Faith Church accepts the Bible as God’s written word and the final and highest authority for religious belief and practice. As a congregation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, we affirm the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms as secondary standards and a summary of the most important doctrines the Bible teaches. The following statement of faith is adapted from B.B. Warfield (1851-1921), a Presbyterian minister and professor of theology at Princeton Seminary. This statement provides a brief summary of the teachings of the confession (WCF) and catechisms (WLC & WSC).
1. The Bible: We believe that our one aim in life and death should be to glorify God and enjoy Him forever and that God teaches us how to glorify and enjoy Him in His Holy Word, that is, the Bible. He has given the Bible by the infallible inspiration of His Holy Spirit in order that we may certainly know what we are to believe concerning Him and what duty He requires of us. We believe the Bible to be inerrant and infallible in its original given form.
2. God: We believe that God is Spirit, infinite, eternal and incomparable in all that He is; one Triune God in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the same in substance, equal in power and glory. We believe He is our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier in Whose power and wisdom, righteousness, goodness and truth we may safely put our trust.
3. The Creation: We believe that the heavens and the earth, and all that is in them, are the work of God’s hands, made in the space of six literal days and all very good, and that all that He has made He directs and governs in all their actions so that they fulfill the end for which they were created, and we who trust in Him shall not be put to shame but may rest securely in the protection of His almighty love.
4. Man: We believe that God created man after His own image, in knowledge, righteousness and holiness, and entered into a covenant of life with him upon the sole condition of the obedience that was His due; thus, it was by willfully sinning against God that man fell into the sin and misery in which we have been born.
5. The Fall: We believe that being fallen in Adam, our first father, we are by nature children of wrath under the condemnation of God and corrupted in body and soul, prone to evil and liable to eternal death, from which dreadful state we cannot be delivered except through the unmerited grace of God our Savior.
6. Grace: We believe that God has not left the world to perish in its sin, but out of the great love with which He has loved it, has from all eternity graciously chosen unto Himself a multitude, which no man can number. God will deliver His people out of their sin and misery, and of them is building up again His kingdom of righteousness in this world. We may be assured that we have our part in this kingdom if we hold fast to Christ the Lord.
7. Christ: We believe that God has redeemed His people unto Himself through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who, though He was and ever continues to be the eternal Son of God, yet was born of a woman, born under the law, that He might redeem them that are under the law. We believe that He bore the penalty due to our sins in His own body on the cross and fulfilled in His own person the obedience we owe to the righteousness of God. We believe that Jesus now presents us to His Father as His purchased possession, to the praise of the glory of grace forever; thus, we renounce all merit of our own, and we put all our trust only in the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ our Redeemer.
8. The Lord: We believe that Jesus Christ is our Redeemer, that He died for our offenses, that He was raised again for our justification and ascended into the heavens where He sits at the right hand of the Father Almighty, continually making intercession for His people and governing the whole world as head over all things for His church. Therefore, we need fear no evil and may surely know that nothing can snatch us out of His hands and nothing can separate us from His love.
9. The Holy Spirit: We believe that the redemption wrought by the Lord Jesus Christ is effectually applied to all His people by the Holy Spirit, Who works faith in us and thereby unites us to Christ, renews us in the whole man after the image of God, and enables us more and more to die unto sin and to live unto righteousness until this gracious work having been completed in us, we shall be received into glory. As we believe in this hope, we must ever strive to perfect holiness in the fear of God.
10. The Gospel: We believe that under the gospel God requires of us, that out of a true sense of our sin and misery and apprehension of His mercy in Christ, we should turn with grief and hatred away from sin and receive and rest upon Jesus Christ alone for salvation. In thus being united to Him, we may receive pardon for our sins and be accepted as righteous in God’s sight, only through the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. This, we believe, is the only way we may be received as sons of God and have a right to all the privileges granted thereunto.
11. Good Works: We believe that having been pardoned and accepted for Christ’s sake, it is further required of us that we walk in the Spirit through Whom love is shed abroad in our hearts. We are to fulfill the obedience we owe to Christ our King and faithfully perform all the duties laid upon us by the holy law of God, our heavenly Father, and always reflect in our lives and conduct the perfect example that has been set before us by Christ Jesus, Who has died for us and granted to us His Holy Spirit just that we may do the good works which God has before prepared that we should walk in them. We believe that good works are the outcome of salvation, not a condition or cause of it.
12. The Church: We believe that God has established His church in the world and endowed it with the ministry of the Word and the holy ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper in order that through these means, along with prayer, the riches of His grace in the gospel may be made known to the world, and by the blessing of Christ and the working of His Spirit in them that by faith receive them, the benefits of redemption may be communicated to His people. Wherefore also it is required of us that we attend on these means of grace with diligence, preparation, and prayer so that through them we may be instructed and strengthened in faith, in holiness of life, and in love so that we will use our best endeavors to carry this gospel and convey these means of grace to the whole world.
13. The Future: We believe that as Jesus Christ has once come in grace, so also He will come a second time in glory to judge the world in righteousness and assign to each His eternal award. We believe that if we die in Christ, at death our souls shall be made perfect in holiness and go home to the Lord. Upon His return, we shall be raised in glory and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoyment of God to all eternity. Encouraged by this blessed hope, it is required of us willingly to take our part in suffering hardship here as a good soldier of Christ Jesus, being assured that if we die with Him, we shall also live with Him; if we endure, we shall also reign with Him. And to Him, our Redeemer, with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, three Persons, one God, be glory forever, world without end. Amen and amen!