FORDLAND FWB CHURCH

THE BIBLE

We believe the Bible to be the complete Word of God.

God used holy men to write the Scriptures. They are, in both the Old and New Testaments, the very words God intended us to have. We believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant and authoritative Word of God. We believe the Bible is the final authority in every area it addresses for every individual Christian, as well as for the church collectively (2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:21; John 10:35).

GOD

We believe that God is the Creator, Sustainer, and Righteous Ruler of the universe. He has revealed Himself in nature, and in the Scriptures of the Holy Bible as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: yet as one God.

JESUS CHRIST

We believe in the absolute and essential deity of our Lord Jesus Christ

He is God’s unique Son; the only one of a kind. The Scripture teaches that He is God revealed in flesh. In His Divine nature He is truly God and in His human nature truly man. He is the One once crucified for man’s sin, the now risen and glorified Savior and Lord who mediates between God and man and who gives us access to the Father through His intercession. None can come to the Father unless they come through Him.

THE HOLY SPIRIT

We believe in the absolute and essential deity, and in the personality of the Holy Spirit

All of the attributes of God are ascribed to the Holy Spirit by the Scriptures. It is He who convicts and convinces men of their sin. He also convinces man of that which is right, and that a final day of judgment will come. He, it is, who comes to live in us at conversion, to open our understanding to the Scripture, and to lead us into the truth.

MANKIND

We believe that Adam was divinely created in the image of God

God’s Relationship to His Creatures and Creation – God exercises a wise and benevolent providence over all beings and things. He maintains the laws of nature and performs special acts as the highest welfare of mankind and His created order of things require.

God created man in a state of innocence. Man, being tempted by Satan, yielded and willfully disobeyed God, becoming a sinner and incurring God’s judgment upon sin. All of Adam’s descendants inherit his fallen nature and thus have a natural inclination to sin. When one comes to an age of accountability, he is guilty of sinning before God and in need of salvation.

SALVATION

We believe that salvation is by the sovereign grace of God

Man receives pardon and forgiveness for his sins when he admits to God that he is a sinner, when in godly sorrow he turns from them and trusts in the work of Christ as redemption for his sin. This acceptance of God’s great salvation involves belief in Christ’s death on the cross as man’s substitute and the fact of God’s raising Him from the dead as predicted. It is a salvation by grace alone and not of works.