The faith once for all delivered to the saints

One God, eternally existing in three distinct, coequal, coeternal Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, sharing one undivided divine essence (Deuteronomy 6:4; Matthew 28:19). We confess that “God is love” (1 John 4:8) is not poetry but eternal truth, and that He upholds and governs all things by His wise and holy providence (Hebrews 1:3), the only ground firm enough for the persecuted and the grieving to stand on.

The sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments are the God-breathed Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16), wholly truthful, sufficient for salvation and godliness, and the supreme and final authority for faith and life. The canon was not created by councils; it was confessed by them. We build every study tool upon these sixty-six books alone, because these alone are the inspired Word.

The additional books read by our Catholic and Orthodox family (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1–2 Maccabees, and others) are cherished by brothers and sisters we love. After five hundred years of prayerful study, we do not confess them as inspired Scripture and do not build doctrine upon them. Yet because we love those who read them, BibleReal renders them as readable text when a translation includes them. We hold our conviction with love, not with swords.

God created all things out of nothing (Genesis 1:1). Every human being, in every ethnicity, language, and condition, from conception to natural death, is made in His image (Genesis 1:27) and bears inherent, inalienable dignity. Our first parents fell, and every person since is born with a fallen nature, unable to save himself apart from grace (Romans 5:12–21).

God created an innumerable host of angels who serve Him and are not to be worshiped. Satan is a real, fallen, personal being, powerful but a creature, not God’s equal. At the cross Christ disarmed the powers (Colossians 2:15); the war is already won. We fight from victory, not toward it (1 John 4:4).

The eternal Son took on a true human nature, one Person in two natures, fully God and fully man (Chalcedon, A.D. 451). He lived sinless, died bearing our substitution and propitiation, redeemed us by His blood, defeated the powers, and rose bodily on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:3–8). The cross is a diamond of many faces; we refuse to flatten it to one.

The Spirit is fully God and fully personal, who convicts, regenerates, indwells, assures, sanctifies, gifts, and seals every believer for the day of redemption (John 16:8; Romans 8:9–17). He is not a force or an influence, but a Person who speaks, teaches, intercedes, and can be grieved.

Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, revealed in Scripture alone (Ephesians 2:8–9). No work, merit, ritual, ancestry, or achievement contributes to justification. Those whom God truly saves, He keeps (John 10:28–29), conforming them to the image of Christ until glory.

The Church is the one body of Christ from every nation, tribe, people, and language (Revelation 7:9), made visible in local gatherings around the Word. We recognize the genuine work of God across the Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox traditions wherever the Nicene faith is confessed and Jesus is trusted, laboring for the unity for which He prayed (John 17).

At death, believers are immediately with Christ. Jesus will return visibly and bodily to raise the dead, judge with perfect justice, and make all things new, a new heavens and new earth where God dwells with His people and every tear is wiped away (Revelation 21:1–4). The final end of the redeemed is not a place but a Person: to see God face to face.