We believe in the good and great God revealed in the Bible. God is the infinite and personal Creator. He is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-present. God exists from all eternity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is supreme in all things worthy of our worship, and deserving of all glory.

God the Father, the first person of the Trinity, is the Source of all things and the perfect model for all true Fatherhood. The Father’s heart is defined most centrally by love. God has many other moral attributes—central among them justice, mercy, holiness, and truth. But like the Father of the Prodigal Son, God the Father is first and foremost full of compassion towards his creatures. “God so loved the world that he gave his Son” (Jn 3:16). God’s deepest posture towards sinners is not one of anger or condemnation. “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn” (Jn 3:17).

God is perfectly just, however. So he hates evil. He abhors human sin because it damages people, both the one who sins and the one sinned against. Human sin breaks relationship, both with God and with others. Sin created and still amplifies the mayhem in the world.

Sin is not just rule-breaking. More fundamentally, sin is taking a stance of opposition to God’s reign in our lives. So God notnot countenance sin in his presence. God in his justice will punish sin, conquer evil, and destroy death. But while God punishes sin, he does not destroy sinners. He makes a way out of sin’s bondage. “While we were yet sinners, Christ gave his life for us” (Rom 5:8).

Crucially, when we sin, we disconnect ourselves from God, the Source of life. In addition, we ultimately destroy ourselves. Jn 3:16 rightly translated says, “All who put their trust in Christ will not destroy themselves.” (The Greek middle voice—’perish’ or ‘destroy’—means a person without faith in Christ destroys himself.) God has no interest in destroying us. God wants us to enjoy Life to the fullest. We cannot experience Life until we turn from our sin.

Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity who came to earth in the incarnation. Christ is the prophesied Messiah of the Jews and the perfect Savior of all humanity.

Jesus is the fully divine Son of God. Though he is one in personhood, he possesses two natures. One is a divine nature. This is clear from his divine titles, divine works, and divine privileges. Most importantly, his deity is confirmed by his resurrection from the dead. Jesus Christ is God of very God.

Jesus Christ is also fully human. He also possesses a human nature. As a human on earth, he lived in a human body, suffered human limitations, and experienced human emotions. He therefore understands all that we experience by personal acquaintance. As a member of the human race, he can fully represent us before the Father.

As the incarnate Son of God, Christ’s words taught us about God, his actions revealed God’s plan, and his miracles confirmed his divine mission. But his ministry did not culminate in his teachings. Christ’s work climaxed in his death on the cross for the redemption of the world and in his victory over death, destruction, and the devil in his resurrection. At the cross, Jesus Christ broke the power of evil, completed the work of redemption, and established his place at the head of the church.

The Holy Spirit, third person of the Trinity, lives intimately with believers. As God, the Spirit participated in creating the universe, and he continues to sustain the natural world.

The Spirit overshadowed Mary so that she became pregnant with the Christ child. The Spirit empowered Christ in his earthly ministry. And at Pentecost, the Spirit fell on the apostles, hovering over them in the form of little flames. This was the same fire that stood above the tabernacle in the Old Testament, representing God’s presence. But now God’s presence rests, not with a building, but with God’s people. Today, the Spirit brings salvation into human lives, heals God’s people of their brokenness, and empowers believers to live fruitful lives.

Importantly, the Spirit guided the authors of the Bible through the act of inspiration. The Spirit also illuminates the minds of those who read the Bible so that even if they lack formal education, they are able to grasp its core message: that God loves every person, challenges each one to acknowledge God’s reign in their lives, offers to give all who respond in faith the gift of salvation, sends each one into the world to serve him, and promises each one eternal life in his presence.

With the Holy Spirit taking the lead, the Triune God inspired the Bible. The Bible is not just an historical document or a literary masterpiece, though it certainly is those things. The Bible is the eternal word of God. God is an author of the Bible. In the Bible, God speaks, communicating his love, his truth, and his will.

The divine authorship of the Bible, through inspiration, establishes the Bible’s divine authority over us. In practical terms, this means that in everything we think and do, we acknowledge the priority of the Bible’s message. The Bible is not the only source by which we know, for God communicates in many other ways. But the Bible is the supreme source and guide for our beliefs and practices. In no case would we accept as true a knowledge claim that contradicts the Bible.

While the Bible is inspired by the Spirit, it also bears the marks of genuine human authorship. Prophets and apostles engaged their humanity in writing the Bible. It reflects their personal idiosyncrasies, cultural contexts, and historical situations. The human writers were indeed authors. But because the Spirit guided those writers through inspiration, the result—the Bible—is more than human opinion about God. It is God’s communication of himself to us.

