credo : ‘I believe’
If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.
John 7:17
We affirm that God in Christ speaks to humankind in the inscripturated Word, the Bible, and that it is reliable and authoritative concerning all things that it addresses, not only concerning salvation, but also concerning the cosmos (history and the physical universe).
GOD
- I believe in the one, infinite, personal, creator-God; revealed as three distinct co-equal and co-essential persons, eternally relating in covenant as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the Son sent to become the incarnate Word of God in space-time history in the person of Jesus Christ as truly God and truly man, and the Holy Spirit sent by the Father and the Son as the agent of the Godhead to fulfil the decrees of their eternal counsel.
MAN
- I believe that mankind, as the climax of God’s creative act, is made in his own likeness: male and female; first, as the ground of intimate relationship with himself (ethical / spiritual); second, as the ground of marriage and family (familial); third, as the ground of human community (societal); and fourth, as the ground for the governance and stewardship of the creation under him (cultural).
- I believe that mankind’s first parents, as free moral agents, rebelled against God’s original covenant command by standing in judgement over it, choosing instead to be autonomous; as covenant-breakers their guilt was imputed to their progeny, plunging them into ethical and intellectual rebellion against God, and hence placed themselves under his wrath and judgement, and thereby mankind into his systemic disorder of sin and death.
SALVATION
- I believe that through his obedience, death, resurrection, and ascension Jesus Christ – as the God-man – came to firstly save mankind from sin and death, reconciling him to God the Father through a vicarious death as the judicial penalty for mankind’s ethical rebellion, satisfying both the justice and wrath of God, hence not only providing forgiveness of sins but also imputing righteousness to those who believe, reinstating him as a covenant-keeper and restoring him to filial intimacy; and secondly, to restore mankind to God’s creational purpose; that through his humanity as the last Adam Christ terminated the old creation of sin and death, and, as the second man, inaugurated a new one of righteousness and life, perfecting a new humanity and renewal of the entire cosmos.
- I believe that through God’s activity in spiritual new birth all those that have been foreordained to salvation shall believe, that by grace through faith they are declared to be righteous, and that they shall mature in faith and conformity to the image of Christ until the end.
CHURCH
- I believe that, in Christ, the redeemed community, as the ‘called out ones’ (ecclesia), are one holy catholic (universal) and apostolic church, and that, coming to the full stature of Christ, it is destined in history – city-by-city – to proclaim and demonstrate, through the Gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit, God’s covenant love, wisdom, and ways for nations and rulers, strategically through its covenant fidelity (one Lord) and apostolic catholicity (one faith, one Spirit, one body).
END THINGS
- I believe that the victory of Christ over his enemies, inaugurated at his ascension, will be gradually realised in history through the Gospel and the present ministry of the Holy Spirit, finally witnessing a lengthy period of human flourishing and peace, culminating in Christ’s return for a matured church, a transformed world, and a restored earth at which time the last enemy – death – will be consumed by life in the resurrection of the dead, and all things will be set-to-rights in the final judgement, and the perfect will come—a fully renewed cosmos.
While the inscripturated Word of God, the Bible, is final and authoritative, the historic creeds of the church serve as provisional summations of that Word, having emerged under the superintending hand of God for the edification and correction of the church.
We affirm the Ecumenical Creeds:
Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, Chalcedonian Creed, and Athanasian Creed.
