For God so loved the world that he gave
his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall
not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
Sing to the Lord, for he has done
glorious things;
let this be known to all the world.
(Isaiah 12:5)
PREAMBLE
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is news, good news: the best
and most important news that any human being ever hears.
This Gospel declares the only way to know God in peace,
love, and joy is through the reconciling death of Jesus
Christ the risen Lord.
This Gospel is the central message of the Holy
Scriptures, and is the true key to understanding them.
This Gospel identifies Jesus Christ, the Messiah of
Israel, as the Son of God and God the Son, the second
Person of the Holy Trinity, whose incarnation, ministry,
death, resurrection and ascension fulfilled the Father’s
saving will. His death for sins and his resurrection from
the dead were promised beforehand by the prophets and
attested by eyewitnesses. In God’s own time and in God’s
own way, Jesus Christ shall return as glorious Lord and
Judge of all (1 Thess. 4:13-18; Mt. 25:31,32). He is now
giving the Holy Spirit from the Father to all those who
are truly his. The three Persons of the Trinity thus
combine in the work of saving sinners.
This Gospel sets forth Jesus Christ as the living
Savior, Master, Life, and Hope of all who put their trust
in him. It tells us that the eternal destiny of all people
depends on whether they are savingly related to Jesus
Christ.
This Gospel is the only Gospel: there is no other; and
to change its substance is to pervert and indeed destroy
it.
This Gospel is so simple that small children can
understand it, and it is so profound that studies by the
wisest theologians will never exhaust its riches.
All Christians are called to unity in love and unity in
truth. As Evangelicals who derive our very name from the
Gospel, we celebrate this great good news of God’s saving
work in Jesus Christ as the true bond of Christian unity,
whether among organized churches and denominations or in
the many trans-denominational cooperative enterprises of
Christians together.
The Bible declares that all who truly trust in Christ
and his Gospel are sons and daughters of God through
grace, and hence are our brothers and sisters in Christ.
All who are justified experience reconciliation with
the Father, full remission of sins, transition from the
kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, the reality
of being a new creature in Christ, and the fellowship of
the Holy Spirit. They enjoy access to the Father with all
the peace and joy that this brings.
The Gospel requires of all believers worship, which
means constant praise and giving of thanks to God,
submission to all that he has revealed in his written
word, prayerful dependence on him, and vigilance lest his
truth be even inadvertently compromised or obscured.
To share the joy and hope of this Gospel is a supreme
privilege. It is also an abiding obligation, for the
"Great Commission" of Jesus Christ still stands: proclaim
the Gospel everywhere, he said, teaching, baptizing, and
making disciples.
By embracing the following declaration we affirm our
commitment to this task, and with it our allegiance to
Christ himself, to the Gospel itself, and to each other as
fellow Evangelical believers.
THE GOSPEL
This Gospel of Jesus Christ which God sets forth in the
infallible Scriptures combines Jesus’ own declaration of
the present reality of the Kingdom of God with the
apostles’ account of the person, place, and work of
Christ, and how sinful humans benefit from it. The
Patristic Rule of Faith, the historic Creeds, the
Reformation confessions, and the doctrinal bases of later
Evangelical bodies, all witness to the substance of this
biblical message.
The heart of the Gospel is that our holy, loving
Creator, confronted with human hostility and rebellion,
has chosen in his own freedom and faithfulness to become
our holy, loving Redeemer and Restorer. The Father has
sent the Son to be the Savior of the world (1 John 4:14):
it is through his one and only Son that God’s one and only
plan of salvation is implemented. So Peter announced:
"Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other
name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved"
(Acts 4:12). And Christ himself taught: "I am the way, the
truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except
through me" (John 14:6).
Through the Gospel we learn that we human beings, who
were made for fellowship with God, are by nature – that
is, "in Adam" (1 Cor. 15:22) – dead in sin, unresponsive
to and separated from our Maker. We are constantly
twisting his truth, breaking his law, belittling his goals
and standards, and offending his holiness by our
unholiness, so that we truly are "without hope and without
God in the world" (Rom. 1:18-32, 3:9-20; Eph. 2:1-3, 12).
Yet God in grace took the initiative to reconcile us to
himself through the sinless life and vicarious death of
his beloved Son (Eph. 2:4-10; Rom. 3:21-24).
The Father sent the Son to free us from the dominion of
sin and Satan, and to make us God’s children and friends.
