What We Believe
Although believing the Bible to be the only inspired and inerrant Word of God, Grace Presbyterian Church believes the Biblical teaching that is set forth in the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms.
Our system of doctrine is the Reformed faith, which pulls together the most significant doctrines taught in the Bible.
It is summarized in the following paragraphs.
The Bible, having been inspired by God, is entirely trustworthy and without error. Inspiration means that God, working through the personalities and gifts of the various biblical authors, so moved them by his Holy Spirit that, what they penned, though truly the words of those authors, was, indeed, the very Word of God. Therefore, we are to believe and obey its teachings. Once the last of the writing Apostles received such special revelation, the canon of Scripture was closed, and the Bible is the only source of special revelation today.
The one true God is personal and we can know him, by his Word and Spirit, yet he remains beyond our comprehension. He is an invisible Spirit, completely self-sufficient and unbounded by space or time, perfectly holy and just, and loving and merciful. In the unity of the Godhead, there are three “persons”: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
God created the heavens and the earth and all they contain. We regard the creation account of Genesis as historical and not mythical, and are especially concerned to uphold the historical account of Adam and Eve and all that entails. God upholds and governs all things in accordance with his eternal will. God is sovereign—in complete control—and has ordained everything that comes to pass; yet this does not diminish human responsibility and accountability.
Because of the sin of the first man, Adam, who represented all mankind in the first covenant between God and man, the covenant of works, all mankind bears the guilt of that first sin, by imputation, and is corrupt by nature, dead in sin, and subject to the wrath of God for original and all actual sins. But God determined, by a covenant of grace, that sinners may receive forgiveness and eternal life through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. Ever since man needed salvation, i.e., after the fall (man did not need to be saved before falling into sin), faith alone in Christ alone has always been the way of salvation, in both Old Testament and New Testament times.
The Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, took upon himself a human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary, so that in her son Jesus, the divine and human natures were united in one person. Jesus Christ did this so that he might serve as our mediator, and he did all that he did, in his life and in his death, as our substitute. He lived a perfect, sinless life for us, fulfilling, as the second Adam, the covenant of works that the first Adam failed to keep by his disobedience. In doing so, he kept the law perfectly on our behalf. This is often called his active obedience. He also died for us on the cross, taking the wrath of God for all the sins of his people, original and actual. This is often called his passive obedience. He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, where he sits as Lord and rules over his kingdom (the church). He will return to judge the living and the dead, bringing his people (with glorious resurrected bodies) into eternal life and consigning the wicked to eternal punishment.
Those whom God has predestined unto life are effectually drawn to Christ by the inner working of the Spirit as they engage the means of grace, particularly the hearing of the gospel in the preaching of the Word. When they believe in Christ, God declares them righteous (justifies them), not because of any righteousness of their own, but based solely on the righteousness achieved for them by Christ in his active and passive obedience, imputed (accounted) to them and received by faith alone. They are also adopted as children of the living God and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who not only declares them to be justified and adopted, as acts of his grace, but further works in them, not only having regenerated them, but sanctifying them, enabling them increasingly to stop sinning and act righteously. They repent of their sins (both at conversion and thereafter), produce good works as the fruit of their faith, and persevere to the end in communion with Christ, with assurance of salvation, which is not of the essence of faith, but an ordinary concomitant of it.
Believers strive to keep God’s moral law, which is summarized in the Ten Commandments, not to earn salvation, but because they have salvation in Christ. In other words, believers seeks to obey the law of God out of gratitude, because they love their Savior and want to obey him. They don’t keep the law to gain acceptance with God (what Christ did secures that); rather, they keep the law because they have acceptance with God. God is the Lord of the conscience, so that men are not required to believe or do anything contrary to, or in addition to, the Word of God in matters of faith or worship.
Christ has established his church, and particular churches, to gather and perfect his people, by means of the ministry of the Word, the sacraments of baptism (which is to be administered to any unbaptized adult upon a profession of faith in Christ, as well as the children of those who profess their faith in Christ) and the Lord’s Supper (in which the body and blood of Christ are really, yet spiritually, present to the faith of believers), and the disciplining of members found delinquent in doctrine or life. Christians assemble on the Lord’s Day chiefly to worship God by praying, hearing the Word of God read and preached, singing psalms and hymns, and receiving the sacraments.