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ARTICLES OF FAITH OF MARYBOROUGH BIBLE BAPTIST CHURCH

 

1. PREAMBLE

We believe that the Holy Bible as originally written was verbally and plenarily inspired and the product of Spirit-controlled men and therefore is without any admixture of error for its matter. We believe the Bible to be the centre of true Christian unity and the supreme standard by which all-human conduct, creeds and opinions shall be tried. (2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Peter 1:19-21)

 

2. THE TRUE GOD

We believe there is one and only living true God, an infinite, sovereign spirit, the Maker and Supreme Ruler of Heaven and earth; inexpressibly glorious in holiness, and worthy of all honour, trust, confidence and love. In the unity of the Godhead, there are three persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, equal in every divine perfection and executing distinct but harmonious offices in the great work of redemption. (Exodus 20:2-3, 1 Corinthians 8:6, Revelation 4:11)

 

3. THE HOLY SPIRIT

We believe that the Holy Spirit is a divine person, equal with God the Father and God the Son and of the same nature, that he was active in creation, that in His relation to the unbelieving world, he restrains the evil one, until God’s purpose is fulfilled. He convicts of sin, of righteousness and of judgement. He bears witness to the truth of the Gospel in preaching and testimony. He, also, is the agent in the new birth. He seals, endues, guides, teaches, witnesses, sanctifies and helps the believer. The gifts of tongues and healings, were sign gifts, until the Scriptures were completed. The gifts ceased at that time. (John 14:26, Luke 1:35, Acts 5:32, Ephesians 1:13-14)

 

4. THE DEVIL, OR SATAN

We believe in the personality of Satan, that he is the unholy god of this age and the ruler of all the powers of darkness and is destined to the judgement of an eternal justice in the lake of fire (Matthew 4:11, 2 Corinthians 4:4, Revelation 20:10)

 

5. CREATION

We believe the Genesis account of creation, as being neither allegory nor myth, but a literal, historic account of the direct, immediate creative acts of God, without any evolutionary process, that man, spirit, soul and body was created by a direct work of God and not from previously existing forms of life and that all men are descended from the historical Adam and Eve, first parents of the entire human race. (Genesis chapters 1 and 2, Colossians 1:16-17, John 1:3)

 

6. THE FALL OF MAN

We believe that man was created in innocence, under the law of his Maker, but by voluntary transgression, Adam fell from his sinless and happy state and all men sinned in him, in consequence of which all men are totally depraved and are partakers of Adam’s fallen nature and are sinners by nature and conduct and therefore are under just condemnation, without defence or excuse. (Genesis 3:1-6, 24, Romans 3:10-19, 5:12,19.)

 

 

 

7. THE VIRGIN BIRTH

We believe that Jesus was begotten of the Holy Ghost in a miraculous manner, born of Mary, a virgin, as no other man was ever born or can ever be born of woman in the same manner. Jesus is both the Son of God and God the Son. (Genesis 3:15, Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:18-25, Luke 1:35, John 1:14, Hebrews 1:8)

 

8. THE ATONEMENT FOR SIN.

We believe that the salvation of sinners is divinely initiated and wholly of grace through the mediatorial offices of the Son of God. Who, by the appointment of the Father, freely took upon himself our nature, yet without sin, honoured, the divine law by his personal obedience and his death, made a full and vicarious atonement for our sins, that his atonement consisted not in setting us an example by His death as a martyr, but was a voluntary substitution os himself in the sinner’s place, the just dying for the unjust, Christ, the Lord, bearing our sin in His own body on the tree. (Ephesians 2:8, Acts 15:11, Romans 3:24-25, John 3:16, Matthew 18:11, Philippians 2:7-8, Hebrews 2:14, Isaiah 53:4-7, 1 John 4:10, 1 Corinthians 15:3, 2 Corinthians 5:21)

 

9. RESSURECTION AND PRIESTHOOD.

We believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ, in His ascension into heaven, where He now sits at the right hand of the Father, as our High Priest. (Matthew 28:6-7, Luke 24:39, John 20:27, 1 Corinthians 15:4)

 

10. GRACE IN THE NEW CREATION

We believe that in order to be saved, sinners must be born again, that the new birth is a new creation in Christ Jesus, that it is instantaneous and not a process, that in the new birth the one dead in trespasses and in sins is made a partaker of the divine nature and receives eternal life, the free gift of God, in a manner above our comprehension, solely by the power of the Holy Spirit in connection with divine truth, so as to secure our voluntary obedience to the gospel that its proper evidence appears in the holy fruits of repentance, faith and newness of life. (John 3:3, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 1 John 3:6-7, Acts 16:30-33, 2 Peter 1:4, Romans 6:23, Ephesians 2:1, 2 Corinthians 5:19, Colossians 2:13, John 3:8)

 

11. JUSTIFICATION

We believe that justification is the judicial act of God, whereby He declares us to be righteous, through faith in Christ Jesus, that justification includes the pardon of sin and the imputation of God’s righteousness, that it is bestowed, not in consideration of any works of righteousness which we have dine, but solely through faith in the Redeemer’s blood. (Acts 13:39, Isaiah 53:11, Zechariah 13:1, 2 Corinthians 5:18-21, Romans 5:1 and 9, 8:1.)

