God has graciously disclosed his existence and power in the created order and has supremely revealed himself to fallen human beings in the person of his Son, the incarnate Word. Moreover, this God is a speaking God who by his Spirit has graciously disclosed himself in human words: we believe that God has inspired the words preserved in the Scriptures, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, which are both record and means of his saving work in the world. These writings alone constitute the verbally inspired Word of God, which is utterly authoritative and without error in the original writings, complete in its revelation of his will for salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do, and final in its authority over every domain of knowledge to which it speaks. We confess that both our finitude and our sinfulness inhibit the possibility of knowing God’s truth completely, but we affirm that, enlightened by the Spirit of God, we can know God’s revealed truth truly. The Bible is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it teaches; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; and trusted, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises. As God’s people hear, believe, and do the Word, they are equipped as disciples of Christ and witnesses to the gospel. This Word yields to us the True Story of the whole world.

2 Timothy 3:16–17 // 2 Peter 1:20–21 // 1 John 1:1–2

We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who know, love, and glorify one another. This one true and living God is infinitely perfect both in his love and in his holiness. He is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible, and is therefore worthy to receive all glory and adoration. Immortal and eternal, he perfectly and exhaustively knows the end from the beginning, sustains and sovereignly rules over all things, and providentially brings about his eternal good purposes to redeem a people for himself and restore his fallen creation, to the praise of his glorious grace.

Deuteronomy 6:4 // Matthew 3:16–17 // Matthew 28:19 // 1 Peter 1:1–2 // John 10:29–30 // 2 Corinthians 13:14

We believe God created human beings, male and female, in his own image. Adam and Eve belonged to the created order that God himself declared to be very good, serving as God’s agents and representatives to care for, manage, cultivate, and govern creation, living in holy and devoted fellowship with their Maker. Men and women, equally made in the image of God, enjoy equal access to God by faith in Christ Jesus and are both called to move beyond passive self-indulgence to significant private and public engagement in family, church, and civic life. In God’s wise purposes, men and women are not simply interchangeable but rather they complement each other in mutually enriching ways.

Genesis 1:27–28 // Genesis 2:18–23 // 1 Corinthians 11:11–12

Not all persons are called to be married; singleness is a vocation of dignity, value, and worth with its own ways to serve the kingdom of God and contribute to the life of the world. In many ways, singleness can be a preferable calling in God’s Kingdom.

Marriage is an institution of creation. Adam and Eve were made to complement each other, as male and female, in a “one flesh” union with both a unitive dimension (the ability to unite two bodies as one), and a procreative dimension (the vehicle through which children are brought into the world).2 Marriage is thus the foundation for family, the sacred building block of society that builds up humanity, and designed to image God in a covenant of faithful love. Jesus affirms the “one flesh” union of male and female as the normative pattern for sex and marriage and highlights the sacred indissolubility of the bond.

Marriage is also an image of salvation, designed to display Christ and his Bride, in faithful love, mutual service, and an unbreakable union that brings life to the world. God ordains that spouses assume distinctive roles which reflect the loving relationship between Christ and the church: the husband taking initiative to love, care for, and serve his wife, while she lovingly and willfully follows his leadership as they partner to shape the culture of their home.

God intends sex to be only practiced within marriage and prohibits any sexual activity outside of this one-man and one-woman covenant (such as, pornography, adultery, pre-marital sex, same-sex sexual activity). As followers of Jesus, we give our bodies to God, pursuing sexual fidelity as an avenue of faithfulness.

Matthew 19:4-6 // Ephesians 5:31-32 // 1 Corinthians 7:6-9

We need to be reconciled with God. We believe that Adam, made in the image of God, distorted that image and forfeited his original blessedness—for himself and all his progeny—by rebelling against God through Satan’s temptation. As a result, all human beings are alienated from God, corrupted in every aspect of their being (e.g., physically, mentally, volitionally, emotionally, relationally, spiritually) and condemned finally and irrevocably to death—apart from God’s own gracious intervention. The supreme need of all human beings is to be reconciled to the God under whose just and holy wrath we stand; the only hope of all human beings is the undeserved love of this same God, who alone can rescue us and restore us to himself. Humanity’s rebellion does not only affect humanity; it disintegrated the whole of creation and subjected it to futility. Sin now is contained within the mores and structures of both biology and society. While the creational structures of the world remain fundamentally good, the distorting power of sin means they have been radically misdirected.

