We believe God is one Being existing in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.¹ God is the Sovereign, the Creator, and the Sustainer of all things.² God is the source and the end of all truth.³ Jesus Christ is the eternal begotten Son of God,⁴ conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary,⁵ fully God and fully man.⁶ Christ, having accomplished a perfect, substitutional, sacrificial, and atoning work in His life and death,⁷ now lives as resurrected and ascended Lord to act as intercessor and mediator before God on behalf of all believers.⁸

We believe that the Scriptures, consisting of the Old and New Testaments, are the inspired and written word of God, inerrant in their original writings, the infallible authority by which He directs and governs all our activities. The Scriptures are in and of themselves the basis for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in godly living.⁹

¹ Deuteronomy 6:4; Matthew 3:16-17; 28:19; John 1:14, 18; 1 Corinthians 8:4, 6; 2 Corinthians 13:14; Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:2-3.

² Genesis 1:1; Nehemiah 9:6; Romans 1:20; 11:36.

³ Proverbs 1:7; Colossians 2:3; 1 Timothy 1:17.

⁴ John 1:1; 3:16; 8:58; 1 Timothy 2:5.

⁵ Luke 1:27-30.

⁶ Galatians 4:4.

^{7 Hebrews 4:15; 7:26; 9:14; 10:14.}

⁸ Romans 8:34; 1 Corinthians 15:3-4; Hebrews 7:25.

⁹ Isaiah 8:20; Matthew 4:4; Luke 16:29-30; 24:27, 44; 2 Timothy 3:15-16; Hebrews 1:1-2; 2 Peter 1:21.

We believe that man was created in the image of God as a rational, moral, and spiritual being.¹⁰ Man sinned in Adam and fell with him in his first transgression into a state of death and separation from God.¹¹ Man’s fall affected him spiritually, intellectually, and physically.¹² He is restored and reconciled only by the renewing grace of the Holy Spirit and the cleansing blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.¹³

We believe the doctrines of grace as taught in the Scriptures to be those truths essential for salvation and for the ability to experience freedom from one’s besetting sins.¹⁴ Men and women are saved and justified, that is, made right and acceptable before the holy God, by grace through faith in Christ alone.¹⁵ The free offer of peace with God is available to all who will come to Him, having their hearts prepared and opened by the Holy Spirit to respond to the offer of salvation.¹⁶ Once justified¸ adopted, and set apart by God’s Spirit, believers are kept faithful and obedient to Christ not by mere willpower but by the supernatural power of God who saves them for all eternity.¹⁷

¹⁰ Genesis 1:27; 1 Corinthians 15:42-49; Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10.

¹¹ Romans 5:12-19.

¹² Genesis 2:17; 6:5; Jeremiah 17:9; Romans 3:10-19; Titus 1:15

¹³ Ezekiel 36:26-27; John 3:16; 14:6; Ephesians 2:13; Hebrews 13:12; Titus 3:5, 7; 1 John 1:7; Revelation 1:5.

¹⁴ John 14:6; Romans 1:16.

¹⁵ Romans 3:22-28; 4:5-8.

¹⁶ John 6:37; Acts 26:18; 1 Corinthians 2:12; Ephesians 1:17-18; 2:14; Titus 3:5.

¹⁷ John 10:28-29; Romans 8:28-30; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Philippians 1:6; 2:13; 1 Peter 1:5, 9.

We believe that our sexuality and its expression were designed by God at creation and that our sexuality and its expression were part of God’s original and good design for mankind, and is clearly communicated to us in the Scriptures.¹⁸ Male and female were both created in God’s image,¹⁹ and we affirm that God’s perfect design for all sexual activity is between one man and one woman in the context of the marriage bond.²⁰ We recognize that, as a consequence of the Fall, all men and women are sexually broken and thus relate in twisted ways to God, self, others, and nature.²¹ Therefore, all expressions of sexual activity outside of the bond of marriage are sinful and are a distortion of God’s good design. This includes all involvement with pornography, sexual fantasy, sexual addictions, adultery, homosexuality, gender distortions and any other sexual activity outside of marriage. All sexual sin grieves God and is offensive to His Holiness, and all sexual sin ultimately harms people, whether it is homosexual or heterosexual sin.²²

We believe that homosexuality is not what God wills for human beings made in His image. We affirm that both homosexual desire and behavior are expressions of mankind’s fallenness, and like all other types of sexual sin, needs to be confessed, renounced and forsaken by those who would be followers of Jesus Christ.²³ We believe that God has always called men and women out of homosexuality or other sexual sin patterns and into the new life of His kingdom through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.²⁴ Thus any attempt to claim, cultivate, or promote a gay identity for oneself is out of place in a confessing Christian since it necessarily competes with the holy identity in Christ that every believer has been given and must claim by faith.²⁵ We believe that Christ gives to all who seek it a growing freedom from the compulsive pull of all sorts of sinful sexual fantasy and behavior.²⁶ This does not preclude the possibility of serious lapses of love and obedience on the part of those who truly believe, but such must be evaluated in light of the ordinary path and process of sanctification in which God places all of His children.²⁷ Such failure on the part of believers can never be taken as license to abolish the call to holiness or to allow a reinterpretation of the Scriptures that permits a “gay Christian” theology.

We believe the Church is the primary instrument God has chosen to use in ministering the reconciliation and wholeness Christ won at the cross.²⁸ At the same time, believing that the Lord takes up all kinds of instruments into His hand for the perfecting of His people, we are thankful for genuine help for people struggling with sexual sin from whatever quarter it comes.²⁹

²⁸ 1 Corinthians 12:12-13; Ephesians 1:10, 22-23; 4:11-16; Colossians 1:18.

²⁹ Luke 9:49-50; Philippians 1:18.