Beliefs

Through creation and the Bible, God speaks and acts in history and has a purpose and love for all humanity. But all too often we choose to reject God’s love and authority, choosing instead to live for ourselves. The Bible calls this behavior “sin.”

God is not passive in the face of our rebellion and separation. Instead, God has lovingly taken the initiative to reach toward us, to communicate to us, and to rescue us from the sin of which all of us are guilty.

• God created human beings with the unique ability to perceive God’s imprint on themselves and the world, and the freedom to adore or ignore God.
• God revealed His nature and purpose to Abraham and Sarah, promising them that through their lineage God would bless the entire world.
• God inspired prophets to communicate God’s nature and desires to all those who would listen. Often ignored or reviled by their hearers, the prophets told of God’s tender concern for the poor, the widow, the orphan, the foreigner. The prophets also told of the coming Savior and Redeemer who one day would rescue God’s people from their greatest enemies.
• Most important of all, in the ultimate plan to reach toward us, God became human, a Jewish baby named Jesus of Nazareth who grew to become a carpenter/rabbi. Indeed the entire unfolding story of the Old Testament points the way to Jesus.

Every human being ever born has made mistakes, had moral lapses, and in a variety of ways fallen short of the holy perfection of God Almighty except one, Jesus Christ.

• Jesus declared Himself to be God. He claimed that He was the One toward whom all the biblical prophets pointed. He taught that our relationship with Him was more important than all other relationships. He claimed that He was the only avenue for humans to come to God, and that at the world’s end He would judge all people.
• Jesus reached out with great compassion to those who were the lowest and most shunned in society.
• Jesus healed people miraculously; while He claimed to be the source of all true healing.
• After living a life without sin, in perfect obedience to God the Father, Jesus chose to die on behalf of the rest of humanity. He freely chose to die to rescue us.
• He claimed that anyone who trusts in His rescue is given a new relationship with God as an adopted child of God. He promised too that God’s Spirit would to reside in that person, leading, comforting, encouraging and empowering that person in daily life.
• Three days after His death on the cross, Jesus was raised to eternal life, never again to die.

Who Jesus is and what He did for us form the foundation on which the Christian faith is built. His claim to be God, His work to die for sin and His resurrection from the dead are key underpinnings of Christian belief and practice.

God invites our personal, individual, grateful response to His saving work. God challenges each person to accept the gift that Jesus offers. This invitation brings both great responsibility and great comfort. The responsibility is that each of us is held accountable for our response. The great comfort is that once the response is given, the person can be fully assured that God has received that person as a beloved child, safe and secure in God’s love, forgiveness and acceptance for now and all eternity.

This response includes three steps:

• “I’m sorry …” — ask God to forgive you for the things you have done wrong, the ways you have pushed God away.
• “Thank you …” — believe that Jesus died on the cross so you could be rescued by God and adopted as God’s beloved child; thank him for this undeserved gift.
• “Please …” — accept God’s gift, invite God to live within you to help you turn from your old way of living to a life committed to pleasing God.

Here is a very simple prayer, to begin the most wonderful relationship of your life:

 Jesus,

I’m sorry for the things I have done wrong in my life. Please forgive me for all the things that have come between us. I now turn away from everything that I know is wrong. Thank you that you died on the cross to rescue me from my sin and everything that keeps me from fully knowing and serving you. Please come into my life, and live with me forever.

Thank you. Amen.

If you have responded to God’s love and rescue with this kind of response, then you are a beloved child of God — a Christian! And Jesus further calls us to live out that faith by becoming more like Him and helping others know Him. Living to make Jesus visible means alerting everyone, in our words and our actions, to God’s reign through his Son Jesus.

If you have any questions about following Jesus or would like someone to pray with you, please contact us. First Presbyterian Church San Antonio welcomes you wherever you are on your journey of faith — a seeker, a skeptic, a new Christian, or a long-time Christian.

