| SBF Beliefs
Because people sometimes want to know what we stand for we've put together a statement of what lies at the core of our church. It tells you:
What We Value
- God and love him because he has loved us
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Jesus Christ uniquely as the son of God and saviour of the world
- God's written word as the truth of God
- the commitment that God has asked us to make to him and to one another
- the responsibility we have to support, encourage and care for one another
- the presence of God, especially when we are together
- the unity that we have in serving and meeting God together
- prayer, because it is a treasured means of grace
- the work that God does in saving people and making them his children
- the part that God gives us in loving and introducing others to Jesus Christ
- Staines; the place where God wants us to serve him and build his church
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What We
Do
What we do, either individually or together, will flow from the things that we value and what we believe. Therefore we will:
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worship and praise God as an expression of our gratitude to him
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learn from the Bible and apply its teaching to our lives
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meet together regularly
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pray; both personally and together
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baptise believers into the church and remember Jesus Christ together in the Lord's Supper
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live to please God and make progress in our understanding and obedience
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give time and resources to one another according to need
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be informed and concerned for one another's welfare and progress
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submit to one another; accept instruction, encouragement and correction
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take collective responsibility for the work of our church
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introduce our family, friends, workmates, neighbours and community to Jesus Christ
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What We Believe
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FOREWORD
Churches are what they believe or, to put it another way, the things we believe shape the life and character of a church. Here we explain what we believe. It doesn’t tell you everything but it’s a good starting point for understanding Staines Baptist Fellowship.
It isn’t just churches that are shaped by their beliefs; it is true of individuals as well. Believing God’s truth should make us more like Jesus Christ. We must leave God to judge how well we are doing … and how well you are doing!
We don’t claim any exclusive right to the truth. If we have misunderstood what God says in his word that’s because we are lazy or silly or sinful. Help us to see the truth more clearly, pray for us and talk with us.
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THE BIBLE
We believe that the Bible is the inspired and infallible word of God, the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behaviour.
We don’t start here because this is the most important belief but because it’s a foundation on which our other beliefs are built. How do we know what God is like, who he is and what has he done? What does he think about us and want from us? The answers to all these questions are found in the Bible where we believe that God speaks reliably, clearly and with authority.
God has breathed out the words of the Bible it is God’s word, complete, reliable and trustworthy. It tells us the truth about God, about ourselves and about the world we live in. Most importantly it tells us about spiritual realities that we couldn’t otherwise guess. We simply wouldn’t know God if he hadn’t made himself known through his word.
There are some good reasons to believe that the Bible is true.
Firstly, God has spoken to people in his word all through history. Countless men and women, including many millions in our own day, have heard the voice of God in this word and have responded to it. It touches us because God is at work in our hearts.
Secondly, Jesus Christ believed that the Bible was God’s word. It seems impossible to claim the title “Christian” without sharing our leader’s attitude to the Bible. He spoke and acted as though the Bible were the word of God.
Thirdly, belief in the Bible is quite reasonable. What it says is entirely consistent with everything that we know about the world. It isn’t a science textbook or an encyclopaedia but its history and geography and its description of human nature, for instance, coincide with what we already know. It is reasonable to believe that the Bible is telling us the truth about God.
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GOD IN CONTROL
We believe that God is sovereign in creation, revelation, redemption and judgement.
Life is not a random series of meaningless or arbitrary events. God is in charge of everything. When it comes to creating, revealing, saving us and judging the world God is not constrained by anything except his own character. Because of who he is he will never be cruel, forgetful, uncaring, evil or weak.
God is a supreme king and nothing can challenge his desire or ability to do what he wants to do. In a word he is the Lord. All authority belongs to him and everyone is responsible to him.
Every human power structure owes its ultimate authority to God who has established them and who shares his authority with them. They are “established by God.”
We also mean that God is right; in fact he decides what is right and wrong and whatever he says is … actually right!
The God who is described like this in the Bible is not easy to understand. God is so great and by comparison we are so small that this is quite difficult to get our minds around, especially when we are used to thinking of ourselves as being pretty clever and powerful.
For God to have unlimited power would be a catastrophe if it were not matched by perfect wisdom and infinite love. That is exactly the kind of God we believe in. It will be important to keep hold of this truth when we are confronted by bad experiences.
One of the most difficult areas of sovereignty for us is that of judgement. How can God possibly do this or that? The answer is that he is sovereign; he can do exactly as he wishes and he is always right.
