Feeding on Jesus: Lent Week 7
This Lent season, we want to feed on Jesus. Lent runs from Ash Wednesday March 4 through Easter on April 20, and we're encouraging everyone involved with Redemption Church to talk through our belief statement with a partner during this time. If you missed the beginning of this, read more about how and why we're doing this here. You can see all the posts in this series by clicking here. Finally, you can see our entire belief statement here.
Here's this week's portion of our belief statement:
The One that now indwells, empowers, and is beginning to transform all who have come to know and believe in Jesus Christ is the Holy Spirit who spoke through the prophets and authors of the sixty-six books of the Bible. He is the same One that is and has been forming all believers since the day of Pentecost into a single, holy, universal, apostles’-teaching-based church that will be the bride of Christ at the culmination of all things. All who are in this church are united together and thus desperately need one another. This church is composed of all who are truly Christian—all who have the faith that the whole Bible was written to engender when properly read, faith in this Father who sent His Son, in this Son who became human for the sake of humanity, and in this Spirit who continues to work in the world through the church.
We believe this faith that Jesus handed down to his apostles. His apostles handed down this faith to their disciples, and it has been believed by everyone who has rightfully called themselves a Christian—it has been believed everywhere, by every Christian, in every age. This faith has been handed down reliably, from the apostles and their disciples to the early universal church councils (such as Nicaea in 325 AD, Constantinople in 381 AD, Ephesus in 431 AD, and Chalcedon in 451 AD) to the reformers to faithful Christians throughout the world today.
When we baptize newly converted believers into the church, we are baptizing them based on this faith. When we practice the Lord’s Supper, we do it based on this faith. What stands written here is intended to be nothing more than a retelling of this faith.
