Triune God

• We believe that God the Father created the heavens and the Earth and continues to sustain us and care for us in every physical need.  He gives us food, clothing, house, home, family, friends, and immeasurable other blessings to care for us in this life.  He does this all out of fatherly goodness and mercy without any merit or worthiness in us. (Gen. 1:1; Job 38:4-7; Ps. 136:5-9; 1 Cor. 8:6)

• We believe in Jesus Christ, the very son of God.  He is 100% true God  and 100% true man, 100% of the time.  How this can be is a profound mystery.

  • We believe that this Jesus Christ was from the beginning.  That he spoke the world into existence (John 1:1-3).  He sat on the throne as he commissioned the prophet Isaiah (Is. 6; Jn. 12:14).  That during the reign of King Herod the Great, the second person of the triune God Became man.  He was born of Mary even though she had not been intimate with a man, in other words she was a virgin (Lk. 1-2).

  • He lived in this world.  He preached, performed miracles, taught in parables in Judea and surrounding areas.  Though he was indeed God, he was also human.  He was tired, hungry, thirsty, physically weak, he subjected himself to all the weight of the law.  Even unto the point of death.  For he was rejected by his own people.  He was betrayed, denied, and abandoned by his 12 disciples.  He was arrested and sentenced to death though he was an innocent man.  He died upon a cross.

  • The first day (Friday) he died, the second day (Saturday) he lay in the tomb dead, the third day (Sunday) he rose from the dead, bodily and physically.  40 days he revealed himself alive to many and then ascended into heaven where he sits on the right hand of God the Father from where he will judge both the living and the dead.

• We believe in God the Holy Spirit.  By our own nature we are enemies with God.  There is no one who seeks God, not even one. (Rom. 3:10-18)  In our fallen sinful nature we are at enmity with God.  Therefore, Jesus gave us the promise of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit enters into us crying "Abba, Father!" (Gal. 4:6)  For no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. (1 Cor. 12:3)  It is by the work of the Holy Spirit that we believe in Jesus Christ.  It is by the Holy Spirit that the church of God is gathered together across time and space.  It is be the Holy Spirit that we are daily and continually being sanctified.

• The Father is God, the Son is God (Jn. 1:1-3, 14), and the Holy Spirit is God (Matt. 12:8-12).  (Matt. 28:19-20)

• Yet there are not three God's, but one God. (Deut 6:4; 1 Cor. 8:6)  This too is a profound mystery.

Therefore we confess the Triune God/Holy Trinity.  One God in three Persons and three persons in one God.