1. The one true God who lives eternally in three persons – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Agreed.
They are in everyone and everything is in them. No one is separated.
2. The love, grace and sovereignty of God in creating, sustaining, ruling, redeeming and judging the world.
Agreed, but some words need to be more specific.
Creating. He created, out of nothing, the heavens and the earth. That work is finished. He’s no longer creating.
Sustaining. He’s in all and everything has its’ being in Him.
Ruling. Humans are appointed to expand His heavenly kingdom, by making Earth like Heaven in all ways.
Redeeming. He redeemed the world at Calvary. He is not still redeeming. He said “it is finished”.
On the judging front, He judges like Judge Deborah, not Judge Judy. His judgement restores, enables and releases, it doesn’t condemn or infer punitive measures. It may act like a refiner’s fire or pruning, but it is for our betterment, not punishment in the limited way English renders the word.
If there’s any condemning-judging going on, it’s Satan doing it, not God.
A possible alternative: The love, grace and sovereignty of God in having created and redeemed the world; now sustaining, restoring, enabling, and releasing the world, ruling in Heaven whilst humans, aligned to His Spirit, rule the world on His behalf, being rewarded with greater resonisbilities.
3. The divine inspiration and supreme authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, which are the written Word of God – fully trustworthy for faith and conduct.
Agreed.
It’s good to note it says the written Word of God, not The Word of God, which is a person, Jesus.
There’s Rema Word of God (Holy Spirit / Jesus) and Logos Word, the written word.
Given that faith is in part “knowing what you hope for”, scripture helps you know what you can hope for. You can also get things to hope for directly from God, or from prophecy (Words from God from other Humans).
For these to be true they can’t contradict scripture, so they should be validated by scripture, but these “words” may be more specific to you than scripture.
We should also note that the written Word of God, was originally transcribed in Hebrew and Greek with some Aramaic. Translations to say English, need to take account of context and have a Jesus hermeneutic (lens), since Jesus affirmed that what was was said about God before Him, did not accurately convey His nature, but Jesus could (John 6.46).
4. The dignity of all people, made male and female in God’s image to love, be holy and care for creation, yet corrupted by sin, which incurs divine wrath and judgement.
Agreed until the last parts, which need to be more specific.
Humans are created in God’s images, made from His cloth, as His imagers on earth.
Humans are made Holy and to care for creation.
Humans are corrupted by sin.
Divine wrath, if translated as vengeful anger, and not “passion” which it sometimes should be, is directed at the sin, the sin nature (old-man, not new-creation) and the spiritual entities that deceive humans into sin. It is not levelled at whole human units.
On the judging front, He judges like Judge Deborah, not Judge Judy. His judgement restores, enables, releases, and rewards (with greater responsibility) it doesn’t condemn or infer punitive measures. It may act like a refiner’s fire or pruning, but it is for our betterment, not punishment in the limited way English renders the word.
If there’s any condemning-judging going on, it’s Satan doing it, not God.
5. The incarnation of God’s eternal Son, the Lord Jesus Christ – born of the virgin Mary; truly divine and truly human, yet without sin.
Agreed.
This has implications some miss.
There's nothing horrible to God about humans and their bodies, He was perfectly happy existing in one.
It shows that God fits in His entirity in a human.
It continues the pattern that miracles, heavenly interventions, Old Testament and New Testament, don't occur without a Human body proclaiming it or being the involved some way.
It shows that God doesn't intervene in Earthly matters, without Human involvement.
6. The atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross: dying in our place, paying the price of sin and defeating evil, so reconciling us with God.
This statement of faith is mostly correct, just not in the way it is commonly understood.
1 Pet 3:18. Christ died for-us and as-us, but not in-our-place, (as if it needed to happen to us or Him, to bring about God’s justice). There’s nothing about “atoning in our place” in this verse, it’s the “just for the unjust”.
