Bethel Baptist Church believes that the Bible is our ultimate authority concerning faith and practice. To express our core beliefs in condensed form, we have adopted The Gospel Coalition (TGC) Confessional Statement as our Statement of Faith. We believe this statement beautifully expresses the essential tenets of Christianity both with contemporary relevance and faithfulness to historical Christianity. [1]
THE TRIUNE 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. 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, and is therefore worthy to receive all glory and adoration. 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 to redeem a people for himself and restore his fallen creation, to the praise of his glorious grace.
REVELATION
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 graciously disclosed himself in human words: we believe that God has inspired the words preserved in the Scriptures, the sixty-six books of the Old and the 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. We confess that both our finitude and our sinfulness preclude the possibility of knowing God’s truth exhaustively, but we affirm that, enlightened by the Spirit of God, we can know God’s revealed truth truly. The Bible is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it teaches; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; and trusted, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises. As God’s people hear, believe, and do the Word, they are equipped as disciples of Christ and witnesses to the gospel.
CREATION OF HUMANITY
We believe that God created human beings, male and female, in his own image. 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. Men and women, equally made in the image of God, enjoy equal access to God by faith in Christ Jesus and are both called to move beyond passive self-indulgence to significant private and public engagement in family, church, and civic life. Adam and Eve were made to complement each other in a one-flesh union that establishes the only normative pattern of sexual relations for men and women, such that marriage ultimately serves as a type of the union between Christ and his church. In God’s wise purposes, men and women are not simply interchangeable, but rather they complement each other in mutually enriching ways. God ordains that they assume distinctive roles which reflect the loving relationship between Christ and the church, the husband exercising headship in a way that displays the caring, sacrificial love of Christ, and the wife submitting to her husband in a way that models the love of the church for her Lord. In the ministry of the church, both men and women are encouraged to serve Christ and to be developed to their full potential in the manifold ministries of the people of God. The distinctive leadership role within the church given to qualified men is grounded in creation, fall, and redemption and must not be sidelined by appeals to cultural developments.
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. As a result, all human beings are alienated from God, corrupted in every aspect of their being (e.g., physically, mentally, volitionally, emotionally, spiritually) and condemned finally and irrevocably to death—apart from God’s own gracious intervention. 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, and to this end foreknew them and chose them. We believe that God justifies and sanctifies those who by grace have faith in Jesus, and that he will one day glorify them—all to the praise of his glorious grace.[2] 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.
THE GOSPEL
We believe that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ—God’s very wisdom. Utter folly to the world, even though it is the power of God to those who are being saved, this good news is christological, centering on the cross and resurrection: the gospel is not proclaimed if Christ is not proclaimed, and the authentic Christ has not been proclaimed if his death and resurrection are not central (the message is: “Christ died for our sins . . . [and] was raised”). This good news is biblical (his death and resurrection are according to the Scriptures), theological and salvific (Christ died for our sins, to reconcile us to God), historical (if the saving events did not happen, our faith is worthless, we are still in our sins, and we are to be pitied more than all others), apostolic (the message was entrusted to and transmitted by the apostles, who were witnesses of these saving events), and intensely personal (where it is received, believed, and held firmly, individual persons are saved).
CHRIST AND HIS REDEMPTIVE WORK
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 canceled 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, 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 in our stead the punishment due us for our sins, making a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God’s justice on our behalf. By his perfect obedience he satisfied the just demands of God on our behalf, since 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.
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 other 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, and 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 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.
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.[3] 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.
GOD’S NEW PEOPLE
We believe that God’s new covenant people have already come to the heavenly Jerusalem; they are already seated with Christ in the heavenlies. This universal church is manifest in local churches of which Christ is the only Head; thus each “local church” is, in fact, the church, the household of God, the assembly of the living God, and the pillar and foundation of the truth. The church is the body of Christ, the apple of his eye, graven on his hands, and he has pledged himself to her forever. 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’ love for one another and for the world. Crucially, this gospel we cherish has both personal and corporate dimensions, neither of which may properly be overlooked. Christ Jesus is our peace: he has not only brought about peace with God, but also peace between alienated peoples. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both Jew and Gentile to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. The church serves as a sign of God’s future new world when its members live for the service of one another and their neighbors, rather than for self-focus. The church is the corporate dwelling place of God’s Spirit, and the continuing witness to God in the world.