Genesis 3:1–7 // Romans 5:12, 19 // Romans 8:20–22

We believe that from all eternity God determined in grace to save a great multitude of guilty sinners from every tribe and language and people and nation, and to this end foreknew them and chose them. We believe that God justifies and sanctifies those who by grace have faith in Jesus, and that he will one day glorify them—all to the praise of his glorious grace. This election is not only a privilege, it is a responsibility; in love, God commands and implores all people through the church to repent and believe, having set his saving love on those he has chosen and having ordained Christ to be their Redeemer.

Ephesians 1:3–10 // Acts 17:30–31 // Acts 13:48 // Romans 9:16 // John 6:37 // John 15:16 // Philippians 1:29 // Isaiah 49:6

We believe that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ—God’s very wisdom. Utter folly to the world, even though it is the power of God to those who are being saved, this good news is:

Christ-Centered — centering on the cross and resurrection: the gospel is not proclaimed if Christ is not proclaimed, and the authentic Christ has not been proclaimed if his death and resurrection are not central; the message is “Christ died for our sins . . . [and] was raised.”

Biblical — his death and resurrection are according to the Scriptures

Saving — Christ died for our sins, to reconcile us to God.

Sanctifying — the grace of God applied by the Spirit trains us to renounce ungodliness.

Historical — if the saving events did not happen, our faith is worthless, we are still in our sins, and we are to be pitied more than all others.

Apostolic — the message was entrusted to and transmitted by the apostles, who were witnesses of these saving events.

Personal — where it is received, believed, and held firmly, individual persons are saved.

Communal — God is saving a people, not just a smattering of individuals.

Political — Jesus is the True King, announcing that the Kingdom of God has come near.

Cosmic — Jesus is comprehensively restoring all of Creation.

1 Corinthians 15:1–8 // 1 John 1:1–4 // Mark 1:14–15

We believe that, in love for us and in obedience to his Father, the eternal Son became human: the Word became flesh, fully God and fully human being, one Person in two natures. The man Jesus, the promised Messiah (Savior-King) of Israel, was conceived through the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit, and was born of the virgin Mary. He perfectly obeyed his heavenly Father, lived a sinless life, performed miraculous signs, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, arose bodily from the dead on the third day, and ascended into heaven. As our Mediator, he is seated at the right hand of God the Father, exercising in heaven and on earth all of God’s sovereignty, and is our High Priest and righteous Advocate. We believe that by his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus Christ acted as our representative and substitute. He did this so that in him we might become the righteousness of God: on the cross he canceled sin, appeased God’s wrath, and, by bearing the full penalty of our sins, reconciled to God all those who believe. By his resurrection Christ Jesus was proved righteous by his Father, broke the power of death and defeated Satan who once had power over it, and brought everlasting life to all his people; by his ascension he has been forever exalted as Lord and has prepared a place for us to be with him. We believe that salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved. No human being can ever boast before him.

John 1:14 // Matthew 1:18 // 2 Corinthians 5:21 // 1 Timothy 2:5 // Matthew 28:18 // John 14:1–3

We believe that Christ, by his obedience and death, fully released the debt of all those who are justified. By his sacrifice, he bore in our stead the punishment due us for our sins, making a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God’s justice on our behalf. By his perfect obedience he satisfied the just demands of God on our behalf, since by faith alone that perfect obedience is credited to all who trust in Christ alone for their acceptance with God. Christ was freely given by the Father for us, and his obedience and punishment were accepted in place of our own. This justification is solely of grace in order that God might be glorified in the justification of sinners. We believe that a passion for personal and public obedience flows from this free justification.

