Doctrinal Statement

What You Affirm by Joining

I affirm:

1. The Bible. Scripture is God's Word, without error and sufficient.
2. The Trinity. One God in three persons.
3. Christ. Truly God and truly man; He died for sinners and rose bodily.
4. Creation. Six days, thousands of years ago.
5. Grace. God chose, Christ purchased, the Spirit applies.
6. Justification. By faith alone: my sins forgiven through Christ's death, His righteousness credited to me, and nothing of mine added.
7. The gospel. Freely offered to all, and all are commanded to believe.
8. The Lord's Supper. For professing believers.
9. The end. Christ will return bodily; resurrection, judgment, heaven, and hell are still to come.

I reject:

1. Errors in the Bible. Higher criticism and every denial that Scripture is inerrant.
   "The Bible has mistakes in it, but it's right about Jesus."
2. A lesser Christ. Every denial of the Trinity or the incarnation.
   "Jesus was the greatest man who ever lived, but He wasn't God."
3. An old earth. Old-earth and evolutionary readings of Genesis.
   "The days in Genesis are ages, and the earth is billions of years old."
4. Free will. Pelagianism, Arminianism, and open theism.
   "God chose me because He saw I would believe." or "A real Christian can lose his salvation."
5. Works. Federal Vision and the New Perspective on Paul.
   "God accepts me because of my faith and my obedience together."
6. No free offer. Hyper-Calvinism.
   "Don't tell everyone to repent and believe — the non-elect can't, so it's dishonest." or "God can save a person who never repents or believes."
7. Lawlessness. Antinomianism.
   "I'm saved, so it doesn't matter how I live."
8. New revelation. Continuationism.
   "God still gives new prophecies, and tongues and healing are for today."
9. Infant communion. Paedocommunion.
   "Babies and small children should take the Lord's Supper."
10. Nothing left to come. Full preterism.
    "The second coming, the resurrection, and the judgment all happened in AD 70. There's nothing left to wait for."
11. No hell. Universalism and annihilationism.
    "Everyone gets saved in the end." or "The lost just stop existing."

Why the Full Statement Is Long

The list above is the short version. The full statement below runs longer than most, on purpose: a short statement is easy to sign while meaning something else. So where a phrase is used two ways, we say which we mean, and where an error hides behind orthodox-sounding words, we name it. A longer statement now means a shorter argument later. Why a dating site has a confession at all is answered in Why Do We Have Creeds and Confessions?

What We Believe

1. We believe the Bible is the written Word of God — all of it, breathed out by God, without error, and sufficient. It is the final rule of faith and life; no tradition, council, church, or teacher stands above it (2 Timothy 3:16–17; 2 Peter 1:20–21; John 17:17).

2. We believe in one God, eternally existing in three persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — one in being, power, and glory (Matthew 28:19).

3. We believe Jesus Christ is God in the flesh: truly God and truly man, one person in two natures. He lived without sin, bore the wrath of God in the place of sinners, died upon the cross, and rose bodily from the grave (John 1:14; 1 Corinthians 15:3–4).

4. We believe God created the heavens and the earth in the space of six 24-hour days, as the creation story clearly teaches, and that He created them mature, thousands of years ago and not millions (Genesis 1:5; Exodus 20:11).

5. We believe salvation is God's work from first to last — chosen by the Father, purchased by the Son, and effectually applied by the Spirit; by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone (Ephesians 1:4–14; 2:8–9).

6. We believe a sinner is justified by faith alone, through the righteousness of Christ imputed to him — credited, never earned, with nothing of his own added to it. Neither repentance, obedience, covenant faithfulness, perseverance, nor any other work forms any part of the ground or instrument of our justification. The faith that alone justifies is never alone, but produces repentance, obedience, and good works as its necessary fruit. Those whom God truly justifies He preserves to the end (Romans 3:28; James 2:17).

7. We believe the gospel is to be proclaimed freely to all people without distinction. Every person who hears the gospel is commanded to repent and believe in Jesus Christ. Saving faith is the gift of God, wrought by the Holy Spirit through the Word; man's inability does not remove his duty to believe (Acts 17:30; Ephesians 2:8).