Rom 3:25. Propitiations for Sin. While Jewish use of this word focused on "cleansing" or "covering" sin, and a gentile reading this term might wrongly associate it with the cost paid to turn away divine wrath at humans, Romans and Hebrews do not say this. There’s nothing about atoning in this verse also. Rom 6.23 The consequence (price/wage) of sin is death (in all its forms; corruption, degeneration, sickness, fear, lack (of possessions to steward, and freedoms) and physical death). Jesus’ sacrifice didn’t merely cover the consequence of sin or assuage God’s anger at humans for being afflicted with sin (which the Bible does not say God is), it removed the consequence of sin on humans for ever, it removed death (in all its forms) from humans.
Col 2:15. Christ certainly defeated evil (spiritual entities, but Greek of the word translated as "Evil" also means "pressed and harassed by labours"). It can be inferred that humans are now less plagued by evil (both meanings) than before the cross. So our reconciliation can be attributed in part, to the defeat of evil, but we also need to understand the nature of the reconciliation...
2 Cor 5:18. He reconciled us to Him, not Him to us. This sentence, in context, wrongly suggests that God was mad at humans, not the sin and death afflicting us. Since God was not mad at Humans, our unity was being revealed by Christ’s death, not established.
Atonement is set up in the Old Testament as “the act”; redemption is the result.
Jer 7:22. The instruction to sacrifice (kill) something as the act of atonement, didn’t come from God. It may have been that God condoned animal sacrifice, at points in Isreal’s history, to avoid them sacrificing humans as the pagan’s were doing.
Gen 4:3 The initial offer of sacrifices to God, made by Cain and Abel, were made unsolicited by God. The Lord respected Abel and his first born and fat offering (the man and his offering; his heart). God didn’t ask Cain and Abel for sacrifices or specify the nature of them, but appears to validate the motivation behind them.
· Where did Cain and Abel, and all humans since, get the notion that killing something settles accounts?
· Satan seems to have given humans the idea, and agreed that his rights and authority we’ve seeded to him, are paid for by killing something.
· If Satan has agreed that death of an innocent is the price to be paid, then God has used this contract to totally usurp Satan’s rule and authority over us.
· If God looks at the heart of the one giving the sacrifice to respect it, and that’s how we’re to view the cross, then humanity is stuffed, because we weren’t offering Jesus up in this manner, we were metering out our own misguided (by Satan) wrath on Him.
· Human’s didn’t offer Jesus as a sacrifice to God.
God offered Himself as an atonement for our delusion, with the price and method of payment, determined by Satan, so he knew what he thought he was taking.
· Satan also broke the contract that gave him rights over humans, because this human, Jesus, was completely innocent, and he had no right to think he was allowed to influence humans to kill Him (Jesus gave his life, He wasn’t killed by Satan, but Satan thought that’s what he was doing, his motives were known).
· The result was that humanity was redeemed from their delusion and Satan lost all power that we'd seeded to him.
At any point, even without the cross, humans could have returned to our union in the trinity, returned to getting our knowledge and identity from our shared spirit in Christ, not from Satan through our senses.
· But we were too far gone, too deluded in sin, so Christ came to demonstrate what was possible for humans, when correctly aligned in spirit. To create a new species of humans, unincumbered by this delusion, by paying the debt owed, making an exchange of His life/light for our delusion, our bandage to Sin and Death, on our behalf.
7. The bodily resurrection of Christ, the first fruits of our resurrection; his ascension to the Father, and his reign and mediation as the only Saviour of the world.
Agreed.
But we need to have in mind the order of rule ordained by God.
Spirit rules souls.
Souls rule their bodies.
Such human bodies rule creation, the rest of the world.
So, whilst Christ is the “Saviour of the world”, He chooses to do so with Manifest Sons of God. Manifest Son’s of God are Humans operating out of Spirit.
Paul and apostles held that saving, sozo/sozaria, was past/done, current and future. It was done, but needed urgent and diligent chasing after. How can that be?
Our spirits are saved.
Our souls and bodies are being saved in our life time.
Any "saving" not attained by our souls and bodies, in our life time, will be inferred to us, when our bodies die.
What we are "saved" sozaria'd, from?
