Carolina Commentary site on the move

Carolina Commentary can now be accessed on the Cornerstone Baptist Church website.

Human Wisdom and God

In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, sixteenth-century theologian John Calvin maintained that “man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.” He goes on to make this point: “Man’s mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity; as it sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God” (Institutes of the Christian Religion & 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, The Library of Christian Classics [Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011], 1:108.)

Humans continue to rely upon themselves to determine who God is, and ordained ministers, it seems, want to remain in their positions even while denying that a personal God does, in fact, exist. Rather than creating God, ordained clergy may deconstruct God.

The United Church of Canada (UC) was formed in 1925 with the merger of four liberal denominations in that nation. One sees something of the theological location of the UC with the top blog post featured on its website: “Making a Pitch for Trans Awareness.” In other words, anything goes. Well, almost anything.

The Reverence Gretta Vosper may have gone too far even for the UC. According to the Canadian Press and reported in Canada’s CTV News online on June 30, “An avowed atheist fighting to keep her job as a United Church minister is now waiting to hear if a review panel will recommend she be defrocked for violating her ordination vows. In an appearance before the panel this week, Gretta Vosper defended her views, which include a lack of belief in God and the Bible.”

The UC professes to be a body of Christian, asks “new members to profess their faith in the triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and to commit themselves to faithful conduct in the church and in the world,” according to the denomination’s website. Additionally, the church states: “As members of one body of Christ, we acknowledge our Reformation heritage and the teaching of the creeds of the ancient church, particularly the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds.”

But the words of Scripture and the truths of the Reformation and orthodox creeds evidently mean little to the church as a whole and even less to Rev. Vosper. The minister maintains that she does not believe in God in the traditional sense: “Were I to be given incontrovertible proof that a god does, or gods do, exist, the evidence of the cruel and capricious realities of disparity, tragedy, illness, and anguish in the world, and the truth that our world and our experience of it is wrapped not only in beauty but also in excruciating pain, would prevent me from worshipping it or pledging my allegiance to it.”

And so we have a minister who says that even if deity does exist, the bad things existing in the world would prevent her from worshiping this deity. I will give Rev. Vosper credit for saying what many ministers would like to say but fear the consequences. Unfortunately, Rev. Vosper has chosen the wrong side in this debate. Showing herself to be a fool (Psalm 14:1), she foolishly promotes the world’s wisdom and places herself in opposition to the God who has revealed himself through his creation, his Son, and his Word.

Rev. Vosper and all who deign to create deity in their own image or deconstruct deity according to their own “wisdom” will find themselves confronted by the very One they modify or deny: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me” (Job 38:2–3 [ESV]). What the world lauds as noble will be revealed by God to be terminally foolish.

Abusing the Scriptures: Galatians 3:28

If you ever took a class on expository preaching, you would have heard the line about the preacher who had written a great sermon and now needed a scripture to go along with it. Unfortunately, that scenario gets played out too often. The Scriptures become something to use instead of the Word of God to heed.

The Bible gets especially abused by professing Christians who seek scriptural support for their agenda, and one of the most egregious abuses concerns their utilization of Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (ESV).

“Christian” apologists for homosexuals and transgenders emphasize the “no male and female” part of that verse. Their claim is that since Christians “are all one in Christ Jesus,” God has demolished the categories of male and female. Sexual categories are irrelevant, so if a person is born female and believes she is really male, what the person feels is more important than what her biology reveals.

Such cherry-picking of Scripture to validate one’s cause reveals naiveté at best and dishonesty at worst. First, the Scriptures affirm the categories of male and female. God created humanity in his image and defined them as male and female (Genesis 1:27). As David writes, from our mothers’ wombs we “are fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13-14). Those who refuse to submit to the sex in which they were created are telling God that his work is flawed and they are going to fix it. The creature “corrects” the Creator.

Second, Scripture condemns attempts to invalidate one’s manhood and womanhood. This is why homosexuality is condemned in both the Old and New Testament. Romans 1:26-28 leaves little doubt: “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (Romans 1:26–28, ESV).

Third, Galatians 3:28 is not speaking to gender but to status. In Christ Jesus there is nothing that distinguishes one believer from another as far as those things we use for status. A Jew is not superior to a Greek, a free man is not superior to a slave, and a male is not superior to a female. In Christ we all have equal standing. That does not change our ethnicity, social position, or sexuality, but we cannot use our ethnicity, social position, or sexuality to claim a superior position over others.

In Luke 11:28 Jesus said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (ESV). We are to conform our will to God’s will, and we do that only as we submit to his Word. God, however, has expressly warned against misusing his Word:

“You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you” (Deuteronomy 4:2, ESV).

“Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it” (Deuteronomy 12:32, ESV).

“I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book” (Revelation 22:18–19, ESV).

Frankly, people who use Galatians 3:28 to affirm what Scripture condemns are guilty of dishonesty. They read into the text what they want it to say, not what the author of the text intended. Forsaking legitimate exegesis, they are guilty of eisegesis of the worst sort. And God will not hold them guiltless, for they have dared to reduce the holy Scriptures to the status of clay, fashioning it after the likeness of their fallenness, and have subsumed God’s will to their own. Claiming that the Bible says what it clearly does not say merely compounds one’s guilt for choosing to condone what God has condemned.

Living faithfully

That we live in strange times is akin to saying the sun is bright. Conservative Americans have seen their country’s moral universe turned inside out, especially with the 5-4 edict of the Supreme Court last summer pronouncing same-sex marriage the law of the land.

Not only is same-sex marriage now law, we are seeing that sexual freedom trumps religious freedom. Christian bakers and florists have been targeted by same-sex marriage folk in order to force those Christians to embrace homosexual weddings or face legal retribution. Under threats from the National Football League and big entertainment and big business, the governor of Georgia vetoed a state bill that would have protected ministers from having to perform such weddings. The Wall Street Journal described the bill in this way: “The ‘Free Exercise Protection Act,’ passed earlier this month, allows faith-based organizations to decline services or fire employees over discordant religious beliefs. The bill also aims to protect religious officials from having to perform marriage ceremonies or other services ‘in violation of their legal right to free exercise of religion,’ according to the legislation.”

North Carolina’s state legislature passed and its governor signed a law that requires persons to use the restroom of their biological gender. That is hardly radical, is it? The state has come under fire from liberal groups who think that transgender persons should be able to use the rest room of their perceived psychological gender, not biological.

So this is the slide into radical depravity down which western culture is descending and, in truth, should not be unsurprising. The apostle Paul wrote almost two millennia ago: “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error” (Romans 1:24–27).

As sad it is to watch our culture’s collapse into moral degeneracy, not to mention what this will mean for our children and grandchildren, it is beyond sad to watch professing Christians follow the culture. Have breathed the philosophical air of secular education and popular entertainment, many professing Christians, including both younger and older persons, see little, if anything at all, wrong with sexual intimacy (either heterosexual or homosexual) outside of marriage, same-sex unions, or people changing their sexual identification. Others, who are more traditional about such matters, openly and proudly support political candidates who support abortion rights or who boast about their sexual “conquests.”

Why is this? Why do the folk next door who are in church on Sunday follow the popular trends of culture? Many right answers could be offered, but one stands out: the Bible simply is not viewed as authoritative over our lives. It may be “the good Book,” but it is held as a book of general guidelines instead of specific precepts.

It really does not matter how much of the Bible we know, how much we memorize, how many times we read it, or how much we revere it if we do not believe that it is the written Word of God that has authority over our thinking and our actions. Jesus’ condemnation of the religious leaders of his day could be given to many of our day: “You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men’” (Matthew 15:7–9).

How shall we then vote?

If ignorance is indeed bliss, then those Americans unaware of this year’s presidential primary are of all people most blessed! One major Democratic candidate could (and probably should) be facing a federal indictment over how top-secret state communications were handled. The other top Democratic candidate is a self-described socialist. Not long ago, he would have been relegated to an asterisk as an inconsequential third-party extremist. This is a different America, indeed.

The leading Republican candidate has boasted of his adulterous “conquests.” He appeared on the cover of “Playboy” with a model wearing only his tuxedo jacket covering her body. His casino in New Jersey was the first in America to open a strip club. He attempted to displace a widow through eminent domain to build a limousine parking lot for his casino. And he has been personally endorsed by the president of Liberty University, the world’s largest evangelical university. These are strange times, indeed.

The almost universal mantra of Christians who support the leading Republican candidate goes something like this, “We’re electing the Commander-in-Chief, not the Pastor-in-Chief.” If one says that often enough, one can use it to cover a multitude of sins. Indeed, Americans are not voting for the nation’s chief pastor and no candidate is perfect, but does that mean that character, virtue, and vice do not matter?

The Democratic primary is down to two contenders. Both are vocal supporters of abortion and same-sex marriage. How can Christians support such candidates? Again, people say, “My candidate believes in other things that are good. Besides, even though I personally don’t agree with abortion or same-sex marriage, I must not impose my Christianity upon other people.”

