Saturday, April 3, 2010

CrossWay Community Church's Statement of Faith on 'The Gospel'

You can find it here on their website:

God’s Gracious Provision: The Gospel of Jesus Christ

We believe that from eternity past God determined in grace to save a great multitude of guilty sinners from every tribe and language and people and nation. We believe that God will perfectly accomplish this purpose through the incarnation, sinless life, substitutionary death, resurrection, and victorious return of Jesus Christ. We believe that Jesus Christ, being fully God from all eternity, became flesh, being born of the virgin Mary, and thus became fully human without relinquishing his full deity in the least. He lived a sinless life thus perfectly fulfilling, as a human, all the requirements of God’s law. He then voluntarily offered his life on the Cross in our place. Christ bore in our place the punishment due us for our sins. This is the heart of the gospel. By dying on the Cross for our sins Christ satisfied God’s justice and reconciled to God all those who believe. In his resurrection Christ was vindicated by the Father, broke the power of death and defeated Satan who once had power over us in death, and brought eternal life to all his people. We believe that this salvation from death into life is found in no place but Jesus Christ.

Man’s Response to the Gospel: Repentance and Faith

We believe man’s fall into sin rendered him spiritually dead and therefore completely unable to initiate any reconciliation with God and completely unable to contribute anything to his own salvation. However, God graciously initiates by regenerating human hearts enabling man to respond to God’s call to salvation with repentance and faith. In repentance we turn away from both our sin and any confidence we might have in our own goodness and in faith we entrust ourselves completely to Jesus Christ and what he has done on our behalf.

The Free Gift of God: Justification

We believe that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone and that when God’s grace is met by faith a person is justified—that is, his sins have been imputed to Christ and he is therefore completely forgiven, and the righteousness of Christ is imputed to him and he is thereby declared righteous and fully accepted by God. This justification simultaneously puts on glorious display the perfect justice and the great love of God.

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