Where I stand
What I Believe
I am a man who takes God at His word. This page is where I stand, said plainly, so you never have to guess. It is not a seminary paper. It is the ground I build my life, my family, and my writing on.
What I Won't Bend On
These are the things a man cannot let go of and still be a Christian. Not my opinions. The foundation.
The Bible is God's Word, cover to cover, Old Testament and New. It is the final authority over my life, and it is true in everything it teaches. It does not bend to me. I bend to it. If it corrects me, I move.
There is one God. He has always existed as three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, each of them fully God.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God, God in the flesh, fully God and fully man. He lived a sinless life, died on the cross for our sins, and rose bodily from the grave. He is coming back, and He will judge every man who ever lived. There is no salvation anywhere but in Him.
Salvation is by grace, through faith, received by repenting and believing. Not by being good enough. Not by cleaning yourself up first. And it is repent and believe, not believe whatever you want and stay the way you are.
The resurrection actually happened. Jesus walked out of the tomb in a real body. If that is not true, none of the rest matters. It is true.
Where I Stand
Here is where I land on everything else. I hold these firmly, and I will defend them. But hear me clearly: none of these are where I decide whether you are my brother. That is the section above. A man who holds the gospel can land somewhere different on some of these, on election, on the gifts, on baptism, on the end times, and still be my brother in Christ. I will say what I believe plainly. I will not make a test of fellowship out of it.
On how a man is saved. Salvation is God's work by grace from start to finish, and a man genuinely has to repent and believe. Scripture teaches both that God chooses and that men must choose, and I hold both without pretending I have untied that knot. I preach to every man I can reach, and I trust God with the rest. And once God truly saves a man, that man cannot lose it. God keeps what is His.
On the Holy Spirit. God still moves. He heals, He works miracles, He shows up when nothing else could, and He does it all the time. I believe that with my whole chest. Exactly which gifts operate and how, I hold with an open hand. God moves how He wills, not how I diagram it.
On the church. Christ's church is led by a group of godly, qualified men, elders who actually meet the standard Scripture sets, not just whoever wants the microphone. Baptism is for believers, a person old enough to repent and believe, and it is done by going all the way under the water. It does not save you. It is a picture: your old sinful life is dead and buried, and you came up out of that water risen with Christ. The Lord's Supper is a memorial. We take the bread and the cup in remembrance of what Jesus did on the cross, and it is not a small thing. And here is a hard one. If your church is weak, if it will not preach the truth, will not call sin what God calls it, and will not be led by godly men, you do not owe it your loyalty. I do not mean bail on a good church because it let you down one Sunday. Stay, and be a brother to the men in it. I mean a church that has left the truth behind. That one you can walk away from with a clear conscience. Go find one that is strong.
On the Old Testament and the New. The whole Bible is God's Word, and every word of it is true. The Old Testament is full of truth worth learning, and it was always pointing to Jesus. But once Christ came, the rules changed. When God gave Israel the Law of Moses, He gave it as one whole covenant, and that whole covenant came to its end at the cross. So I am not under the Law of Moses. I am under the law of Christ. Nine of the Ten Commandments get picked back up in the New Testament, so they still bind me, not because Moses said them but because Christ does. The one that does not carry over as law is the Sabbath, because Jesus is the rest it always pointed to. I still guard the Lord's Day. Every Sunday is for worship, for rest, and for my family, and I do not miss it. But I keep it because it is good and wise and because Christ is my rest, not because an old command hangs over my head. It is worship, not law.
On being a man, marriage, and how God made us. Every man is called to lead. Not to dominate, to lead. Strong in character, first to serve, standing up for the innocent, and following Christ out front where his family can see him. Marriage is one man and one woman, giving themselves freely to each other before God, for the rest of their lives. And God made two, male and female. That was His design from the beginning, and Jesus pointed men right back to it (Genesis 1:27; Matthew 19:4). He made them that way on purpose, and no one gets to redraw what God drew. A man is a man and a woman is a woman because God said so.
On the last things. Jesus is reigning right now. He will return, in a real body, and every eye will see Him. The dead will be raised, all of them, and He will judge the living and the dead. Death itself will be destroyed, and He will make everything new. And hell is real, and it is forever. I do not say that to scare anybody. I say it because it is true, and because a man ought to know what he is being rescued from.
So There It Is
That is where I stand. I am not here to sell you anything. If you are a brother, welcome. Let's get to work. If you are not sure what you believe yet, come read, come pray, and take Jesus seriously, because He is exactly who He said He is. And if you are sitting in a weak church settling for less than the truth, take this as your nudge. Go find a strong one.
Want to go deeper on the law and the covenants?
Reformed or New Covenant, ExplainedIf you want the long version of how I read the Old Testament and the law, I wrote it all out here: You Are Not Under the Law, You Are Under Christ