(from the ECO Constitution: Essential Tenets, Polity, and Rules of Discipline, 2020)

Presbyterians have been of two minds about essential tenets. We recognize that just as there are some central and foundational truths of the gospel affirmed by Christians everywhere, so too there are particular understandings of the gospel that define the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition. All Christians must affirm the central mysteries of the faith, and all those who are called to ordered ministries in a Presbyterian church must also affirm the essential tenets of the Reformed tradition. Recognizing the danger in reducing the truth of the gospel to propositions that demand assent, we also recognize that when the essentials become a matter primarily of individual discernment and local affirmation, they lose all power to unite us in common mission and ministry.

Essential tenets are tied to the teaching of the confessions as reliable expositions of Scripture. The essential tenets call out for explication, not as another confession, but as indispensable indicators of confessional convictions about what Scripture leads us to believe and do. Essential tenets do not replace the confessions, but rather witness to the confessions’ common core. This document is thus intended not as a new confession but as a guide to the corporate exploration of and commitment to the great themes of Scripture and to the historic Reformed confessions that set forth those themes.

The great purpose toward which each human life is drawn is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Each member of the church glorifies God by recognizing and naming His glory, which is the manifestation and revelation of His own nature. Each member of the church enjoys God by being so united with Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit as to become a participant in that divine nature, transformed from one degree of glory to another and escorted by Christ into the loving communion of the Trinity. So we confess our faith not as a matter of dispassionate intellectual assent, but rather as an act by which we give God glory and announce our membership in the body of Christ. We trust that when God’s glory is so lifted up and when His nature is thus made manifest in the life of the body, the church will be a light that draws people from every tribe and tongue and nation to be reconciled to God.

THE AUTHORITY FOR OUR CONFESSION

The clearest declaration of God’s glory is found in His Word, both incarnate and written. The Son eternally proceeds from the Father as His Word, the full expression of the Father’s nature, and since in the incarnation the Word became flesh all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are offered to His disciples. The written Word grants us those treasures, proclaims the saving gospel of Jesus Christ, and graciously teaches all that is necessary for faith and life. We glorify God by recognizing and receiving His authoritative self- revelation, both in the infallible Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and also in the incarnation of God the Son. We affirm that the same Holy Spirit who overshadowed the virgin Mary also inspired the writing and preservation of the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit testifies to the authority of God’s Word and illumines our hearts and minds so that we might receive both the Scriptures and Christ Himself aright.

We confess that God alone is Lord of the conscience, but this freedom is for the purpose of allowing us to be subject always and primarily to God’s Word. The Spirit will never prompt our conscience to conclusions that are at odds with the Scriptures that He has inspired. The revelation of the incarnate Word does not minimize, qualify, or set aside the authority of the written Word. We are happy to confess ourselves captive to the Word of God, not just individually, but also as members of a community of faith, extending through time and around the globe. In particular, we affirm the secondary authority of the following ECO Confessional Standards as faithful expositions of the Word of God: Nicene Creed, Apostles’ Creed, Heidelberg Catechism, Westminster Confession, Westminster Shorter Catechism, Westminster Larger Catechism and the Theological Declaration of Barmen.

THE TWO CENTRAL CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES

A. TRINITY

The Trinity, the central mystery of the Christian faith, is worshipped by Christians worldwide. It teaches that God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is one God in three persons. God is limitless, eternal, unchanging, and beyond human suffering or emotion. He cannot be divided and is always the same. He is the source of all goodness, truth, beauty, love, and life—mighty, all-knowing, and everywhere.

The three persons of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—are always together, eternal, and equal. They are not three different gods or parts of God, but three distinct persons united as one God. The Son is eternally from the Father, and the Spirit eternally comes from the Father and the Son. Each person of the Trinity deserves our worship and praise.

God needs nothing outside Himself, yet out of His kindness, He created everything. His ongoing act of creation shows His control and care, keeping the world and all creatures for His glory. He is the Holy One, the basis of everything, whose greatness is so immense that meeting Him directly would overwhelm us. Still, God made creation to show His glory and gave people the desire and ability to know and be with Him.

Because our God is a burning fire, and we cannot be close to Him when we are sinful, He came near to us by becoming a human in Jesus Christ.

