We believe that the greatest joy in all of life is to know God through Jesus Christ and we count it our highest privilege to live for His glory. We are not a great people; we are simply sinners saved by grace. We have, by God’s grace, seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ and we are an eternally happy and blessed people for that!
To put it simply, we believe the Bible teaches “ruin by the Fall, ransom by the Son, and regeneration by the Holy Spirit”. Our Evangelical, Reformed, and Baptist forefathers were not ashamed or embarrassed to spell out exactly what they believed the Word of God taught in the1689 Baptist Confession of Faith. While we embrace the body of doctrine that is expressed in this document it is entirely subservient to the Word of God and holds no authority over it. Our only authoritative rule and standard is God’s Holy Word, the Bible. Of this Confession Charles Spurgeon wrote:
“This little volume is not issued as an authoritative rule, or code of faith, whereby you are to be fettered, but as an assistance to you in controversy, a confirmation in faith, and a means of edification in righteousness. Here the younger members of our church will have a body of divinity in small compass, and by means of the Scriptural proofs, will be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in them. Be not ashamed of your faith; remember it is the ancient gospel of martyrs, confessors, reformers and saints. Above all, it is the truth of God, against which the gates of Hell cannot prevail. Let your lives adorn your faith, let your example adorn your creed. Above all live in Christ Jesus, and walk in Him, giving credence to no teaching but that which is manifestly approved of Him, and owned by the Holy Spirit. Cleave fast to the Word of God which is here mapped out for you.”
Click here to read the 1689 Confession of Faith.
The Editor of the CHRISTIAN INDEX, the state paper of Georgia Baptists, wrote of it in an 1839 editorial as “our old confession” and urged all Baptist churches in Georgia to formally adopt it for the sake of uniformity, since most of them already used it or their own paraphrase of it as their own doctrinal statement. Just because something is old does not make it right. But it should give us pause before we throw it away. God has not changed; human nature has not changed; the Bible has not changed; God’s sentence of eternal condemnation upon unrepentant sinners has not changed; the Gospel has not changed; God’s appointed means of saving sinners by the preaching of the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit has not changed; God’s appointed means of growing Christians in grace through the preaching of the Word, prayer, fellowship, the reading of the Word, and the sacraments have not changed. Thus, Christians today stand on the shoulders of previous generations of believers who have studied, prayed over, meditated upon, and defended the Word of God. We want to “hold fast to this faith once and for all delivered to the saints”.