God has revealed, and so we believe...
From the time of the Apostles to today, Christians have laid out doctrine (beliefs) in definitive statements of
confession and creed. As those who know God, and are known by Him, we believe it is helpful to set forth a
summary of the cornerstone truths of our local church as guided by the authority of Scripture. Our Statement
of Faith shows unity in Christ and seeks to guard from error our church and those churches God uses us to
plant and influence. We believe these fallible human statements are faithful to the infallible, God-breathed
Scriptures, and that they are a solid foundation for our local church ministry and the eternal joy of more and
more people through Jesus Christ.
We hold to a God-centered, Christ-exalting, Spirit-empowered, gospel-proclaiming faith. Our aim is to see
more and more people become more and more like our Savior, Jesus Christ. We believe God is most glorified
as we enjoy Him, and gratefully and robustly participate in the ministry of disciple making by the power He
provides. All members of Calvary have affirmed this statement of faith, and by God's grace are seeking to
demonstrate their belief in these truths through their united lives.
Calvary Statement of Faith
1. Scripture, the Word of God Written
1.1 We believe that the Bible, consisting of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, is the infallible
Word of God, verbally inspired by God, and without error in the original manuscripts.
1.2 We believe that God’s intentions, revealed in the Bible, are the supreme and final authority in testing all
claims about what is true and what is right. In matters not addressed by the Bible, what is true and right is
assessed by criteria consistent with the teachings of Scripture.
1.3 We believe that the process of discovering the intention of God in the Bible is a humble and careful effort to
find in the language of Scripture what the human authors intended to communicate. Limited abilities, traditional
biases, personal sin, and cultural assumptions often obscure Biblical texts. Therefore, the work of the Holy Spirit,
and the gifts He has assigned for the common good of the church, are essential for right understanding of the
Bible. Prayer for His enablement accompanies a diligent effort to understand and apply God’s Word.
2. The Trinity, One God as Three Persons
We believe in one living, sovereign, and all-glorious God, eternally existing in three infinitely excellent Persons:
God the Father, fountain of all being; God the Son, eternally begotten, not made, without beginning, being of one
essence with the Father; and God the Holy Spirit, proceeding in the full, divine essence, as a Person, eternally
from the Father and the Son. Thus each Person in the Godhead is fully and completely God.
3. God’s Eternal Purpose and Election
3.1 We believe that God, from all eternity, in order to display the full extent of His glory for the eternal and ever-increasing enjoyment of all who love Him, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His will, freely and
unchangeably ordain and foreknow whatever comes to pass.
3.2 We believe that God upholds and governs all things – from galaxies to subatomic particles, from the forces of
nature to the movements of nations, and from the public plans of politicians to the secret acts of solitary
persons—all in accord with His eternal, all-wise purposes to glorify Himself, yet in such a way that He never sins,
nor ever condemns a person unjustly; but that His ordaining and governing all things is compatible with the moral
accountability of all persons created in His image.
4. God’s Creation of the Universe and Man
4.1 We believe that God created the universe, and everything in it, out of nothing, by the Word of His power.
God was pleased in creation to display His glory for the everlasting joy of the redeemed, from every tribe and
tongue and people and nation.
4.2 We believe that God directly created Adam from the dust of the ground, and Eve from his side. We believe
that Adam and Eve were the historical parents of the entire human race; that they were created male and female
equally in the image of God, without sin; that they were created to glorify their Maker, Ruler, Provider, and
Friend by trusting His all-sufficient goodness, admiring His infinite beauty, enjoying His personal fellowship, and
obeying His all-wise counsel; and that, in God’s love and wisdom, they were appointed differing and
complementary roles in marriage as a type of Christ and the church.
4.3 We believe that God designed marriage to be a picture of Christ’s love for His church. We believe that
marriage is the covenant commitment of one man and one woman in a single, exclusive, lifelong relationship and
that Scripture repeatedly provides warnings and illustrations of the heartache that follows when His good design
is exchanged for a sinful counterfeit.
4.4 We believe that God gave husbands and wives the gift of sex to joyfully express their union with one another
and to fill the earth with those who would worship his great Name. We believe that sexual expression outside of
marriage is sinful. Any deviation from God’s design for sex (such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality,
bisexuality, bestiality, incest, pornography, any attempt to change one’s gender, or disagreement with one’s God-given biological gender) is an expression of rebellion against God.
4.5 We believe that God offers redemption, restoration, and transformation to all who will confess and forsake
their sin and seek His mercy and forgiveness through Jesus Christ. We believe that every person must be
afforded compassion, love, kindness, respect, and dignity. Hateful and harassing behavior or attitudes directed
toward any individual are to be repudiated and are not in accord with Scripture or the doctrines of the church.