Not from God's wrath at us. Not from eternal torment.
We were saved from the negative consequences of Sin, which is Death. Not just physical cestation of our bios life, but death in all its guises: corruption, degeneration, sickness, fear, lack (of possessions to steward, and freedoms) and physical death.
8. The justification of sinners solely by the grace of God through faith in Christ.
1. Rom 5:1 / Rom 3:22 Humanity’s justification (being made righteous, free from the negative consequences of Sin) comes from Christ’s faith, or Christ’s faith (in us), not ours in Him.
2. Gal 3:26. Humanity’s experiential position as Sons (what is true of us, becomes true to us) comes from our faith in Christ.
3. Eph 2:8 Our faith in Christ is a divine gift to us, not our choice. Grace comes through Christ’s faith, not our belief.
4. Eph 1:4 Humanity was first Holy and without blame, in Christ before the foundation of the world. The “sinners” label came later but was dealt with on calvary. Addressing us by our old label, and not our restored new selves, is disingenuous.
Problems with this statement:
· It focuses on an identity that doesn’t belong to humans anymore (irrespective of their beliefs).
· It uses the word faith, when contextually it means to say belief.
· It implies that being free from the future negative consequences of sin, is achieved by what we believe.
· It draws on a common mistranslation of the Greek, rendering “Christ’s faith” wrongly, as “(our) faith in Christ”.
A possible alternative: “The restoration of humanity from the consequences of deception, solely by the grace of God through Jesus’ faith for humans”
9. The ministry of God the Holy Spirit, who leads us to repentance, unites us with Christ through new birth, empowers our discipleship and enables our witness.
Agreed.
Worth noting though that “repentance” is to totally transform your mind or belief for something better, to change your understanding to getting your knowledge and identity from your God union spirit in you, not from your external senses. It’s not to have a sense of regret or shame of past deeds, although you could be said to be sorry for them.
And this “repentance” or strictly speaking the Holy Spirit, reveals to us our union and new birth; it doesn’t bring it about.
10. The church, the body of Christ both local and universal, the priesthood of all believers — given life by the Spirit and endowed with the Spirit’s gifts to worship God and proclaim the gospel, promoting justice and love.
Agreed.
We believing humans are the body of Christ. There may also be some humans, unknowingly operating as Christ.
We are priests and kings.
Jesus is our King, so He is King of Kings.
We should understand what priests and kings were understood to do in those days, to better understand our purpose in life.
Priests (which we now all are):
Priests could enter the holiest of holies, could approach God directly.
Priests could issue blessings to others on behalf of God.
Priests could, with God's understandings, proclaim what was good in others.
Priests could declare others clean.
They resolved disputes.
They led worship.
They offered sacrifices because they had to, like servants, but we, as Sons and Daughters, do this because we want to. And the sacrifices (now free responses) are different: Prayer (chating with father God) praise and intercession.
Kings do this:
act as God's earthly agents,
they defend property, systems and people,
they take new territory,
they build fortifications, stores and palaces,
they rule with justice.
They stay on their throne.
They rule by decree and declaration.
They don't need to shout
All of which we are now to do.
Eph 4:12-13 We might also want to consider where we fit in the roles of the fivefold ministry, in enabling all believers in undertaking this commission. Individuals might span more than one category, or fulfil them only for a spell…
Apostles: Sent leaders, pioneers, and church planters who initiate new ministries, establish foundations, and build networks of faith communities.
Prophets: Discerning voices who declare God's truth to call the church to greater faithfulness, justice, and alignment with God's heart.
Evangelists: Passionate proclaimers of the gospel who focus on outreach, sparking revival, and drawing new people into the faith.
Pastors (Shepherds): Caring leaders who guide, protect, and nurture the spiritual well-being of the local church community.
Teachers: Instructors who break down biblical truth, grounding believers in sound doctrine and helping them grow in understanding.
And unity isn't derived from agreement on all matters of understanding (theology).
11. The personal and visible return of Jesus Christ to fulfil the purposes of God, who will raise all people to judgement, bring eternal life to the redeemed and eternal condemnation to the lost, and establish a new heaven and new earth.
