Our Beliefs

We believe that the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. The Bible is a perfect treasure of divine instruction and contains no errors. The Bible is God's Word to mankind and because it reveals God's character through His Word, it cannot error. The Bible provides divine instruction for all things that concern faith and practice. The Bible comes from God and it is perfectly truthful and trustworthy in all that it says. Therefore, we believe the Bible is inerrant, infallible, sufficient, and authoritative, which necessitates its centrality to NHBC.

We believe that the God that reveals Himself in the Bible is one true God and no other gods exist. God is eternal in nature and has no beginning and no end. God is the perfect Creator of the universe and all that is in it and He created out of nothing. God is perfect in His knowledge and had planned before creation that He would redeem people back to Himself. God is sovereign over history and has been working out His redemptive plan since the fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden. God has revealed Himself in the Bible in the trinitarian form. God has revealed Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This means that God is Trinity, which means that God is three persons and God is one.

We believe that God the Father reigns with providential care over His universe, We believe that God the Father has been revealed as spirit. We believe God the Father is sovereign over His creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history according to the purposes of His grace. We believe that He is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, and all-wise. We believe that God is the heavenly Father of all those who become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

We believe that Jesus Christ is the incarnate form of the eternal Son of God. We believe that in His incarnation as Jesus Christ, the Son of God was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. Jesus perfectly revealed the Father to the world and He perfectly obeyed the will of the Father, taking upon Himself human nature with its demands and necessities and identifying Himself completely with mankind yet without sin. Jesus' substitutionary death on the cross provided redemption for mankind from sin. He was raised from the dead with a glorified body and appeared to His disciples as the person who was with them before His crucifixion. He ascended into heaven and is now exalted at the right hand of God where He is the One Mediator, fully God, fully man, in whose Person is effected the reconciliation between God and man. He will return in power and glory to judge the world and to consummate His redemptive mission.

We believe the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God and that He is fully divine. The Holy Spirit inspired holy men of old to write every word in the Scriptures. Through illumination, He enables people to understand the truth that is revealed in the Bible. He exalts Christ. He convicts people of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. He calls people to the Savior and effects regeneration. At the moment of regeneration, He baptizes every believer into the Body of Christ. He cultivates Christian character, comforts believers, and bestows the spiritual gifts by which they serve God through His church. He seals the believer unto the day of final redemption. His presence in the Christian is the guarantee that God will bring the believer into the fullness of the stature of Christ. He enlightens and empowers the believer and the church in worship, evangelism, and service.

We believe that mankind is the special creation of God, made in His own image. He created them, male and female, as the crowning work of His creation. The gift of gender is thus part of the goodness of God’s creation. In the beginning, man was innocent of sin and was endowed by his Creator with freedom of choice. By his free choice man sinned against God and subjected mankind and creation to the curse of sin. Therefore, as soon as they are capable of moral action, they become transgressors and are under condemnation. Only the grace of God can bring man into His holy fellowship and enable man to fulfill the creative purpose of God. The sacredness of human personality is evident in that God created man in His own image, and in that Christ died for man; therefore, every person of every race possesses full dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love.

We believe that salvation is available to all people who would confess Jesus as their Lord and believe in Him as their Savior. Jesus lived in perfect righteousness to the Father making Him the perfect sacrifice for the sins of all people. Jesus, being fully God and fully human made Him the perfect mediator between man and God. By faith in Jesus, people's sins are counted to the cross of Christ and they are counted as righteous before God because they stand in Jesus' righteousness. The moment that a person puts their faith in Christ for salvation, they receive the indwelling Holy Spirit who works in their life to transform them to look more like Jesus. There is no salvation apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.

We believe Jesus Christ is the head of the church and the members are His body. The New Testament reveals that churches are autonomous local congregations of baptized believers. The church's autonomy means that the congregation is the final earthly authority for discerning God's will for the church. The church's autonomy necessitates the congregation be comprised of baptized believers who have all received the indwelling Holy Spirit to ensure unity as the church discerns God's will. The fundamental marks of the church are the right preaching of God's Word and the right observance of the two ordinances (believer's baptism and the Lord's Supper). The church's mission is found in the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20), which is to make disciples by going on missions to the ends of the earth, evangelizing the lost, and growing disciples unto maturity.