Because God authored the Bible, we have confidence that it is completely true in what it teaches and powerful in its effects. When the Bible speaks, we acknowledge that God speaks. While we commit to working carefully and respectfully to interpret the Bible in its original meaning, we also have confidence that the Spirit speaks to us through its pages.

Every human being is “created in God’s image” (Gen 1:27), which entails that each human life is of inestimable worth. The value of a human life, even one yet to be born, never depends on social status, physical strength, intellectual knowledge, or any other ability. Everyone matters to God.

God created us as human beings for a reason—to relate intimately with our Creator (Adam and Eve walked with God in the Garden), to do productive work (Adam and Eve cared for the Garden), and to represent God in the world (Adam named the animals).

From the beginning, God invited us as humans into this intimate love. By definition, love cannot be coerced. So God does not compel us love him. Instead, he invites us to follow him, to make him the Leader of our lives. He has smoothed every pathway and removed every obstacle to love relationships, even offering complete forgiveness for our sin. Yet he also leaves open the choice to rebel. Of the millions of decisions any person makes in a lifetime, the most important is The Choice to enthrone God as King in our own lives.

When we answer The Choice by choosing to put God first, to follow Christ, we receive the gift of salvation. Intimacy with God then becomes the defining characteristic of our existence. It becomes our very identity.

Identity today is often pegged to a person’s national origin, family connections, race or ethnicity, professional achievement, sexual inclination, or social class. Of course, these factors do describe humans in their diversity. But in the Bible, intimacy with God or alienation from God is any human person’s most fundamental identity marker. We who follow Christ, who have submitted to God as King, are called Christians. We are “in Christ” (II Cor 5:17). We are Christ Ones.

The Choice (to honor God as our Leader and King or to rebel against God) is presented time and again throughout the Bible: “I have set before you this day life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live!” (Deut 30:19).

Every one of us therefore confronts The Choice: (1) choosing God as King or (2) anointing Self as Master of our lives.

In the Garden, The Choice is immediately presented to our first parents, symbolized by two trees. They were commanded to choose God as their Leader (symbolized in the Garden by the Tree of Life). This was the path to Life, the fulfillment of God’s purpose in creating them. But they also had it in their power to choose Self their guide for life (signified by the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil).

Our first parents chose death. They ate the fruit of the forbidden tree (the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil), and in so doing disobeyed God. In eating the fruit, they didn’t simply commit an individual sinful act, like stealing $5000. More fundamentally, this act of disobedience amounted to saying, “We put Self in charge of our lives.”

This choice broke the intimacy that Adam and Eve enjoyed with God. But their sin did much more, for it infected every part of creation with evil. Sin caused a rupture in their love as husband and wife. Sin distorted their work. Sin tore their family apart leading to their son, Cain, murdering his brother, Abel. In the end, the web of corruption expanded out to include everything in society, leading to worldwide judgment.

Humans tried to overcome the alienation from God by banding together to build a Tower to heaven. But this political project came to nothing. The biblical story summarizes the dismal result of rebellion: “Every thought of every person was only evil all the time” (Gen 6:6).

Today this rupture of sin infects every human before birth. At birth, before we ever become self-aware, we were already separated from God and alienated from others. We were thrust into a web of human relationships shaped by moral dysfunction and self-centeredness. As we grow, we experience unhealthy differentiation—the desire to define ourselves over against others and to use others to meet our own needs.

Even as self-aware adults, we experience an inborn, habitual inclination toward self-centeredness. We feel an urgent desire to prioritize our own survival and status at the expense of others. And this fact of intrapersonal insecurity leads us to an interpersonal posture of fear. We act out this posture by committing acts of aggression against others, which only reinforce our alienation from God and from others.

Thus every human is thrown into the physical world and grows up in a social world disconnected from God. Every heart is inclined toward making Self the leader for life. This triggers every other human problem we face. We are mired in this mess. We are powerless, in our own strength, to overcome it. We cannot solve either our fundamental sin problem or the tentacles of its symptoms. Our only hope is God.

But God, in his love, has a plan. Since God’s stance towards us is first and foremost a posture of love, not of condemnation, God longs to see us experience renewal, both intrapersonally and interpersonally. God wants to restore our hearts, reestablish our human relationships, and (most deeply) reconnect our hearts with himself. The message of God’s loving plan is called the Gospel.

For us today, the first step we take to access the Gospel requires more than intellectual agreement with a message. The invitation is to respond—to act in response to—to God’s loving invitation. This step involves two related parts: repentance—rejecting our former stance of Self as king—and faith—acting in trust to give ourselves over to Christ as King.

This act, however, is not a work for which we are rewarded. Indeed, on our own, we are entirely powerless to respond. Sin has so entangled us that we cannot do anything on our own to win God’s favor. Faith is all of grace. It’s entirely undeserved. God is the one who enlightens us, invites us, woos us, and empowers us to respond. Salvation is sheer gift.

