Perth Community Church is a creedal and confessional church.
We are catholic in the sense that we share much in common with the universal
church and its roots in historic, apostolic Christianity. We hold to those truths that are
embraced and confessed by all Christians of all denominations and all traditions. As
such we are committed to the great Creeds of historic Christianity such as The
Apostle’s Creed and The Nicene Creed.
We are evangelical because we embrace the two historic and cardinal doctrines of
the Reformation –
- Sola Scriptura – “by Scripture alone” (the authority of Scripture); and
- Sola fide – “by faith alone” (justification by faith alone).
We are reformed. By that we mean we embrace those doctrines and confessions
that are specific to the Reformed Faith – particularly as they are set out in our
subordinate standards of The Westminster Confession of Faith as well as The
Westminster Shorter and Larger Catechism. We recognize that just as there are
some central and foundational truths of the gospel affirmed by Christians
everywhere, so too there are particular understandings of the gospel that define the
Presbyterian and Reformed tradition. All Christians must affirm the central
mysteries of the faith, and all those who are called to ordered ministries in a
Presbyterian church must also affirm the essential teachings of the Reformed
tradition.
The great purpose toward which each human life is drawn is to glorify God and to
enjoy Him forever.
I. God’s Word: The Authority for Our Confession
The clearest declaration of God’s glory is found in His Word, both incarnate and
written. The Son eternally proceeds from the Father as His Word, the full expression
of the Father’s nature, and since in the incarnation the Word became flesh all the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge are offered to His disciples. The written Word
grants us those treasures, proclaims the saving gospel of Jesus Christ, and
graciously teaches all that is necessary for faith and life. We glorify God by
recognizing and receiving His authoritative self revelation, both in the infallible
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and also in the incarnation of God the
Son. We affirm that the same Holy Spirit who overshadowed the virgin Mary also
inspired the writing and preservation of the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit testifies to the
authority of God’s Word and illumines our hearts and minds so that we might receive
both the Scriptures and Christ Himself.
We confess that God alone is Lord of the conscience, but this freedom is for the
purpose of allowing us to be subject always and primarily to God’s Word. The Spirit
will never prompt our conscience to conclusions that are at odds with the Scriptures
that He has inspired. The revelation of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word does not
minimize, qualify, or set aside the authority of the written Word. We join with other
members of the Presbyterian and Reformed community to affirm the secondary
authority of the Westminster Confession of Faith as a faithful exposition of the Word
of God.
II. Trinity and Incarnation: The Two Central Christian Mysteries
A. Trinity
With Christians everywhere, we worship the only true God – Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit – who is both one essence and three persons. God is infinite,
eternal, immutable, impassible, and ineffable. He is the source of all
goodness, all truth and all beauty, of all love and all life, omnipotent,
omniscient, and omnipresent. The three persons are consubstantial5 with one
another, being both coeternal, and coequal, such that there are not three gods,
nor are there three parts of God, but rather three persons within the one
Godhead. The Son is eternally begotten from the Father, and the Spirit
proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son. All three persons are worthy
of worship and praise.
God has no need of anyone or anything beyond Himself. Yet in grace this
Triune God is the one Creator of all things. He is both sovereign and
provident, maintaining the existence of the world and all living creatures for the
sake of His own glory. He has made the creation to reflect His glory, and He
has made human beings in His own image, with a unique desire to know Him
and a capacity for relationship with Him. Since our God is a consuming fire
whom we in our sin cannot safely approach, He has approached us by
entering into our humanity in Jesus Christ.
B. Incarnation
This is the second great mystery of the Christian faith, affirmed by all true
Christians everywhere: that Jesus Christ is both truly God and truly human. As
to His divinity, He is the Son, the second person of the Trinity, being of one
substance with the Father; as to His humanity, He is like us in every way but
without sin, of one substance with us, like us in having both a human soul and
a human body. As to His divinity, He is eternally begotten of the Father; as to
His humanity, He is born of the virgin Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit. As to
His divinity, His glory fills heaven and earth; as to His humanity, His glory is
shown in the form of a suffering servant, most clearly when He is lifted up on
the cross in our place.