Romans 3:21–31 // Titus 2:11–14 // 2 Corinthians 5:21 // Genesis 15:6

We believe that salvation, attested in all Scripture and secured by Jesus Christ, is applied to his people by the Holy Spirit. Sent by the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ and, as the “other” Advocate, is present with and in believers. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and by his powerful and mysterious work gives new life to spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance and faith, and in him they are baptized into union with the Lord Jesus, such that they are justified before God by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. By the Spirit’s agency, believers are renewed, sanctified, and adopted into God’s family; they participate in the divine nature and receive his sovereignly distributed gifts. The Holy Spirit is himself the down payment of the promised inheritance, and in this age indwells, guides, instructs, equips, revives, and empowers believers for Christ-like living and service.

Ezekiel 36:25–27 // John 14:16–17 // 1 Corinthians 12:1–11

We believe that those who have been saved by the grace of God through union with Christ by faith and through regeneration by the Holy Spirit enter the kingdom of God and delight in the blessings of the new covenant: the forgiveness of sins, the inward transformation that awakens a desire to glorify, trust, and obey God, and the prospect of the glory yet to be revealed. Good works constitute indispensable evidence of saving grace. Living as salt in a world that is decaying and light in a world that is dark, believers should neither withdraw into seclusion from the world nor become indistinguishable from it. Rather, we are to do good to the city, for all the glory and honor of the nations is to be offered up to the living God. Recognizing whose created order this is, and because we are citizens of God’s kingdom, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, doing good to all, especially to those who belong to the household of God. The kingdom of God, already present but not fully realized, is the exercise of God’s sovereignty in the world anticipating the redemption of all creation. The kingdom of God is an invasive power that plunders Satan’s dark kingdom and regenerates and renovates through repentance and faith the lives of individuals rescued from that kingdom. It therefore inevitably establishes a new community of human life together under God.

Matthew 22:36–40 // Mark 1:14–15 // Matthew 5:13–16 // Galatians 6:10

We believe that God’s new covenant people have already come to the heavenly Jerusalem; having been made new, they are reigning with Christ over the powers of sin and death. This universal church is manifest in local churches of which Christ is the only Head; thus each ”local church” is, in fact, the church, the household of God, the assembly of the living God, and the pillar and foundation of the truth. The church is the body of Christ, the apple of his eye, graven on his hands, and he has pledged himself to her forever. The church is distinguished by her gospel message, her sacred ordinances, her discipline, her great mission, and, above all, by her love for God, her members’ love for one another, and for the world. Crucially, this gospel we cherish has both personal and corporate dimensions, neither of which may properly be overlooked. Christ Jesus is our peace. He has not only brought about peace with God but also peace between alienated peoples. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both Jew and Gentile to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. The church serves as the presence of God’s inbreaking kingdom, and as a sign of God’s future new world when her members live for the service of one another and their neighbors rather than for self-focus. The church is the corporate dwelling place of God’s Spirit, and the continuing witness to God in the world.

Ephesians 2:14-16, 19-22 // Matthew 28:18–20 // John 13:34

We believe in the personal, glorious, and bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ with his holy angels, at which time he will exercise his role as final Judge, and his kingdom will be finally and fully established. We believe in the bodily resurrection of both the just and the unjust—the unjust to judgment and eternal conscious punishment in hell, as our Lord himself taught, and the just to eternal blessedness in the presence of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb, in the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness. All evil will be wiped away, all brokenness healed, and all injustice rectified; the entire fabric of creation will be renewed having been healed in Christ. On that day the church will be presented faultless before God by the obedience, suffering and triumph of Christ, all sin purged and its wretched effects forever banished. God will be all in all; his people will be enthralled by the immediacy of his indescribable holiness and everything will be to the praise of his glorious grace.

Revelation 19:11–16 // Revelation 21:1–5 // Ephesians 1:9–10 // Luke 12:4–5

We believe there are two ordinances: baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

We believe that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ordained by the Lord Jesus himself. The former is connected with entrance into the new covenant community, the latter with ongoing covenant renewal. Together they are simultaneously God’s pledge to us, divinely ordained means of grace, our public vows of submission to the once crucified and now resurrected Christ, and anticipations of his return and of the consummation of all things.