BAPTISM AND THE LORD’S SUPPER
We believe that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ordained by the Lord Jesus himself. The former is connected with entrance into the new covenant community, the latter with ongoing covenant renewal.[4] Together they are simultaneously God’s pledge to us, our public vows of submission to the once crucified and now resurrected Christ, and anticipation of his return and of the consummation of all things.
THE RESTORATION OF ALL THINGS
We believe in the personal, glorious, and bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ with his holy angels, when he will exercise his role as final Judge, and his kingdom will be consummated. We believe in the bodily resurrection of both the just and the unjust—the unjust to judgment and eternal conscious punishment in hell, as our Lord himself taught, and the just to eternal blessedness in the presence of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb, in the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness. On that day the church will be presented faultless before God by the obedience, suffering and triumph of Christ, all sin purged and its wretched effects forever banished. God will be all in all and his people will be enthralled by the immediacy of his ineffable holiness, and everything will be to the praise of his glorious grace.
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[1] This Confessional Statement was adopted by the Council of The Gospel Coalition on May 22, 2007 and revised on April 12, 2011. Used by permission of The Gospel Coalition (thegospelcoalition.org), Austin, TX 78717. Minor revisions have been applied to the titles and content of some of the articles. We further expound on the Statement of Faith in the footnotes to follow and in supplemental materials which contain supporting biblical references.
[2] God’s sanctifying work includes his preservation of the faith of those he has justified.
[3] The full benefits of God’s kingdom will result from Christ’s physical return.
[4] The Lord’s Supper is a memorial in which believers reaffirm both to themselves and the corporate body the status and privileges God has bestowed upon them once and for all as his adopted children under the new covenant. The Lord’s Supper thereby serves to re-invigorate our love for the Lord, though it does not denote a remaking or reinstitution of the new covenant.
We believe that all human life is sacred and created by God in His image. Human life is of inestimable worth in all its dimensions, including pre-born babies, the aged, the physically or mentally challenged, and every other stage or condition from conception through natural death. We are therefore called to defend, protect, and value all human life.
Bethel Baptist Church has adopted the Bethlehem Baptist Church (Minneapolis, MN) statement concerning Marriage, Gender, and Sexuality: [1]
Articles 1–4: Creation
Article 1: God’s Good Design
We affirm that God created mankind in his image as male and female with equal personhood and worth, and that he commissioned them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and to rule and subdue it together. We also affirm that differences between men and women are part of God’s good design and plan (Genesis 1:26–28, 31).
We deny that male and female are indistinct from or interchangeable with one another, or that the differences are inconsequential (Genesis 1:26–27, 2:21–24; Matthew 19:4–5).
Article 2: Sexual Difference
We affirm that when God created human beings, he established a male-female binary that is normatively displayed at the chromosomal level of human biology (Genesis 1:27, 2:18–25; Matthew 19:4; 1 Corinthians 11:8–12).
We deny that any so-called gender identity that contradicts the biological markers of male and female assigned by God can be legitimately chosen or changed based on personal preference, subjective feeling, or societal norm (Psalm 139:13–15). We also deny that any human condition resulting from the Fall removes or cancels the image of God in any individual or puts anyone beyond God’s call to salvation and saving grace.
Article 3: The Fall
We affirm that because of the Fall, sin has marred the sexual experience of humankind, resulting in various disorders (such as intersex conditions and gender dysphoria), which display the brokenness of creation (Genesis 3, Romans 8:20–23).
We deny that the presence of various disorders is evidence that God intended other modes of existence outside the male-female binary and that such disorders or dysphoria ever legitimize behaviors contrary to this divine intention (Genesis 1:26–28, Matthew 19:4–5).
Article 4: Masculinity and Femininity
We affirm that men ought to display uniquely masculine ways of being and that women ought to display uniquely feminine ways of being in every sphere of life, which are fitting to God’s good design in creation, even if the expressions of masculinity and femininity may vary in limited ways from culture to culture (1 Corinthians 11:13–16, 16:13; 1 Timothy 2:8–13; 1 Peter 3:3).
We deny that these masculine and feminine ways of being can be reduced to mere social constructs, while also denying that they should include unhelpful cultural stereotypes that are not in step with the Bible.