4.6 We believe that in order to preserve the function and integrity of the church as the local body of Christ, and
to provide a biblical role model to the church members and community, it is imperative that all persons
employed by the church in any capacity, or who serve as volunteers, should agree to and abide by this statement
on God’s creation, including marriage and sexuality.
5. Man’s Sin and fall from Fellowship with God
5.1 We believe that, although God created man morally upright, he was led astray from God’s Word and wisdom
by the subtlety of Satan’s deceit, and chose to take what was forbidden, and thus declare his independence from,
distrust for, and disobedience toward his all-good and gracious Creator. Thus, our first parents, by this sin, fell
from their original innocence and communion with God.
5.2 We believe God has subjected the creation to futility, and the entire human family is made justly liable to
untold miseries of sickness, decay, calamity, and loss. Thus all the adversity and suffering in the world is an echo
and a witness of the exceedingly great evil of moral depravity in the heart of mankind; and every new day of life
is a God-given, merciful reprieve from imminent judgment, pointing to repentance.
6. Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God
6.1 We believe that in the fullness of time God sent forth His eternal Son as Jesus the Messiah, conceived by the
Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary. We believe that, when the eternal Son became flesh, He took on a fully
human nature, so that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one Person,
without confusion or mixture. Thus the Person, Jesus Christ, was and is truly God and truly man, yet one Christ
and the only Mediator between God and man. Jesus is both the Son of God, and God the Son.
6.2 We believe that Jesus Christ lived without sin, though He endured the common infirmities and temptations of
human life. He preached and taught with truth and authority unparalleled in human history. He worked miracles,
demonstrating His divine right and power over all creation: dispatching demons, healing the sick, raising the
dead, stilling the storm, walking on water, multiplying loaves, and foreknowing what would befall Him and His
disciples, including the betrayal of Judas and the denial, restoration, and eventual martyrdom of Peter.
6.3 We believe that Jesus Christ suffered voluntarily in fulfillment of God’s redemptive plan, that He was crucified
under Pontius Pilate, that He died, was buried and on the third day rose from the dead to vindicate the saving
work of His life and death and to take His place as the invincible, everlasting Lord of glory. During forty days after
His resurrection, He appeared again and again, giving many compelling evidences of His bodily resurrection. He
then ascended bodily into heaven, where He is seated at the right hand of the Father, interceding for His people
on the basis of His all-sufficient sacrifice for sin, and reigning until He puts all His enemies under His feet.
7. The Saving Work of Christ
7.1 We believe that by His perfect obedience to God and by His suffering and death as the Lamb of God, Jesus
Christ obtained forgiveness of sins and the gift of perfect righteousness for all who trusted in God prior to the
cross and all who would trust in Christ thereafter. Through living a perfect life and dying in our place, the just for
the unjust, Christ absorbed our punishment, appeased the wrath of God against us, vindicated the righteousness
of God in our justification, and removed the condemnation of the law against us.
7.2 We believe that the atonement of Christ for sin warrants and impels a universal offering of the gospel to all
persons, so that to every person it may be truly said, “God gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believes
in Him might not perish but have eternal life.” Whosoever will may come for cleansing at this fountain, and
whoever does come, Jesus will not cast out.
8. The Saving Work of the Holy Spirit
8.1 We believe that the Holy Spirit has always been at work in the world, sharing in the work of creation,
awakening faith in the remnant of God’s people, performing signs and wonders, giving triumphs in battle,
empowering the preaching of prophets and inspiring the writing of Scripture. Yet, when Christ had made
atonement for sin, and ascended to the right hand of the Father, he inaugurated a new era of the Spirit by
pouring out the promise of the Father on His Church.
8.2 We believe that the newness of this era is marked by the unprecedented mission of the Spirit to glorify the
crucified and risen Christ. This He does by giving the disciples of Jesus greater power to preach the gospel of the
glory of Christ, by opening the hearts of hearers that they might see Christ and believe, by revealing the beauty of
Christ in His Word and transforming His people from glory to glory, by manifesting Himself in spiritual gifts (being
sovereignly free to dispense, as He wills, all the gifts of 1 Corinthians 12:8-10) for the building up of the body of
Christ and the confirmation of His Word, by calling all the nations into the sway of the gospel of Christ, and, in all
this, thus fulfilling the New Covenant promise to create and preserve a purified people for Himself.
8.3 We believe the Holy Spirit does this saving work in connection with the presentation of the Gospel of the
glory of Christ. Thus neither the work of the Father in election, nor the work of the Son in atonement, nor the
work of the Spirit in regeneration is a hindrance or discouragement to the proclamation of the gospel to all
peoples and persons everywhere. On the contrary, this divine saving work of the Trinity is the warrant and the
ground of our hope that our evangelization is not in vain, in the Lord. The Spirit binds His saving work to the
gospel of Christ, because His aim is to glorify the Christ of the Gospel. Therefore, we do not believe that there is
salvation through any other means than through receiving the gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit.
