By Don Brown (Elder)
What do we believe?
We believe that salvation is the free gift of God, whereby God, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, regenerates, justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies an individual. That, in order to be saved, individuals must respond by faith to the call of God by repenting of their sin, believing in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and committing themselves to follow Christ. We believe that those whom God has redeemed in Christ and sanctified by the Spirit will persevere to the end and can never lose their salvation.
Why do we believe?
Ephesians 2:8-9 – For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Why does it matter?
Our eternal security rests on the biblical teaching that those whom God justifies, He will also glorify (Romans 8:29-30). Those who are saved will indeed be conformed to the image of Christ through the process of sanctification (1 Corinthians 6:11). When a person is saved, the Holy Spirit breaks the bondage of sin and gives the believer a new heart and a desire to seek holiness. Therefore a true Christian will desire to be obedient to God and will be convicted by the Holy Spirit when he sins. True Christians will never “live any way they want” because such behavior is impossible for someone who has been given a new nature (2 Corinthians 5:17).
If someone is truly saved, he has been made alive by the Holy Spirit and has a new heart with new desires. There is no way that one that has been “born again” can later be “unborn.” Because of His unique love for His children, God will keep all of His children safe from harm, and Jesus has promised that He would lose none of His sheep. The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints recognizes that true Christians will always persevere and are eternally secure because God keeps them that way. It is based on the fact that Jesus, the “author and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2), is able to completely save those whom the Father has given Him (Hebrews 7:25) and to keep them saved through all eternity.