Skip to content

Statement of faith

  • Know what you believe, and know how to defend that belief in love.
  • Value specific and absolute truth of the whole counsel of God.
  • This statement of faith is personal, not corporate, in focus.
  • If you are uncertain in faith, the lowest common denominator of doctrine leads to a spiralling decay of truth.

Scripture

Where a person stands on the authority of Scripture divides doctrine more sharply than anything else, and it is an essential truth.

What is scripture

  • The 66 books consisting of the Old and New Testament

I hold to the 66 books of the Old and New Testament as the complete, closed canon of Scripture — nothing to be added, nothing taken away. It is one unified story across two testaments, written by many hands over many centuries, yet with one Author behind it: 2 Timothy 3:16 (ESV) — "All Scripture is breathed out by God."

Scripture is the infallible word of God

  • Scripture, in its original writing, is without error and fully trustworthy in everything it affirms.

Because Scripture is God-breathed, it carries God's own authority and cannot fail: 2 Peter 1:20-21 (ESV) — "no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation... men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." Psalm 119:160 (ESV) says plainly, "the sum of your word is truth." I take that as my starting point, not a conclusion I arrive at after everything else — Scripture judges my reasoning; my reasoning does not get to judge Scripture.

Scripture alone is the revelation of truth

  • The Bible is the final authority for what I believe and how I live — above tradition, feeling, or personal experience.

Tradition, experience, and reason all have a place, but none of them sit in judgment over Scripture — Scripture sits in judgment over them. The Bereans were commended for testing even an apostle's teaching against the text itself: Acts 17:11 (ESV) — "they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so." Isaiah 8:20 (ESV) puts the test bluntly: "To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn."

One God in Three

The nature of God as Scripture reveals Him is the second such dividing line, and likewise essential.

I believe in one God, eternally existing in three distinct persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — each fully God, co-equal and co-eternal, yet one in essence, not three gods. Deuteronomy 6:4 (ESV) states the oneness plainly — "The LORD our God, the LORD is one" — while the baptismal command names three persons under a single name: Matthew 28:19 (ESV) — "baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." This is a mystery Scripture states rather than fully explains, and I hold it as Scripture gives it, not as I might simplify it.

God the Father

  • The Father is the first person of the Trinity, Creator and sovereign over all, and Father to those who believe in His Son.

All things come from the Father and exist for Him, and Paul marks off His role from the Son's in the same breath: 1 Corinthians 8:6 (ESV) — "for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist." He is no distant deity, but a Father who holds on to those who are His: John 10:29 (ESV) — "no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand."

God the Son

  • Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, virgin-born, sinless, crucified for sin, bodily risen, ascended, and coming again.

The Son is God become flesh, not a created being: John 1:1,14 (ESV) — "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."

He emptied Himself to take on humanity while remaining fully God: Philippians 2:6-8.

His death and bodily resurrection are not one option among many but the substance of the gospel itself: 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 (ESV) — "Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures... he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures."

He ascended visibly and will return the same way He left: Acts 1:11.

God the Holy Spirit

  • The Holy Spirit is a person, not a force — He indwells, seals, convicts, and empowers every believer.

The Spirit is the promised Helper who teaches and reminds believers of Christ's own words: John 14:26. Every believer is sealed by Him as a guarantee of what's to come: Ephesians 1:13-14. He convicts the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8), and empowers believers to be Christ's witnesses (Acts 1:8) — a transformation I have watched Him work in named, particular lives, my own among them.

Creation

Understanding the nature of creation is a foundational belief for a wise worldview.

Creation is a literal and deliberate act of God

  • God created all things out of nothing, by His word, with purpose — not by unguided natural process.

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1, ESV) is a historical claim, not a poem to be explained away. God spoke, and what He spoke was not assembled from material already lying to hand: Hebrews 11:3 (ESV) — "By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible." Faith is how that is apprehended; it is not how it was done. All things, visible and invisible, were created through Christ and for Him: Colossians 1:16.

Creation is 6 days

  • God created the heavens, the earth, and all life in six literal days, and rested on the seventh.

Genesis 1 marks each day with "there was evening and there was morning" — ordinary-day language, not an epoch. The fourth commandment ties the Sabbath directly back to this as a historical week, not a metaphor: Exodus 20:11 (ESV) — "in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day." I take the plain reading as the intended one.

The fall and Sin

  • Adam's disobedience brought sin and death into the human race; every person since is born under sin's condemnation and needs a savior.

