The United Methodist Church affirms key theological points
that we share with many other Christian churches.
We affirm the doctrine of faith in the Holy Trinity. God has revealed himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – three persons and still one God. He is the true, eternal God without body or parts, and has infinite power and wisdom. Our Savior comes from this God. Jesus was born a fully human person and yet was still fully divine. By his death and resurrection we are saved. We affirm that Jesus truly died and was physically raised from the dead on the third day. We believe that the Holy Spirit is active in the life of our church and its members.
The Bible is the sufficient revelation of who God is and how salvation comes to us. There is more to God than we will know on this earth, but the Bible reveals enough for us to know God as creator and redeemer. There is a consistency between the Old Testament and the New Testament. No other writings compare to the 66 books of the Bible.
They are our final authority.
We teach that the human problem is sin. It is a corruption of being made in God’s image. It is shown like the symptoms of a disease; we must treat the root cause, not merely the symptoms. We affirm that people have free will. We continually make choices that lead us closer or farther away from God. Without the grace of God, we cannot move closer to him.
To be reunited with God in a full relationship is our goal; this is called justification. In it, God sees us as fully acceptable even though everybody knows our sins make us unacceptable.
God’s grace forgives our sins.
This is a gift from God and never our work. At no time could we ever be morally good enough that God would owe us salvation; we always owe God. Our good works do not earn us a place near God but reflect that God accepts us and we are responding with grace. We continue to sin after we are saved, but these do not imperil our salvation. These sins are evidence we are still growing spiritually, moving toward a level of sanctification (spiritual purity) that God can use to draw others to him and grow his kingdom. Sanctification is the Holy Spirit’s renewal of our sinful nature.
It is a cleansing of spiritual pollution to the point that
we can joyously obey all of God’s commands.
We believe that the church is the visible and functional Body of Christ on earth. It is a place to hear the Word of God preached, the sacraments of baptism and communion properly practiced, and service to the community is planned and launched.
