We Believe that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are completely separate Persons yet completely one Being and are equal as members of the Godhead. They never had a beginning and they will never have an end. It is in looking to them that we see the perfect example of community and oneness. (Deuteronomy 6:4; 2 Corinthians 13:14; Luke 3:22)

We deny the claim that the Trinity is not an essential doctrine, or that the Trinity can be understood in merely economic or functional categories.

We believe that God the Father, the first Person of the Trinity, is the Creator of all things. He is an infinite and personal spirit, perfect in power, authority, knowledge, wisdom, justice, love and glory. He is sovereign in creation, providence, and redemption. His fatherhood involves both His designation within the Trinity and His relationship with humanity. In one sense, as Creator He is Father to all human beings, yet in a far greater and salvific sense, He is Father only to those who believe in His Son. He has decreed for His own glory all things that come to pass. He continually upholds, directs, and governs all creatures and events. In His sovereignty He is neither author nor approver of sin, nor does He diminish the accountability of morally intelligent creatures for their own choices and actions. The end of all things is that God the Father will be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15:24-28, Romans 8:12-17, Galatians 4:4-7)

We affirm the great need for people to understand the Father’s love, especially in our culture of broken families and misplaced identities. We affirm that it was the Father’s love that sent His Son into the world to save sinners from future punishment for their sins.

We deny that there is any incongruence between the Father and the Son, but that Jesus came to show us the Father and that to know the Son is to know the Father and to know the Father is to know the Son.

We believe Jesus is Lord. We are not our own and we were bought with a price. We now have the joy of believing Him, following Him, obeying Him, and being used by Him however He sees fit. He became man without ceasing to be God, having been conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. We believe He lived a perfect life of obedience to God the Father. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate but rose from the dead on the third day. He ascended into heaven and is now seated at the right hand of God as our high priest where He is our intercessor, representative, and advocate. He will one day come again to judge the living and the dead. (John 1:1-2, 14; Luke 1:35; Romans 3:24; 1 Peter 2:24; Ephesians 1:7; 1 Peter 1:3-5; Acts 1:9-10; Hebrews 7:25; Hebrews 9:24; Romans 8:34; 1 John 2:1-2; 1 Peter 4:5; Romans 14:9; 2 Timothy 4:1)

We affirm that Jesus Christ is true God and true Man, in perfect, undiluted, and unconfused union throughout his incarnation and now eternally. We also affirm that Christ died on the cross as a substitute for sinners, as a sacrifice for sin, and as a propitiation of the wrath of God toward sinners. We affirm the death, burial, and bodily resurrection of Christ as essential to the Gospel. We further affirm that Jesus Christ is Lord over His Church, and that Christ will reign over the entire cosmos in fulfillment of the Father’s gracious purpose.

We deny that the substitutionary character of Christ’s atonement for sin can be compromised without serious injury to the Gospel or denied without repudiating the Gospel. We further deny that Jesus Christ is visible only in weakness, rather than in power, Lordship, or royal reign, or, conversely, that Christ is visible only in power, and never in weakness.

We believe that God the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. He is the supernatural agent in regeneration. All believers are baptized with the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ, He then indwells and seals them unto the day of redemption. He desires to continually fill each believer with His power so that we might serve effectively for God’s glory. We believe all the gifts of the Holy Spirit are active today and are to be eagerly pursued and exercised with love for the building up of the body. (John 16:8-11; 2 Corinthians 3:6; 1 Corinthians 12:12-14; Romans 8:9; Ephesians 5:18, 1 Cor 14:1, 3, 4, 12, 26)

We affirm that every true disciple of Jesus Christ has the Holy Spirt living in them and should seek to live moment by moment in communion with and dependent upon the power of the Holy Spirit for all that Christ commands of us as His people. In fact, it is impossible to live the Christian life apart from the Holy Spirit’s enabling power. Since the Holy Spirit is very God of very God, we also affirm that believers should live with expectation that we can experience His supernatural power for the sake of being effective witnesses, overcoming sin and being delivered from demonic forces, as well as exercising spiritual gifts for the building up of the body of Christ to the glory of God.