B. INCARNATION

The Christian faith holds a deep mystery that all believers agree on: Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human. He is the eternal Son, the second part of the Trinity, completely one with the Father. Yet as a human, Jesus fully shares our human experiences, except for sin, having a human soul and body just like ours. He was always from the Father in His divine side, and in His human side, He was born from the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit's special conception. His divine greatness fills heaven and earth, while His human greatness is most clearly shown in His suffering on the cross for us.

We believe in the mystery of Jesus having two sides, divine and human, together in one person. We reject any idea that mixes these sides to weaken His true greatness or humanness, and we emphasize their difference to keep the truth about when God became a person. Jesus Christ is really Immanuel, God with us, not a god from before or a messenger from God. His coming lets us see God's greatness as He perfectly shows the good parts of God, where all of God likes to be. His act of becoming human doesn't make His God side smaller, and His real humanness is still with His greatness. This mystery is too big for us to understand all of it, but we love it and believe it.

The mystery of Jesus becoming human goes on even after He left Earth, because the risen Christ, sent by the Father, went up to be with the Father again in His new, risen human body. He is still here in person, and we can't wait to see His face someday. It's the same Jesus from Nazareth, who was born from Mary, died to save us on the cross, and walked with His followers to Emmaus. This Jesus, now back with the Father, will come again with His new body to judge everyone who is still alive and who has died.

Jesus promised His followers that He wouldn't leave them by themselves after He went up to heaven. He asked the Father to send the Holy Spirit to be their Comforter and Helper. With the Holy Spirit's help, we believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and God. Just like the Spirit came down to the followers at Pentecost, making them strong in their beliefs and helping them tell others about Jesus, He keeps working with us today.

A. GOD'S GRACE IN CHRIST

God declared that the world He created was good and that human beings, made in His own image, were very good. The present disordered state of the world, in which we and all things are subject to misery and to evil, is not God’s doing, but is rather a result of humanity’s free, sinful rebellion against God’s will. God created human beings from the dust of the earth and His own breath, to be His images and representatives, conduits of God’s grace to the creation. Since the fall our natural tendency is to abuse and exploit the creation, preferring evil to goodness. God also created human beings to speak His grace and truth to one another, to be helpers who are fit for one another, so that our social relationships would strengthen our ability to serve and obey Him. Since the fall, our natural tendency is to engage in relationships of tyranny and injustice with one another, in which power is used not to protect and serve but to demean. God further created human beings with the capacity for relationship with Him, with His law written on our hearts so that we had the ability to worship Him in love and obey Him by living holy lives. Since the fall, our natural tendency is to hate God and our neighbor, to worship idols of our own devising rather than the one true God.

As a result of sin, human life is poisoned by everlasting death. No part of human life is untouched by sin. Our desires are no longer trustworthy guides to goodness, and what seems natural to us no longer corresponds to God’s design. We are not merely wounded in our sin; we are dead, unable to save ourselves. Apart from God’s initiative, salvation is not possible for us. Our only hope is God’s grace. We discover in Scripture that this is a great hope, for our God is the One whose mercy is from everlasting to everlasting.

This grace does not end when we turn to sin. Although we are each deserving of God’s eternal condemnation, the eternal Son assumed our human nature, joining us in our misery and offering Himself on the cross in order to free us from slavery to death and sin. Jesus takes our place both in bearing the weight of condemnation against our sin on the cross and in offering to God the perfect obedience that humanity owes to Him but is no longer able to give. All humanity participates in the fall into sin. Those who are united through faith with Jesus Christ are fully forgiven from all our sin, so that there is indeed a new creation. We are declared justified, not because of any good that we have done, but only because of God’s grace extended to us in Jesus Christ. In union with Christ through the power of the Spirit we are brought into right relation with the Father, who receives us as His adopted children.

