What Presbyterians Believe

With all Christians, we Presbyterians believe in the basic truths of the Christian faith, as revealed to us in Scripture, and as expressed by the Church in the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed.  We believe that God created the heavens and the earth.  We believe that God created human beings to be in relationship with him.  We believe that human beings have sinned and continue to sin against both the Lordship and Love of God.  We believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God incarnate in human flesh, who by His teaching, death on the cross, and bodily resurrection has opened to human beings the pathway into salvation from sin and death.  We believe the Holy Spirit is God present with us now, who also enables us to enter into that salvation, and to live lives pleasing to God and increasingly conformed to His Will.  We believe the Church to be the Body of Christ in the world.

With those forms of Christianity which arose during the great Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, we share a belief in the absolute authority of Scripture for what Christians are to believe and to do.  We hold fast to the teaching of Scripture that we are saved by grace received in faith, and not by our own good works.  We believe in the forgiveness of sins and in the priesthood of all believers.  We believe in the imperative of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) and seek to be faithful to the work of making disciples.  We believe that we are to serve God in our “secular” work just as truly as we serve Him on Sundays in our “sacred” work of worship.