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GOD THE TRINITY
We believe there is one God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
There doesn’t seem a lot of point in a God who is strong, wise and good if we can’t know him. We believe that we can know him and that he is approachable and relational. We don’t mean that we simply know things about him but that we can know him as a friend. It is enjoyable and desirable to have a relationship with him even though the Bible reveals God as unimaginably more majestic and infinitely more complex that any human being could begin to conceive.
The Bible says that there is only one God and that God is one. He alone is worthy of worship and adoration and it is a great sin to give any other being what belongs to God alone. But mysteriously the God of the Bible is revealed as complex rather than simple. The Old Testament alludes to this with language that suggests complexity: “Let us make man in our image …” And we can read about the Angel of the lord or the Spirit of God or the Wisdom or Word of God being separate from God but acting as God. The New Testament is even more emphatic. Jesus is God and the Holy Spirit is God.
The Bible teaches us that God is uniquely one but that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are God, three persons living in an undivided unity. Christians call this the trinity. We recognise the difficulty of explaining this truth but we are not embarrassed to admit that the God we worship and follow is somewhere beyond our understanding and we are struggling to keep up!
The God we worship is not a far-off, impersonal deity or an impersonal intelligence. He is a loving and caring person, he can be known; indeed he wants us to know him and to have a close relationship with him. It’s a cause for hope.
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HUMAN SIN
We believe that he whole of humankind is sinful and guilty, so that everyone is subject to God's judgement.
There is a deadly virus on the loose and its effects are unimaginably serious. Although everyone who contracts the disease dies, sufferers will not recognise that they are ill. Other effects include selfishness, pride, arrogance and a refusal to try the only remedy that has been proven to work. Every part of human life is infected and every human institution has been corrupted.
The disease is sin; an unpopular but essential idea in Christian belief. Sin prevents us from enjoying a relationship with God in several ways.
Sin is doing wrong things. God has told us in his word (we believe the Bible is reliable!) that certain actions, thoughts and attitudes are wrong. God has drawn a line between what is acceptable to him and what is not. That’s his law and if we step over the line we are lawbreakers, sinners.
Sin is rebellion against God; by sinning we choose to go our own way, contrary to God’s will, asserting our independence and deciding for ourselves what we will and won’t do, we are rebels.
Sin is breaking our relationship with God. Instead of acknowledging him as our maker, ruler and father we live as though he didn’t exist. He might as well be dead; we are saying that we don’t want anything to do with the God of the Bible and we are breaking off our friendship.
Sin means having a nature that God finds offensive. The Bible teaches that it isn’t just what we do that offends God, it's what we are. Even if we did nothing either good or bad, God would find that our very nature offended him; just by being here. And because of our sinful natures we do sin, leaving God doubly offended.
Sin affects everyone and every part of human life; it affects us so deeply that we can’t help ourselves at all. Very often we can’t even see that we have a problem. We need help!
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JESUS CHRIST: GOD AND MAN
We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, God's incarnate son, is fully God; he was born of a virgin; his humanity is real and sinless.
The virgin birth sounds like a teaching that shouldn’t be in the Bible. It is provocative and, some would say, unnecessary, even downright silly. But the birth of Jesus to a virgin woman illustrates an important truth about him. The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is uniquely able to help us with the problem of our sin because he is both God and man.
Jesus is a man, fully human and born in a normal way to a human mother. He did not live his life in a cocoon of divine protection like an alien inside a force shield. He got hungry, tired and sad; sometimes he was frightened and if he wanted to go somewhere he had to get up and walk. When he was a boy he had to do what his parents told him. All this qualifies him to act as a representative of the human race.
He is human in order to properly represent humans as a substitute: “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed … the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Although his birth was normal his conception was extraordinary. Mary became pregnant because God worked a miracle in her life. Jesus is a direct and divine descendant of God. Throughout his adult life he said and did things that were uniquely divine; his miracles and teaching supported his claim to be God’s anointed and appointed king. If Jesus were not fully divine then God would have been punishing an innocent third party for human sin which hardly seems fair.
Because he is fully God and fully man Jesus Christ is uniquely placed to represent both God and man.
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JESUS CHRIST: ONLY SAVIOUR
We believe that redemption from the guilt, penalty and power of sin comes only through the sacrificial and substitutionary death of Jesus, the Son of God.
The only possibility of being saved is through Jesus Christ offering himself up as a sacrifice in our place.