Here is the question that Christians must answer: Does the lordship of Christ over their lives matter outside the church? Does the lordship of Christ carry over to decisions we make at our voting precinct?

Let’s be clear: the Bible knows nothing about dichotomizing one’s life into realms of “sacred” and “secular.” For the Christian, all of life is sacred. Nothing exists outside the Lordship of Christ. For those who disagree, think deeply about these stark words of Jesus: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (Matt 7:21-23).

To the one who protests that Jesus is referring to “religious” things (the ones condemned speak of their prophesying, exorcising demons, and doing miracles in Christ’s name), think about 1 Corinthians 10:31: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” If activities as seemingly banal as eating and drinking are to be done to the glory of God, then surely our vote for leaders of our country ought to be done to the glory of God.

What we must do is think deeply about those for whom we vote. The best candidate may not be a Christian, but at least he should be a person of common decency and virtue, a person who has demonstrated a consistency lifestyle and decision-making that does not blatantly contradict scriptural precepts. Is this person honest? Does he exhibit a concern for others? Has he been faithful in his most intimate relationships with others? How does he treat his opposition – with grace or retribution? Does he exhibit, not merely with words but with life, that there is a just and righteous God who rules over us and to whom we are accountable?

This is the question that we need to answer about our decision: Can I justify to God the reason for my vote? Superficial answers won’t do.

Refusing to bow

In Luke 19 we find Jesus and his disciples nearing Jerusalem. Because his disciples assumed that the kingdom of God was about to appear, Jesus told them a parable, beginning in this way: “A nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return. Calling ten of his servants, he gave them ten minas, and said to them, ‘Engage in business until I come.’ But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us.’” Jesus was pointing to his death and going to heaven, but he would return one day to establish the consummated kingdom of God.

For those who reject the biblical Christ, this is the bottom line: “I will not have him to reign over me.” The bottom line really is whether we retain our autonomy or surrender it to Jesus.

Many mask their rejection of the rule of Christ by claiming they do follow him, but everybody else who follow the Bible are the ones who misunderstand the real Jesus. The real Jesus, they say, is all about love, and that’s the Jesus they follow. This love is one that allows all things, whether it is same-sex marriage or folks changing their gender or women having the right to abort their unborn baby, etc.

The Bible, of course, calls such things “sin,” but these “Christian” rebels claim that the Bible is simply a manmade book and really doesn’t carry any authority.

Amazingly, many of those who refuse to bow to Christ are in the Christian ministry. With academic degrees and ministerial standing, they undermine the very faith that they claim to follow.

One such minister is in a mainline denomination that endorses same-sex marriage and legalized abortion. Without shame he claims: “I think the Bible is wrong about most everything. It is wrong about evolution, slavery, women, and gays. It has no authority on those topics. I think the Bible is wrong about cosmology, history, our future, Jesus, and God. The texts were all written by human beings without any supernatural or special revelation. Yet I preach in a PC(USA) pulpit.” He mocks, “Run! Flee! Escape while you can into the refreshing waters of pure doctrine!”

To those who leave the denomination because it refuses to address such heresy, he taunts: “We will need plenty more break-offs before we finally give up on the oppressive notion of the Authority of Scripture. The Bible contains no truth outside of what we can discover through public means of inquiry. Don’t misunderstand. I enjoy the Bible. It is a marvelous human book. I read it and study it with all the critical means at my disposal. In so doing, I will do my part to undermine its Authority which I think is the next important step for religious freedom.”

And so we learn that his issue is the authority of Scripture. This minister enjoys the prospect of a god of his own creation, a god who basically endorses all that he himself approves, a god who is basically a mirror image of what he conceives as good. No holiness. No righteousness. No divine justice. No fear of God.

This minister and countless others discount the Bible because it doesn’t endorse such a view. It presents a holy God who requires perfection in order to dwell in God’s presence. The Bible takes issue with sin, but the Son of God came to earth to satisfy divine justice for those who will submit to Christ. But that’s the thing — this minister, who happens not to believe in the afterlife, refuses to bow.

But bow he shall, as will all of creation: “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9–11 [ESV]).

 

 

Helpful thinking for responding to criticism

Amanda Criss has provided some very helpful thoughts in how to respond properly to criticism. Here’s a taste:

I realize now that my feelings were so hurt because my pride was so devastated. A proud heart like mine is shocked and offended at an accusation of imperfection. I want to be liked and admired, but instead, my desperate need for a Savior was shamefully exposed.

But the gospel frees me to receive criticism without anger and indignation. In the reflection of God’s holiness, I realize and embrace that I am much more sinful than my accuser can ever think to express. Even if the specific accusations I receive are without merit, when it comes to my deceitful heart, they don’t know the half of it.