 

12. REPENTENCE

We believe that repentance is a change of mind and purpose toward God, prompted by the Holy Spirit, that is characterised by godly sorrow for sin as offensive to God and ruinous to the soul and that true repentance is inseparably related to true faith. (Luke 13:13, 15:7, Acts 8:22, Romans 2:4, 2 Corinthians 7:10, Acts 20:21)

 

 

 

13. FAITH AND SALVATION

We believe that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is the only condition of salvation. (Acts 16:31)

 

14. SANCTIFICATION

We believe that sanctification is the divine setting apart of the believer unto God, accomplished on a threefold manner. First, an eternal act of God based upon redemption in Christ, establishing the believer in a position of holiness at the moment he trusts the Saviour. Second, a continuing process in the saint as the Holy Spirit applies the Word of God to the life. Third, the final accomplishment of this process at the Lord’s return. (Hebrews 10:10-14, John 17:17, 2 Corinthians 3:18, Ephesians 5:25-26, 1 Thessalonians 4:3-4, 5:23-24, Ephesians 5:27, 1 John 3:2, Jude 24-25, Revelation 22:11)

 

15. ADOPTION

We believe that adoption is the gracious act, whereby the Father, for the sake of Christ, places new believers into the honoured position of mature sons, in contrast with regeneration, whereby the believer receives the nature of God and becomes a child of God. The full benefit of the position accorded by adoption as the sons of God awaits the glorification of the believer at the coming of the Lord. (Ephesians 1:5, Galatians 4:1-7, Ephesians 1:13-14, 1 John 3:1-2.)

 

16. THE SECURITY OF THE SAINTS.

We believe that all who are truly born again are kept by God the Father for Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6, John 10:28-29, Romans 8:35-39, Jude 1)

 

17. THE CHURCH

We believe in the unity of all true believers in the Church which is the Body of Christ, which was established of the day of Pentecost and that all believers from Pentecost to the Rapture, both Jews and Gentiles, are added to this church by the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

 

We believe that this Church is manifested through the local church which is a congregation of immersed believers, associated by covenant of faith and fellowship of the gospel, observing the ordinances of Christ, governed by His laws, exercising the gifts, rights and privileges invested in them by His Word and that its officers are Pastors and deacons, whose qualifications, claims and duties are clearly defined in the Scripture. We believe the true mission of the church is the faithful witnessing of Christ to all men as we have the opportunity. We hold that the local church has the absolute right of self-government, free from the interference of any hierarchy of individuals or organisations, that the one and only superintendent is Christ, through the Holy Spirit, that it is scriptural for true churches to cooperated with each other on contending for the faith and for the furtherance of the gospel, that each local church is the sole judge of the measure and method of its cooperation and that on all matters of membership, of polity of government, of discipline, of benevolence, the will of the local church is final. (Ephesians 3:1-6, 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, Acts 2:41-42, 1 Corinthians 11:2, Ephesians 1:22-23, 4:11, Acts 20:17-28, 1 Timothy 3:1-7, Colossians 1:18, Ephesians 5:23-24, Acts 15:13-18)

 

 

18. BAPTISM AND THE LORD’S SUPPER

We believe that Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water, under the authority of the local church, to show forth in a solemn and beautiful emblem our faith in the crucified, buried and risen Saviour, through whom we died to sin and rose to a new life, that baptism is prerequisite to the privilege of church membership. We believe that the Lord’s Supper in the commemoration of His death until He come and should be preceded always by solemn self-examination. We believe that the Biblical order of the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper and that participants should be immersed believers. (Acts 8:36,38-39, John 3:23, Romans 6:3-5, Matthew 3:16, Colossians 2:12, 1 Corinthians 11:23-28, Matthew 28:19-20, Acts 2:41-42)

 

19. SEPARATION

We believe in obedience to the Biblical commands to separate entirely from worldliness and ecclesiastical apostasy unto God. (2 Corinthians 6:16-7:1, 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10, 1 Timothy 6:3-5, Romans 16:17, 2 John 9-11)

 

20. CIVIL GOVERNMENT

We believe that civil government is of divine appointment for the interests and good order of human society, that magistrates are to be prayed for, consequently honoured and obeyed, except in things opposed to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only Lord of the conscience and the coming King of Kings. (Romans 13:1-7, 2 Samuel 23:3, Exodus 18:21-22, Acts 23:5, Matthew 22:21, Acts 5:29, 4:19-20, Daniel 3:17-18)

 

21. THE RAPTURE

We believe in the imminent, premillennial return of Christ for His Church and that at that moment the dead in Christ shall be raised first in glorified bodies and the living in Christ shall be given glorified bodies without tasting death and all shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air before the seventieth week of Daniel. (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, 1 Corinthians 15:42-44, 51-54, Philippians 3:20, Revelation 3:10)

 

22. THE RIGHTEOUS AND THE WICKED

We believe that there is a radical and essential difference between the righteous and the wicked, that only those who are justified by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and sanctified by the Spirit of our God are truly righteous in His esteem, while all such as continue in impenitence and unbelief are in His sight wicked and under the curse and this distinction holds among men both in and after death in the everlasting felicity of the saved and the everlasting conscious suffering of the lost in the lake of fire. (Malachi 3:18, Genesis 18:23, Romans 6:17-18, 1 John 5:19, Romans 7:6, 6:23, Proverbs 14:32, Luke 16:25, Matthew 25:34-41, John 8:21, Revelation 20:14-15)