9. The Justifying Act of God
9.1 We believe that in a free act of righteous grace God justifies the ungodly by faith alone apart from works,
pardoning their sins, and reckoning them as righteous and acceptable in His presence. Faith is thus the sole
instrument by which we, as sinners, are united to Christ. His perfect righteousness and satisfaction for sins is
entirely the ground of our acceptance with God. This acceptance happens fully and permanently at the first
instant of justification. Thus the righteousness by which we come into right standing with God is not anything
worked in us by God, neither imparted to us at baptism nor over time, but rather is accomplished for us by Jesus
Christ, outside ourselves, and is imputed to us.
9.2 We believe, nevertheless, that the faith, which alone receives the gift of justification, does not remain alone
in the person so justified, but produces, by the Holy Spirit, the fruit of love and leads necessarily to sanctification.
This necessary relation between justifying faith and the fruit of good works gives rise to some Biblical expressions
which seem to make works the ground or means of justification, but in fact simply express the crucial truth that
faith that does not yield the fruit of good works is dead, being no true faith. We believe that the reason justifying
faith necessarily sanctifies is fourfold:
First, justifying faith is a persevering, that is, a continuing, kind of faith. Even though we are justified at the first
instant of saving faith, yet this faith justifies only because it is the kind of faith that will surely persevere. The
extension of this faith into the future is, as it were, contained in the first seed of faith, as the oak in the acorn.
Thus the moral effects of persevering faith may be rightly described as the effects of justifying faith.
Second, we believe that justifying faith trusts in Christ not only for the gift of imputed righteousness and the
forgiveness of sins, but also for the fulfillment of all His promises to us based on that reconciliation. Justifying
faith magnifies the finished work of Christ’s atonement, by resting securely in all the promises of God obtained
and guaranteed by that all-sufficient work.
Third, we believe that justifying faith embraces Christ in all His roles: Creator, Sustainer, Savior, Teacher, Guide,
Comforter, Helper, Friend, Advocate, Protector, and Lord. Justifying faith does not divide Christ, accepting part of
Him and rejecting the rest. All of Christ is embraced by justifying faith, even before we are fully aware of, or fully
understand, all that He will be for us. As more of Christ is truly revealed to us in His Word, justifying faith
recognizes Christ and embraces Him more and more fully. More and more people, more and more like Jesus.
Fourth, we believe that this embracing of all of Christ is not a mere intellectual assent, or a mere decision of the
will, but is also a heartfelt, Spirit-given (yet growing) satisfaction in all that God is for us in Jesus. Therefore, the
change of mind and heart that turns from the moral ugliness and danger of sin, and is sometimes called
“repentance,” is included in the very nature of saving faith.
10. God’s Work in Faith and Sanctification
10.1 We believe that the sanctification which comes by the Spirit through faith is imperfect and incomplete in
this life. Although slavery to sin is broken, and sinful desires are progressively weakened by the power of a
superior satisfaction in the glory of Christ, yet there remain remnants of corruption in every heart that give rise
to irreconcilable war, and call for vigilance in the lifelong fight of faith.
10.2 We believe that all who are justified will win this fight. They will persevere in faith and never surrender to
the enemy of their souls. This perseverance is the promise of the New Covenant, obtained by the blood of Christ,
and worked in us by God Himself, yet not so as to diminish, but only to empower and encourage, our vigilance; so
that we may say in the end, I have fought the good fight, but it was not I, but the grace of God which was with
me.
11. Living God’s Word by Meditation and Prayer
11.1 We believe that faith is awakened and sustained by God’s Spirit through His Word and prayer. The good
fight of faith is fought mainly by meditating on the Scriptures and praying that God would apply them to our
souls.
11.2 We believe that the promises of God recorded in the Scriptures are suited to save us from the deception of
sin by displaying for us, and holding out to us, superior pleasures in the protection, provision, and presence of
God. Therefore, reading, understanding, pondering, memorizing, and delighting in the promises of all that God
will be for us in Jesus are primary means of the Holy Spirit to break the power of sin’s deceitful promises in our
lives. Therefore, it is needful that we give ourselves to such meditation on God and His Word, day and night.
11.3 We believe that God has ordained to bless and use His people for His glory through the means of prayer,
offered in Jesus’ name by faith. All prayer should seek ultimately that God’s name be hallowed, and that His
kingdom come, and that His will be done on earth as it is done in heaven. God’s sovereignty over all things is not
a hindrance to prayer, but a reason for hope that our prayers will avail much.
