We at Christ Reformed Church regard the Westminster Confession of Faith (PDF) along with the Larger (PDF) and Shorter Catechism (PDF) as excellent, though not inspired, expressions of the teaching of the Word of God. Because we acknowledge the Word of God written to be the supreme authority in all matters of faith, morals, and order, we adopt this historic document as our statement of faith. We find it to be an assistance in controversy, a confirmation in faith, and a means of edification in righteousness.
We also subscribe to The Cambridge Declaration of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.
Questions about our doctrinal beliefs or distincitives? Feel free to contact us.
The Need For Doctrine
It is no revelation that doctrine has been vastly watered down over the past 100 years in American churches. Statements of faith have become less defined in order for churches and organizations to be more inclusive. For some institutions there may be some warrant for this, but for the church, doctrine must be well defined for the sake of unity and its health.
For the most part, the Church in America has become very unhealthy due to its dumbing-down and shallowness of doctrine, which simply means “the teachings” of our faith. Many people like to discount the need for doctrine today, but doctrine is the basis of the truth upon which our faith stands. Jesus clearly exhorts us in His commission, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them . . . teaching them . . .” (Matthew 28:19-20). The teaching of doctrine is the means where believers are preserved from error and apostasy and the means of strengthening our relationship with God.
Notice Peter’s exhortation at the end of his short epistle , “but grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” In understanding this verse, we must put it in context with what precedes it,
14 Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless; 15 and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation -- 16 as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures. 17You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked; 18but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and forever. Amen.
(2 Peter 3:14-18)
Peter is here commending the growth in the deep things of Scripture in order to protect us from error and falling away from the Lord. It is interesting to see that he admits that some things in Scripture are hard to understand. However, he is certainly not giving us license to dismiss those hard things, but is exhorting us to apply ourselves all the more diligently in order to understand even the hard things. That is why he concludes with the command to grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
The words of Paul as he exhorted Timothy, a young pastor at Ephesus, in 2 Timothy 4:2-4, are noteworthy for the present day in which we are living,
2 Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. 3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; 4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.
Ministers must fulfill their divine calling by preaching the Word and teaching sound doctrine. Few pulpits today are faithfully heeding this command.
In his first epistle to young Timothy, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul calls the church the ground and pillar of truth (1 Timothy 3:15). The church is God’s institution that upholds the truth and maintains it’s integrity. Godly men coming out of the Protestant Reformation understood the importance of preserving the integrity of truth, especially against the backdrop of the abuses in the Roman Catholic Church from which the Reformation occurred. In order to define the truth that the Bible teaches, Protestants drew up Confessions of Faith which are still used to help believers know the doctrines and teachings of the Bible and aid them in discerning error.
It is imperative for us to understand what the Bible teaches and be able to accurately teach our children to discern between correct and false teaching. In our nation’s brief history, America stands as the leading country in producing the most cults in the history of the church. Most of these false religions have sprung out of orthodox Christianity and use the very words of the Bible to promote heresy. That is why the old saying, “No creed but the Bible,” while worthy of respect, is not sufficient to expose the difference between truth and error when the very words of Scripture are maligned and distorted. A confession is not equal with the Bible in authority, but is an expression of our faith as we understand what the Bible teaches.
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