Our Beliefs

We believe God has graciously disclosed his existence and power in the created order and has supremely revealed himself to fallen human beings in the person of his Son, the incarnate Word. We believe that God has inspired the words preserved in the Scriptures, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. These writings alone constitute the verbally inspired Word of God, which is utterly authoritative and without error in the original writings, complete in its revelation of his will for salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do, and final in its authority over every domain of knowledge to which it speaks.

We believe that God created human beings, male and female, in his own image. Adam and Eve were made to complement each other in a one-flesh union that establishes the only normative pattern of sexual relations for men and women, such that marriage ultimately serves as a type of the union between Christ and his church.

We believe marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman instituted by God for the mutual happiness of his people and for the glory of his name.  As such, it is the duty of Christians to marry only in the Lord, that is, to marry fellow believers.

We believe that Adam, made in the image of God, distorted that image and forfeited his original blessedness—for himself and all his progeny—by falling into sin through Satan’s temptation. As a result, all human beings are alienated from God, corrupted in every aspect of their being (e.g., physically, mentally, volitionally, emotionally, spiritually) and condemned finally and irrevocably to death—apart from God’s own gracious intervention.

We believe that from all eternity God determined in grace to save a great multitude of guilty sinners from every tribe and language and people and nation, and to this end foreknew them and chose them. We believe that God justifies and sanctifies those who by grace have faith in Jesus, and that he will one day glorify them—all to the praise of his glorious grace.

We believe that the Gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ—God’s very wisdom. Christ died for our sins and was raised from the dead to reconcile us with God.

We believe that, moved by love and in obedience to his Father, the eternal Son, Jesus Christ, became human: the Word became flesh, fully God and fully human being, one Person in two natures. The man Jesus, the promised Messiah of Israel, was conceived through the miraculous agency of the Holy Spirit and was born of the virgin Mary. He perfectly obeyed his heavenly Father, lived a sinless life, performed miraculous signs, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, arose bodily from the dead on the third day, and ascended into heaven. As the mediatorial King, he is seated at the right hand of God the Father, exercising in heaven and on earth all of God’s sovereignty, and is our High Priest and righteous Advocate. We believe that salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved.

We believe that Christ, by his obedience and death, fully discharged the debt of all those who are justified. Inasmuch as Christ was given by the Father for us, and his obedience and punishment were accepted in place of our own, freely and not for anything in us, this justification is solely of free grace, in order that both the exact justice and the rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners.

We believe that this salvation, attested in all Scripture and secured by Jesus Christ, is applied to his people by the Holy Spirit. Sent by the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ and is present with and in believers.

We believe that those who have been saved by the grace of God through union with Christ by faith and through regeneration by the Holy Spirit enter the kingdom of God and delight in the blessings of the new covenant: the forgiveness of sins, the inward transformation that awakens a desire to glorify, trust, and obey God, and the prospect of the glory yet to be revealed.

We believe that God’s new covenant people have already come to the heavenly Jerusalem; they are already seated with Christ in the heavenlies. This universal church is manifest in local churches of which Christ is the only Head; thus each “local church” is, in fact, the church, the household of God, the assembly of the living God, and the pillar and foundation of the truth.

We believe that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ordained by the Lord Jesus himself.

We believe in the personal, glorious, and bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ with his holy angels, when he will exercise his role as final Judge and his kingdom will be consummated. We believe in the bodily resurrection of both the just and the unjust—the unjust to judgment and eternal conscious punishment in hell, as our Lord himself taught, and the just to eternal blessedness in the presence of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb, in the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness.

The Bible, being inspired by the Holy Spirit and without error, is the final authority concerning divinely revealed truth, morality, and the proper conduct of mankind.  We look to the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Book of Church Order of the Presbyterian Church in America, and the First Presbyterian Church Session as the final interpretive authority for the application of First Presbyterian Church’s faith, doctrine, practice, policy, and discipline.