The beauty of despair

It is hard to claim that twenty-first-century America is a happy place. Anger and bitterness abound, and joy and peace are in short supply. A sense of despair hangs over us. As a people, we seem to have no sense of purpose.

We try to alleviate this despair with busyness or toys, so we distract ourselves with work and social media and television and smart phones. Such things, though, do not solve our basic issues, so we seek therapy, believing that a psychiatrist and perhaps the right drugs will get our minds balanced to deal with the problems of contemporary living.

In many churches the pastor is the spiritual therapist, and his sermons are therapeutic, giving attention to hearers’ felt needs. People flock to such churches because life is all about them and their issues, and they know that this particular pastor is going to deal with human concerns and give them some spiritual therapy to apply to their psychological sore.

Unfortunately, we miss the root issues while trying to fix the surface ones. The primary reason for our despair is sin, and the solution is not a pseudo-psychiatrist masquerading as a preacher.

Fallen man and woman live in selfish sinfulness. They live outside of God and in rebellion to his will. This man or woman may attend church periodically, perhaps even every Sunday morning. Perhaps he or she recognizes that something is out of order in life and considers church as the place to get it right.

While the therapeutic salve or always being on the go may distract momentarily distract us, in the dark of night and the quiet of one’s soul the despair continues. It may be dulled, but it is not removed or replaced. Unfortunately, many stumble through life, day by day, pushing their despair aside with the distraction of entertainment or social media, work or recreation, or alcohol or pharmaceuticals. Anthony Burgess [1600-1663] observed this about the nature of man centuries ago: “Oh, it is to be feared that there are many that give themselves lusts, and carnal pleasures, that so they may put a foggy mist between their conscience and themselves. Others dig into the world, labouring to become senseless, that so there may be an eclipse of this light by the interposition of the earth. Others run to damnable heresies, denying Scriptures, God, heaven, hell. . . . What are these but refuges of guilty consciences? We must distinguish between our carnal concupiscence [desire], and conscience; between deluded imaginations, and conscience; between an erroneous and scrupulous conscience, and a well grounded and truly informed conscience, and when we have done so, we must follow conscience as far as that follows the Word.”

The despair remains because the condition of the fallen person remains. Scripture instructs that, as fallen humans, we are “dead in trespasses and sins,” that we “follow the course of this world, . . . the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience,” that we live “in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and [are] by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:1-3).

We are helped only when we recognize that despair is a God-given gift to alert us to the fact that we are not what we were intended to be. God created us to live in fellowship with him, but like the fish longing to live on land, we rebelled and find ourselves out of the environment unto which we were created.

God has graciously gifted us with despair so that we will grow weary of living in an alien environment. Our conscience convicts us of our waywardness, and the Word of God and the Spirit of God point us to Christ. Only in Christ will our lives find the peace and sense of purpose unto which we were created: “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” [Romans 14:17 (ESV]). Despair arises from living in the wrong environment, but despair is God’s gift to drive us to Christ, the One who is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

This and that: some random thoughts

What kind of church do we want Cornerstone to be? Do we want to be a “Christian ghetto church” that withdraws from the community, concerned only about the people we have and those who happen to find us? Are there not ways that we intentionally can share Christ with others? Perhaps we can open our homes to unbelievers and lead conversations to aspects of the gospel, something the Lord would use to soften hearts and draw unbelievers unto himself.

Are there ways that we can inform others of some of our beliefs? There really are Christians looking for “a Cornerstone,” but they don’t really know that we exist. Oh, they may know there is a church called “Cornerstone,” but they don’t realize that we hold to Reformed doctrine. How can we better get that word out?

Unfortunately, many who are satisfied with today’s typical Baptist church culture assume that’s what we are. When they visit, they discover otherwise and don’t return. Others are looking for a Reformed fellowship and assume that we are basically the same as any other Baptist church, so they don’t even look into Cornerstone to learn what we’re about. How can we better inform the community? Don’t assume they know. Most do not.

. . . . . . .

Thinking about prayer, Alistair Begg has shared some useful observations about prayer that we should find helpful:

“If our prayer is meager, it is because we regard it as supplemental and not fundamental.

“We can do more than pray after we have prayed but not until we have prayed.

“We do not pray for the work. Prayer is the work and preaching is gathering up the results.

“God does not delay to hear our prayers because he has no mind to give; but that by enlarging our desires, he may give us the more largely” (William Philip, Why We Pray, 16).

. . . . . . .