[The personal and visible return of Jesus Christ….]
1 Thes 4:16-17, confirms the dead and the living to be caught up together as Jesus descends from Heaven, to come straight back with Him. This is not going to Heaven, Jesus is on His way down. This a sort of going out to greet Him in, like going to the airport to pick up a relative.
1 Cor 15:51-52, confirms we will all be changed in the twinkling of an eye.
Acts 1:11, confirms He will return as He left, in body, visibly.
So, this phrase is sound.
[…to fulfil the purposes of God]
Presumably the purposes of God on earth.
Jesus (and humans) are already enthroned and in charge in Heaven.
Jesus has already come in His glory there, 2000 years ago.
Gen 1:26 and Psalm 115:16 The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD’s; But the earth He has given to the children of men.
So, the purposes of God on earth, are to be fulfilled by humans, not Jesus returning.
Humans, connected to Jesus in spirit, are to make earth like heaven, are to expand His kingdom, that Genesis commission never went away.
And it is an ever increasing kingdom.
So, we’re not waiting for His return to fix earth, He’s waiting for us to fix it, to return.
[…who will raise all people to judgement…]
1 Thes 4:16-17, confirms the dead and the living to be caught up together as Jesus descends from Heaven, to come straight back with Him. So, this raising isn’t to judgement. Raising isn’t a precursor to judgement.
Rev 20:11-15 (The great white throne judgement), is not predicated on Jesus’ physical return, simply because John stated, “then I saw…”. It is not necessarily “a day” of judgement.
It can as easily be interpreted as an ongoing spiritual reality, having earthly consequences every day.
As with Adam and Eve, heaven and earth wrongly (for no right reason) would flee away from God, but this time there's no place to go. Jesus now insists on showing everyone His mercy from Calvary.
It's Jesus on the Bema (reward, not judgement) seat.
It's Satan doing the judgement (condemning or accusing) as per the books in Dan 7.
But Jesus reveals His own book, the book of life. Turns out all humans throughout time are in it, so we don't get disowned after all! Death, Hades and Demons found guilty, go into the Eternal fire (no humans).
It impacts us every day though, as Satan accuses us daily.
John 10:11 Jesus said He didn’t condemn the woman. He doesn’t change so won’t be doing so at the end.
John 8:15 Jesus said He judged no one. He doesn’t change so won’t be doing so at the end.
Heb 9:27 It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgement. We can consider ourselves, our old man, already dead, and/or we can consider that it’s the judgement (condemnation of Satan, not God) or if it’s the judgement of God, that it isn’t punitive but restorative and for recognition/reward.
In most any western theology understanding, the phrase above invokes an incorrect understanding of God.
[…bring eternal life to the redeemed…]
This is not brought about by the personable and visible return of Jesus.
It’s not to the redeemed but it is for them.
All humanity is redeemed, but not all access eternal life in this life.
Aiōnios Zoe, the abundance of biological life from an everlasting (heavenly) source, is to be attained in this life, or Nicodemus would not have questioned why he’d been unable to attain it so far in life.
John 3:16. To realise eternal life, (again, in this life) requires belief by individuals; for what is true of us, to become true to us.
[…and eternal condemnation to the lost…]
Matt 24:46. Will most likely be sited to support this, but fails to establish it in several ways. It’s “an age”, so not “forever”, the Greek word is a specific form of punishment, not condemnation, that is restorative in nature. The damning interpretation, takes no account of the old-self and new creation, that components of a human’s character, may be at stake, not humans in their entirety, nor more left field interpretations that point to the nation subjects being angels and demons, not humans or their new/old souls.
[…and establish a new heaven and new earth.]
Rev 21-22. Fine! But pay special attention to the “I make all things”, all means all, don’t try to be exclusive of other humans where there’s no grounds to be.
A possible alternative: “The personal and visible return of Jesus Christ to witness the purposes of God, having been fulfilled through His Sons and Daughters, and then establish a new heaven and new earth.”