Redemption means being bought with a price. Jesus Christ hands over the ransom so that we can belong to him. He releases us from the terrible consequences of sin so that we are no longer headed for condemnation. Christians call this being forgiven.
Jesus does this by making a courageous exchange: “I’ll swap your life of failure, rebellion and offensiveness for my perfect, obedient life.” Now we are free because we have his life and he … died because he had taken on the terrible, sinful lives of other people. The Bible says, “We all like sheep have gone astray, but the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
He died as a sacrifice and the Bible says we are to put our faith in him and what he has done.
In the Bible having faith means being certain – and the thing that we should be most certain about is Jesus Christ. Faith means acknowledging that Jesus Christ is God’s appointed saviour and authorised ruler. When the thief on the cross asked Jesus to remember him, “When you come into your kingdom” he was acknowledging that Jesus was God’s anointed king. He had faith, unlike most of the other people at the crucifixion who obviously had none; the religious leaders, the soldiers and the other thief all laughed at the idea of Jesus being a king. Faith is being certain that Jesus is God’s appointed king and saviour.
Every Christian believes that Jesus Christ died in their place; that’s what we mean when we say, “Jesus died for me.”
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JESUS CHRIST: RAISED FROM THE DEAD
We believe that he was raised bodily from death and is now reigning over heaven and earth
Jesus’ death was not the end of the story. Three days after being tortured and crucified he was raised to life by the mighty power of God and exalted to the throne of God in heaven.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ has been one of the main targets of those who want to discredit Christianity. Most objections slot into the “Jesus-didn’t-really-die-on-the-cross” or the “his-body-was-stolen” categories. Theories about Jesus simply being unconscious when he was buried give no credit to the murderous efficiency of the soldiers who supervised his death and burial or the determination of the religious leaders to stamp out Christianity. The idea of his body being spirited away and his disciples then dying for the lie of his resurrection is not at all credible; Jesus was seen by many hundreds of people after his resurrection.
His resurrection was certainly much more than an impressive magic trick and much more even than the miraculous revival of a dead man, several incidents of which are recorded in the Bible.
Although Jesus’ resurrection body was tangibly physical it was also quite extraordinary. His resurrection body was “super-physical” and not subject to normal physical limitations. Jesus had often said that through his death and resurrection, he would “enter his glory” and now he is glorious! He has assumed the mantle that God promised him as the rightful King and Judge, ruler of God’s kingdom.
There are several implications of Jesus’ resurrection. Firstly, Jesus is vindicated; everything he said and did is true and approved by God. Secondly, Jesus is the one to whom God has entrusted judgement; it is to Jesus that we must go for forgiveness and acceptance. Thirdly, Jesus is here now; not simply an interesting, academic exercise in ancient history but as a present and imminent reality.
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THE HOLY SPIRIT: MIRACLE OF NEW BIRTH
We believe that the Holy Spirit alone makes the work of Christ effective to individual sinners, enabling them to turn to God from their sin and to trust in Jesus Christ.
Being a Christian isn’t a matter of tradition or family. Becoming a Christian calls for such a radical change that the Bible calls it being “born again.”
One of the effects of sin is that we are separated from God and have no desire to know him; we are spiritually dead with no ability to respond to God. This human condition is well illustrated by an incident in Jesus’ life; he met a man who was paralysed but who would be healed if only he climbed into the healing waters. But he couldn’t because he was paralysed! Someone else would have to help him (by the way, Jesus did help him, he healed him!).
If we are going to be healed from the terrible effects of sin we will need a miracle of help. That is the miracle that the Holy Spirit works in our lives. He brings us to life and gives us the ability to acknowledge Jesus Christ and receive his forgiveness. By his power we are “born again.”
Another Bible term for this change is repentance. That doesn’t mean shaping up or cleaning up our lives so that we will be acceptable to God. Far from it, the Bible makes it clear that we can’t shape up or clean up. The Bible word for repentance means “changed mind” and not “changed life.” Repentance is a new attitude, a change of mind about what God is doing through Jesus Christ. And repentance is a gift from God
This new attitude is such a seismic shift of spiritual understanding that it needs a miracle in our lives; we need God to do something quite extraordinary for us to repent or have a new attitude. Because of our sin we can never work out the truth about God for ourselves. It has to be given to us through a spiritual transplant. It is this miraculous work of the Holy Spirit in our lives that enables us to change and turn to God in trust and obedience.
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THE HOLY SPIRIT: MIRACLE OF NEW LIFE
We believe that the Holy Spirit lives in all those he has regenerated. He makes them increasingly Christ-like in character and behaviour and gives them power for their witness in the world.