We deny that believers must seek a “second work of grace” or “second baptism” of the Holy Spirit subsequent to salvation. We further deny that one must speak in tongues as evidence of such a baptism. While we acknowledge all the gifts of the Spirit as still being operable today when rightly understood within the context of scripture, we also acknowledge that many counterfeit spirits exist within the greater church today and believers must be diligent to discern between that which is authentic and that which is counterfeit. We also deny the legitimacy of the “New Apostolic Reformation” as well as the “Word of Faith” movement.

We believe salvation belongs to God. He sovereignly chooses people out of the world to be His children and to fellowship with Him forever. Salvation happens when a person hears the gospel, repents of his utterly sinful state, and believes in the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins; joyfully accepting by faith that He died as their substitute and then rose again on the third day proving that God the Father accepted the sacrifice of His Son Jesus on their behalf. (Ephesians 1:4-6; 13-14; Ephesians 2:8-9; Romans 3:21-26; Romans 10:9-10; John 1:12-13; John 3:16)

We affirm that people are saved wholly of God’s sovereign grace and that even saving faith itself is a gift from God. We also affirm that people are completely responsible for their decisions and actions and should be honestly called upon to repent and trust Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord if a person rejects the gospel, it is because that person chooses to do so and is responsible for his choice. We also affirm that in these two truths of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility, there is great mystery, but that both are clearly taught in the Holy Scriptures.

We deny that men can of their own free will come to saving faith in Christ apart from the work of the Holy Spirit drawing them. We deny that God’s sovereignty in salvation is a reason for disciples not to preach the gospel or pray for the salvation of the lost, but rather a motivation to share it with passion and pray with zeal. For God has sovereignly ordained the sharing of the gospel through the mouths of His people as the means by which people will be saved.

We believe that man was created in the image and likeness of God, but that through Adam's sin the race fell, inherited a sinful nature, and became alienated from God. Man is totally depraved and of himself utterly unable to remedy his lost condition. (Genesis 1:26-27; Romans 3:10-18, 23; Romans 5:12; Ephesians 2:1-3)

We affirm the necessity of preaching man’s universal condition of total depravity apart from Christ. To not know the depths of your sin is to not know the heights of grace and salvation offered in Christ. We also affirm that it is loving to warn people of the future judgement and to urge them to repent and trust in Christ for salvation from the wrath of God.

We deny that a person can be saved without any conviction of his sin by the power of the Holy Spirit. We deny that natural man is simply uninformed or neutral toward the things of God, but rather hostile towards them and is bent towards suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. We also deny that watering down the message of man’s sinfulness and God’s wrath is in any way a helpful means of evangelism.

We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the verbally inspired word of God and the final authority for faith and life. They are inerrant in the original writings, infallible, and God-breathed. (2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:20-21; Matthew 5:18; John 16:12-13)

(From T4G statement of affirmations and denials)

We affirm that the sole authority for the Church is the Bible, verbally inspired, inerrant, infallible, and totally sufficient and trustworthy. We affirm that the authority and sufficiency of Scripture extends to the entire Bible, and therefore that the Bible is our final authority for all doctrine and practice. We affirm that truth ever remains a central issue for the Church, and that the Church must resist the allure of pragmatism and postmodern conceptions of truth as substitutes for obedience to the comprehensive truth claims of Scripture. We affirm the centrality of expository preaching in the Church and the urgent need for a recovery of biblical exposition and the public reading of Scripture in worship.

We deny that the Bible is a mere witness to the divine revelation, or that any portion of Scripture is marked by error or the effects of human sinfulness. We deny that any portion of the Bible is to be used in an effort to deny the truthfulness or trustworthiness of any other portion. We further deny any effort to identify a canon within the canon or, for example, to set the words of Jesus against the writings of Paul. We deny that truth is merely a product of social construction or that the truth of the Gospel can be expressed or grounded in anything less than total confidence in the veracity of the Bible, the historicity of biblical events, and the ability of language to convey understandable truth in sentence form. We further deny that the Church can establish its ministry on a foundation of pragmatism, current marketing techniques, or contemporary cultural fashions. We deny that God-honoring worship can marginalize or neglect the ministry of the Word as manifested through exposition and public reading. We further deny that a Church devoid of true biblical preaching can survive as a Gospel Church.