Jesus Christ is the only Way to this adoption, the sole path by which sinners become children of God, for He is the only-begotten Son, and it is only in union with Him that a believer is able to know God as Father. Only in Jesus Christ is the truth about the Triune God, fully and perfectly revealed, for only He is the Truth, only He has seen the Father, and only He can make the Father known. Only Jesus Christ is the new Life that is offered, for He is the bread from heaven and the fountain of living water, the one by whom all things were made, in whom all things hold together. The exclusivity of these claims establishes that God’s love is not impersonal, but a particular and intimate love in which each individual child of God is called by name and known as precious; that God’s love is not only acceptance, but a transforming and effective love in which His image within us is restored so that we are capable of holy living.

B. ELECTION FOR SALVATION AND SERVICE

The call of God to the individual Christian is not merely an invitation that each person may accept or reject by his or her own free will. Having lost true freedom of will in the fall, we are incapable of turning toward God of our own volition. God chooses us for Himself in grace before the foundation of the world, not because of any merit on our part, but only because of His love and mercy. Each of us is chosen in Christ, who is eternally appointed to be head of the body of the elect, our brother and our high priest. He is the one who is bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, our divine Helper who is also Bridegroom, sharing our human nature so that we may see His glory. We who receive Him and believe in His name do so not by our own will or our wisdom, but because His glory compels us irresistibly to turn toward Him. By His enticing call on our lives, Jesus enlightens our minds, softens our hearts, and renews our wills, restoring the freedom that we lost in the fall.

We are all sinners who fall short of God’s glory, and we all deserve God’s eternal judgment. Apart from the saving work of Jesus Christ, we are incapable of being in God’s presence, incapable of bearing the weight of His glory. We rejoice that Jesus Christ offers us safe conduct into the heart of God’s consuming and purifying fire, shielding us with His perfect humanity and transforming us by His divine power. Having received such grace, we extend grace to others.

We are not elect for our own benefit alone. God gathers His covenant community to be an instrument of His saving purpose. Through His regenerating and sanctifying work, the Holy Spirit grants us faith and enables holiness, so that we may be witnesses of God’s gracious presence to those who are lost. The Spirit gathers us in a community that is built up and equipped to be light, salt, and yeast in the world. Christ sends us into the world to make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that Christ has commanded us. We are now in service to God’s plan for the fullness of time: uniting all things in heaven and earth to Himself. To this end, we preach Christ, calling all persons to repent and believe the gospel. We also care for the natural world, claim all areas of culture in the name of Jesus, serve the poor, feed the hungry, visit the prisoner, and defend the helpless. We do this work not with any thought that we are able to bring in the kingdom, but in the confident hope that God’s kingdom is surely coming, a day when suffering and death will pass away and when God will live among His people.

C. COVENANT LIFE IN THE CHURCH

We are elect in Christ to become members of the community of the new covenant. This covenant, which God Himself guarantees, unites us to God and to one another. Already in the creation, we discover that we are made to live in relationships to others, male and female, created together in God’s image. In Christ, we are adopted into the family of God and find our new identity as brothers and sisters of one another, since we now share one Father. Our faith requires our active participation in that covenant community.

Jesus prays that His followers will all be one, and so we both pray and work for the union of the church throughout the world. Even where institutional unity does not seem possible, we are bound to other Christians as our brothers and sisters. In Christ the dividing wall of hostility created by nationality, ethnicity, gender, race, and language differences is brought down. God created people so that the rich variety of His wisdom might be reflected in the rich variety of human beings, and the church must already now begin to reflect the eschatological reality of people from every tribe, and tongue, and nation bringing the treasures of their kingdoms into the new city of God.

Within the covenant community of the church, God’s grace is extended through the preaching of the Word, the administration of the Sacraments, and the faithful practice of mutual discipline. First, through the work of the Holy Spirit, the word proclaimed may indeed become God’s address to us. The Spirit’s illuminating work is necessary both for the one who preaches and for those who listen. Second, the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are signs that are linked to the things signified, sealing to us the promises of Jesus. In the Baptism of infants, we confess our confidence in God’s gracious initiative, that a baby who cannot turn to God is nonetheless claimed as a member of the covenant community, a child of God, cleansed by grace and sealed by the Spirit; in the Baptism of adults, we confess our confidence that God’s grace can make us new creations at any stage of our lives. Baptism is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, a mark of entrance into the visible church, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes this sacrament efficacious in God’s time to those whom God has called. In the Lord’s Supper, we confess that as we eat the bread and share one cup the Spirit unites us to the ascended Christ, so that His resurrection life may nourish, strengthen, and transform us. Third, the community of the Church practices discipline in order to help one another along the path to new life, speaking the truth in love to one another, bearing one another’s burdens, and offering to one another the grace of Christ.