We confess the mystery of His two natures, divine and human, in one person.
We reject any understanding of the communication of attributes that must
result in a blending of the two natures such that Jesus Christ is neither truly
God nor truly human. We insist upon sufficient distinction between the two
natures to preserve the truth of the incarnation, that Jesus Christ is indeed
Immanuel, God-with-us. Rather, in His coming we have seen God’s glory, for
Jesus is the exact imprint of God’s very being and in Him the fullness of God
was pleased to dwell.
This mystery of the incarnation is ongoing, for the risen Jesus, who was sent
from the Father, has now ascended to the Father in His resurrected body and
remains truly human. He is bodily present at the right hand of the Father.
When we are promised that one day we will see Him face to face, we
acknowledge that it is the face of Jesus of Nazareth we will someday see. The
One who, for us and for our salvation, was born of Mary, died at Calvary, and
walked with disciples to Emmaus is the same Jesus Christ who is now
ascended and who will one day return visibly in the body to judge the living and
the dead.
Jesus promised His disciples that He would not leave them comfortless when
He ascended into heaven, but would ask the Father to send them the Holy
Spirit as a comforter and advocate. We confess Jesus Christ as Lord and God
only through the work of the Holy Spirit. He comes to us as He came to the
gathered disciples at Pentecost: to kindle our faith, to embolden our witness,
and to empower us for ministry.
III. The Reformed Tradition
A. God’s grace in Christ
God declared that the world He created was good and that human beings,
made in His own image, were very good. The present disordered state of the
world, in which we and all things are subject to misery and to evil, is not God’s
doing, but is rather a result of humanity’s free, sinful rebellion against God’s
will. God created human beings from the dust of the earth and His own breath,
made in His image to be His representatives, to speak His grace and truth to
one another, to be helpers who are fit for one another, so that our social
relationships would strengthen our ability to serve and obey Him. Since the
Fall, our natural tendency is to engage in relationships of tyranny and injustice
with one another, in which power is used not to protect and serve but to
demean. God further created human beings with the capacity for relationship
with Him, with His law written on our hearts so that we had the ability to
worship Him in love and obey Him by living holy lives.
Since the Fall, our natural tendency is to reject God and our neighbor, to
worship idols of our own devising rather than the one true God. As a result of
the entrance of sin into our lives, human life is poisoned by everlasting death.
No part of human life is untouched by sin. Our desires are no longer
trustworthy guides to goodness, and what seems natural to us no longer
corresponds to God’s design. We are not merely wounded in our sin; we are
dead, unable to save ourselves. Apart from God’s initiative, salvation is not
possible for us. Our only hope is God’s grace. Our God is the One whose
mercy is from everlasting to everlasting.
This grace does not end when we turn to sin. Although we are each deserving
of God’s eternal condemnation, the eternal Son assumed our human nature,
joining us in our misery and offering Himself on the cross in order to free us
from slavery to death and sin. Jesus takes our place both in bearing the weight
of condemnation against our sin on the cross and in offering to God the perfect
obedience that humanity owes to Him but is no longer able to give. All
humanity participates in the Fall into sin, for all have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God. Those who are united through faith with Jesus Christ are fully
forgiven from all our sin, so that there is indeed a new creation. We are
declared justified, not because of any good that we have done, but only
because of God’s grace extended to us in Jesus Christ. In union with Christ
through the power of the Spirit we are brought into right relation with the
Father, who receives us as His adopted children.
Jesus Christ is the only Way to this adoption, the sole path by which sinners
become children of God, for He is the only-begotten Son, and it is only in union
with Him that a believer is able to know God as Father. Only in Jesus Christ is
the truth about the Triune God, fully and perfectly revealed, for only He is the
Truth, only He has seen the Father, and only He can make the Father known.
Only Jesus Christ is the new Life that is offered, for He is the bread from
heaven and the fountain of living water, the one by whom all things were
made, in whom all things hold together. The exclusivity of these claims
establishes that God’s love is not impersonal, but a particular and intimate love
in which each individual child of God is called by name and known as precious;
that God’s love is not only acceptance, but a transforming and effective love in
which His image within us is restored so that we are capable of holy living.