Jesus paid our penalty in our place on his cross,
satisfying the retributive demands of divine justice by
shedding his blood in sacrifice and so making possible
justification for all who trust in him (Rom. 3:25-26). The
Bible describes this mighty substitutionary transaction as
the achieving of ransom, reconciliation, redemption,
propitiation, and conquest of evil powers (Mt. 20:28; 2
Cor. 5:18-21; Rom. 3:23-25; John 12:31; Col. 2:15). It
secures for us a restored relationship with God that
brings pardon and peace, acceptance and access, and
adoption into God’s family (Col. 1:20, 2:13-14; Rom.
5:1-2; Gal. 4:4-7; 1 Pet. 3:18). The faith in God and in
Christ to which the Gospel calls us is a trustful outgoing
of our hearts to lay hold of these promised and proffered
benefits.
This Gospel further proclaims the bodily resurrection,
ascension, and enthronement of Jesus as evidence of the
efficacy of his once-for-all sacrifice for us, of the
reality of his present personal ministry to us, and of the
certainty of his future return to glorify us (1 Cor.15;
Heb. 1:1-4, 2:1-18, 4:14-16, 7:1-10:25). In the life of
faith as the Gospel presents it, believers are united with
their risen Lord, communing with him, and looking to him
in repentance and hope for empowering through the Holy
Spirit, so that henceforth they may not sin but serve him
truly.
God’s justification of those who trust him, according
to the Gospel, is a decisive transition, here and now,
from a state of condemnation and wrath because of their
sins to one of acceptance and favor by virtue of Jesus’
flawless obedience culminating in his voluntary
sin-bearing death. God "justifies the wicked" (ungodly:
Rom. 4:5) by imputing (reckoning, crediting, counting,
accounting) righteousness to them and ceasing to count
their sins against them (Rom. 4:1-8). Sinners receive
through faith in Christ alone "the gift of righteousness"
(Rom. 1:17, 5:17; Phil. 3:9) and thus become "the
righteousness of God" in him who was "made sin" for them
(2 Cor. 5:21).
As our sins were reckoned to Christ, so Christ’s
righteousness is reckoned to us. This is justification by
the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. All we bring to
the transaction is our need of it. Our faith in the God
who bestows it, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
is itself the fruit of God’s grace. Faith links us
savingly to Jesus, but inasmuch as it involves an
acknowledgment that we have no merit of our own, it is
confessedly not a meritorious work.
The Gospel assures us that all who have entrusted their
lives to Jesus Christ are born-again children of God (John
1:12), indwelt, empowered, and assured of their status and
hope by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 7:6, 8:9-17). The moment we
truly believe in Christ, the Father declares us righteous
in him and begins conforming us to his likeness. Genuine
faith acknowledges and depends upon Jesus as Lord and
shows itself in growing obedience to the divine commands,
though this contributes nothing to the ground of our
justification (James 2:14-26; Heb. 6:1-12).
By his sanctifying grace Christ works within us through
faith, renewing our fallen nature and leading us to real
maturity – that measure of development which is meant by
"the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). The Gospel calls us
to live as obedient servants of Christ and as his
emissaries in the world, doing justice, loving mercy, and
helping all in need, thus seeking to bear witness to the
Kingdom of Christ. At death Christ takes the believer to
himself (Phil. 1:21) for unimaginable joy in the ceaseless
worship of God (Rev. 22:1-5).
Salvation in its full sense is from the guilt of sin in
the past, the power of sin in the present, and the
presence of sin in the future. Thus, while in foretaste
believers enjoy salvation now, they still await its
fullness (Mark 14: 61-62; Heb. 9:28). Salvation is a
trinitarian reality, initiated by the Father, implemented
by the Son, and applied by the Holy Spirit. It has a
global dimension, for God’s plan is to save believers out
of every tribe and tongue (Rev. 5:9) to be his Church, a
new humanity, the people of God, the Body and Bride of
Christ, and the community of the Holy Spirit. All the
heirs of final salvation are called here and now to serve
their Lord and each other in love, to share in the
fellowship of Jesus’ sufferings, and to work together to
make Christ known to the whole world.
We learn from the Gospel that as all have sinned, so
all who do not receive Christ will be judged according to
their just deserts as measured by God’s holy law, and face
eternal retributive punishment.
UNITY IN THE GOSPEL
Christians are commanded to love each other despite
differences of race, gender, privilege, and social,
political, and economic background (John 13:34-35; Gal.