We practice “believer’s baptism,” meaning that baptism is appropriately administered by full immersion and only to those who give a thoughtful profession of faith in Jesus Christ. We believe that baptism should come after faith in Jesus rather than before. For this reason, we will not baptize infants or small children that are unable to make a thoughtful profession of faith. We understand that some within our church family may have different convictions about the value of infant baptism. Therefore, we will not necessarily exclude from membership those who do not agree with our position on baptism and refuse to be baptized as believers, though we do expect that they have a theologically defensible reason for holding to infant baptism and that they will not allow this non-essential issue to cause division.

Matthew 28:18–20 // Romans 6:3–5 // Matthew 26:26–28 // 1 Corinthians 11:23–2

Ironwood Church is overseen by a plurality of male pastor/elders.

The complementary nature of men and women requires that we partner together to love and lead the church. The consistent pattern in the New Testament is that qualified male pastor/elders shepherd each local body of believers. Pastors/elders are called to a number of formal and specific duties, including: prayer and Scripture study, caring for the people in the church, equipping the church to do ministry, giving an account to God for the church, living exemplary lives, preaching and teaching, praying for the sick, and teaching sound doctrine and refuting error at the corporate level.

While the office of pastor/elder is reserved for men, to serve as “fathers” of the church family, the role of women as “mothers” of the church family is equally necessary and invaluable. Because men and women are complementary, it is essential that pastor/elders seek out formal and informal input from their sisters in Christ. Female leaders are also called to the task of committing themselves to prayer, Scripture, and exemplary obedience as they equip the church through leading, training, praying, and teaching within the various ministries of the church.

1 Timothy 3:1–7 // Hebrews 13:17 // 1 Timothy 5:17 // 1 Timothy 2:10–15 // Romans 16:1, 3-4

Church discipline is the process of confronting sin to achieve repentance and restoration.

The bride of Christ is not nor has it ever been perfectly faithful; she has been shamefully complicit in society’s sin and has thereby harmed people, her witness, and the name of Jesus.

For this reason we commit to the practice of Church Discipline. The informal process of church discipline happens any time a believer confronts another believer about his or her sin and encourages repentance. The formal process of church discipline typically begins when the individual in sin is unwilling to repent over an extended period of time. Thus, most formal church discipline is not as much about the sin as it is about the hard-hearted unwillingness to repent of sin. The process of church discipline concludes when the believer either repents or is formally removed by the elders from participating in the church. Additionally, those who intentionally stir up divisions in the church should be disciplined with greater swiftness.

The leaders of the church are not exempt from this process. For this reason, we emphasize plurality at every level of our organization. Leaders of the church are to be disciplined with an even greater swiftness and publicity, as sin in leadership severely harms the local church.

Galatians 6:1 // 1 Corinthians 5:1–7 // Romans 16:17 // Matthew 18:15-1

We are called to love our neighbors with conviction and civility.

From the beginning, humanity has been called to be culture makers: to subdue and have dominion over the rest of creation. When sin entered the creation, the society-building project did not end; it simply changed directions. Instead of building a world meant to glorify the Father, sinful humans sought to glorify themselves. All societies have elements of good, as fallen humans are still in God’s image, but nonetheless are fundamentally rebellious from the heart.

Jesus’ reign is absolute and universal; every single part of creation is accountable to Jesus as Lord. Jesus, in both his miracles and his teaching, pushed back the effects of the curse on individuals, societal structures, and the natural world. Now, by his Spirit, he continues his comprehensive and redemptive work on earth; participation in the Way of Jesus cannot be contained to the private realm but implicates every arena of public life as well. Though all things will not be renewed until the final and triumphant return of Jesus, in the meantime, love requires that we seek the flourishing of our neighbors, societies, and cultures.

