Statement of Faith.
For Redeemed Way Christian Counseling
The Tri-une God We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matt 29:19), who know, love, and glorify one another. This one true and living God is infinitely perfect both in His love and in His holiness. He is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible. Immortal and eternal, He perfectly and exhaustively knows the end from the beginning, sustains and sovereignly rules over all things, and providentially brings about His eternal good purposes (Romans 8:28) to redeem a people for Himself and to restore His fallen creation.
Revelation We believe God has graciously disclosed His existence and power in the created order and has supremely revealed Himself to fallen human beings in the person of His Son, the incarnate Word. Moreover, this God is a speaking God who by his Spirit has made Himself known in human words. We believe that God has inspired the words preserved in the Scriptures (2 Tim 3:16), the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, which are both record and means of His saving work in the world. These writings alone constitute the verbally inspired Word of God, which is utterly authoritative and 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 (Rev 22:18-19).
Creation of Humanity We believe that God created human beings, male and female, in His own image (Gen 1:27). Adam and Eve belonged to the created order that God, Himself, declared to be very good, serving as God’s agents to care for, manage, and govern creation, living in holy and devoted fellowship with their Maker. As part of God’s created order male and female are immutable characteristics. Men and women, equally made in the image of God, enjoy equal access to God by faith in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28). Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, were made to complement each other (Gen 2:18) in a one-flesh union between one man and one woman that establishes the only God-ordained pattern of sexual relations, such that marriage ultimately serves as a type of the loving union between Christ and His church. Sexual intimacy outside of marriage is sinful and contrary to God’s design. In God’s wise purposes, men and women are not simply interchangeable, but rather they are designed to be the fitting companion to each other in mutually enriching ways (Eph 5:31-33).
The Fall We believe that Adam, made in the image of God, distorted that image and forfeited his original blessedness—for himself and all his progeny—by falling into sin through Satan’s temptation (Gen 3:1-22). As a result, all human beings are alienated from God, corrupted in every aspect of their being (e.g., physical, emotional, social, intellectual, and spiritual) and condemned finally and irrevocably to death—apart from God’s own gracious intervention (Rom 5:12-17). The supreme need of all human beings is to be reconciled to the God under whose just and holy wrath we stand; the only hope of all human beings is the undeserved love of this same God, who alone can rescue us and restore us to himself.
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 (Rev 7:9-10). We believe that God justifies and sanctifies those who, by grace, have faith in Jesus, and that His purpose for doing so is to enable people to come into a love relationship with Him. In love, God commands and invites all people to repent and believe (Mark 1:15), having set his saving love on all whom Christ redeems.
The Gospel We believe the Gospel is not just good news, but the best news ever. Essentially the Gospel is: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (I Peter 3:18). The death of Christ as our substitute is the heart of the gospel. As the only perfect human, He was able to die not as payment for His own sins, but in place of us for our sins. We believe Christ’s death shows how seriously God, in His holiness, takes sin, but also how loving He is to send His only beloved Son to do what we were incapable of doing for ourselves (Rom 5:7-8). He did this so we could be free from the exhausting, hopeless, and religiously legalistic path of striving to earn God’s approval through our own actions (Matt 11:29-30). Our gratitude for His unearned, loving sacrifice is our only pure motivation for following Him in obedience.
Redemption through Christ We believe Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was the Word of God, who became flesh, fully God and fully human being, one Person in two natures. He was conceived 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, appeared to over 500 witnesses (I Cor 15:6) and ascended into heaven (Luke 24:51). By His incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus Christ acted as our representative and substitute. He did so to bear the full penalty of our sins, and to reconcile us to God by believing in Him (Gal 3:13). We believe that salvation is found in no one else (Rom 5:11).
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 punishment due to us for our sins. 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 (Rom 3:22-24). We believe that a zeal for personal and public obedience flows from this free justification.
The Power of the Holy Spirit We believe that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:7-10). By his powerful and mysterious work, He regenerates spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance and faith. In Him, they are baptized 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 Holy 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 (2 Pet 1:3-4). The Holy Spirit is Himself the down payment of the promised inheritance, and indwells, guides, instructs, equips, revives, and empowers believers for Christ-like living and service.
The Kingdom of God We believe that those who have been saved by the grace of God 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. The kingdom of God is an invasive power that plunders Satan’s dark kingdom and regenerates and renovates the lives of individuals rescued from that kingdom. It therefore inevitably establishes a new community of human life together under God (Hebrews 8: 6-13).
God’s New People We believe that God’s new covenant people is manifest in local churches over which Christ is the only Head. Thus, this community of believers is, in fact, the Church, the household of God, the assembly of the living God, and the pillar and foundation of the truth (Acts 4:31-33). The Church is the beloved body of Christ, the apple of His eye, the engraving on the palms of His hands, and the betrothed of His heart, forever. The Church is distinguished by her gospel message of grace, her faith-filled ordinances, her great mission, her diverse and varied members of the body, and, above all, her love for God, and her members’ love for one another and for fellow human beings.
The Resurrection of All Humans We believe in the resurrection of both the just and the unjust. God gives all humans over to their own desires for Lordship. To those who remain unjustified by Jesus Christ, He grants the fruit of self-rule and the consequent judgment, which is painful eternity apart from God. To those who are justified by the grace of Jesus Christ and those desiring the Lordship of Christ, He grants the eternal blessedness in the glorious and healing presence of Him who sits on the throne of righteousness (2 Cor 5:10).
Human Health In light of all the above, we believe that true health and human flourishing arises from authentic, rightly-aligned relationship with God and, by extension, relationship with ourselves and others (I John 4:15-21). Only when we understand that before God, both the worst of who we are is truly revealed, but also the best of who we can be is fully realized, can we safely open the deepest corners of our hearts before the Father (Romans 7:21-25) and other human beings. Then His wisdom can bring peace, rest, forgiveness, comfort, direction, transformation, and motivation for a life filled with meaning. Healing, then, involves the on-going personal submission of one’s physical, emotional, social, intellectual, and spiritual life to the Will and direction of the loving Heavenly Father.
(Taken and adapted from The Gospel Coalition)