3:28-29), and to be of one mind wherever possible (John
17:20-21; Phil. 2:2; Rom. 14:1-15:13). We know that
divisions among Christians hinder our witness in the
world, and we desire greater mutual understanding and
truth-speaking in love. We know too that as trustees of
God’s revealed truth we cannot embrace any form of
doctrinal indifferentism, or relativism, or pluralism by
which God’s truth is sacrificed for a false peace.
Doctrinal disagreements call for debate. Dialogue for
mutual understanding and, if possible, narrowing of the
differences is valuable, doubly so when the avowed goal is
unity in primary things, with liberty in secondary things,
and charity in all things.
In the foregoing paragraphs an attempt has been made to
state what is primary and essential in the Gospel as
Evangelicals understand it. Useful dialogue, however,
requires not only charity in our attitudes, but also
clarity in our utterances. Our extended analysis of
justification by faith alone through Christ alone reflects
our belief that Gospel truth is of crucial importance and
is not always well understood and correctly affirmed. For
added clarity, out of love for God’s truth and Christ’s
Church, we now cast the key points of what has been said
into specific affirmations and denials regarding the
Gospel and our unity in it and in Christ.
Affirmations & Denials:
1. We affirm that the Gospel entrusted to the Church
is, in the first instance, God’s Gospel (Mark 1:14; Rom.
1:1). God is its author and he reveals it to us in and by
his Word. Its authority and truth rest on him alone.
We deny that the truth or authority of the Gospel
derives from any human insight or invention (Gal. 1:1-11).
We also deny that the truth or authority of the Gospel
rests on the authority of any particular church or human
institution.
2. We affirm that the Gospel is the saving power of God
in that the Gospel effects salvation to everyone who
believes, without distinction (Rom. 1:16). This efficacy
of the Gospel is by the power of God himself (1 Cor.
1:18).
We deny that the power of the Gospel rests in the
eloquence of the preacher, the technique of the
evangelist, or the persuasion of rational argument (1 Cor.
1:21; 2:1-5).
3. We affirm that the Gospel diagnoses the universal
human condition as one of sinful rebellion against God,
which if unchanged will lead each person to eternal loss
under God’s condemnation.
We deny any rejection of the fallenness of human nature
or any assertion of the natural goodness, or divinity, of
the human race.
4. We affirm that Jesus Christ is the only way of
salvation, the only mediator between God and humanity
(John 14:6; 1 Tim. 2:5).
We deny that anyone is saved in any other way than by
Jesus Christ and his Gospel. The Bible offers no hope that
sincere worshippers of other religions will be saved
without personal faith in Jesus Christ.
5. We affirm that the Church is commanded by God and is
therefore under divine obligation to preach the Gospel to
every living person (Luke 24:47; Mt. 28:18-19).
We deny that any particular class or group of persons,
whatever their ethnic or cultural identity, may be ignored
or passed over in the preaching of the Gospel (1 Cor.
9:19-22). God purposes a global Church made up from people
of every tribe, language and nation (Rev. 7:9).
6. We affirm that faith in Jesus Christ as the divine
Word (or Logos, John 1:1), the second Person of the
Trinity, co-eternal and co-essential with the Father and
the Holy Spirit (Heb. 1:3), is foundational to faith in
the Gospel.
We deny that any view of Jesus Christ which reduces or
rejects his full deity is Gospel faith or will avail to
salvation.
7. We affirm that Jesus Christ is God incarnate (John
1:14). The virgin-born descendant of David (Rom. 1:3), he
had a true human nature, was subject to the Law of God
(Gal. 4:5), and was like us at all points, except without
sin (Heb. 2:17, 7:26-28). We affirm that faith in the true
humanity of Christ is essential to faith in the Gospel.
We deny that anyone who rejects the humanity of Christ,
his incarnation, or his sinlessness, or who maintains that
these truths are not essential to the Gospel, will be
saved (1 John 4:2-3).
8. We affirm that the atonement of Christ by which, in
his obedience, he offered a perfect sacrifice,
propitiating the Father by paying for our sins and
satisfying divine justice on our behalf according to God’s
eternal plan, is an essential element of the Gospel.
We deny that any view of the atonement that rejects the
substitutionary satisfaction of divine justice,
accomplished vicariously for believers, is compatible with
the teaching of the Gospel.