B. Election for salvation and service
The call of God to the individual Christian is not merely an invitation that each
person may accept or reject by his or her own free will. Having lost true
freedom of will in the Fall, we are incapable of turning toward God of our own
volition. God chooses us for Himself in grace before the foundation of the
world, not because of any merit on our part, but only because of His love and
mercy. Each of us is chosen in Christ, who is eternally appointed to be head of
the body of the elect, our brother and our high priest. He is the one who is
bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, our divine, sharing our human nature so
that we may see His glory. We who receive Him and believe in His name do
so not by our own will or wisdom, but because His glory compels us irresistibly
to turn toward Him. By His enticing call on our lives, Jesus enlightens our
minds, softens our hearts, and renews our wills, restoring the freedom that we
lost in the Fall.
We are all sinners who fall short of God’s glory, and we all deserve God’s
eternal judgment. Apart from the saving work of Jesus Christ, we are
incapable of being in God’s presence, incapable of bearing the weight of His
glory. We rejoice that Jesus Christ offers us safe conduct into the heart of
God’s consuming and purifying fire, shielding us with His perfect humanity and
transforming us by His divine power. Having received such grace, we extend
grace to others.
We are not elect for our own benefit alone. God gathers His covenant
community to be an instrument of His saving purpose. Through His
regenerating and sanctifying work, the Holy Spirit grants us faith and enables
holiness, so that we may be witnesses of God’s gracious presence to those
who are lost. The Spirit gathers us in a community that is built up and
equipped to be salt and light in the world. Christ sends us into the world to
make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that Christ has commanded
us. We preach Christ, calling all persons to repent and believe the gospel. We
also care for the natural world, desiring to see all areas of culture transformed
in the name of Jesus Christ, serve the poor, feed the hungry, visit the prisoner,
and defend the helpless. We do this work not with any thought that we are
able to bring in the kingdom, but in the confident hope that God’s kingdom is
surely coming, a day when suffering and death will pass away and when God
will live among His people.
C. Covenant life in the church
We are elect in Christ to become members of the community of the new
covenant. This covenant, which God Himself guarantees, unites us to God
and to one another. Already in the creation, we discover that we are made to
live in relationships to others, male and female, created together in God’s
image. In Christ, we are adopted into the family of God and find our new
identity as brothers and sisters of one another, since we now share one
Father. Our faith requires our active participation in that covenant community.
Jesus prays that His followers will all be one, and so we both pray and work for
the union of the church throughout the world. Even where institutional unity
does not seem possible, we are bound to other Christians as our brothers and
sisters. In Christ the dividing wall of hostility created by nationality, ethnicity,
gender, race, and language differences is brought down. God created people
so that the rich variety of His wisdom might be reflected in the rich variety of
human beings, and the church must already now begin to reflect the future
reality of people from every tribe and tongue and nation bringing the treasures
of their kingdoms into the new city of God.
Within the covenant community of the church, God’s grace is extended through
the preaching of the Word, the administration of the Sacraments, and the
faithful practice of mutual discipline. First, through the work of the Holy Spirit,
the word proclaimed may indeed become God’s address to us. The Spirit’s
illuminating work is necessary both for the one who preaches and for those
who listen. Second, the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are
signs that are linked to the things signified, sealing to us the promises of
Jesus. In the Baptism of infants, we confess our confidence in God’s gracious
initiative, that a baby who cannot turn to God is nonetheless claimed as a
member of the covenant community, a child of God, cleansed by grace and
sealed by the Spirit; in the Baptism of adults, we confess our confidence that
God’s grace can make us new creations at any stage of our lives. Baptism is a
sign and seal of the covenant of grace, a mark of entrance into the visible
church, and it is the Holy Spirit that makes this sacrament efficacious in God’s
time to those whom he has called. In the Lord’s Supper, we confess that as
we eat the bread and share one cup the Spirit unites us to the ascended
Christ, so that His resurrection life may nourish, strengthen, and transform us.