11.4 We believe that prayer is indispensable to meditation, as we cry out to God for the desire to turn from the
world to the Word, and for the spiritual ability to see the glory of God in His testimonies, and for a soul-satisfying
sight of the love of God, and for strength in the inner man to do the will of God. By prayer God sanctifies His
people, sends gospel laborers into the world, and causes the Word of God to spread and triumph over Satan and
unbelief.
12. Christ’s Church and Her Ordinances
12.1 We believe in the one universal Church, composed of all those, in every time and place, who are chosen in
Christ and united to Him through faith by the Spirit in one Body, with Christ Himself as the all-supplying, all-sustaining, all-supreme, and all-authoritative Head. We believe that the ultimate purpose of the Church is to
glorify God in the everlasting and ever-increasing gladness of worship.
12.2 We believe it is God’s will that the universal Church find expression in local churches in which believers
agree together to hear the Word of God proclaimed, to engage in corporate worship, to practice the ordinances
of believer’s baptism and the Lord’s Supper, to build each other’s faith through the manifold ministries of love, to
hold each other accountable in the obedience of faith through Biblical discipline, and to engage in local and world
evangelization. The Church is a body in which each member should be led by God’s Spirit to a ministry for His
gifts; it is the household of God in which the Spirit dwells; it is the pillar and bulwark of God’s truth in a truth-denying world; and it is a city set on a hill so that men may see the light of its good deeds and give glory to the
Father in heaven.
12.3 We believe that each local church should recognize and affirm the divine calling of spiritually-qualified men
to give leadership and example to the church through the role of elder in the ministry of the Word and prayer.
We believe that each local church should recognize and affirm the divine calling of spiritually-qualified men to
give leadership and example to the church through the role of deacon in the ministry of serving Christ’s church.
Women are not to fill the role of elder in the local church, but are encouraged to use their gifts in appropriate,
complementary roles that edify the body of Christ and spread the gospel.
13. Christ’s Commission to Make Disciples of All Nations
We believe that the commission given by the Lord Jesus to make disciple-making disciples of all nations is binding
on His Church to the end of the age. This task is to proclaim the Gospel to every tribe and tongue and people and
nation, baptizing them, teaching them the words and ways of the Lord, and gathering them into churches able to
fulfill their Christian calling among their own people. The ultimate aim of world missions is that God would create,
by His Word, worshipers who glorify His name through glad-hearted faith and obedience. Missions exists because
worship doesn’t. When the time of ingathering is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their
faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. But worship abides forever. Worship, therefore, is the
fuel and the goal of missions.
14. Death, Resurrection, and the Coming of the Lord
14.1 We believe that when Christians die they are made perfect in holiness, are received into paradise, and are
taken consciously into the presence of Christ, which is more glorious and more satisfying than any experience on
earth.
14.2 We believe in the blessed hope that at the end of the age Jesus Christ will return to this earth personally,
visibly, physically, and suddenly in power and great glory; and that He will gather His elect, raise the dead, judge
the nations, and establish His kingdom. We believe that the righteous will enter into the everlasting joy of their
Master, and those who suppressed the truth in unrighteousness will be consigned to everlasting, conscious
misery.
14.3 We believe that the end of all things in this age will be the beginning of a never-ending, ever-increasing
happiness in the hearts of the redeemed, as God displays more and more of His infinite and inexhaustible
greatness and glory for the enjoyment of His people. Edenic perfection will be restored to the glory of God.
15. The Spirit of These Articles of Faith for our Local Church
15.1 We do not believe that every part of this affirmation must be believed in order for one to be saved.
15.2 We believe Bible doctrine stabilizes saints in the winds of confusion and strengthens the church in her
mission to meet the great systems of false religion and secularism. We believe that the supreme virtue of love is
nourished by the strong meat of God-centered doctrine. Therefore, our aim is not to discover how little can be
believed, but rather to embrace and teach “the whole counsel of God.” Our aim is to encourage a hearty delight
in the Bible, the fullness of its truth, and the glory of its Author.
15.3 We believe that the cause of unity in the church is best served, not by finding the lowest common
denominator of doctrine, around which all can gather, but by elevating the value of truth, stating the doctrinal
parameters of a church, seeking the unity that comes from the truth, and then demonstrating to the world how
Christians can love each other across boundaries rather than by removing boundaries. In this way, the
importance of truth is served by the existence of doctrinal borders, and unity is served by the way we love others
across those borders as we live and proclaim God’s truth.
15.4 We do not claim infallibility for these Articles of Faith and are open to refinement and correction from
Scripture. Yet we do hold firmly to these truths as we see them and call on others to search the Scriptures to see
if these things are so.