Dr. Ray Ortlund, pastor of Immanual Church in Nashville, Tennessee, addresses a fundamental issue confronting American churches, and this is certainly true of many, many Baptist churches: ““The need of our times is the re-Christianization of our churches, according to the gospel alone, in both doctrine and culture, by Christ himself. Nothing less than the beauty of Christ will suffice today, though what a renewed church will look like may, at present, lie beyond our imaginations” (The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ, 18-19).

. . . . . . .

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse [1895-1960], longtime pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, commented on the sad case of Cain: “He started with human reason as opposed to divine revelation; he continued in human willfulness instead of divine will; he opposed human pride to divine humility; he sank to human hatred instead of rising to divine love; he presented human excuses instead of seeking divine grace; he went into wandering instead of seeking to return; he ended in human loneliness instead of in divine fellowship. To be alone without God is the worst thing that earth can hold, to go thus into eternity is, indeed, the second death” (Genesis, 38-39).

. . . . . . .

Jesus says some things about discipleship that are shocking to twenty-first-century ears and rarely repeated in pulpits. For instance, Jesus said, “I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law” (Luke 12:49–53). We must not think casually about following Jesus.

Why does Cornerstone call itself “a Reformed Baptist fellowship”?

The word “reformed” helps theologically minded people understand something about us, but the term means little to others, so they ask, “What is a Reformed Baptist church?”

First things first: we are Baptists in the historical sense. While we officially use the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message as informed by the Abstract of Principles (1858) of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, we find our beliefs more explicitly stated in what is known as the Second London Baptist Confession, or the Baptist Confession of 1689. Early Baptists typically identified as either Particular Baptists or General Baptists, and the distinction was primarily over the extent of Christ’s atonement. Because Particular Baptists believed in the doctrines of grace (we’ll get to those doctrines in a bit), they believed that Christ died effectually for those who would believe upon him (particular atonement), not potentially for everyone in the world (general atonement). Consequently, Cornerstone is in the tradition of Particular Baptists.

Particular Baptists arose out of the settled dust of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther and John Calvin notably defended the New Testament doctrine of the sovereignty of God in all things generally and in individual salvation specifically. Particular Baptists would primarily differ from the earlier Protestants over the subjects of salvation. Baptism was an ordinance reserved for believers in Christ only, not for infants.

Cornerstone holds to the five solas of the Reformation to summarize our beliefs and practices: sola fide, by faith alone; sola scriptura, by Scripture alone; solus Christus, through Christ alone; sola gratia, by grace alone; and soli Deo gloria, glory to God alone.

As mentioned above, Reformed Baptists hold to the doctrines of grace: total depravity, unconditional election, limited or particular atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. We believe in the total depravity of man, that all humans are corrupted by sin. Total depravity does not mean that we are as evil as we could be, but all of us are corrupted with evil (Romans 3:10-12). If God did not work in our hearts, none of us would ever seek him because we are “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1).

We believe that God has chosen his people unto salvation unconditionally (Ephesians 1:3-11). God does not base his choice of us before the foundation of the world on a decision to follow him that he sees will occur in the future. We are saved by God’s grace through faith, so we have nothing in ourselves about which to boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).

We believe that the atoning death of Christ is expressly for those who believe upon him, not for each and every person who has ever been conceived, regardless of their belief in Christ. Jesus said that he gave his life for the sheep (John 10:11, 15). But is not Christ “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but for the sins of the world” (1 John 2:2)? He is indeed, having died not just for certain believers but for believers throughout the world, regardless of ethnicity, language, social status, gender, or any other way groups of people are set against others.

We believe that God’s grace is irresistible. God regenerates the unbelieving heart to desire to repent of sin and trust in Christ: “as many as were appointed to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48). Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44), and he later said, “No one can come to me unless it has been granted him by the Father” (John 6:65).

We believe that all those who truly come to Christ will persevere in their faith throughout their lives. Those in the church who turn aside from Christ “went out from us, but they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us” (1 John 2:19).

In addition to the doctrines of grace, we believe in the centrality of preaching the Scriptures, the Word of God, in the gathered worship of the church. The Bible alone reveals who Jesus is and what God requires. Everything flows from the Scriptures, whether the subject is who God is, what salvation requires, how Christians are to live, how worship should be order, how a local church should be organized, whatever it may be. “Preach the Word” (2 Timothy 4:2). A Reformed Baptist church is guided not by whatever will “work” but by what the Scriptures say.

Cornerstone is established as a Reformed Baptist fellowship, and we want always to be reforming our understanding of the church and our lives in light of the Scriptures. Unto God alone be the glory.