Our Beliefs

We are an evangelical church in the Reformed tradition, holding to the Westminster Confession of Faith. We are drawn from areas across the city with a strong commitment to share our faith in Christ with each other and with others locally and internationally.

We believe that Jesus Christ is God’s Son, and is the only mediator between us and God and that it is by His death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead that atonement for sin is obtained through the work of the Holy Spirit. We believe in the divine inspiration and authority of the Bible as our only rule of belief and conduct.

We believe that we are put right with God by faith alone. We believe that salvation is unearned and is by grace alone.

In more detail:

What’s it all about…?

We were created to have a relationship with God. We were created to worship God. If we don’t do this, we replace the one true God with other things, like money, career, family, sport, and many other things. God created us to have fellowship with Him. We rebelled, and fell out of that relationship with God. God had a plan to redeem us and through that plan we can know redemption and restoration to that original relationship of fellowship with God. This is why we worship. We who worship are sinners, saved by grace, and who we worship is God the Father through his son, Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit.

Creation

God the Father, through his Son, Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit created all things, and created humankind with a special worth and position in creation. To worship God, to enjoy fellowship with God, to be with God and glorify him and to do his work and will in the world – to look after creation. Each one of us therefore is of immense worth to God and he loves us all, uniquely and he knows us intimately. We have a special place in creation, ordained by God, for his purposes.

Fall

We rejected all that God offered us. Adam and Eve, the beginning of the human family, rejected the love, fellowship and ordination of God in his ordering of creation, and we like them disobey God’s order and command and seek to put ourselves on an equal standing to God. This is sin, disobedience of God’s will and ordination. That sin, which we all carry, separates us from God, breaks the fellowship we were made to have with him and results in the wrath of God and the just punishment for that disobedience, which, as God made clear is death. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and by our own efforts we have no way back to our original relationship of fellowship with and glory in God.

Redemption

Before creation, God ordained a plan to purchase us back from this dead, fallen, sinful state. Out of his own free grace and by the willing obedience of his son, Jesus Christ, God the son took on human form and dwelt among us to be tempted as we are. Yet he did not sin. He obeyed his Father and gave himself as a sacrifice for sin, offering himself up on the accursed cross, paying the price, once and for all for our sin. Ensuring that, by his son, in the free and grace filled offer of salvation through this substitutionary payment for sin, we may be counted by God as righteous and holy, by being washed in the blood of Jesus Christ, the one and only son of God, on the cross.

Restoration

By the glorious free gift of this grace through the sacrifice that Jesus Christ paid for our sin, we are all free to enter into the relationship God our Father intended us to have with him from the beginning of creation. That restored relationship is one which brings us into the presence of God the Father, by the Holy Spirit and sees us covered by the sacrifice Jesus paid for us. God now counts us to be his sons and daughters. As sons and daughters of God we therefore meet together to praise, worship and glorify God, in that relationship we were meant to have with him in the beginning. We meet together as a body of believers, which constitutes part of the church, to fellowship with, praise, worship and glorify God together to our mutual encouragement and support. By this, God is glorified in the lives of those who are his and in the witness of this to the world. This is why we meet together and worship.

We would love for you to join us to learn about the grace of God, freely offered for you and, we hope, for you to share with us your earthly journey in the service of God as restored, forgiven and redeemed children of our God and Father.

You can learn more about the beliefs of the Free Church of Scotland at the link below:

Core Beliefs and Ethos – Free Church of Scotland