One Hope Baptist Church

We are Christians

This means that we believe the gospel. We believe that the God of the universe, Yahweh, is eternally existent in the persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We believe the eternal Son was born of the virgin Mary, lived a sinless and righteous life, and then offered Himself up as a substitute for our sins on the cross. We believe He rose bodily from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sent His Spirit to indwell all those who believe. We believe Christ will return bodily to judge the world. The righteous will experience eternal reward, and the unrighteous will experience eternal torment. We believe that we were born in sin, but at the point of repentance and faith, God awakes us from our spiritual death, and imparts eternal life into our souls, and regards Christ’s righteousness as being ours, while charging our sin to Him. Because of His sovereign act, we now love Christ. We believe He is our Saviour from sin and the Lord of our lives.

This means that we affirm the gospel as taught in the Bible, believed through the centuries, and especially recovered during the time of the Reformation. We believe salvation is by faith alone, in Christ alone, by grace alone, to the glory of God alone.

We believe in God’s sovereignty in salvation

We affirm the sovereignty of God over all things, including salvation. We affirm human responsibility in salvation, while recognising God’s sovereign election. We believe in the eternal security of the believer, as well as the perseverance of true believers.

We are creationists

We believe that the Genesis account of creation was meant to be understood literally, not symbolically, typologically, or as a ‘literary framework’. We believe God created the universe in the six days He described. We reject models of origins that include Darwinistic evolution, that is, speciation occurring through natural selection over aeons. We believe that theories which seek to combine evolution with special creation may ultimately compromise the integrity of the gospel, by compromising the truths of man’s original innocence and subsequent fall, and the need for a substitutionary Saviour.

We believe in biblical counselling and a progressive model of sanctification

We hold that Scripture is entirely sufficient for man’s spiritual needs and problems (2 Tim 3:16-17), and does not need to be supplemented or integrated with insights from secular psychology. Therefore we believe we need to admonish and confront one another with biblical truth to solve our problems. We believe sanctification is a process of increasingly gaining the mind of Christ through Spirit-enabled understanding of the Scriptures, and so putting off the old and putting on the new (Eph 4:22-24). We reject the idea of second-blessing Christianity. We do not hold the revivalist view that spiritual growth is brought about by precipitating a crisis decision every week through an altar-call.

Conclusion

This might sound like a bulky list. Whatever happened to plain, simple Christianity? Well, we’re happy to profess the simple gospel with all other Christians. However, we can’t put our heads in the sand, either. The convictions we hold have emerged because of real disputes and conflicts over what Christians ought to believe and practise. Some of these disputes are centuries old. Some of them are relatively recent. Our goal is not to be eccentric, but to navigate the complicated landscape of modern Christianity, trying to be as fully biblical as we can.

We trust this has helped you understand something of the position and practices of One Hope Baptist Church. We hope you see the basis for this, and will join with us in knowing Christ and making Him known!