What began as one man's disobedience in the garden (Genesis 3) became the condition of every person since: Romans 5:12 (ESV) — "sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned." No one is exempted by their own effort: Romans 3:23 (ESV) — "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Left there, the wage owed is death: Romans 6:23. That verse doesn't end there, and neither does this statement — see Salvation, below.

Love

Love as our Creator reveals it is not what man arrives at on his own. We would not know love without God, and we are called to walk in it.

  • God is love

"God is love" (1 John 4:8,16, ESV) is not a sentiment but a definition — love isn't a rule God happens to keep, it's who He is, and it's the reason there's a gospel at all: John 3:16 (ESV) — "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son." What that love looks like in practice is spelled out plainly: 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. Jesus made it the identifying mark of His followers, not doctrine alone: John 13:34-35 (ESV) — "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

Wisdom

We are called by God to seek wisdom.

  • True wisdom begins with reverence for God, not human cleverness, and He gives it freely to those who ask.

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10, ESV) — wisdom starts with who God is, not with how clever I can be. It's also freely offered, not hoarded for the naturally gifted: James 1:5 (ESV) — "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach." What the world calls foolish — a crucified Messiah — is where God's own wisdom is found: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25.

Salvation

  • I am saved by the grace of God alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone — not by anything I have done or could do.

This is the center of everything above. Because of sin, I owed a debt I could not pay myself, and God paid it: Romans 5:8 (ESV) — "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Salvation is not earned; it's received: Ephesians 2:8-9 (ESV) — "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." Titus 3:5 (ESV) says the same thing from the other direction — "not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy."

Belief, confession, and new life go together: Romans 10:9-10. And I hold this exclusively, not as one path among several: John 14:6 (ESV) — "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Justification

The section above says how I am saved. Justification names what God declares in saving me.

Declared righteous in Christ

  • Justification is a verdict, not a process — God declares me righteous the moment I trust Christ, and that verdict neither improves nor erodes with my performance.

Romans 5:1 (ESV) — "since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." The verb is Δικαιωθέντες (dikaiōthentes), from δικαιόω (dikaioō, G1344), which sits in the same word group as δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosunē, G1343), "righteousness". The whole group concerns standing — where a person is placed in relation to God.

Paul sets it in a courtroom and then empties the dock: Romans 8:33-34 (ESV) — "Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?" The charge fails because the Judge has already ruled. Hence Romans 8:1 (ESV) — "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

Righteousness credited, not achieved

  • The righteousness I stand in is Christ's, credited to me.

Romans 4:3-5 (ESV) uses an accounting word — Abraham "believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness" — and says who receives it: God "justifies the ungodly." Credited to an account that had nothing in it. Philippians 3:9 (ESV) says the same from the inside: "not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ." 2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV) states the exchange itself — "he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

Which is why effort cannot manufacture it: Galatians 2:16 (ESV) — "by works of the law no one will be justified."

God is just in justifying

  • God did not waive my sin in order to declare me righteous; He punished it in Christ.

An acquittal with no payment behind it would make the Judge corrupt. Romans 3:23-26 (ESV) answers that directly: all have sinned, and are "justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood... so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." The cross is what makes the verdict both merciful and lawful.

Sanctification

Justification settles where I stand with God. Sanctification is what He then does with the life that follows, and it is the part I am living in now.

Set apart, and being set apart

  • At the cross God declared me holy once for all; by His Spirit He is now making me holy in practice.

Hebrews 10:14 (ESV) holds both halves in a single sentence — "by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified." Perfected: finished, God's verdict over me. Being sanctified: unfinished, God's work in me. Neither cancels the other.

Scripture puts it among the things God has plainly willed for me: 1 Thessalonians 4:3 (ESV) — "this is the will of God, your sanctification." And it is His work to complete, not mine to sustain: 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 (ESV) — "may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely... He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it." Philippians 1:6 (ESV) says the same: "he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ."

Sanctified now, glorified then

  • Sanctification is this life's work; glorification is Christ finishing it when I see Him.

Romans 8:29-30 (ESV) runs the whole chain — foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified — and names the destination: "conformed to the image of his Son." Glorification is that conforming completed, and it happens at sight of Him: 1 John 3:2 (ESV) — "when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is."

The next verse turns that hope into present work: "everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure" (1 John 3:3). Sanctification does not earn glorification; the certainty of glorification is what drives sanctification. What glorification actually is, I take up below.

Walking in the Way

  • I grow by fixing on Christ Himself — knowing the Way is how I recognise stepping off it.

Jesus did not say He points out the way; He said He is it (John 14:6). So the walk is a person, and the instruction for it is a direction of gaze: Hebrews 12:1-2 (ESV) — "lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely... looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith." Stop looking and the pressure runs the other way: Romans 12:2 (ESV) — "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind."

