On Life & Scripture

The 1689 Baptist Confession rejects both false presumption and despair, teaching that sincere believers may gain real assurance through true faith in Christ, sincere love for him, and a conscientious pursuit of obedience.

While true believers may possess genuine assurance of salvation, Scripture repeatedly warns that many religious people deceive themselves with false assurance, making careful self-examination and faith in Christ alone essential.

Believers may know they belong to Christ through the promises of the gospel, the witness of the Spirit, and the evidences of grace, while avoiding both false assurance and needless despair.

Bible translation is a providential necessity for the church’s mission, rooted in Scripture itself, shaped by costly history, and sustained by God through imperfect yet faithful human labor.

The most significant textual variants in the New Testament reveal both the complexity of the Bible’s transmission and the remarkable preservation of Christian doctrine throughout the manuscript tradition.

The New Testament has been preserved through thousands of manuscripts containing many textual variants, yet careful comparison shows that these differences are largely insignificant and do not affect the reliability of Scripture.

God providentially preserved Scripture through scribes, manuscripts, and textual transmission, demonstrating the reliability of the Bible despite ordinary human means and minor textual variations.

God’s people recognized the Old and New Testament books as Scripture, resulting in the completed and closed biblical canon.

God inspired Scripture by working through human authors, using the written word as his chosen medium, and preserving his Word through providential means rather than a flawless chain of copies.

A biblical examination of musical instruments, the Lord’s Supper, baptism, and the benediction as elements or circumstances of worship.

The public reading of Scripture, congregational singing, and the spoken “Amen” are essential elements of corporate worship, grounded in biblical command, pattern, and purpose.

Revelation 19 shows how God’s just judgment of evil leads to the salvation, joy, and final union of his people with Christ.

Scripture, through both explicit commands and apostolic example, establishes preaching, giving, and prayer as essential elements of corporate worship, guiding us to seek what God desires rather than what he merely permits.

Jesus warns that material prosperity can quietly lead believers into self-reliance and spiritual blindness, leaving them outwardly secure yet dangerously distant from the only true source of life and salvation.

Acts 2:42 reveals that the early church devoted itself to four central elements of corporate worship—the apostles’ teaching, fellowship through giving, the Lord’s Supper, and prayers—offered with sincere hearts in spirit and truth.

If God alone determines who he is, should he not also determine how he is worshiped? Scripture offers eleven reasons the church must worship according to what God has revealed rather than our own preferences.

Because the church is a holy people set apart by God and because Scripture is both authoritative and sufficient, the gathered church must regulate its corporate worship according to what God has revealed in his Word rather than human invention.

In both the Old and New Testaments, the Bible shows that God alone defines how he is to be worshiped, and therefore, the church must worship according to his revealed Word rather than human invention.

God has always prescribed how he is to be worshiped and continues to care deeply that his people worship him according to his revealed will rather than human preference.