D. FAITHFUL STEWARDSHIP OF ALL OF LIFE

The ministries of the church reflect the three-fold office of Christ as prophet, priest, and king – reflected in the church’s ordered ministries of teaching elders, deacons, and ruling elders. We affirm that men and women alike are called to all the ministries of the Church, and that every member is called to share in all of Christ’s offices within the world beyond the church. Every Christian is called to a prophetic life, proclaiming the good news to the world and enacting that good news. Every Christian is called to extend the lordship of Christ to every corner of the world. And every Christian is called to participate in Christ’s priestly, mediatorial work, sharing in the suffering of the world in ways that extend God’s blessing and offering intercession to God on behalf of the world. We are equipped to share in these offices by the Holy Spirit, who conforms us to the pattern of Christ’s life.

Jesus teaches us that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind. There is no part of human life that is off limits to the sanctifying claims of God. We reject the claim that love of any sort is self-justifying; we affirm that all our affections and desires must be brought under God’s authority. We reject the claim that human souls are unaffected by the fall and remain naturally inclined to God; we affirm that soul and body alike must be cleansed and purified in order to love God properly. We reject the claim that the life of the mind is independent from faith; we affirm that unless we believe we cannot properly understand either God or the world around us. Historically, the Presbyterian tradition has been especially called to explore what it is to love God with all our minds, being committed to the ongoing project of Christian education and study at all levels of Christian life.

E. LIVING IN OBEDIENCE TO THE WORD OF GOD

Progress in holiness is an expected response of gratitude to the grace of God, which is initiated, sustained, and fulfilled by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. The first response of gratitude is prayer, and the daily discipline of prayer – both individually and together – should mark the Christian life. The life of prayer includes praise to God for His nature and works, sincere confession of our sin, and intercession for the needs of those we know and for the needs of the world. As we practice the discipline of regular self-examination and confession, we are especially guided by the Ten Commandments. We therefore hold one another accountable to:

• worship God alone, living all of life to His glory, renouncing all idolatry and all inordinate loves that might lead us to trust in any other help;
• worship God in humility, being reticent in either describing or picturing God, recognizing that right worship is best supported not by our own innovative practices but through the living preaching of the Word and the faithful administration of the Sacraments;
• eliminate from both speech and thought any blasphemy, irreverence, or impurity;
• observe the Sabbath as a day of worship and rest, being faithful in gathering with the people of God;
• give honor toward those set in authority over us and practice mutual submission within the community of the church;
• eradicate a spirit of anger, resentment, callousness, violence, or bitterness, and instead cultivate a spirit of gentleness, kindness, peace, and love; recognize and honor the image of God in every human being from conception to natural death.
• maintain chastity in thought and deed, being faithful within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman as established by God at the creation or embracing a celibate life as established by Jesus in the new covenant;
• practice right stewardship of the goods we have been given, showing charity to those in need and offering generous support of the Church and its ministries;
• pursue truth, even when such pursuit is costly, and defend truth when it is challenged, recognizing that truth is in order to goodness and that its preservation matters;
• resist the pull of envy, greed, and acquisition, and instead cultivate a spirit of contentment with the gifts God has given us.

In Jesus Christ we see the perfect expression of God’s holy will for human beings offered to God in our place. His holy life must now become our holy life. In Christ, God’s will is now written on our hearts, and we look forward to the day when we will be so confirmed in holiness that we will no longer be able to sin. As the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, Jesus leads us along the path of life toward that goal, bringing us into ever deeper intimacy with the Triune God, in whose presence is fullness of joy.