Rather than secluding ourselves from the world, love takes the first step as we move towards our neighbors with sobriety. We engage our world with both conviction and civility, soft hearts and steel spines because pluralism, systemic idolatry, and brokenness are our present realities. Though ultimate failure is the norm until Christ’s second coming, the Spirit sometimes blesses our obedient efforts.

Genesis 1:28 // Genesis 11:4 // Jeremiah 29:4–7 // Acts 16:20–2

The body is sacred—including its sexed nature—and a fundamental aspect of our identity.

Our bodies are sacred. We are not just persons who have bodies; we are bodies. Body and soul share an integral union, mutually integral to our personhood: we are embodied souls, and ensouled bodies.

The body’s sexed nature, as male or female, is not only significant but bound up with our creation in the image of God. Jesus reaffirms the diversity of the sexes as ethically significant and grounded in the structure of creation. Jesus also recognizes the exception of those “born eunuchs” (which is analogous, if not equivalent, to intersex conditions) while simultaneously affirming the male/female binary as normative for creation. Christ’s incarnation and resurrection affirm the body’s foundational significance.

Followers of Jesus ought to identify in accordance with our bodily sex, not present ourselves in ways that will intentionally introduce confusion as to our identity as male or female, and not seek to alter our body’s sex through hormone therapy or sex-reassignment surgery.

We recognize some of our members are born with an intersex condition (a biological reality) and others experience gender dysphoria (a psychological reality): both of these are real and can be painful. If this is you, you are loved by God, created with dignity, value, and worth, and an invaluable part of God’s world and church. We want to walk with you, love you, and serve Jesus together, as a church family where there are no “second-class citizens,” only image-bearers who are members of Christ’s body.

While our conviction is that gender should be understood within (rather than in addition to) one’s biological sex, there is great flexibility in how one expresses their gender, so long as one is not deliberately seeking to identify or present themselves in opposition to their bodily sex. King David was a “real” man when he wrote poetry and played the harp; Deborah was a “real” woman when she led Israel into war. Jesus wept over Jerusalem like a mother hen (Matt. 23:31); the woman of Proverbs 31 buys property, runs a business, has a strong back, and provides for her family.

We cannot expect those who have rejected Jesus as Creator and Redeemer to live in line with the Creator’s order and purpose. God calls us to exercise judgment with one another in our church body, pressing each other towards holiness in the way of Christ, and trust him to deal with those outside.

Genesis 1:27 // Matthew 19:4, 11-12a // Deuteronomy 22:5 // 1 Corinthians 5:12–13

God’s people are called to love the last, the least, and the lost.

God’s prioritization of the poor and overlooked is a theme on display throughout the biblical story. In the Exodus, God’s foundational act of salvation, he saves an enslaved people from the sins of their oppressors. In the Law, he repeatedly calls his people to pay significant attention—both personally and politically—to what theologians have called the “Quartet of the Vulnerable”: widows, orphans, sojourners, and the poor. In the Prophets, he gives warning and rebuke to those who have oppressed the vulnerable or turned a blind eye to the plight of those in need. In the Wisdom literature, he gives insight regarding the complicated nature of both wealth and poverty. In the Epistles, he repeatedly calls his Church to care for the last, the least, and the lost.

In his infinite wisdom the triune God decided that Jesus would take on flesh into a community that was a religious and ethnic minority, into citizenship in a low-influence city, and conceived by unplanned pregnancy into a powerless, sojourning, low-income family. For this reason, among others, Jesus equates kindness to the poor and overlooked with kindness to him.

In the Gospels, to be in proximity to Jesus was to be in proximity to the poor and powerless. In his public ministry, he heals the sick, cares for the poor, feeds the hungry, and ministers to the suffering. Jesus regularly shares meals and spends time with those considered outcasts. Rather than clamor for fame or influence with those in the seats of power, the Savior is content in the company of fisherman and tax- collectors, servants and widows. Jesus does not overlook the people whom society overlooks. There are no God-forsaken people or places.