Articles 5–10: Marriage, Family, and Singleness
Article 5: Definition and Purpose of Marriage
We affirm that God created and intended marriage to be the loving, lifelong union of a man and a woman, and that marriage is the only proper context for sexual intimacy. We affirm that one of the purposes of marriage is procreation; nevertheless, a husband and wife may still glorify God even if they are unable to have children (Genesis 1:28, 2:24; Song of Solomon 2:7; Matthew 19:4–6; Luke 20:34–36).
We deny that any union between two men, two women, more than two people, or any other unbiblical arrangement constitutes a legitimate marriage.
Article 6: Marriage Roles
We affirm that God, in his wisdom, appointed unique and complementary roles within marriage, according to creation, and as a type of the relationship between Christ and the church (Genesis 2:15, 18; Ephesians 5:22–33; 1 Peter 3:1–7).
We deny that the distinct, God-given roles of husbands and wives or of fathers and mothers are inconsequential, interchangeable, or indistinct from one another.
Article 7: Husbands
We affirm that, as Christ is the head of the church, a husband is the head of his wife and should display sacrificial and loving headship in marriage, bearing a particular accountability before God in the leadership of the home (Ephesians 5:22–33, 1 Peter 3:7).
We deny that a husband’s headship is inherently oppressive to his wife. We deny that either spouse should ever domineer, manipulate, neglect, or abuse the other spouse, and we deny that these behaviors should ever be overlooked or permitted when brought to the attention of church leaders.
Article 8: Wives
We affirm that, as the church submits to Christ, a wife should submit to her husband and
should display joyful respect and help in marriage (Ephesians 5:22–33, Colossians 3:18,
1 Peter 3:1–6).
We deny that a wife’s submission is a result of sin’s corruption of God’s design. We also deny that either wives or husbands should follow their spouses into sin.
Article 9: Singleness
We affirm that just as marriage is a gift from God, singleness is also a gift from God to be enjoyed as an excellent path for faithful and fruitful service in the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 7:6–8, Matthew 19:10–12).
We deny that singleness should be given less respect or honor as a way of life in service to Christ. We also deny that singleness should be used as an excuse for sinful behaviors.
Article 10: The Telos of Marriage
We affirm that the ultimate point of marriage is to picture the relationship between Christ and
the church, which will be consummated when the church, Christ’s bride, will be united to Jesus in glory, at which point marriage will cease to exist in its earthly form (Luke 20:34–36,
Ephesians 5:31–32).
We deny that earthly marriage is the ultimate goal of the Christian or that one must pursue marriage to portray the gospel with one’s life.
Articles 11–13: The Church
Article 11: Unity in Christ and Calling
We affirm that men and women share equally in the manifold blessings of salvation through Jesus Christ and that he commissioned them to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18–20, Acts 2:17–21, Galatians 3:28).
We deny that men and women’s unity in Christ removes God-given distinctions between the sexes in the home, church, and society.
Article 12: The Office of Elder
We affirm that the office of pastor/elder in Christ’s church is to be occupied by faithful men, whose work includes shepherding the flock, guarding faithful doctrine, and teaching God’s word in corporate worship gatherings and other contexts (1 Timothy 2:12, 3:1–7; Titus 1:6–9; 1 Peter 5:2–3). We affirm that the New Testament teaching on male pastors/elders is rooted in the order of creation (1 Corinthians 11:8–9; 1 Timothy 2:13–14). We also affirm that elders should seek the valuable perspectives and contributions of women in the church for the sake of the faithfulness and fruitfulness of both women and men (Romans 16:3, Philippians 4:2–3).
We deny that the prescription of male pastors/elders is intended for only one specific culture or time period and not universally binding.
Article 13: Spiritual Gifts
We affirm that God has given men and women various spiritual gifts to glorify him, love and serve others, and build up the body of Christ. We affirm the apostle Paul’s instruction that a woman should not teach or exercise authority over a man (1 Timothy 2:12) and also that there are biblically appropriate contexts for women to teach (Acts 18:26; 1 Corinthians 11:4–5, 12:27–31; Colossians 3:16; Titus 2:3–5). We affirm that the gifts and ministry of women are essential to the church.
We deny that women are less gifted than men, and we deny that giftedness is an entitlement to an office or certain responsibilities in the church.
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[1] This statement was created by Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is used with permission. We have chosen the Bethlehem statement over other similar statements because we consider it to be comprehensive in scope. We also value its consistency with similar internationally recognized statements, such as the Nashville Statement: A Coalition for Biblical Sexuality, published August 29th, 2017, https://cbmw.org/nashville-statement.