What we believe
Let us hold unswervingly to the confession of our hope
Because of sin, every person has been separated from God. Sin means a broken relationship. Yet the relationship between people and God can be restored. This requires a mediator — the Son of God — Jesus, who has already suffered the penalty of sin for every person.
A person is saved — their relationship with God made whole — through faith, not through religious performance. Anyone who believes in their heart in Jesus’ saving work — who is born again — is righteous: forgiven and declared not guilty before God. They are free from the law of sin and death. They are free from condemnation and live in fellowship with God forever.
Freedom
This is the freedom we want to cherish at Toivon Syke — not as an excuse for sin, but for God’s will to shape all that we are and do. Scripture shows that “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free” and that we are “called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” True freedom is not selfish pursuit of pleasure, but readiness to serve, coloured by love.
Faith
Scripture shows that “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” In the same place it says that “without faith it is impossible to please God.” At Toivon Syke we want to remind people of God’s promise: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved — you and your household.” We are saved through faith and by grace alone, without our own merit before God.
We also believe that through faith we share in God’s particular promises — those given to God’s children — with Abraham, the father of faith, as our example, who while waiting for God’s promise “hoped against hope.”
Hope
True to our church’s name, we want to bring hope to the hopeless — hope for this moment, and above all hope of eternal life. “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” Scripture says. Of this glory we already share in fellowship with God in this age, yet it cannot compare with “the glory that will be revealed” to God’s own when this age ends. This is the hope we want our church to pulse with.
Acts 16; Rom 4, 8; Gal 5; Eph 2; Col 1; 1 Tim 2; Heb 11
The heart of our faith
- We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
- We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, who was made flesh by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, who was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered death and was buried, rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and whose kingdom will have no end.
- We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, and who has spoken through the prophets.
- We believe in the infallibility of Holy Scripture, the prophetic Word of God.
- We believe that God remains faithful to the covenant he made with Abraham.