Jesus’ coming kingdom will bring about the ultimate restoration of creation from every dimension of sin’s curse: spiritual and psychological, bodily and ecological, economic and socio-political. As the Church, we are called to embody Christ’s kingdom today: through concrete acts of compassion, tangible ministries of mercy, and prophetic witnesses of justice. These serve as a sign and foretaste of the kingdom that, upon King Jesus’ return, he will bring in fullness.

Matthew 25:40 // Leviticus 23:22 // Proverbs 14:31 // Galatians 2:10 // Zechariah 7:9–10 // Luke 14:13

Racism is the sin of partiality manifest in hearts and societies on the basis of skin color or ethnicity.

God created one human race made in his image that contains a plurality of ethnicities designed to reflect the unity, equality, and distinctiveness within the Trinity. When humanity rebelled against God, the earliest consequences were division between God and humanity and between one another.

Humanity, as a fruit of their ethnocentrism and egocentrism (including many Christians in history), assigned different “races” different degrees of humanity and dignity. Because God hates racial division and ethnic hostility, we grieve them and desire to help undo their harmful effects wherever they exist.

Many Christians, especially and including our own Reformed tradition, perpetuated, promoted, and profited from evil, racist systems for centuries, and, as members of one body united across time and space, we lament and grieve the sins of those who have come before, whether sins of commission or omission.

In its fullness, the Kingdom of God will not have these hostile divisions. But until we experience the fullness of that Kingdom, Redemption Church aspires to be a foretaste of Christ’s multi-ethnic Kingdom at every level of membership and leadership. We rejoice that the gospel of Jesus provides the resources to not only heal humanity’s division from God, but also from one another.

Daniel 9:4–5 // Ephesians 2:14–16 // Romans 10:12 // Galatians 2:11–13

Divorce is always a tragedy, but is sometimes permitted because of adultery, abandonment, or abuse.

Jesus affirms marriage as a divinely ordained institution, grounded in the structure of creation, and commands regarding the sacred nature of its union, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:6). Yet Jesus and the New Testament also recognize circumstances in which divorce may be permissible. While divorce is always a result of sin (whether from one spouse or another), it is not always sinful.

Biblically, divorce is permitted, but not required, on the grounds of sexual immorality (porneia) or abandonment. We believe physical, sexual, and other types of abuse may be considered a form of abandonment. Stopping abuse may require separation and may lead to divorce. Marriage reconciliation can be the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s work, but it may not always be wise, possible or biblically commanded.

Does the Bible allow for remarriage following a divorce? Paul answers this question in 1 Corinthians 7:10-11, saying that in cases of unbiblical divorce the individual should either remain unmarried or pursue reconciliation. If the divorce was biblical, remarriage is permissible. Every situation is unique. Therefore, we would recommend that those who are concerned about their situation meet with a pastor to receive personal care and biblical direction.

Finally, our convictions about divorce and remarriage lead us to a few important applications as a church. In order to preserve healthy marriages, we will require pre-marital counseling as a prerequisite to being married by a Redemption Church pastor, we will offer counseling and equipping to help strengthen marriages, and we will initiate church discipline on individuals or couples who are pursuing an unbiblical divorce.

Malachi 2:15-16 // 1 Corinthians 7:10-1

The following are issues that we consider “open-handed,” meaning that while individuals within our leadership and church may have convictions about them, they are secondary issues and freedom should be given within our church to hold different beliefs as long as the beliefs remain within the spectrum of biblical Christianity.

We have simply named the issues below and given a clarifying statement to ensure that we are clear about what we would not consider to be within the spectrum of biblical Christianity.

SIGN GIFTS
Statement: While we believe “sign gifts” to be an open-handed issue, we do not believe that the gift of tongues (or any other individual spiritual gift) is required as an evidence of salvation.

THE MILLENNIAL REIGN
Statement: While we believe “the millennial reign” to be an open-handed issue, we do not believe that Jesus has already returned or that there are “two peoples of God.”

AGE OF THE EARTH
Statement: While we believe “the age of the earth” to be an open-handed issue, we do not believe in atheistic or naturalistic evolution.