Confession of Faith
Confession of Faith
We, the members of Faith Memorial Baptist Church, do enact and establish the following articles to which we voluntarily subscribe and submit ourselves.
The Bible
We believe the Holy Bible, consisting of the sixty-six canonical books of the Old and New Testaments, to be the inspired Word of God. We believe this inspiration to be verbal (extending to every word), plenary (equally in all parts), inerrant (incapable of error), and infallible (incapable of being wrong) in the original writings. We believe that the Bible is our sufficient, supreme, and final authority in faith and life.
The Godhead
We believe that there is one, and only one, true and living God; that He is the Creator, and that He is infinite in every excellence. We believe in the Triune nature of God; that in the unity of the Godhead there are three distinct Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three Persons are co-eternal and co-equal in every divine perfection, and that they have distinct but harmonious offices in the work of creation, providence, and salvation.
We believe in God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. We rejoice that He concerns Himself mercifully in the affairs of all mankind, that He hears and answers prayer, and that He saves from sin and death all who come to Him through Jesus Christ.
We believe in the absolute Deity and full humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin. He lived a sinless life and died for our redemption. He physically rose from the dead and ascended into heaven and is now at the right hand of the Father as Lord, only Mediator, High Priest, and Intercessor. His return will be personal, pre-millennial, and imminent in order to consummate His work of redemption.
We believe that the Holy Spirit is God, and that He is a divine Person, equal with God the Father, and God the Son, and of the same nature; who, in His relationship to the unbelieving world, convicts of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; and that He bears witness of the truth in preaching and testimony; that He is the Agent of the New Birth; that He seals, endues, guides, teaches, witnesses, sanctifies, and helps the believer.
Creation
We believe in the direct creation by God in six solar days, of the physical universe, all spirit beings, man, and lower forms of life, without the process of evolution; and also, that the early chapters of Genesis are literal and accurate history.
Satan
We believe that Satan is a personal being. He was created a perfect and holy being, but through pride, rebelled against God, thus becoming completely corrupt in character. He was a murderer from the beginning; is a liar and the father of lies. He is described in Scripture as the god of this age, the accuser of the brethren, and the prince of this world. Satan and his demons possess great power, but they are limited by the sovereign will of God. He perverts the Scriptures, opposes the work of God, hinders the Gospel, and works lying miracles (wonders). He and the demons have already been judged and someday will be cast into the lake of fire to be tormented day and night, forever and ever.
Man
We believe that man was created in the image of God without sin on the sixth day. Although man was created in innocence, he deliberately chose to sin, plunging all of mankind into spiritual and physical death. Therefore, the entire human race sinned in Adam. The consequence of this fact is that all men are totally depraved and inheritors of Adam’s fallen nature and under the just condemnation of God. All people are incapable of pleasing God and incurably sinners by nature and choice. Therefore, man is utterly unable to redeem himself from the bondage of sin.
Salvation
We believe that the salvation of sinners is entirely a work of God’s grace. All sinners must be born again to be saved. This new birth is known as regeneration and is wrought by the agency of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God, whereby we become partakers of the divine nature. Although salvation occurs in a moment, the Bible speaks of being saved from the penalty of sin (justification), the power of sin (sanctification), and eventually the presence of sin (glorification). The basis of our salvation is the substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ, His burial, and His resurrection and appearance from the dead. Our redemption and forgiveness of sins are only through the blood of Christ. The death of Christ on the cross was sacrificial, vicarious (on our behalf), and propitiatory (our satisfaction of the wrath of God). When a sinner has repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, he is declared righteous and credited with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. We believe that good works are a consequence of saving faith but never the cause of our salvation. We believe that a truly born-again believer can never lose his eternal life because the power of God keeps him.
