HCCF STATEMENT OF FAITH
- “The Tri-une God: We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who know, love, and glorify one another. (Deuteronomy 6:4; 2 Corinthians 13:14)
- Revelation and the Scripture: We believe God has graciously revealed himself to us in the person of his Son Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word. Moreover, he also spoke to us through the Holy Spirit, in that he has inspired the words preserved in the Scriptures, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. We believe the Scriptures to be inerrant in it's original manuscripts and is our final authority regarding doctrine, faith, and life. (Psalm 1, Psalm 19:7-11, Psalm 119, Proverbs 30:5-6, 2 Timothy 3:16, 17; 2 Peter 1:20, 21; Matthew 5:18; John 1:1-15, 1 John 1:1-5, John 16:12, 13)
- Creation of Humanity: We believe that God created human beings, male and female, to reflect his glory in his own image for his good pleasure and our ultimate joy.(Genesis 1:26, 27; Romans 3:22, 23; 5:12; Ephesians 2:1–3, 12)
- The Fall: We believe that the first human beings willfully disobeyed God's commandment, this rebellious nature is passed down to all human beings, rendering us utterly unable to obey God's law morally or in action and therefore placing everyone under God's righteous judgement and wrath to come. (Genesis 1:26, 27; Romans 3:22, 23; 5:12; Ephesians 2:1–3, 12)
- The Plan of God: We believe that from all eternity God determined in grace to save a great multitude of guilty sinners from every tribe and language and people and nation, and to this end foreknew them and chose them. We believe that God justifies and sanctifies those who by grace have faith in Jesus alone, and that he will one day glorify them—all to the praise of his glorious grace. In love God commands and implores all people to repent and believe, having set his saving love on those he has chosen and having ordained Christ to be their Redeemer. (Genesis 1:26, 27; Romans 3:22, 23; 5:12; Ephesians 2:1–3, 12)
- The Gospel: We believe that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ, of his life, death on the cross in our place to take God's wrath, and his resurrection and victory over death, and final restoration of all creation in the final arrival of God's kingdom when he returns. The gospel is the power of God for salvation to those who believe, but foolishness and offense to those who are perishing. (Ephesians 2:8–10; John 1:12; Ephesians 1:7; 1 Peter 1:18–19)
- The Redemption of Christ: We believe that, moved by love and in obedience to his Father, the eternal Son became human: the Word became flesh, fully God and fully human being, one Person in two natures. The man Jesus, the promised Messiah of Israel, was conceived through the miraculous agency of the Holy Spirit, and was born of the virgin Mary. He perfectly obeyed his heavenly Father, lived a sinless life, performed miraculous signs, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, arose bodily from the dead on the third day, and ascended into heaven. As the mediatorial King, he is seated at the right hand of God the Father, exercising in heaven and on earth all of God’s sovereignty, and is our High Priest and righteous Advocate. We believe that by his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus Christ acted as our representative and substitute. He did this so that in him we might become the righteousness of God: on the cross he cancelled sin, propitiated God, and, by bearing the full penalty of our sins, reconciled to God all those who believe. By his resurrection Christ Jesus was vindicated by his Father, broke the power of death and defeated Satan who once had power over it, and brought everlasting life to all his people; by his ascension he has been forever exalted as Lord and has prepared a place for us to be with him. We believe that salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved. Because God chose the lowly things of this world, the despised things, the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, so that no human being can ever boast before him—Christ Jesus has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption.
- The Justification of Sinners: We believe that Christ, by his obedience and death, fully discharged the debt of all those who are justified. By his sacrifice, he bore the sins and its punishment of the world, making a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God’s justice . By his perfect obedience he satisfied the just demands of God law, and by faith alone that perfect obedience is credited to all who trust in Christ alone for their acceptance with God. Inasmuch as Christ was given by the Father for us, and his obedience and punishment were accepted in place of our own, freely and not for anything in us, this justification is solely of free grace, in order that both the exact justice and the rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners. We believe that a zeal for personal and public obedience flows from this free justification.
(Ephesians 2:8–10; John 1:12; Ephesians 1:7; 1 Peter 1:18–19) - The Power of the Holy Spirit: We believe that this salvation, attested in all Scripture and secured by Jesus Christ, is applied to his people by the Holy Spirit. Sent by the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ, and, as the Paraclete, is present with and in believers. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and by his powerful and mysterious work regenerates spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance and faith, baptizing them into union with the Lord Jesus, such that they are justified before God by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. By the Spirit’s agency, believers are renewed, sanctified, and adopted into God’s family; they participate in the divine nature and receive his sovereignly distributed gifts. The Holy Spirit is himself the down payment of the promised inheritance, and in this age indwells, guides, instructs, equips, revives, and empowers believers for Christ-like living and service. (John 16:8–11; 2 Corinthians 3:6; 1 Corinthians 12:12–14; Romans 8:9; Ephesians 5:18)
- The Kingdom of God: We believe that those who have been saved by the grace of God through union with Christ by faith and through regeneration by the Holy Spirit enter the kingdom of God and delight in the blessings of the new covenant: the forgiveness of sins, the inward transformation that awakens a desire to glorify, trust, and obey God, and the prospect of the glory yet to be revealed. Good works constitute indispensable evidence of saving grace. Living as salt in a world that is decaying and light in a world that is dark, believers should neither withdraw into seclusion from the world, nor become indistinguishable from it: rather, we are to do good to the city, for all the glory and honor of the nations is to be offered up to the living God. Recognizing whose created order this is, and because we are citizens of God’s kingdom, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, doing good to all, especially to those who belong to the household of God. The kingdom of God, already present but not fully realized, is the exercise of God’s sovereignty in the world toward the eventual redemption of all creation. The kingdom of God is an invasive power that plunders Satan’s dark kingdom and regenerates and renovates through repentance and faith the lives of individuals rescued from that kingdom. It therefore inevitably establishes a new community of human life together under God.
- Baptism, Lord’s Supper, and Christian discipline: We believe that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ordained by the Lord Jesus himself, they, with proper Biblical discipline of church members are essential for sanctification and growth. Baptism is connected with entrance into the new covenant community, the Lord's Supper with ongoing covenant renewal. Together they are simultaneously God’s pledge to us, divinely ordained means of grace, our public vows of submission to the once crucified and now resurrected Christ, and anticipations of his return and of the consummation of all things. (Matthew 28:19, 20; Acts 2:41, 42; Acts 18:8; 1 Corinthians 11:23–26)