9. We affirm that Christ’s saving work included both
his life and his death on our behalf (Gal. 3:13). We
declare that faith in the perfect obedience of Christ by
which he fulfilled all the demands of the Law of God in
our behalf is essential to the Gospel.
We deny that our salvation was achieved merely or
exclusively by the death of Christ without reference to
his life of perfect righteousness.
10. We affirm that the bodily resurrection of Christ
from the dead is essential to the biblical Gospel (1 Cor.
15:14).
We deny the validity of any so-called gospel that
denies the historical reality of the bodily resurrection
of Christ.
11. We affirm that the biblical doctrine of
justification by faith alone in Christ alone is essential
to the Gospel (Rom. 3:28; 4:5; Gal. 2:16).
We deny that any person can believe the biblical Gospel
and at the same time reject the apostolic teaching of
justification by faith alone in Christ alone. We also deny
that there is more than one true Gospel (Gal. 1:6-9).
12. We affirm that the doctrine of the imputation
(reckoning or counting) both of our sins to Christ and of
his righteousness to us, whereby our sins are fully
forgiven and we are fully accepted, is essential to the
biblical Gospel (2 Cor. 5:19-21).
We deny that we are justified by the righteousness of
Christ infused into us or by any righteousness that is
thought to inhere within us.
13. We affirm that the righteousness of Christ by which
we are justified is properly his own, which he achieved
apart from us, in and by his perfect obedience. This
righteousness is counted, reckoned, or imputed to us by
the forensic (that is, legal) declaration of God, as the
sole ground of our justification.
We deny that any works we perform at any stage of our
existence add to the merit of Christ or earn for us any
merit that contributes in any way to the ground of our
justification (Gal. 2:16; Eph. 2:8,9; Titus 3:5).
14. We affirm that while all believers are indwelt by
the Holy Spirit and are in the process of being made holy
and conformed to the image of Christ, those consequences
of justification are not its ground. God declares us just,
remits our sins, and adopts us as his children, by his
grace alone, and through faith alone, because of Christ
alone, while we are still sinners (Rom. 4:5).
We deny that believers must be inherently righteous by
virtue of their cooperation with God’s life-transforming
grace before God will declare them justified in Christ. We
are justified while we are still sinners.
15. We affirm that saving faith results in
sanctification, the transformation of life in growing
conformity to Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Sanctification means ongoing repentance, a life of turning
from sin to serve Jesus Christ in grateful reliance on him
as one’s Lord and Master (Gal. 5:22-25; Rom. 8:4, 13-14).
We reject any view of justification which divorces it
from our sanctifying union with Christ and our increasing
conformity to his image through prayer, repentance,
cross-bearing, and life in the Spirit.
16. We affirm that saving faith includes mental assent
to the content of the Gospel, acknowledgment of our own
sin and need, and personal trust and reliance upon Christ
and his work.
We deny that saving faith includes only mental
acceptance of the Gospel, and that justification is
secured by a mere outward profession of faith. We further
deny that any element of saving faith is a meritorious
work or earns salvation for us.
17. We affirm that although true doctrine is vital for
spiritual health and well-being, we are not saved by
doctrine. Doctrine is necessary to inform us how we may be
saved by Christ, but it is Christ who saves.
We deny that the doctrines of the Gospel can be
rejected without harm. Denial of the Gospel brings
spiritual ruin and exposes us to God’s judgment.
18. We affirm that Jesus Christ commands his followers
to proclaim the Gospel to all living persons, evangelizing
everyone everywhere, and discipling believers within the
fellowship of the Church. A full and faithful witness to
Christ includes the witness of personal testimony, godly
living, and acts of mercy and charity to our neighbor,
without which the preaching of the Gospel appears barren.
We deny that the witness of personal testimony, godly
living, and acts of mercy and charity to our neighbors
constitute evangelism apart from the proclamation of the
Gospel.
OUR COMMITMENT
As Evangelicals united in the Gospel, we promise to
watch over and care for one another, to pray for and
forgive one another, and to reach out in love and truth to
God’s people everywhere, for we are one family, one in the
Holy Spirit, and one in Christ.
Centuries ago it was truly said that in things
necessary there must be unity, in things less than
necessary there must be liberty, and in all things there
must be charity. We see all these Gospel truths as
necessary.
Now to God, the Author of the truth and grace of this
Gospel, through Jesus Christ, its subject and our Lord, be
praise and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