Every person who responds to grace and places their trust in Christ receives the gift of salvation. Salvation means we’re forgiven of the penalty for sin, freed from the power of sin, given new spiritual life, endowed with status as heirs of God, and granted the gift of eternal life.

Salvation is made possible by the Cross: Christ’s atoning death and his resurrection. (Christ’s death purchases the gift of salvation; our faith is the humble act of receiving the gift.) When we surrender to Christ by placing our trust in him, the benefits of the Cross, including forgiveness, are applied to us. When we open the gift box of salvation, we find it contains the gift of intimate connection to God.

After this conversion experience, we begin a growth experience of spiritual transformation. This involves learning the Christian way of life, practicing spiritual disciplines, and discovering our spiritual gifts. This season of apprenticeship to Christ includes the transformation of thinking (mindsets), the building of godly character (habits), and preparation for Kingdom service. It culminates when a believer’s life becomes completely infused with the love of Christ (Jude 21).

The purpose of salvation is not just to buy a ticket to heaven. Receiving salvation means becoming a Citizen of God’s Kingdom, and every Citizen is commissioned as an Ambassador. So we prepare to live lives of love, generosity, hospitality, and service. We don’t sit around waiting for the Rapture. Instead, we prepare for and execute the mission of every Christian and every local church: to join God in his redemptive work in the world. This includes words of truth that share the Gospel of the Kingdom as well as deeds of love that serve our neighbors in Christ’s name.

As soon as we become Kingdom Citizens (Phil 3:20), we take our first steps toward training as Kingdom Ambassadors (II Cor 5:20). We’re all commanded to play a part in inviting others into Kingdom citizenship. And we’re all commanded to live our lives as agents of God’s peace in the world. We do this by serving our families, churches, neighborhoods, workplaces, and communities. By doing this missional work, we become a part of the answer to the words of the Lord’s Prayer: “May your will be done on earth … as it is in heaven.”

The church is the New Testament community of God’s people on earth. The church is a new, covenantal society. It is formed by love, and it works to shape each member into their full, godly potential for service.

Paul calls the New Testament church a New Humanity. It is composed of diverse people from every social, ethnic, gender, racial, or political background (Eph 2:14-16). When a local church operates as it should, its members become a people who are led by Christ, shaped by love, and dedicated to mission.

This mission of the church sits in an Old Testament context. The Bible explains in Gen 3-11 that sin decimated the world. In Gen 12:1-3, God launched his plan to restore the world—to bless individuals, families, communities, and nations. God chose Abram and gave him the task: bless the nations of the earth.

This blessing was the beginning of God’s cosmic process of renewal in which all things will be “set back to rights.” God declared that this work of restoring all things will be competed when he brings heaven to earth to establish his Kingdom (Rev 21:1-4).

Although God first gave the task of blessing the nations to the Jewish nation, the people of God in the Old Testament got off mission. Israel was more concerned with receiving and protecting its own blessings than with blessing others. This led to national judgment.

After church began at Pentecost, God gave the task of blessing the nations over to the New Humanity of God, the church (see Acts 3:25). Thus, it is critical that the people of God today follow God’s plan to bless the nations of the earth by spreading the Gospel—the message of salvation through Christ.

Every local church faces the same question Israel faced. Will we commit to the mission of God or will we enjoy our blessings and protect our preferences? Every church faces the temptation to turn its attention to itself, to spend its resources on its own, and to get off mission.

Each local church’s response to this question directly affects whether or not that local church will flourish today. American churches that prioritize Christ’s mission for invitation are the very churches that become fruitful. Conversely, the American churches in crisis—the churches on a slippery slope toward death—are the churches that are repeating Israel’s disobedience. Some of these may seem like “good” churches from the outside. But in fact, they’re following their own preferences, protecting themselves from the world, and enjoying rich fellowship with one another.

Someday, God will complete the work he gave the church—his Kingdom-building project on earth. When Christ returns, this project will be consummated.

Christ’s return does not mean the destruction of earth, however, as some suppose. The New Testament teaches that God will bring heaven and earth together, unifying the two. God’s Kingdom reign, inaugurated during Christ’s first coming, will now blossom in its fulness. And the people of God will live with the King.

Until that day, we who are Kingdom Citizens do not wait passively for Christ’s return. We work with energy as Kingdom Ambassadors.

In the end, God will plant the Tree of Life. This tree, first seen in the Garden of Eden, will produce abundant life. The Tree symbolizes the bearing of much fruit, for it will produce, not just each spring, but in every month of the year (Rev 22:2). God will renew a world of Shalom in which there is no pain, no crying, and no evil, only love, joy, and peace.

As so shall we be with the Lord forever.