8. We believe the Lord's Supper is for professing believers — those able to examine themselves and discern the Lord's body (1 Corinthians 11:28–29).

9. And we believe Jesus Christ will personally, visibly, and bodily return in glory to judge the living and the dead. There will be a future bodily resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked and a future final judgment: everlasting life and blessedness for those in Christ, and everlasting conscious punishment for those apart from Him. These things are still to come, and we wait for them as the church always has (Acts 1:11; Acts 24:15; Matthew 25:46).

What We Reject

1. We reject any denial of the inspiration, infallibility, inerrancy, or sufficiency of Scripture, in whole or in part — including the claim that the Bible merely contains the Word of God, or that it errs in history and creation while speaking truly of salvation. With this we reject the conclusions of critical scholarship that overturn Scripture's testimony about itself: that Moses did not write the Pentateuch, that Isaiah is the work of several hands, that Daniel was written after the events it foretells, or that Adam, Noah, and Jonah are figures of literature rather than men who lived (2 Timothy 3:16–17; 2 Peter 1:20–21; John 10:35; John 17:17).

2. We reject every denial of the Trinity — that God is one person appearing in three modes, that the Son or the Spirit is a creature or anything less than fully God, or that the three persons are three gods. We reject every denial of the incarnation: that Christ was not truly God, that He was not truly man, that His two natures were mixed or divided, that He was conceived otherwise than by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin, that He sinned, or that His resurrection was anything less than bodily (Matthew 28:19; John 1:1, 14).

3. We reject every reading of Genesis that turns the days of creation into anything other than a 24-hour period — including the framework hypothesis, the day-age theory, the gap theory, and theistic evolution in all its forms. We reject the claim that the earth is millions or billions of years old, however it is fitted to Genesis or held apart from it. We reject the claim that man ascended from earlier creatures, or that Adam was other than one man, made from the dust, from whom the whole human race descends and in whom it fell (Genesis 2:7; Exodus 20:11; Romans 5:12).

4. We reject Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism, and the Arminian system that follows them: that fallen man retains the power to turn himself to God or to cooperate with grace of his own will; that God's choice of a people rests on foreseen faith or merit; or that a man truly born of God may finally fall away and be lost. We reject also the teaching that God does not know with certainty all that shall come to pass (Ephesians 2:1, 8–9; John 10:28–29; Isaiah 46:10).

5. We reject the Federal Vision and related departures from the Reformed doctrine of justification, including the New Perspective on Paul, wherever they make covenant membership, repentance, obedience, covenant faithfulness, perseverance, or works instrumental to our justification or final acceptance before God (Romans 3:28; Galatians 1:6–8).

6. We reject hyper-Calvinism, including the denial of duty-faith, the denial of the free and indiscriminate call of the gospel, and any teaching that God ordinarily brings a person capable of hearing and understanding the gospel to new birth apart from the Word, or that such a person may possess eternal salvation apart from repentance and faith in Jesus Christ (Acts 17:30; Romans 10:17; 1 Peter 1:23).

7. We reject antinomianism — the teaching that the moral law is no longer the Christian's rule of life, or that a man may profess Christ while living unrepentant in sin (Romans 3:31; James 2:17).

8. We reject continuationism — the pursuit or practice today of the apostolic gifts, including tongues, prophecy, and healing; all claims to new revelation; and any teaching that binds the conscience to a word outside Scripture (Ephesians 2:20; Hebrews 2:3–4; Jude 3; Daniel 9:24).

9. We reject paedocommunion — admitting to the Lord's Table those not yet able to examine themselves, discern the Lord's body, and personally profess faith in Christ (1 Corinthians 11:28–29; Deuteronomy 6:20–25).

10. We reject full or hyper-preterism, which teaches that Christ's return, the bodily resurrection of the dead, or the final judgment are already behind us (Acts 1:11; Acts 24:15).

11. We reject universalism, annihilationism, and conditional immortality — that the wicked will at last be saved, or will at last cease to be (Matthew 25:46).

These exclusions are doctrinal, not merely denominational: adopting one of these teachings is incompatible with membership regardless of the label under which it is held. Where the statement is silent — baptism, church government, the millennium, the Lord's Day — members are free to differ, and The Men Who Inspired explains why the door is drawn there.