Third, the community of the Church practices discipline in order to help one
another along the path to new life, speaking the truth in love to one another,
bearing one another’s burdens, and offering to one another the grace of Christ.
D. Faithful stewardship of all of life
The ministries of the church reflect the three-fold office of Christ as prophet,
priest, and king – reflected in the church’s ordered ministries of teaching
elders, deacons, and ruling elders. We affirm that men and women alike are
called to all the ministries of the Church, and that every member is called to
share in all of Christ’s offices within the world beyond the church. Every
Christian is called to a prophetic life, proclaiming the good news to the world
and enacting that good news. Every Christian is called to extend the lordship
of Christ to every corner of the world. And every Christian is called to
participate in Christ’s priestly, mediatorial work, sharing in the suffering of the
world in ways that extend God’s blessing and offering intercession to God on
behalf of the world. We are equipped to share in these offices by the Holy
Spirit, who conforms us to the pattern of Christ’s life.
Jesus teaches us that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with
all our soul, and with all our mind. There is no part of human life that is off
limits to the sanctifying claims of God. We affirm that all our affections and
desires must be brought under God’s authority. We reject the claim that
human souls are unaffected by the fall and remain naturally inclined to God;
In Reformed Theology, discipline is seen as one of the marks of the church. Where we see one in our fellowship drift into or choose a sinful way of living, there needs to be discipline and that is up to the whole Body of Christ to participate in.
We affirm that soul and body alike must be cleansed and purified in order to
love God properly. We reject the claim that the life of the mind is independent
from faith; we affirm that unless we believe we cannot properly understand
either God or the world around us. Historically, the Reformed tradition has
been especially called to explore what it is to love God with all our minds,
being committed to the ongoing project of Christian education and study at all
levels of Christian life.
E. Living in obedience to the Word of God
Progress in holiness is an expected response of gratitude to the grace of God,
which is initiated, sustained, and fulfilled by the sanctifying work of the Holy
Spirit. The first response of gratitude is prayer, and the daily discipline of
prayer – both individually and together – should mark the Christian life. The life
of prayer includes praise to God for His nature and works, sincere confession
of our sin, and intercession for the needs of those we know and for the needs
of the world. As we practice the discipline of regular self examination and
confession, we are especially guided by the Ten Commandments. We
therefore hold one another accountable to:
- Worship God alone, living all of life to His glory, renouncing all idolatry
and all inordinate loves that might lead us to trust in any other help; - Worship God in humility, being reticent in either describing or picturing
God, recognizing that right worship is best supported not by our own
innovative practices but through the living preaching of the Word and the
faithful administration of the Sacraments; - Eliminate from both speech and thought any blasphemy, irreverence, or
impurity; - Observe the Sabbath as a day of worship and rest, being faithful in
gathering with the people of God; - Give honor toward those set in authority over us and practice mutual
submission within the community of the church; - Eradicate a spirit of anger, resentment, callousness, violence, or
bitterness, and instead cultivate a spirit of gentleness, kindness, peace,
and love; recognize and honor the image of God in every human being
from conception to natural death. - Maintain chastity in thought and deed, being faithful within the covenant
of marriage between a man and a woman as established by God at the
creation or embracing a celibate life as established by Jesus in the new
covenant;
Practice right stewardship of the goods we have been given, showing
charity to those in need and offering generous support of the Church and
its ministries; - Pursue truth, even when such pursuit is costly, and defend truth when it
is challenged, recognizing that truth is in order to goodness and that its
preservation matters;
10.Resist the pull of envy, greed, and acquisition, and instead cultivate a
spirit of contentment with the gifts God has given us.
In Jesus Christ we see the perfect expression of God’s holy will for human
beings offered to God in our place. His holy life must now become our holy
life. In Christ, God’s will is now written on our hearts, and we look forward to
the day when we will be so confirmed in holiness that we will no longer be able
to sin. As the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, Jesus leads us along the path
of life toward that goal, bringing us into ever deeper intimacy with the Triune
God, in whose presence is fullness of joy.