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Old Testament (KJV)
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New Testament (KJV)
Our Basic
Beliefs
You
become a Southern Baptist by uniting with a
Southern Baptist church, one in friendly
cooperation with the general Southern
Baptist enterprise of reaching the world for
Christ. Typically church membership is a
matter of receiving Jesus as your Savior and
Lord and experiencing believer's baptism by
immersion.
Southern
Baptists have prepared a statement of
generally held convictions called The
Baptist Faith and Message. It serves as a
guide to understanding who they are. Copies
are available at Southern Baptist churches.
The topics here provide only a brief,
partial summary. The full text on the issue
discussed is also available on this website.
The
Scriptures
The Holy Bible was written by
men divinely inspired and is God's
revelation of Himself to man. It is a
perfect treasure of divine instruction. It
has God for its author, salvation for its
end, and truth, without any mixture of
error, for its matter. Therefore, all
Scripture is totally true and trustworthy.
It reveals the principles by which God
judges us, and therefore is, and will remain
to the end of the world the true center of
Christian union, and the supreme standard by
which all human conduct, creeds, and
religious opinions should be tried. All
Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is
Himself the focus of divine revelation.
God
There is one and only one
living and true God. …The eternal triune God
reveals Himself to us as Father, Son and
Holy Spirit, with distinct personal
attributes, but without division of nature,
essence, or being.
God the Father
God as Father reigns with providential care
over His universe, His creatures, and the
flow of the stream of human history
according to the purposes of His grace. …God
is Father in truth to those who become
children of God through faith in Jesus
Christ.
God the Son
Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His
incarnation as Jesus Christ, He was
conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the
virgin Mary. …He honored the divine law by
His personal obedience, and in His
substitutionary death on the cross, He made
provision for the redemption of men from
sin.
God the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit
of God, fully divine. …He exalts Christ. He
convicts men of sin, of righteousness and of
judgment. …He enlightens and empowers the
believer and the church in worship,
evangelism, and service.
Man
Man is the special creation
of God, in His own image. He created them
male and female as the crowning work of His
creation. …By his free choice man sinned
against God and brought sin into the human
race. … The sacredness of human personality
is evident in that God created man in His
own image, and in that Christ died for man;
therefore every person of every race
possesses dignity and is worthy of respect
and Christian love.
Salvation
Salvation involves the
redemption of the whole man, and is offered
freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as
Lord and Savior, who by His own blood
obtained eternal redemption for the
believer. In its broadest sense salvation
includes regeneration, justification,
sanctification, and glorification.
God's Purpose of Grace
Election is the gracious
purpose of God, according to which He
regenerates, justifies, sanctifies, and
glorifies sinners. …All true believers
endure to the end. Those whom God has
accepted in Christ, and sanctified by His
Spirit will never fall away from the state
of grace, but shall persevere to the end.
The Church
A New Testament church of the
Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local
congregation of baptized believers,
associated by covenant in the faith and
fellowship of the gospel, observing the two
ordinances of Christ, governed by His laws,
exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges
invested in them by His Word, and seeking to
extend the gospel to the ends of the earth.
Each congregation operates under the
Lordship of Christ through democratic
processes. In such a congregation each
member is responsible and accountable to
Christ as Lord. Its scriptural officers are
pastors and deacons. While both men and
women are gifted for service in the church,
the office of pastor is limited to men as
qualified by Scripture.
Baptism & the Lord's Supper
Christian baptism is the
immersion of a believer in water. …It is an
act of obedience symbolizing the believer's
faith in a crucified, buried, and risen
Savior, the believer's death to sin, the
burial of the old life, and the resurrection
to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus.
The Lord's Supper is a
symbolic act of obedience whereby members …
memorialize the death of the Redeemer and
anticipate His second coming.
Evangelism & Missions
It is the duty and privilege of every
follower of Christ and every church of the
Lord Jesus Christ to endeavor to make
disciples of all nations... to seek
constantly to win the lost to Christ by
verbal witness under girded by a Christian
lifestyle, and by other methods in harmony
with the gospel of Christ.
The Lord's Day
The first day of the week is
the Lord's Day. …It commemorates the
resurrection of Christ from the dead and
should be employed in exercises of worship
and spiritual devotion.
Last Things
God, in His own time and in
His own way, will bring the world to its
appropriate end. …Jesus Christ will return
personally and visibly…the dead will be
raised; and Christ will judge all men in
righteousness. The unrighteous will be
consigned to Hell. …The righteous… will
receive their reward and will dwell forever
in Heaven with the Lord.
Education
The cause of education in the
Kingdom of Christ is co-ordinate with the
causes of missions and general benevolence …
there should be a proper balance between
academic freedom and academic
responsibility. …The freedom of a teacher in
a Christian school, college, or seminary is
limited by the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ,
by the authoritative nature of the
Scriptures, and by the distinct purpose for
which the school exists.
Stewardship
God is the source of all
blessings, temporal and spiritual; all that
we have and are we owe to Him. Christians
have a spiritual debtorship to the whole
world, a holy trusteeship in the gospel, and
a binding stewardship in their possessions.
They are therefore under obligation to serve
Him with their time, talents, and material
possessions.
Cooperation
Christ's people should …
organize such associations and conventions
as may best secure cooperation for the great
objects of the Kingdom of God. Such
organizations have no authority over one
another or over the churches. …Cooperation
is desirable between the various Christian
denominations.
The Christian & the Social
Order
All Christians are under
obligation to seek to make the will of
Christ supreme in our own lives and in human
society... in the spirit of Christ,
Christians should oppose racism, every form
of greed, selfishness, and vice, and all
forms of sexual immorality, including
adultery, homosexuality, and pornography. We
should work to provide for the orphaned, the
needy, the abused, the aged, the helpless,
and the sick. We should speak on behalf of
the unborn and contend for the sanctity of
all human life from conception to natural
death...
Religious Liberty
Church and state should be
separate. The state owes to every church
protection and full freedom in the pursuit
of its spiritual ends. …A free church in a
free state is the Christian ideal.
Family
God has ordained the family
as the foundational institution of human
society. It is composed of persons related
to one another by marriage, blood or
adoption.
Marriage is the uniting of
one man and one woman in covenant commitment
for a lifetime. ... The husband and wife are
of equal worth before God, since both are
created in God's image. A husband is to love
his wife as Christ loved the church. He has
the God-given responsibility to provide for,
to protect, and to lead his family. A wife
is to submit herself graciously to the
servant leadership of her husband even as
the church willingly submits to the headship
of Christ. She, being in the image of God as
is her husband and thus equal to him, has
the God-given responsibility to respect her
husband and to serve as his helper in
managing the household and nurturing the
next generation... Children, from the moment
of conception, are a blessing and heritage
from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to
their children God's pattern for marriage.
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