Rockdale Community Church

RCC Statement of Faith & Doctrine:

• We believe that there is but one living and true God. An infinite and intelligent Spirit, perfect in all His attributes, one of essence but eternally existing in three Persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each equally deserving worship and obedience.

• We believe that God the Father orders and disposes things according to His own purpose and grace. As the absolute highest ruler in the universe, He is sovereign in creation, providence, and redemption. He is creator of all things.

• We believe that God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, was virgin born and God incarnate. The purpose of the incarnation was to reveal God, redeem man, and rule over God’s kingdom.

• We believe that Jesus secured salvation for God’s elect through His death on the cross, which paid the penalty for the sins of man and satisfied God’s wrath toward believing sinners. His free gift of salvation is appropriated by faith.

• We believe in the literal and physical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, which makes the believer’s salvation sure and secure.

• We believe, when the time appointed by the Lord is come and the salvation of the elect complete, that the Lord Jesus Christ will return from heaven just as He ascended, with great glory and majesty, to judge all mankind.

• We believe that the Holy Spirit is the supernatural and sovereign agent in regeneration. Jesus baptizes all believers with the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ at the moment of salvation. As the Holy Spirit permanently indwells all believers, He instructs them, empowers them for service, seals them until the day of redemption, and continually conforms them into the likeness of Jesus as they yield to His control in their lives.

• We believe that the baptism with the Holy Spirit occurs only once and for all at the moment of regeneration.

• We believe that it is the believer’s responsibility to be filled with the Spirit, which is accomplished continually throughout the believer’s life as he submits in obedience to God.

• We believe that the Holy Spirit administers spiritual gifts to the church, not to glorify Himself or the gifts by ostentatious displays, but to glorify Christ and edify believers.

• We believe that man was directly and immediately created by God in His image and likeness.

• We believe that the purpose of man’s creation was that he should glorify God, enjoy His fellowship and live his life in the will of God.

• We believe that through Adam’s disobedience, man lost his purpose, incurred the penalty of death, and became subject to the wrath of God, with no power to recover himself. man is hopelessly lost apart from the salvation that is available in the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

• We believe that salvation is totally of God by grace through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, and not on the basis of human merit or works whatsoever.

• We believe that justification is an act of God by which he declares righteous those who believe in Christ by receiving His life. This righteousness is apart form any virtue or work of man, and involves the exchange of a believer’s sins for the righteousness of Christ.

• We believe that all true believers in Jesus Christ will openly confess His Lordship over their lives.

• We believe that all true believers, once saved, are kept by God’s power and are thus secure in Christ forever. Good works are never a cause of salvation, but are always the result of it.

• We believe that all who receive Jesus as Lord are immediately baptized with the Holy Spirit into one united spiritual body - the church, of which Christ is the head.

• We believe that the Bible is the written revelation of God, absolutely inerrant in the original documents, and God-breathed, It constitutes the only infallible rule of faith and practice.

• We believe that two ordinances have been committed to the local church: baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

• We believe that baptism is an act of obedience that follows salvation, and that it has no saving merit.

• We believe that the Lord’s Supper is commemoration and proclamation of the death of Jesus until He comes, and should be preceded always by solemn self-examination. While Christ’s flesh and blood are not actually present, the Lord’s Supper is an actual communion with the risen Christ who is present in a unique way, fellowshipping with His people.

• We believe that angels are created beings, and therefore are not to be worshiped. They are created to serve God and worship Him.

• We believe that Satan is a created angel and author of sin. He incurred judgment of God by rebelling against his Creator, involving numerous angels who became demons, in his fall. He introduced sin into the human race by the temptation of Eve.

• We believe in the bodily resurrection of all people - the saved to eternal life, dwelling with God forever, and the unsaved to judgment and everlasting punishment, separated from God forever in a literal place called hell. Physical death involves no loss of consciousness.