Statement of faith!

Our vision is to be a Christ-centred and Bible-based church, where disciples are made, people are loved and communities are transformed and the following biblical beliefs serve as our confession of faith.

a/ The Bible is the highest doctrinal authority for New Life Church. The divine inspiration and supreme authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, which are the written Word of God – final and complete and fully trustworthy for faith and conduct.
We believe God has supremely revealed Himself through Jesus Christ, the Son of God and his incarnate Word. We believe that all of the divinely Holy Spirit inspired, inerrant, authoritative, sixty-six canonical books of the Bible reveal to us Jesus Christ. Because God is a loving Father who speaks, we seek to hear from Him and test everything by the Word of God.

b. The one true God who lives eternally in three persons – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The love, grace and sovereignty of God in creating, sustaining, ruling, redeeming and judging the world.
We believe there is only one true God, who eternally exists as a Trinity of equally divine persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each member of the Trinity thinks, acts, feels, speaks, and relates, because each is a person and not an impersonal force. Each member of the Trinity is equally God, sharing all the divine attributes. And because love and community flow from the Trinity to us through the Holy Spirit, we seek to live in loving community with God and others.

c. That God created the heavens and the earth, and that He created humankind in His own image. The dignity of all people, made male and female in God’s image to love, be holy and care for creation, yet corrupted by sin, which incurs divine wrath and judgement.
We believe that God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing, and lovingly prepared them as a home in which to worship and enjoy Him. Everything in creation and history is dependent upon God and is only good when functioning according to his intentions. God, the author and subject of history, will bring history to an end and create a new heaven and a new earth.

We believe that in love God created the first human beings, Adam and Eve, as male and female, equal in dignity, value, and worth, in order to mirror and reflect God as an act of worship and obedience. We believe that human beings, as God’s sole image bearers, are under God and over lower creation, not to be pulled up like gods or pushed down like animals. We believe that human life begins at conception and that an unborn baby is an image-bearer of God. We believe that God created marriage solely for one man and one woman, and created sex only for married couples. Because God created human life and marriage, we value the sanctity of life and godly marriage.

d. All human beings are sinners by both nature and choice. All fallen people are by nature sinners, children of wrath, and destined to death.
We believe that God created this world in a perfect state. In Eden, Satan tempted both Adam and Eve to mistrust God’s word, and they were deceived. The sin committed by Adam, also called “original sin,” has been imputed to all human beings except Jesus Christ. Because we are sinners in need of a Saviour and new nature, we trust in Jesus Christ alone for new and eternal life.

We believe that God makes and keeps his covenant promises. God’s covenants reveal his loving grace and mercy, because although people deserve nothing but condemnation, God gives gracious, covenantal salvation. Because God has welcomed us into eternal covenant relationship, we seek to live in gracious loving relationship with Him and others.

e. The incarnation of God’s eternal Son, the Lord Jesus Christ – born of the virgin Mary; truly divine and truly human, yet without sin.
We believe that the eternal Son of God and second person of the Trinity became flesh, adding humanity to his divinity, and entered into human history as the God-Man, Jesus Christ. Jesus alone is one person with two natures, fully God and fully man. Jesus Christ is the Word, or Logos, of God because he is the personal, eternally existing Creator of the universe, distinct from, yet equal with the Father and Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ was miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem to redeem sinful man as the only mediator between God and man. We believe that Jesus Christ, during the Incarnation, laid aside the continual exercise of his divine attributes and lived his sinless life by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is both our Saviour and example.

f. The atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross: dying in our place, paying the price of sin and defeating evil, so reconciling us with God.
We believe that Jesus Christ lived a perfectly righteous and sinless life, died in the place of sinners, fully absorbing the wrath of God, paying the just penalty for their sins and reconciling them to God. As our substitute, on the cross Jesus Christ suffered and died in our place to forgive us, love us, cleanse us, and embrace us as the punishment for our sins was diverted from us to Jesus.

g. The bodily resurrection of Christ, the first fruits of our resurrection; his ascension to the Father, and his reign and mediation as the only Saviour of the world. The justification of sinners solely by the grace of God through faith in Christ.

 We believe that Jesus Christ, after dying on the cross, arose bodily from the grave on the third day, appearing to many witnesses and proving that he was physically alive. Through faith we are united with the risen Christ, raised with Christ, and granted the same Holy Spirit power that raised Christ. The benefits of Jesus’ resurrection include the forgiveness of sins, justification, sanctification, and ultimately glorification. We believe that justification through the work of Jesus Christ is possible by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. His righteousness is imparted to us at the time of saving faith, simultaneous with our justification, and brings us new life by the Holy Spirit, who regenerates us with a new nature and begins sanctifying us to become increasingly more like Jesus.

h. The ministry of God the Holy Spirit, who leads us to repentance, unites us with Christ through new birth, empowers our discipleship, enables our witness and enables us to go from one degree of glory to another through the process of sanctification in our Christian lives.

We believe in Ministry of the Spirit. We believe that all spiritual gifts are a special grace of the Holy Spirit, given to us at our new birth to serve the mission of Jesus, and continue to the present age.

i. The church, the body of Christ both local and universal, the priesthood of all believers — given life by the Spirit and endowed with the Spirit’s gifts to worship God and proclaim the gospel, promoting God’s justice and love.
We believe that the local church is a community of regenerated believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord, and that the universal church is comprised of all God’s people in all times and places. In obedience to Scripture, Christians organise under qualified leadership, gather regularly for preaching and worship, observe the sacraments of baptism and Communion, are unified by the Spirit in love, are corrected for holiness, and scatter to fulfil the great commandment and the great commission as missionaries to the world.

j. The personal and visible return of Jesus Christ to fulfil the purposes of God, who will raise all people to judgement, bring eternal life to the redeemed and eternal condemnation to the lost, and establish a new heaven and new earth.
Upon Jesus’ second coming, there will be a bodily resurrection for everyone, to either eternal salvation or condemnation. The time between Jesus’ resurrection and our resurrection is a lengthy ministry season of love, grace, and mercy as news of the gospel goes forth, inviting sinners to repent of sin and enjoy the present and future salvation of Jesus.