If becoming a Christian is a miracle so is actually being a Christian. None of us has the character and resolve to serve Jesus Christ as he deserves and requires. The Holy Spirit lives in us and works in us to shape us as children of God.
The Holy Spirit ensures our adoption into the family of God so that we can enjoy all the privileges and responsibilities of son-ship. We aren’t just the subjects of a rescue mission; the Holy Spirit binds us into a new, family relationship. God is our father and we are his children. “How great is the love he has lavished on us that we should be called children of God.” God has adopted us into his family.
This family adoption brings both privileges and responsibilities. It is the Holy Spirit’s intention that we should make progress towards the goal of complete likeness to Jesus Christ. This is a progressive work that makes us more and more free from sin and like Christ in our actual lives. The Holy Spirit is leading us on a journey of holiness and or progress that should be marked and obvious.
This progress requires our co-operation. The Bible, especially the New Testament, repeatedly suggests the straightforward, time-honoured means of cooperation on our part are: understanding God’s word, prayer, evangelistic activity, worship, Christian fellowship and self-control.
This new life is so dependant on the work of the Holy Spirit that the Bible frequently refers to Christians as people who are “baptised in the Holy Spirit.” We are never alive apart from the ongoing work of God’s Spirit.
God works a miracle in us by his Spirit so that we become Christians and then goes on working a miracle in our lives by his Spirit so that we live as Christians.
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THE CHURCH
We believe that the one holy, universal church is the Body of Christ over which he rules and to which all true believers belong and local churches are a special representation of that universal church
We are happy to endorse Jesus Christ’s magnificent plan to build his church. Everyone who is miraculously “born again” is inducted into the church. Everyone who has ever put his or her faith in Jesus Christ in whatever age and whatever place is a member of the universal church.
The New Testament teaches that we are not just members of the great, universal church but that we must be members of local churches as well. Local congregations are the environment in which Christians gain the support and accountability that enables them to live the Christ-like lives that God requires. We teach each other and learn together, we love and encourage each other. We steer and guide each other’s lives and work together to show others the truth about Jesus Christ. These local congregations should fulfil Christ’s mandate to take the good news about Jesus Christ to the whole earth. Local churches must be structured and disciplined by God’s rule exercised through his word.
Because God enjoys relationships, especially with us, we should enjoy one another. It is not compatible with being a child of God that we spurn other family members.
To make these things clear for us Jesus commanded his followers to do two things together. Baptism is a sign of the commitment we make in joining the church. Communion (Christians often refer to this as “the Lord’s Supper”) is a sign of our continuing commitment to Christ and to one another.
We aren’t just saying that you should to come to church; simply going along to church doesn’t make anyone a Christian. But it would be quite unnatural for a Christian not to want to be part of a church. We want you to be a supportive, accountable and productive member of our church family.
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JESUS WILL COME AGAIN
We believe that he Lord Jesus Christ will return in person to deliver God's judgement on those who have not repented and to receive the redeemed into eternal glory.
It isn’t over yet! Jesus is going to return to the earth as Judge and King. This “second coming” is going to be an awesome and spectacular occasion. We don’t know exactly when it will be but Jesus has warned us to be constantly vigilant because it could happen at any time (this is one reason why the work of evangelism is so important; we don’t know how much time is left).
The moment of Jesus’ return will be the end of the world. It is often referred to in the Bible as “the day of judgment” because that is when Jesus will pronounce judgement on everyone who has opposed him or refused to accept him. There will be nothing unfair or arbitrary about his judgement because he knows every fact and understands every motive perfectly. His judgement will be right.
Hell is a reality that Jesus often spoke about as a place where will consign every thing and every one who does not want to live under his rule. Eventually everyone gets what he or she have always wanted. Those who long for Jesus and want him involved intimately in every part of their lives will receive just that. And those who want to live their lives in their own way without Jesus Christ will be able to do exactly that; for ever...
For everyone who has put his or her faith in Jesus Christ his return will be a time of great rejoicing. The end of this world means the beginning of a new heaven and a new earth where Jesus will reign without a shadow of opposition. There will be nothing impure or unclean in his new kingdom; we shall be free from every hindrance that presently stands between our wonderful King Jesus and us or clouds our relationship with him.
We believe that the day of Jesus’ return will be such a happy day that we should work and pray and long for it with every fibre of our being. “Come, Lord Jesus!”
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