Much Christian energy goes into cataloguing error. I hold the emphasis the other way round: know Christ well enough and error announces itself. A man who knows the road knows when the ground under his feet has changed, and he knows it without having memorised every wrong turning. Discernment grows out of familiarity with Christ, not out of a separate study of counterfeits.

The resolve for that walk was His before it was ever asked of me. The Servant of Isaiah 50:7 (ESV) says, "I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame" — and Luke reports it of Jesus in the event itself: "he set his face to go to Jerusalem" (Luke 9:51, ESV).

The house God is building

  • God lays the bricks; I can keep His work or pull it down, and the maturing of it depends on which.

The building is His, and any of it I attempt alone comes to nothing: Psalm 127:1 (ESV) — "Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain." The foundation is fixed and not mine to choose: 1 Corinthians 3:11 (ESV) — "no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ."

I picture the walk as a house going up on that foundation. God lays each brick: a conviction taken to heart, a habit put to death, a lie about Him replaced with the truth. What James 1:23-25 (ESV) describes is a brick coming straight back down — the man sees his own face in the mirror of the Word "and at once forgets what he was like." Nothing was built, because nothing was kept. Do that often enough and the house never reaches any height. The foundation is never at risk; the house standing on it is what I can waste.

Reward for the believer

  • A believer's works are examined for reward at the judgment seat of Christ — a separate event, with a separate outcome, from the final judgment of all.

The same passage that names the foundation goes on to test what was built on it, and the man whose work burns "will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire" (1 Corinthians 3:15, ESV). 2 Corinthians 5:10 (ESV) names the setting: "we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil." This is a son's work being assessed, not a trial to determine whether he is a son: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1, ESV). The robe I will stand in was washed in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:14), and any reward I receive is grace crowning what grace produced. It happens when He comes for His own (1 Corinthians 4:5), a thousand years before the great white throne (Revelation 20:5). I work through the Scripture behind this, and where the reading is contested, in The Judgment Seat of Christ.

Glorification

Justified is what God has already declared. Sanctified is what He is doing. Glorified is the one part of the sequence I have seen none of yet.

Already spoken over me

  • Glorification is as certain as my justification, because God speaks of both as settled.

Romans 8:30 (ESV) — "those whom he justified he also glorified." The verb is ἐδόξασεν (edoxasen), from δοξάζω (doxazō, G1392) — and it is aorist, the same past tense Paul has just used for called and justified in the same sentence. The finished thing he describes is still ahead of me. He writes it as done because God's purpose is not in question, and I take the certainty at the strength he gives it. Titus 3:7 (ESV) makes the same link from the other end — "being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life."

Against that, present suffering is real but not the final measure: Romans 8:18 (ESV) — "the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

A body like His

  • Glorification includes my body — raised imperishable and made like Christ's own risen body.

1 Corinthians 15:42-44 sets it out in four contrasts: sown perishable, raised imperishable; sown in dishonour, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body. The pattern is a specific one: "we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven" (1 Corinthians 15:49), and Philippians 3:20-21 (ESV) names Him — Christ "will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body."

So what I am waiting for is not release from the body but the redemption of it: Romans 8:23 (ESV) — we "groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." The change itself is instantaneous: 1 Corinthians 15:51-53 (ESV) — "we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet." See End times below for where that falls.

The finishing of the work

  • At glorification God completes what He began in me, and sin is gone from me entirely.

2 Corinthians 3:18 (ESV) describes the present stretch — "we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another." Degree by degree now; glorification is the last degree. Colossians 3:4 (ESV) fixes when: "When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory."

What arrives that day is a people with nothing left in them to forgive: Ephesians 5:27 (ESV) — Christ presents the church to Himself "without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish."

The house is finished on that day, and the builder was never me (Psalm 127:1).

End times

  • There is a prophesied literal seven year tribulation period.

I hold a dispensational, pretribulational view of end-times prophecy. The church will be caught up to meet Christ before the tribulation begins — a real, physical event, not a metaphor for death: 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (ESV) — "the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air."

What follows is a literal seven-year tribulation, the "one week" of Daniel 9:27 (ESV), a time of judgment on a world that has rejected God.

It ends with Christ's visible, physical return to earth — not a spiritual metaphor but a King coming to reign: Revelation 19:11-16.

He then reigns for a literal thousand years (Revelation 20:1-6), after which comes final judgment for all who rejected Him (Revelation 20:11-15) and the eternal state — a new heaven and a new earth where God dwells with His people forever: Revelation 21:1-4. See the prophecy studies for the fuller working-out of this.