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What We Believe
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St. John's is a congregation affiliated with the
Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod. As
Confessional Lutherans we believe:
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- in one God who has revealed Himself to us in three Divine Persons--God the Father and
God the Son and God the Holy Spirit;
- that this Triune God has caused His Word to be perfectly recorded in the Old and New
Testament Scriptures by inspiration of the Holy Spirit; therefore, the Bible has no
mistakes and errors of any kind and can be trusted absolutely;
- that by His almighty Word God created a perfect world in six days but that this perfect
world was ruined by Adam and Eve's rebellion against their Creator. Their sin has
corrupted all humanity so that all people are now conceived and born dead in sin and under
God's wrath;
- that out of pure, undeserved love God sent His eternal Son into our sinful world to
assume our flesh and to satisfy God's anger against our sins by His perfect life and His
innocent suffering and death on the cross;
- that this same Son of God, Jesus Christ, not only died for the sins of humanity but that
He rose bodily from the dead after three days;
- that for Jesus' sake God has graciously pardoned the entire world and it is this good
news or Gospel which Jesus wants His Church to proclaim to all people;
- that God distributes His forgiveness and is present today among His people through the "means
of grace" (the Word and Sacraments) and that God's Church is found
wherever these means of grace are used;
- that Baptism is one of these "means of grace" through
which God, by water in His mighty Word, calls people (including infants and little
children) into His Church or family, gives them the new birth of faith, and forgives them
all their sins;
- that the Lord's Supper is another "means of grace" in
which our risen Savior gives all communicants His true body to eat and His true blood to
drink hidden in, with, and under the outward forms of bread and wine for the forgiveness
of all their sins;
- that the Holy Spirit no longer speaks directly to people as He did to the prophets and
apostles in the Bible but works in us today through the Ministry of Word and Sacrament
alone;
- that through congregations such as ours God calls qualified men into the public Ministry
of Word and Sacrament to represent Him and to speak His Word in His place;
- that our risen Savior Jesus will return visibly to this world on the last day as He has
promised to assign all unbelievers to eternal punishment in hell but to take all true
believers to live with Himself in heaven forever;
- that all the teachings of the Lutheran Church, as we have learned to know them
from Luther's Small Catechism and as they are more thoroughly explained in the
other Lutheran Confessions are true and correct statements of the teachings of the Bible
and reflect our own personal faith today.
- finally, that diversity and innovation should not be encouraged in the Church;
rather harmony and uniformity among God's people should be encouraged as
St. Paul teaches (Romans 15:5) so that we might all "with one
heart and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ"
(Romans 15:6); hence we use historic and traditional liturgies and hymnody in all Divine Services.
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