Below is a summary of Community Bible Church’s fundamental doctrines. For a complete statement of our beliefs, please download our full Articles of Faith and Church Constitution.
The Scriptures
The Trinity
We believe in one Triune God, eternally existing in three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, co-equal in power and glory.
Jesus Christ
The Holy Spirt
We believe that the Holy Spirit is a member of the Trinity, the Triune God, distinct from the Father and the Son. We understand from Scripture that it is the role of the Holy Spirit to convict individuals of their sin, to make them aware of the demands of God’s righteousness, and to warn them of coming judgment for sin. When a person comes to know the Lord as Savior, the Holy Spirit immediately takes up residence in that person and serves as God’s permanent, absolute and unchangeable guarantee—God’s seal—that the person now is redeemed, saved from God’s wrath, forever part of God’s family, and assured of Heaven.
We believe that the Holy Spirit is the divine Teacher who guides and illuminates believers through the Scriptures and that it is the privilege as well as the duty of all the saved to be filled with and controlled by the Spirit.
A key role of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Believer is to pursue the process of sanctification—of setting the individual apart for God’s desires and making the individual more and more like the Lord Jesus. This is a work of God’s grace. Through it, the individual increasingly is released from slavery to the demands of old habits and desires of the old nature, renewed in God’s likeness with a new nature, and increasingly empowered to live the holy and victorious life that God intends for His children.
We believe that the Holy Spirit provides each Believer with one or more unique special enablements—spiritual gifts—that provide the individual with a special ability to honor the Lord in serving others. We believe that some of the early gifts—”sign gifts” such a speaking in unlearned languages and healing—were intended to authenticate the broad reach of the gospel, the new revelation, and the authority of the apostles at the beginning of the Church age and were unique to that period.
Salvation
We believe that all human beings are by nature rebels against God, sinners by birth and by choice, and deserving of eternal punishment for sin. However, we believe that God loves all of us so much that He was willing to die in our place, taking upon Himself the punishment we deserve, so that He could offer us mercy, forgiveness, meaning in life, and an eternity in Heaven, in other words, salvation.
We believe that salvation is the gift of God, apart from works, brought to man by grace and received by repentance from sin and by personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His shed blood.
We believe that God’s salvation has at least three aspects. When a person comes to faith in the Lord, that person is forever saved from punishment for sin. At that point, God begins a work in the life of a believer that increasingly frees or “saves” the person from the power of sin in his or her life. Ultimately, God will save the believer forever from the very presence of sin.
We believe that God’s specific intention is that His children—believers—glorify Him by their lives, their behavior, and their work in this life. For this reason, true salvation is accompanied by good works. At the same time, the scriptures provide strong warnings to believers against dishonoring God by indulging in deliberate, defiant sin. Such behavior will result in God’s discipline.
We believe God has provided absolute assurance of salvation to all those that have come to faith in Christ by the clear promises of His word and by the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. We believe that God preserves His work so that when a person comes to faith, that person can never lose salvation.
The Church
A local church is not a building. The building is just a meeting place. Rather, a local church is an assembly of people committed to gathering together regularly to worship the Lord, learn about Him, and serve Him by serving each other. This local group is part of a much larger, world-wide family—the universal church—made up of brothers and sisters from every people-group that know the Lord Jesus as personal Savior. We believe CBC is a spiritual home for someone like you—a person that wants to know God and worship Him.