A Summary of Christ the King Church's Doctrinal Commitments
Christ the King Church's Statement of Faith is intended to be a robust, foundational document that unifies our elders and members. The Scripture is our final authority in faith and in practice, therefore our Statement of Faith is based on the Bible's teachings and includes many references to relevant Scriptures.
In addition to the following statement of faith, the elders of CTK affirm the London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689) and the Baptist Faith and Message (2000).
The Triune God
We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who know, love, and glorify one another. This one true and living God is infinitely perfect both in his love and in his holiness. He is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible, and is therefore worthy to receive all glory and adoration. Immortal and eternal, he perfectly and exhaustively knows the end from the beginning, sustains and sovereignly rules over all things, and providentially brings about his eternal good purposes to redeem a people for himself and restore his fallen creation, to the praise of his glorious grace.
Revelation
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. Moreover, this God is a speaking God who by his Spirit has graciously disclosed himself in human words: we believe that God has inspired the words preserved in the Scriptures, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, which are both record and means of his saving work in the world. 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.
The Fall
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 (physically, mentally, volitionally, emotionally, spiritually) and condemned finally and irrevocably to death — apart from God's own gracious intervention. The supreme need of all human beings is to be reconciled to the God under whose just and holy wrath we stand; the only hope of all human beings is the undeserved love of this same God, who alone can rescue us and restore us to himself.
God's Eternal Purpose
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.
The Gospel
We believe that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ — God's very wisdom. This good news centers on the cross and resurrection: Christ died for our sins and was raised according to the Scriptures. This good news is biblical, theological, historical, apostolic, and intensely personal — where it is received, believed, and held firmly, individual persons are saved.
The Redemption of Christ
We believe that the eternal Son 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.
We believe that by his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus Christ acted as our representative and substitute. On the cross he canceled sin, propitiated God, and, by bearing the full penalty of our sins, reconciled to God all those who believe. 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.
The Power of the Holy Spirit
We believe that this salvation is applied to his people by the Holy Spirit. Sent by the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and by his powerful and mysterious work regenerates spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance and faith. By the Spirit's agency, believers are renewed, sanctified, and adopted into God's family.
Marriage and Sexuality
God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. The term "marriage" has only one meaning: a covenant between one man and one woman, in a single exclusive union, by which their status changes from two individuals to one flesh as God joins them together.
God created sex as a gift to be enjoyed between husband and wife within the lifelong covenant of marriage. We believe that the exercise of sexual expression outside the biblical definition of marriage, in any manner, is sinful and contradictory to God's design for sexuality and marriage.
Regarding gender, God wonderfully and immutably creates each person as male or female. These two distinct, complementary genders together reflect the image and nature of God.
The Restoration of All Things
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, 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.