New Life Baptist Church Core Beliefs

*Our beliefs are in accordance with the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

The Scriptures

We believe that men divinely inspired wrote the Holy Bible. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter.

The Godhead

There is one and only one living and true God, an intelligent, spiritual, and personal Being, the Creator, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe, infinite in holiness and all other perfections, to whom we owe the highest love, reverence, and obedience. He is revealed to us as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, each with distinct personal attributes, eternally existent, but without division of nature, essence or being.

God the Son (Jesus Christ)

We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ was conceived of the Holy Spirit without a human father, born of a virgin and is God and truly man.

God the Holy Spirit

We believe in the person and deity of the Holy Spirit, who is the divine interpreter of God's Word, who convicts the world of sin, and righteousness, and of judgment, who regenerates, and indwells every true believer, testifying of Christ, energizing, enlightening, and constraining in the way of holiness.

The Fall of Man

We believe, according to the teachings of Scripture, that man was created a moral being in the image of God after His likeness, but man by voluntary transgression fell from his original sinless state. In consequence, the whole human race was involved in guilt, making all mankind now sinners, depraved in nature, spiritually dead, subject to the powers of evil, void of holiness, positively inclined to evil, and hopeless apart from divine grace.

The Resurrection of Christ

We believe in the resurrection of the crucified body of Christ. That this body which was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures was a literal body consisting of flesh and bones. That He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God as the believer's High Priest and Advocate.

The Way of Salvation

We believe that personal salvation, according to the Scriptures, is wholly by grace through faith plus nothing. This salvation of the undeserving sinner is based upon the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ who became the sinner's substitute before God, shed His blood and died a propitiatory (or wrath-satisfying) sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.

The Security of the Believer

We believe that all born-again persons are eternally secure in Christ since the Scriptures teach that our justification before God rests alone upon the finished work of Christ.

The Church

We believe that the Church, the body of Christ, is composed of all those who have true faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that the local church assembly is a congregation of baptized believers, associated by the covenant of Christ, the true head of the Church. These ordinances of Christ are baptism by immersion and the Lord's Supper.

The Obligation to Holiness

We believe that all believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are called to a life of separation from the world, to which they have been crucified by the death of Christ, and should abstain from worldly lusts and such practices and habits as will retard spiritual growth or cause others to stumble and thus bring reproach upon the cross of Christ. The believer is called upon to walk worthily, keeping himself unspotted from the world, zealous of good works.

The Evangelization of the World

We believe in the evangelization of the world, placing emphasis upon the task of reaching the individual with the gospel and its implications, and that no humanitarian and philanthropic schemes may be substituted for the preaching of the cross.

Bible INterpretation

We believe in accepting the literal teaching of the Word. "When the plain sense of the Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense." Therefore, every declaration is to be taken in its primary, ordinary, literal and most obvious meaning unless the facts of the context and the well-defined laws of language clearly indicate the terms either to be symbolic or figurative and not literal. Whatever is not literal must be explained in the light of other passages that are literal.

Creation

We believe in the Genesis account of a literal six-day period of creation which teaches that all things found their origin in God who created by His own fiat instantaneously every living thing after its kind.

Eschatology (Last Things)

We believe that God, in His own time and in His own way, will bring the world to its appropriate end. According to His promise, Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly in glory to the earth; the dead will be raised; and Christ will judge all men in righteousness. The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell, the place of everlasting punishment. The righteous in their resurrected and glorified bodies will receive their reward and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord.

Satan

We believe in the reality of the person of Satan, "that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the world."

Marriage and Gender

We believe God created only two genders: male and female. These genders (determined at conception) are biological in nature and are an immutable part of one's identity. We believe God created marriage as a loving bond between one man and one woman only. This bond is to last until death does them part. We believe that any sexual act outside of marriage (which includes adultery, fornication, and homosexuality) is a sin in the eyes of God.