Our God and Savior

We believe in one God, eternally existing in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Triune God created the universe in six days, all of which was good. He sustains and preserves the created order according to His eternal counsel and providence. We believe in the original sin of Adam, and the physical and spiritual death that resulted for all mankind. We believe that we are saved only by the work of the new Adam, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, fully God and fully man.

Christ alone, by His substitutionary death on the cross for our sins and His resurrection from the dead, has secured for us the forgiveness of our sins, imputed righteousness, and eternal life. We are saved not by our will, our works, or our merit, but by the grace of God, according to His sovereign will, ordained before the foundation of the world. There is only one way to the Father, and that is through Christ our Lord. 

Our faith in Christ is a result of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, convicting us of sin, and convicting us of the righteousness of Christ, according to God's covenantal promise of grace. God redeems a people of His own possession, reconciling us to Him and reconciling us to one another. This work of God, turning a heart of stone into a heart of flesh, causes a person to be born again, repenting and believing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In appreciation for the great love God has shown us in Christ, we are committed to living thankful and obedient lives to the glory of God as we grow in Christ.

We believe God causes His chosen people to persevere in true faith until the bodily appearance of Jesus Christ, who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. At His coming, the Lord will make our mortal bodies like unto His glorified body, and we will reign with Him forever in the New Heaven and New Earth.

Our Authority

We believe the Bible is the divinely inspired, infallible, and inerrant Word of God, fully authoritative and sufficient in all matters of faith and conduct. We are a church that believes in the Bible, studies the Bible, preaches and teaches the Bible, and seeks to obey the Bible. The Bible is central to all that we are and do. We seek to be faithful the the Word of God.

Our trust and faith are in Christ alone: in his person, work, and Word. The Bible and it alone, as the Word of Christ, is our final standard for all that we believe and do. It is inspired of God and therefore the absolute authority as truth; inerrant and infallible in all matters, including history and science. The whole counsel of God in Scripture is our standard in every area of life and thought.

As a Reformed church we hold the highest estimation on the Bible. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy provides a full statement of the correct view of Scripture. In the summary statement, we read:

1. God, who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is God’s witness to Himself.
2. Holy Scripture, being God’s own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: It is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises.
3. The Holy Spirit, Scripture’s divine Author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning.
4. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives.
5. The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited of disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible’s own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church.

“The Word, the Whole Word, Nothing but the Word!”

What are the "Subordinate Standards" 

We have adopted the universal creeds of the ancient church (Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian) and the Three Forms of Unity (Heidelberg Catechism, Belgic Confession of Faith, and Canons of Dort) as our confessional standards. These creeds and confessions are accurate summaries of Christian doctrine and are subordinate to our highest authority, the Bible.
 

Because these confessions were written by men, we acknowledge they are fallible, which is why they are "subordinate" standards for the church. RCUS officers and churches are required to subscribe to these confessions and faithfully teach the system of doctrine they contain as a faithful summary of the Bible.
 

Click here to learn more about the subordinate standards called the Three Forms of Unity.

Why do we uphold the historic creeds and confessions?

One may question, “why does your church need subordinate standards if the Bible is your sole infallible source of authority?” This is a good question. The answer is simply this: The Bible is a big book. It is made up of 66 books written by 40+ authors over a timespan of 1,500+ years. No person knows perfectly everything the Bible teaches. Furthermore, the Bible is not written like a systematic theology textbook where one can look and see what the Bible teaches on the Trinity (for example). The Bible is a story of Redemptive History and it’s story unfolds organically and progressively across the pages of Holy Scripture. What our confessions do is summarize this teaching and categorize it.

When asked, “What does the Bible teach?” or “How do you interpret it?” we respond with a unified voice by referring to the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed church which summarize the message of Scripture. The RCUS does not, however, make its confessional statements equal to, or elevated above, Scripture, for our Constitution says,

The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, which are called canonical, being recognized as genuine and inspired, are received as the true and proper Word of God, infallible and inerrant, and the ultimate rule and measure of the whole Christian faith and doctrine. (Constitution, Art. 176)

Mere human writings can never be our ultimate and final standard, even those with ecclesiastical authority due to the fact that they were decided in the councils of the church:

Neither may we consider any writings of men, however holy these men may have been, of equal value with those divine Scriptures, nor ought we to consider custom, or the great multitude, or antiquity, or succession of times and persons, or councils, decrees or statutes, as of equal value with the truth of God, since the truth is above all. (Belgic Confession, Art. 7)

It is an integral part of our confession to define the nature of biblical authority and distinguish scripture from confessional statements. Our creeds, confessions, and catechism are to be understood as subordinate standards. And yet they have real authority in the church because they are based upon and embody biblical truth.

Our statement of faith includes the Apostle’s Creed as well as the historic confession of the churches of the Reformation. We affirm and teach that system of doctrine which is set forth in the Three Forms of Unity: the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort. These three doctrinal statements, born of the Protestant Reformation, define what it means to be “reformed.” The Constitution of our denomination states,

The Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession of Faith, and the Canons of Dort are received as authoritative expressions of the truths taught in the Holy Scriptures, and are acknowledged to be the subordinate standards of doctrine in the Reformed Church in the United States. (RCUS Constitution, Part IV. Doctrine and Worship, Section 1, Doctrine, Article 177)

Because the The Heidelberg Catechism, The Belgic Confession of Faith and the The Canons of Dort accurately summarizes the teachings of Scripture, we have adopted them as our confessional standards.

Church Polity

The Head of the church is Jesus Christ, who rules His people by His Word and Spirit and appoints officers for their care and service. Our Consistory (pastor, elders, and deacons) guards the temporal concerns of the church, and our Spiritual Council (pastor and elders) watches over its spiritual interests. Our officers are also accountable to the South Central Classis and the Synod of the Reformed Church in the United States.