Church
We believe that the Church, the body of Christ, is a spiritual organism made up of all born-again believers of this present age; that it was constituted and empowered by the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost; that it was founded upon Christ; purchased with His blood; and that its mission is to make disciples throughout the world. We also believe in local, visible churches as taught and defined in the New Testament Scriptures. A New Testament church is a body of believers in Christ, baptized by immersion, associated by covenant of faith under the direction of Christ for worship, instruction, fellowship, prayer, and the spread of Christ’s gospel. There are two New Testament offices in a local church, the pastor (also known as elder, bishop, or overseer) and the deacon. Each office has specific New Testament qualifications. We believe that every believer should be an active participant in a local church where he may exercise his spiritual giftedness. Each member of the local church should contribute voluntarily and joyfully as God has prospered him. The local church is autonomous, under the administration of Christ, in the handling of its own affairs and in determining its own relationship; that its relationship with other ecclesiastical bodies is one of fellowship only.
Ordinances
We believe that Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, to show forth in a solemn and beautiful picture faith in the crucified, buried and risen Savior, with its effect in death to sin and resurrection to a new life; that it is prerequisite to the privileges of church membership. The only proper subjects of Christian baptism are those who do actually profess repentance towards God, faith in, and obedience to our Lord Jesus. The Lord’s Supper is a commemoration of the Lord’s death to be observed until He comes; that the elements—the bread and the fruit of the vine—are only symbols of His broken body and shed blood, and that our observance is a pictorial testimony of the believer’s fellowship with the Crucified Savior and should be preceded by self-judgment.
The Walk of Believers
We believe that we are to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which we have been called, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit in order that we should not fulfill the lusts of the flesh; but the flesh, being in us to the end of our earthly pilgrimage needs, to be constantly put to death, or it will surely manifest its presence to the dishonor of the Name of Christ.
We believe that the relationship of one believer to another in the Church, which is the body of Christ, should not be impaired by contentions and that we are responsible to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, rising above all sectarian prejudices and denominational barriers and loving one another with a pure heart fervently.
Human Sexuality
We believe that God has commanded that no intimate sexual activity be engaged in outside of a marriage between one man and one woman. We believe that any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, transvestism, bisexuality, bestiality, incest, fornication, adultery, and pornography are sinful perversions of God’s gift of sexuality. We believe that God disapproves of and forbids any attempt to alter one’s gender by surgery or appearance.
The Family
We believe that God has ordained the family as a foundational institution of human society. A family is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption. The Bible defines marriage as the unique one-flesh relationship between one man and one woman created by a covenant that lasts until death. God designed the marriage relationship for the purposes of procreation, companionship, sexual purity, and to picture the mystical relationship between Christ and His Church. The Bible clearly teaches that all sexual relationships outside of marriage are sinful and condemned by God. The Scriptures teach that the wife’s role in marriage is to submit to her husband’s leadership, while the husband’s role is to love his wife as Christ loved the Church. The Bible teaches that children are a special blessing from God. Children are to honor and obey their parents, who are to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
The Lord’s Day
We believe that the first day of the week is the Lord’s Day, and is a Christian institution that is to be kept sacred for spiritual purposes insofar as is possible on the part of the individual believer. It commemorates the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. It is a time for the public gathering of believers, for public worship, and for spiritual growth.
The Righteous & the Wicked
We believe that the souls that have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation do at death immediately pass into His presence, and there remain in conscious bliss until the resurrection of the body at His coming, when soul and body reunited shall be forever with Him in glory; but the souls of unbelievers remain after death in conscious misery until the final Judgment of the Great White Throne at the close of the millennium, when soul and body reunited shall be cast into the Lake of Fire, not to be annihilated, but to be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power.
The Second Coming
We believe in the imminent coming of Christ for the Church: to be followed by a period called the Great Tribulation; after which He will return with His saints to this earth, where He will sit on the throne of David, and subdue all enemies and reign in righteousness for a thousand years; and that after this shall be the Judgment of the Great White Throne when the wicked dead shall be raised and condemned to eternal punishment in the lake of fire which is the second death. The righteous shall then enjoy eternal glory with God.
Address
Faith Memorial Baptist Church
6801 Iron Bridge Road
North Chesterfield VA, 23234
Phone
(804) 921-0287