Statement of Faith
George L. Hinman
For from him
all that is has come to be. God, made known to humanity in three
eternal persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, most generously
created the universe, governs its worlds, and sustains its life.
Being all that is good and true and beautiful, God yearns to display
and share his glory with a community of worshipping creatures made
like himself to delight in the radiance of his presence.
God made a covenant with humanity’s first parents, representatives
of the race. He invited their worship and instructed obedient
dependence. Yet they rebelled against God. They chose autonomy over
goodness and violated their creaturely nature. And so we die. Under
God’s just judgement, alienated from the only source of life, we
perish, body and soul.
And through him
all that is may find redemption. Inexplicably, God slows the hand of
justice, proclaims a word of hope to his idolatrous, sin-stained,
mortal—but still beloved—humanity, and sustains them for a
redemption of unfathomable grace.
In the fullness of time, the Son of God took upon himself a human
nature and walked upon the soil of creation, fully divine and fully
human, most clearly articulating the perfect being and love of God.
On behalf of humanity Jesus Christ offered a complete obedience and
a thorough death and so fulfilled humanity’s covenant obligations.
The third day he snapped the spine of sin and death and arose to
eternal life and restoration with God the Father.
God offers us this same restoration and union with Jesus Christ as
an unmerited gift received by faith. He calls us to relinquish
idolatry for true and soul-satisfying worship. God plies us with
spiritual life, declares us righteous, renews us, restores us by
degrees to the intended fullness of humanity, and assures us that
there is no adversary in heaven or on earth, in life or in death,
that might keep us from God’s love and our ultimate resurrection and
glorification in Jesus Christ.
And to him
all that is will soon be rightly restored. From every generation God
has called forth a people, redeemed by Christ, bound to him and to
one another in his grace, and embraced by Word and Sacrament.
Through Scriptures of human authorship, God gives us a written,
authoritative, and inerrant witness to Jesus Christ. Through
Sacraments God offers an enactment of the gospel, identifies the
people of his covenant, and renews us afresh by the Spirit. In
Baptism we are joined to Jesus and his church. In the Lord’s Supper
we are nourished by his resurrection life.
The Son of God and Savior of the church, Jesus sends the church in
the power of the Spirit among all the peoples of the world to extend
the reconciling work of the Father. He sends it in love to embrace
all, to proclaim his resurrection, to confess his lordship over all
of life, to embody his compassion and justice, and to live as
witnesses that Jesus alone fulfills the prophetic promise of
liberation, justice, peace, and restoration with God.
Soon faith will be sight, and we will behold the triumphant return
of Christ, the eternal day of God’s rule among the nations, and the
glorious summation of all history in the one from whom and through
whom and to whom
Are all things.
To him be the glory forever. Amen.
