
Apostles' Creed
The Apostles' Creed is a very early summary of the Apostles' teaching. While not directly attributable to the Apostles, it is widely accepted as an accurate distillation of their doctrine.
Read CreedReforming Truth Church was founded in March of 2013. Our name says three things about who we are as a church:
In light of the above, we trace our identity today by orienting ourselves within the larger universal church through history. We are orthodox, catholic, credal, protestant, confessional, and reformed baptists. Read on to learn more about what that means.
First, we are firmly within orthodox Christianity. When we say that we are orthodox, we are affirming the orthodox beliefs of the Christian faith as articulated by the early church fathers in the ecumenical creeds. These beliefs include:
Second, we are recognize that we are part of the catholic, or universal, church. We highly value our connection with the global church and the church throughout history.
As such, we affirm the four primary ecumenical creeds which set the bounds of orthodox belief and have been affirmed by the vast majority of the catholic church throughout history.
The Apostles' Creed is a very early summary of the Apostles' teaching. While not directly attributable to the Apostles, it is widely accepted as an accurate distillation of their doctrine.
Read CreedFirst developed in A.D. 325, the Nicene Creed defended the divinity of Christ and was later expanded in A.D. 381 to also defend the divinity of the Holy Spirit.
Read CreedAdopted in A.D. 451, the Chalcedonian Creed responded to heretical views of the nature of Christ. It laid out the orthodox view that Christ has two natures united in one person.
Read CreedThe Athanasian Creed, named after the strong apologist Athanasius, is a concise description of the doctrine of the Trinity and the nature of Christ.
Read CreedWe are protestant and are grateful for the work of the reformers in their contention for the Christian faith and for their work in restoring a gospel-centered approach to the church. We affirm the five Solas of the Protestant Reformation for their usefulness as a framework for understanding the Gospel. The following articles from Ligonier are a good introduction to the five Solas.
Scripture Alone: God’s people have universally affirmed that there is only one thing that can legitimately function as the supreme standard: God’s Word. There can be no higher authority than God Himself.
Read ArticleFaith Alone: What is justification? Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardons all our sins, and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.
Read ArticleGrace Alone: The Reformers understood the importance of the grace of God to the Bible’s teaching on salvation. In fact, one of the slogans that came to define Reformation teaching was sola gratia, which is Latin for “by grace alone.” Christians are saved by the grace of God alone.
Read ArticleChrist Alone: Reformed theology affirms that Scripture and its teaching on grace and faith emphasize that salvation is solus Christus, “by Christ alone”—that is, Christ is the only Savior (Acts 4:12). B.B. Warfield wrote, “The saving power of faith resides thus not in itself, but in the Almighty Savior on whom it rests.”
Read ArticleTo the Glory of God Alone: We use the phrase glory of God so often that it tends to lose its biblical force. But this glory, like the sun, is no less blazing— and no less beneficial—because people ignore it. Yet, God hates to be ignored. So let’s focus again on the glory of God. What is God’s glory, and how important is it?
Read ArticleWe are confessional. Many of the reformers and protestant denominations produced confessions detailing their beliefs. These confessions were significantly more exhaustive than the earlier creeds in expositing the doctrines of Christianity. As such, while they generally are in agreement, there are differences specific to each denomination. Because of the great agreement between the various protestant confessions, many protestant leaders recently came together to create a “mere protestant” confession. The Reforming Catholic Confession is the result and we affirm its text.
Many of the other confessions produced since the reformation are extremely beautiful compositions that articulately describe Christian doctrine. While we cannot affirm the entirety of these confessions, we do appreciate their beauty and find them useful expositions of Scripture and worthy of our study.
Within protestant Christianity, we are reformed and baptist. As reformed christians, we hold to classical theism, covenant theology, a law/gospel distinction, a redemptive historical hermeneutical approach to the scriptures, and a calvinistic soteriology. As credobaptist, we believe that baptism should be administered only to those with a credible profession of faith in Christ. As reformed baptists, our leadership affirms the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689.
The Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 was written by baptists of the 17th century in England. Their aim was express their consistency with the reformed theology of the Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration while detailing their views on baptism and ecclesiology. We consider this ancient document to be an excellent expression of that which we believe is clearly taught in the Word of God and embraced by us as faithful statements of our beliefs. We find it to be a confirmation of faith, a means of edification, an aid in controversy, and a basis for church unity.
In light of the above, you will see our theology demonstrated in our ministry by the following.
In concert with the historical church, we use a robust liturgy with many corporate elements such as signing, reciting scripture, and corporate prayer. Our liturgy is designed so that the entire service is a Gospel presentation. Learn more on our Liturgy page.
We acknowledge the importance and primacy of the ordinary means of grace in the local gathering of the church, so we emphasize the preaching of the Word of God, praying together, and weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper.
The church requires regular instruction in the fundamental tenets of the faith, therefore we include regular recitation of creeds, confessions, and catechisms in our service alongside the preaching of the Holy Scriptures.
The Gospel is not only for unbelievers. The church also needs the regular proclamation of the Gospel. Every week, you will hear proclaimed the grace of God through the finished work of Christ through our entire service from the structure, to the sermon and the Lord’s Supper.
The Scriptures are the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. So we exposit the scriptures every week, generally using consecutive exposition and orienting the passage within flow of redemptive history.
Christ has accomplished our salvation and given us all we need for life and godliness. In our service, we maintain a clear law/gospel distinction, highlighting all that Christ had done for us and that we should rest in the sufficiency of his gracious work.
In light of all that we have been given is Christ, our worship and our obedience arise out of gratitude and thanksgiving. We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, so we desire to please our Lord.
We take the Gospel of Christ seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too serious. We know that everything we have is from Christ. While our service is structured, the atmosphere is relaxed and easy going.
Because we know that our presence in the family of God is solely on the basis of the family of God, we are welcoming to all. We place a high priority on genuine friendship and love for one another.
You may find the below resources helpful in your study of the scriptures. We may not agree with the entirety of these articles, confessions, catechisms, and statements, but we believe they are worth reading.
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