We believe that if there was any other way to save a person, other than the sacrifice of Jesus, then we believe that God would have used that other method.   The fact that the sacrifice of Jesus was carried out on the cross, tells us much about the intrinsic nature of God.  Principally it tells us how significant the problem of sin is and how much it takes to restore the broken relationship between God and man.  Justification comes about by what Jesus did, not by what I do, nor by what we do.

We believe that God is a loving and giving God. We see God’s nature in Jesus’ sacrificial gift upon the cross.  We further believe that this salvation has always been planned by God to be through the death of Jesus on the cross, from before the creation of the world.   We believe that God knew all along that man’s sin debt would require such an awesome gift.   [ Ephesians 1:3-2:22 ]

We believe that the just sentence for sin is spiritual death; it is the account held against the individual person due to their own choice to go against God.  This sin dept was paid in full, once for all times, for all men, by the death of the one man, Jesus, the Christ.   [ Ezekiel 18:1ff, Hebrews 7:19ff,  Colossians 1:13-23 ]

We believe that in order for an individual to access the gift of God’s mercy, a gift given for all mankind who are willing to follow Jesus, then we must follow the whole plan of salvation which God set up.  That plan is not based on the cheapened grace of simple arbitrary forgiveness, but on the blood of Christ which makes for a very costly form of grace.  [ Romans 11:6 ]

We believe that the plan of salvation requires that we must first hear the story of the Christ, and thus come to know Him off of our own efforts.  It means that we must follow on to the hearing of that message about Jesus, that we must individually reach the point of belief in Jesus as the saviour of mankind, just as it was done repeatedly in the book of Acts, that we must do / heed what God has to say, letting it touch our hearts deeply.   [ Acts 2:14ff., Acts 3:11:ff.,  Romans 10:17 ]

We believe that this point of belief is where we come to when we totally believe that Jesus is the Crucified Son of God.  In turn, this means that we have to come to an understanding that it is my sins that put Jesus on the cross, and that I must then repent of my sins.  This means that I must commit myself to a change of heart, and change of will and a change of action. [ Heb.11: 6 Acts 16:31-34, Acts 26:20 ]

We believe that this call us to confess our faith and belief that Jesus is the Son of God to the world.  This confession is a very simple public statement of our faith that Jesus is who He said that He was.

We believe that following our confession, we should be baptized, fully immersed in water.  This corresponds to Paul’s points in Romans 6 and in Galatians 3 about baptism.  It is being buried with Christ, thus putting on Christ, to arise a new and absolutely clean creature who has had the saving blood of Jesus applied to their life.  This plan is not of man’s invention: it is what God has requested in His inspired word and I must obey it if I am to receive the gift of His mercy and grace applied to my life.

[ Acts 2:38, Acts 8: 34-38, Acts 22:16,  I Peter 3:21, Romans 6:1ff, Galatians 3:23ff. ]    

We believe that like Naaman, who was requested to dip all seven times, in the river Jordan, to receive the cure for his leprosy, the gift of God grace will not be applied to our lives unless we follow the whole plan of God in this matter of the plan of salvation. [ Romans 10: 1-10 ] 

We believe that none of these five segments of the plan of salvation are acts by which we can ever earn salvation.  They are all equally acts of endorsement, acts of compliance, acts of faith, acts of our love of God and of His Son, of our willingness to submit totally to Him as the sovereign Lord. They are not attempts to earn salvation.  They are all the simple acts of a faith-filled person doing what God has said to do so that that person could receive the salvation that God set up and prepared for that person at the cross.  [ Ephesians 4: 14 ]