raised up and created a new humanity in him. Renewed in God’s image, they are thereby enabled to live out his life in

Open The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit

The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit

We believe that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, the unseen yet active personal presence of God in the world, who unites believers to Christ, regenerating and making them new creatures with hearts oriented to the light and life of the kingdom of God and to peace and justice on earth. 

We believe the Spirit indwells those whom he makes alive with Christ, through faith incorporates them into the body of Christ, and conforms them to the image of Christ so that they may glorify him as they grow in knowledge, wisdom, and love into mature sainthood, the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

We believe the Spirit is the light of truth and fire of love who continues to sanctify the people of God, prompting them to repentance and faith, diversifying their gifts, directing their witness, and empowering their discipleship.

Open The Church

The Church

We believe that the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church is God’s new society, the first fruit of the new creation, the whole company of the redeemed through the ages, of which Christ is Lord and head. The truth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, is the church’s firm foundation.

We believe the local church is both embassy and parable of the kingdom of heaven, an earthly place where his will is done and he is now present, existing visibly everywhere two or three gather in his name to proclaim and spread the gospel in word and works of love, and by obeying the Lord’s command to baptize disciples and celebrate the Lord’s Supper.

Open Baptism and the Lord's Supper

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper

We believe that these two ordinances, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which some among us call “sacraments,” are bound to the Word by the Spirit as visible words proclaiming the promise of the gospel, and thus become places where recipients encounter the Word again. 

We believe baptism and the Lord’s Supper communicate life in Christ to the faithful, confirming them in their assurance that Christ, the gift of God for the people of God, is indeed “for us and our salvation” and nurturing them in their faith. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are physical focal points for key Reformation insights: the gifts of God and the faith that grasps their promise. 

We believe that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are tangible expressions of the gospel insofar as they vividly depict our dying, rising, and incorporation into Jesus’ body, truly presenting Christ and the reconciliation he achieved on the cross. 

We believe baptism and the Lord’s Supper strengthen the faithful by visibly rec

Open Holy Living

Holy Living

We believe that through participating in baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as well as prayer, the ministry of the Word, and other forms of corporate worship, we grow into our new reality as God’s people, a holy nation, called to put on Christ through his indwelling Spirit. 

We believe that it is through the Spirit’s enlivening power that we live in imitation of Christ as his disciples, individually and corporately, a royal priesthood that proclaims his excellent deeds and offers our bodies as spiritual sacrifices in right worship of God and sacrificial service to the world through works of love, compassion for the poor, and justice for the oppressed, always, everywhere and to everyone bearing wise witness to the way, truth, and life of Jesus Christ.

Open Last Things

Last Things

We believe that in God’s own time and way, the bodily risen and ascended Christ will visibly return to consummate God’s purpose for the whole cosmos through his victory over death and the devil. He will judge the world, consigning any who persist in unbelief to an everlasting fate apart from him, where his life and light are no more. 

We believe that God will prepare his people as a bride for the marriage supper of the Lamb, giving rest to restless hearts and life to glorified bodies as they exult in joyful fellowship with their Lord and delight in the new heaven and the new earth. There they shall reign with him and see him face to face, forever rapt in wonder, love, and praise.

Open Explanation

EXPLANATION: A HISTORICAL & THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Why we say what we say

INTRODUCTION: A REFORMATION TO LAUD, LAMENT, OR LONG FOR?

The Protestant Reformers believed they were contending for “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) and recovering the gospel that some were “so quickly deserting” (Gal. 1:6). They therefore believed their efforts to be both catholic and evangelical, that is, on behalf of the whole church and for the sake of the integrity of the gospel, particularly the singularity and sufficiency of Christ’s person and saving work (solus Christus). On the eve of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, however, the narrative that prevails in some quarters focuses on its supposed negative consequences, including secularization, radical individualism, skepticism and, most notably, schism. According to this telling of the story, Protestants necessarily prove to be dividers, not uniters.

That the world is divided – by race, class, age, gender, nation, pol

Open About

About

October 31, 2017, marks the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Historians recognize this pivotal action as the symbolic beginning of the Protestant Reformation. There are hundreds of ways Christians around the world are remembering and celebrating the legacy of the sixteenth-century Reformation, which has had such a profound influence on the witness and contours of the global church.

One of the best ways to commemorate the Reformation is to remember the Reformers’ original vision for Catholic unity under canonical authority. This original vision has sometimes been forgotten not only by the heirs of the Reformation, but also by its critics, who often fixate on the divisions within Protestantism. Thus, a number of leaders from across the Protestant spectrum have come together to honor the original vision of the Reformers by demonstrating that, despite our genuine differences, there is a significant and substantial doctrinal