STATEMENT OF FAITH

Andover Baptist Church holds to the triune nature of God, the inerrancy of scripture, and the call to share our faith with a lost world.  Below is an overview of our statements of faith.  If you would liked to view our full statement of faith, please refer to The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 or visit www.sbc.net/bfm2000/bfm2000.asp

WHO IS GOD?

There is one and only one living and true God. He is an intelligent, spiritual, and personal Being, the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe. God is infinite in holiness and all other perfections. God is all powerful and all knowing; and His perfect knowledge extends to all things, past, present, and future, including the future decisions of His free creatures. To Him we owe the highest love, reverence, and obedience. 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.

  • THE FATHER

    God the Father is the first person of the Trinity.  God as Father reigns over all of creation. He is all powerful, all knowing, all loving, and all wise.

  • THE SON

    Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the second person of the Trinity.  He came to earth to pay the price for our sin on the cross.

  • THE holy spirit

    The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God and the third person of the Trinity.  He inspired the writers of scripture, illuminates the truth of scripture and shows us where we fall short of God's glory.  He calls men to the Savior, and effects regeneration.

HOW DO I LEARN ABOUT HIM?

God is not hidden from us.  He seeks a relationship with each and every individual.  God has revealed himself most clearly through the scriptures (.i.e. the Bible) and He continues to use the church to share his unfailing love with a broken and hopeless world.

  • THE SCRIPTURES

    The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God's revelation of Himself to man.  It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter.  It is 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.

  • THE CHURCH

    The church is the Body of Christ which includes all of the redeemed of all the ages, believers from every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation.  Therefore, the church is the expression of God's hands and feet in the world.

DOES GOD LOVE ME?

God loves all of his creation with an unconditional, unfailing love.  John 3:16 tells us that God loved us so much that He sent His son to die in our place for the sin that we could never be freed from.  The Bible also tells us that Jesus died for all; therefore, God has made a way for everyone to come to Him.  The only thing that God needs from us is to accept his free, loving gift of salvation.

  • SALVATION

    Salvation is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  There is no salvation apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.

  • THE PURPOSE OF GRACE

    Anyone that accept God's free gift of salvation through Jesus will never fall away from God's grace, but shall persevere to the end. They will be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.

WHAT IS CHURCH ALL ABOUT?

Church and Christianity get plenty of negative publicity in our culture today.  According to our culture, church is for fanatics and Christianity is full of hypocrites and haters.  But that's not the church that Jesus Christ died for and established.  We're all broken, hurting people and too often hurt people, hurt people.  Jesus tells us that people will know that we're His disciples by the way that we love people.  Sometimes that means that we have to love people enough to tell them that they're headed the wrong direction.  God has made humanity to live in community.  Community is expressed most perfectly in humanity, family, church, and God's kingdom.

  • MANKIND

    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 full dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love.

  • THE 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. It is God's unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church.

  • THE CHURCH

    The church is the Body of Christ which includes all of the redeemed of all the ages, believers from every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation. Therefore, the church is the expression of God's hands and feet in the world.

  • GOD'S KINGDOM

    The Kingdom of God includes both His general sovereignty over the universe and His particular kingship over men who willfully acknowledge Him as King. Particularly the Kingdom is the realm of salvation into which men enter by trustful, childlike commitment to Jesus Christ. Christians ought to pray and to labor that the Kingdom may come and God's will be done on earth. The full consummation of the Kingdom awaits the return of Jesus Christ and the end of this age.