We believe that all the redeemed, once saved, are kept by God's power and are thus secure in Christ forever. God’s Word encourages believers to rejoice in the assurance of their salvation but clearly forbids the use of Christian liberty as an occasion for the flesh. (John 6:37-40; John 10:27-30; Romans 8:1; 39-39; 1 Corinthians 1:4-8; 1 Peter 1:5; Romans 13:13-14; Galatians 5:13; Titus 2:11-15)

We affirm that our justification is rooted in the perfect work of Christ and not our own works. We also affirm that the word of God alone may define what may be called a good work. While no human works can in any way contribute to our justification, we affirm that good works are an inevitable outworking or fruit of our justification brought about by the Spirit of God who dwells in all those who have been justified in Christ.

We deny that the certainty of our glorification is grounds to live a lukewarm, worldly, ungodly life. Rather, it is the motivation for us to run with endurance the race marked out for us and to call our brothers and sisters in Christ to do the same.

We believe that the Church is a spiritual organism made up of anyone who has been born again by the Spirit of God. We believe that the planting and continuance of the local church is clearly taught and defined in the New Testament Scriptures. We believe that the Church is the body of Christ on earth and we therefore seek to obey what He commands as His hands and feet. We believe the church is the bride of Christ and we therefore look forward to being physically united with Him at His return and also rejoice in the right-standing with God that His shed blood has provided. We recognize the importance of regularly taking the Lord's Supper, as a reminder of what He has accomplished for us in His death, as a calling to take up our cross, and as a hope that we will eat together with Him in the Kingdom. We recognize this along with believer's baptism as a means of testimony for the church but that neither act is a means of salvation. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. (Ephesians 1:22-23; 4:12; 5:25-27; 1 Corinthians 12:12-14; 2 Corinthians 11:2; Acts 14:27; 18:22; 20:17; 1 Timothy 3:1-3; Titus 1:5-11; Matthew 28:19-20; Acts 2:41-42; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26)

We affirm that the nature of Christian discipleship is congregational and that God’s purpose is evident in building faithful Christ-centered, gospel-preaching, disciple-making congregations, each displaying God’s glory in the marks of authentic ecclesiology. We affirm that the church is first and foremost a living organism that is the Family of God, the bride and body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit. While we wholeheartedly affirm that the church is much more than a once or twice a week meeting, we also affirm that it should not be viewed as less than that, and that every disciple should be diligent to meet with God’s people in various settings for their mutual edification.

We deny that any Christian can truly be a faithful disciple apart from the teaching, discipline, fellowship, and accountability of a congregation of fellow disciples, organized as a Christ-centered, gospel-preaching, disciple-making Church.

We believe Heaven is a real, literal place of indescribable glory and joy and hell is a real, literal place of indescribable torment and pain. There will be a future physical resurrection of the dead. Only those who turn from sin and to Jesus in faith and repentance will be raised to eternal reward. Those who do not turn from sin and to Jesus will be raised to eternal punishment. (John 3:16; John 5:24; Mark 9:43-48; 2 Thess. 1:9; Rev. 20:10-15; John 5:28-29; 1 Cor.15:51-52)

We affirm that the Bible makes it abundantly clear that those who die apart from trusting in the gospel of Jesus Christ will spend eternity suffering the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of His might. We affirm that his teaching is central to the gospel itself and that to minimize the horror of hell or the splendor of heaven is to minimize the work of Christ and all that he came to save us from and all that He came to save us for.

We deny that it is necessary, helpful or in any way loving to move this doctrine to the periphery of what the church teaches. We further deny that a church can deny this doctrine and remain a faithful gospel church.