Monday, 2 January 2012

Statement of Faith

STATEMENT OF FAITH:

 

GOD, HOLY SPIRIT AND JESUS CHRIST:

 

1.      An almighty, living, loving, perfect, holy, righteous God and Creator of heaven and earth, our heavenly Father, exists. He hears, sees, feels, loves, longs, is jealous, gets angry, punishes, delivers, cleanses, forgives.

2.      Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He was born from a virgin by the Holy Spirit, He was murdered by sinners like myself, and He rose from the dead and now sits at the right hand of God.

3.      The Holy Spirit of God and of Jesus Christ lives and works amongst us as God Himself.

4.      God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are One.

5.      I believe that God loves me perfectly and everything happens to me in His perfect love and in my best interest, how incomprehensible it may be at times.

 

THE WORD:

 

6.      I believe that God inspired the Bible in the original languages

7.      I believe we only live if we live from every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

8.      Jesus is the Word of God that became flesh and my relationship to the Bible reflects my relationship to Jesus. If I break the Word, I break Jesus.

9.      As Jesus' flesh was severely wounded, so His Word was severely wounded by wrong translations, interpretations and teachings, but God will help the honest and sincere seeker to find Him and the truth despite all the distortions to His flesh and His Word. 

 

OUR SINS AND JUDGEMENT:

 

10. I have sinned against God. I committed harlotry away from Him, I committed adultery against Him and I became a slave of sin. Herein I grieved, broke and crushed His loving heart.

11. Therefore, the wages of sin is suffering and death and I will surely die if I sin.

 

GOD’S REQUIREMENTS AND PROMISES:

 

12. I must love God with all my heart, soul, mind and power and my neighbor as myself.

13. God commands and requires a holy and righteous life - and promised that He will sanctify and justify me.

14. God’s eternal promises and oaths are that He would crush the head of Satan, that He would write His laws in my heart and give me a new heart that I may not sin against Him or my neighbor.

 

GOD’S ADVANCE:

 

15. God Himself came in His love to earth through His Holy Spirit and at one point in time as His Son, Jesus Christ. God so personally / physically came to show His love, grace, power, life and works and to speak His words.

16. Jesus came to deliver me from my sins and to win and buy me back to God from my love for sin and from my slavery to Satan.

 

THE CROSS:

 

17. Jesus was despised, rejected, martyred, crucified and murdered because of, by and through my sins. My sins against God fell on Jesus and it wounded and killed Him.

18. Jesus came to bear my sins in his body on the cross that I may see how hideous sins are, how painful it is to God and what it does to Him, that I may deeply repent, sorrowfully confess, so that my sin may stop and that I may live righteously.

19. I believe that God forgives me my sins and that the blood of Jesus cleanses me from all and each sin. This happens if I confess in true sorrow my guilt in His pain, wounds and blood because of each sin and if I repent from all sin and if I make restitution as far as possible. So His blood washes me from all sin. 

20. I believe that the wounds of Jesus heal me spiritually and also physically if I accept, acknowledge and confess my guilt therein and if I repent from all sins that pain and wound Him.

21. I reject the penal substitutionary atonement teaching. God did not punish Jesus in my place to atone for my sins. 

 

THE LORD’S SUPPER:

 

22. Through the bread that I break and the wine I pour at the Lord’s Supper, I remember, acknowledge, confess, illustrate, show and declare openly what my sins do and have done to Jesus. If I continue in sin, I continue breaking Jesus' body and spilling His blood.

 

BAPTISM:

 

23. Baptism is a public act declaring and prayer I am dying with Christ as my sins killed Him and I will rise to a new life with Him and His Holy Spirit in me.   

 

SINS AFTER THE CROSS:

 

24. I am again guilty of the body and blood of Jesus if I sin again and deserve the death penalty, but I believe that God will forgive and cleanse me perfectly if I acknowledge and confess this in true sorrow, if I repent from it and if I make restitution as far as possible. I need to persevere until His work is perfected and I am free indeed.

 

PERFECT / COMPLETE DELIVERANCE AND HOLINESS:

 

25. I believe Jesus can deliver, justify and sanctify me perfectly that all sins stop - so that I may see Him after death.

26. I will not see Jesus without a pure heart and without holiness and no unclean person or sinner will enter heaven.

 

CONGREGATIONAL LIFE:

 

27. I believe that, when we have been cleansed from our sins by the blood of Jesus, we are made prophets, priests and kings for God to live teach and preach His gospel.

28. We are all brothers and we have one Leader and Teacher, Jesus Christ.

29. The true congregation of Jesus is His body. In this body we are all members, the seemingly weaker members are more necessary and God bestows greater honor to the member lacking it. If one member suffers, the whole body and we all suffer. God reveals His wisdom to the lowly and hides it from the high.

30. What I do or don’t do to the least; I do and don’t do to Jesus.

31. God COMMANDED in 1COR 14 how we should gather. All who live Biblical lives may contribute and prophecy. Those not following 1Cor14 are not prophets and not spiritual and will be ignored by God. 

32. Traditional trained and ordained pastors with their titles who control and lead congregations and preach alone i.e. main man / men shows, are unbiblical. 

 

SUFFERING:

 

33. When Adam and Eve sinned, they deeply grieved, pained and crushed God’s loving and holy heart but they failed to see, acknowledge or confess that or their sins, they blamed another and failed to repent. Therefore, God drove them out of  Eden.  

34. Away from God’s presence, God allowed Satan, the earth, world, life, people and our bodies to do to us what we have done to Him – we suffer and we deserve it and worse. We have no right to ask not to suffer. Until we see this and confess that we caused Him more pain and suffering than what we endure, until we repent and stop everything that cause Him suffering, we will suffer to understand, bear or be blessed by our suffering.

35. Once we see this, we see suffering as in Hebr 12 – we have nothing to complain, we must not sin, Jesus suffered bearing my sin and rebellion, I must also accept and bear my suffering, I must rather bleed and die not to sin and cause Him more suffering, He chastises me in love to become acceptable by Him as a true child,  it is for my benefit and training so that I may partake in His holiness, that I may experience peace which is the fruit of righteousness, I am strengthened, I make my paths straight, and that I may find holiness, without which I shall not see God.

36. Job's experience and the one robber on the cross next to Jesus teach the above. To complain against God for suffering or to ask to be taken out of suffering, illustrate no fear / respect for God and no knowledge of  God or of the cross of Jesus. 

 

RETURN OF CHRIST:

 

37. Jesus shall return to judge all in perfect righteousness according to their works, to eternally punish sinners and to let the saints reign eternally with Him on a new and perfect earth.

 

AMEN.

 

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