As Presbyterians, we believe:
We believe that there is only one true and eternal God. Creator of the Universe. Our Creator.
He has revealed himself as triune, a perfect unity of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
God is love and exists within this community of love. He is all powerful, perfectly good and just.
If we are to know Him personally, a sovereign God must take the initiative to reveal Himself to us.
We can only come to know Him through the way He chooses.
He has revealed Himself in a general way through the wonders of creation, but we cannot tell from this observation what kind of a God He is. He has revealed himself in a specific way through His holy and inspired Word, entirely trustworthy as originally given and supremely authoritative in matters of faith and conduct. From this we come to know the character of God and the way He relates with humanity whom He has created in His image.
A true knowledge of ourselves depends on a true knowledge of God. Humanity was created to live in peace and harmony with God and with each other, but in pride and disobedience, we fell away from this communion and now live under the condemnation and wrath of God in a condition of sinfulness and guilt. We have been left incapable of reaching up to God without His help. We express this broken relationship, through imperfect relationships with one another and dissonance within ourselves, which falls short of God’s perfect standards.
There is no sufficient sacrifice we can offer to enter into a right relationship with God again. We cannot earn our salvation. In utter grace and mercy, God Himself provides the only possible sacrifice that will restore us to our full humanity, whereby we are enabled to live in joyful freedom to love and serve God and others to the glory of His name.
God revealed Himself in a personal way through the Incarnation of His Son, Jesus Christ. The perfect sinless Son of God took on our human flesh, fully God and fully man.
Jesus’ uniqueness qualifies Him as the only one who could be our representative and substitute by shedding His blood for the forgiveness of our sin. He bears God’s wrath and displays God’s grave and glory in perfect love on the cross. He redeems us from the guilt and corruption of our sinful natures. In Christ, we are reconciled with God.
We are an Easter people and celebrate the fact that Jesus rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven. The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, from the dead, gives us a sure hope that sin and death have been conquered and that we too will live eternally with Him. We must, therefore, be joined to Him in His death and resurrection through the gift of the Holy Spirit at work in us, generating faith and repentance through grace alone to receive new life as the adopted children of God. God’s people are redeemed into a new community of love, the one holy, catholic, and apostolic church. Jesus Christ is the only King and Head of the church. The Holy Spirit who indwells each believer unites us to Christ and to each other. The Holy Spirit continues to work within us, changing us to be increasingly more like Christ.
We live to declare the praises of Him who has bought for us so great a salvation. We live to proclaim the good news that Jesus Christ can transform and heal us from our broken condition. We live to worship God with demonstrations of love and grace empowered by the Spirit. We respond in loving obedience because He first loved us.
Salvation is wholly the work of God from beginning to end. It is He who has saved us, is saving us, and will bring full salvation when Jesus Christ returns personally to establish His kingdom in all its glory.
As Presbyterians, we stand in continuity with the Reformed Tradition of the Christian faith as confessed by the Presbyterian Church in Canada in the subordinate standards of the Westminster Confession of Faith as adopted in 1875 and 1889, in the Declaration Concerning Church and Nation of 1954 and in Living Faith as adopted in 1998. Under the continual illumination and correction of the Holy Spirit speaking in scripture, we seek to be ever reformed and reforming by the biblical witness to the glory of God.
These documents may be found on the National Church’s Website at: www.presbyterian.ca