What we believe
God made us to know him; we rejected him (which is sin); and he redeems us through Jesus.
We are a Reformed church. With Christians through the ages, we confess that we are saved by grace alone, through Christ alone, revealed in Scripture alone, received by faith alone, and for God’s glory alone. These truths, recovered at the Reformation, shape how we worship, how we live and how we serve.
The five “alones”
- Scripture alone. The Bible is God’s Word, our final authority for everything we believe and how we live.
- Grace alone. We are saved not by anything we do, but by God’s undeserved kindness.
- Faith alone. We receive God’s gift of salvation by trusting in Jesus, not by earning it.
- Christ alone. Jesus is the only mediator between God and us. His death and resurrection are enough.
- To God’s glory alone. Everything we have and are is for God’s praise.
What we believe
God
There is one true God, eternally existing as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He created everything, he rules over all things, and he is holy, just, loving and good.
Humanity and sin
God made us in his image to know him, love him and live under his loving rule. But we have all turned away from him. Sin has broken our relationship with God, with each other and with the world, and none of us can fix it ourselves.
Jesus Christ
In love, God sent his Son. Jesus, fully God and fully human, lived the perfect life we could not live, died on the cross to bear the punishment for our sin, and rose bodily from the dead. Everyone who trusts in him is forgiven, declared right with God and adopted into his family.
The Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit gives new life, joins us to Christ, and helps God’s people to grow in faith, holiness and love, and to share Jesus with others.
The church and the sacraments
The church is God’s family, gathered around his Word. Jesus gave two sacraments as signs and seals of his promises: baptism, given to believers and their children, and the Lord’s Supper, where we remember Christ’s death and are nourished by him in faith.
Jesus’ return
Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead and to make all things new. Until then we live in hope, serving him and sharing the good news.
Creeds and confessions
Together with the Christian Reformed Churches of Australia, we summarise the teaching of the Bible in the three historic creeds of the church and in the Reformed confessions, often called the “Three Forms of Unity”. We also hold the Westminster Confession of Faith in high regard. You can read each of them in full below.
Find out more about our denomination at the Christian Reformed Churches of Australia website.
Creeds & confessions
The ecumenical creeds
Shared by Christians around the world, these creeds summarise the faith of the early church.
- c. 8th century (received form)The Apostles' CreedThe oldest and simplest summary of the Christian faith, growing out of the baptismal confession of the early church at Rome and reaching its received form in the West by about the eighth century. It confesses the triune God and the saving work of Christ in a few short clauses.Read →
- 325 / 381The Nicene CreedThe creed of the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), drawn up to defend the full deity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit against the Arian and related heresies. It is the most widely shared confession of the Christian church, East and West; this is the Western form, which includes the words “and the Son”.Read →
- c. 5th–6th centuryThe Athanasian CreedA Latin confession, known from its opening words as the “Quicunque vult”, that sets out with great precision the doctrine of the Trinity and of the two natures of Christ in one person. Though traditionally named after Athanasius of Alexandria, it was composed in the Latin West, probably in the late fifth or sixth century.Read →
The Three Forms of Unity
The Reformed confessions that summarise what we believe the Bible teaches.
- 1561The Belgic ConfessionA confession of faith in 37 articles written in French by Guido de Brès, a preacher in the persecuted Reformed churches of the Low Countries, who was later martyred for the faith. It was adopted by Reformed synods in the Netherlands and revised and approved by the Synod of Dort in 1619.Read →
- 1563The Heidelberg CatechismA catechism of 129 questions and answers prepared in Heidelberg, chiefly by Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus, at the request of Elector Frederick III of the Palatinate. Arranged around our misery, our deliverance and our thankfulness, it is divided into 52 Lord's Days so that it can be taught through the year.Read →
- 1618–1619The Canons of DortThe doctrinal decisions of the international Synod of Dort (Dordrecht), held in 1618–19 to answer the five points of the Remonstrants (followers of Jacobus Arminius). In four chapters (“heads of doctrine”) it sets out the Reformed teaching on election, the death of Christ, man's corruption and conversion, and the perseverance of the saints, each with a rejection of the opposing errors.Read →