There is one God, Creator and Lord of the universe, the Holy Trinity, 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, infinitely perfect both in His love and holiness, governs all things according to His will and is accomplishing His purposes in the world and in the church.

God has inspired the words preserved in the Scriptures, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, which are both the record and means of His saving work in the world. These writings alone constitute the verbally inspired Word of God, which is 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.

All human beings, male and female, are created in God’s own likeness and therefore have inherent value and equality before God. Through Satan’s temptation, Adam, made in the image of God, fell into sin, which is any act, attitude, or disposition that, failing to measure up to the standards of God’s righteousness, puts something else in the place of God. As a result of the fall, all human beings are subject to God’s wrath and condemnation, are corrupted in every aspect of their being, and are alienated from God, from one another, and from His creation—apart from God’s own gracious intervention.

Salvation from the guilt, penalty, and all other consequences of sin has been achieved solely through the historic work of Jesus Christ. By His virgin birth, sinless life, atoning death, and bodily resurrection, he acted as our representative and substitute. Jesus alone is truly God and truly human, the only mediator between God and humanity. There is salvation through no other person, creed, process, or power. Through union with Christ, each sinner is justified before God and reconciled to God only by divine grace appropriated through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.

This salvation is applied to His people by the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. The work of the Holy Spirit is necessary for the individual’s new birth and growth to maturity. The Holy Spirit is himself the down payment of the promised inheritance, and in this age indwells, guides, and empowers the church, enabling its continuous renewal in truth, wisdom, faith, holiness, love, ministry, power, and mission.

The church is the body of which Christ is the Head. The church is distinguished by her gospel message, her sacred ordinances, her discipline, her great mission, and, above all, by her love for God, and by her members’ sacrificial love for one another and for the world. The church serves as a sign of God’s future new creation when its members live for the service of one another and their neighbors, rather than for self-focus.

As the Lord Jesus ascended to His Father, so he will return personally, visibly, and in glory. He will raise from the dead 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 God. Although God’s kingdom is already present but not yet completely realized, at the end God will fully establish His kingdom and finish the new creation—a new heaven and a new earth from which all sin and its wretched effects will be excluded and in which God will be glorified forever.