Hilltop Free Will Baptist
Statement Of Faith
What we believe as Free Will Baptist:
A. Trinity: We believe there is but one true and living God whose essence is spirit and who exists in a Trinity of equal persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that they are each equal and infinite in their being, power, glory, and attributes.
B. The Father: We believe that God the Father is the First Person of the divine Trinity who is absolute in His deity possessing all the attributes of deity and equal with the Son and the Holy Spirit.
C. Jesus Christ: We believe in the absolute deity of Jesus Christ our Lord and that He shares equally in all the attributes of deity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. We believe in His virgin birth, in His perfect and sinless humanity, in His miracles and in their literalness, in His substitutionary, satisfactory, propitiatory, atoning death on Calvary, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, in His present intercessory ministry, and in His personal return for the Church. We believe Jesus is 100% God and 100% Man.
D. Holy Spirit: We believe in the absolute and full deity of the Holy Spirit, the Third Member of the blessed Trinity, who is equal with the Father and the Son. It was the Father who gave His Son, the Son who gave His life, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives spiritual life to those who believe in Christ. He indwells the believer and empowers him and Christ’s Church for service giving the various gifts to the members of the body of Christ to aid the Church in accomplishing the Great Commission.
E. Scriptures: We believe that holy men of old wrote the Bible as they were moved (literally “being borne along”) by the Holy Spirit (II Peter 1:21), which harmonizes with II Timothy 3:16, which teaches that all Scripture is inspired (literally “God breathed”) or “breathed out by God”. This means that the Holy Spirit so superintended the writers of the Holy Scripture that, although they utilized their own vocabularies and experiences, they wrote the very exact message God intended without any omission, addition, or error which means that the Bible is theologically, historically, scientifically, and geographically correct since the Holy Spirit is incapable of erring. Being plenary verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit guarantees the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible in every area in which it speaks and makes it the highest authority and guide for the believer.
F. Salvation: We believe in salvation by grace totally apart from any human merit. Salvation is bestowed by a gracious God upon unworthy man conditioned solely upon his faith in Jesus Christ and His finished work on Calvary (Eph. 2:8-10; Jn. 3:16).
G. Unlimited Atonement: We believe that the atonement of our Lord was unlimited, that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world and therefore offers salvation to the whole world (John 3:16; I John 2:2; I Timothy 2:4; II Peter 3:9). We believe that the atonement of Jesus was sufficient for all but efficient only for those who believe. We believe that the atonement is limited only by man’s unbelief and not by an arbitrary decision on God’s part to save some and to reprobate the rest of mankind to hell.
H. Conditional Election: We believe in conditional election, that, according to 1 Peter 1:1-2, God chose from the masses of mankind those who would be saved based on His foreknowledge of their faith. We believe that God’s foreknowledge was based on His omniscience and that in His omniscience He knew who would believe and those He elected or chose to save.
I. Man’s Response to God’s Gracious Offer: We believe in resistible grace, that an individual can say no to the convicting power of the Holy Spirit and be forever lost. We believe that when God extends a call to salvation, it is a legitimate call both to the elect and to the non-elect, and that the non-elect refuses because of his own personal unbelief or rebellion and not because God refuses to enable him to believe because he was not one whom He chose to be saved. We believe that every individual who receives the call of the Gospel also receives a divine enablement to believe.
J. Depravity: We believe in total depravity, that a man is born dead in trespasses and sin, and that apart from the divine enablement of the Holy Spirit, man, left to his own, will never and can never repent and believe. We believe that all men born since Adam are born with a natural inclination toward sin and not toward God and righteousness, that as Adam fled in the Garden from God, unregenerate man still flees a loving and pursuing God. We believe that although man is born dead in trespasses and sin and that the image of God in man is marred, he is still in the image of God, mentally, volitionally, and emotionally. The image of God in man is marred but not destroyed. (Romans 3:10; 3:23)
K. Security of the Believer: We believe that the Word of God teaches the security of the believer, that God will keep securely in His hand (Jn. 10:25-30) those who are trusting in Jesus but offers absolutely no hope for that person who is not trusting in Christ (I Pet. 1:5). The link that unites God and man is faith (Jn. 3:16). The security of the believer is based upon a continuous faith in Jesus Christ (Col. 1:21-23; John 3:16; Heb. 3:12-13). We believe that the Scriptures present the possibility of an authentic believer ceasing to believe but are confident of eternal life for all who continue in faith (I Jn. 2:24; Heb. 3:12-13). We believe that apostasy is committed by willful unbelief and is without remedy (Heb. 6:4-6).
L. New Birth: We believe that all men are born with a depraved nature and are sinful by nature and by choice and as such are alienated from God, born dead in trespasses and sin. We believe that this condition can only be reconciled by the new birth, which is a work of regeneration wrought by the Holy Spirit (Jn. 3:5-6; Titus 3:5), conditioned upon a man’s mpersonal faith in the atoning work of Jesus on Calvary as sufficient payment for his sins (Eph. 2:8-10).
M. Resurrection: We believe in future bodily resurrection of the believer, at which time he will receive a resurrected glorified body, and that the new body will be joined with the soul so that the child of God will spend eternity to come as a body/soul being. We likewise believe that the unbeliever will be resurrected with a body and soul, which will forever suffer in the torments of hell.
N. Judgment: We believe in the future Judgment Seat of Christ at which time the believer will stand before Christ and be judged and rewarded for the deeds done in the body whether they be good or bad (II Cor. 5:10). We also believe in the Great White Throne Judgment for the unsaved, where their lives will be reviewed and judged according to their works, which will determine the degree of their punishment in the eternal flames of hell (Rev. 20:11-15).
O. Church: We believe in the local church as God’s autonomous, self-governing, divinely ordained institution for this age, whose head is Christ (Eph. 5:22-23; Col. 1:18) and whose life and vitality are produced by the regenerating indwelling presence and power of the Holy Spirit. We believe that the Great Commission (to evangelize and edify) is still the great task of the Church today (Matt 28:18-20). We believe that the individual local church is the highest spiritual authority on earth outside the Christian home and that all other Para-church organizations or institutions exist by the authority granted by the local church or cooperating local churches, and that their only right of existence is as they ultimately aid the Church in fulfilling the Great Commission.
P. Apostasy: Free Will Baptist Doctrine holds to an Arminian position, based on the belief in a General Atonement, that it is possible to commit apostasy by willfully rejecting one's faith. Faith is the condition for salvation, hence Free Will Baptists hold to "conditional eternal security." An individual is "saved by faith and kept by faith." The concept is not of someone sinning occasionally and thus accidentally ending up "not saved", but instead of someone "repudiating" their faith in Christ. We do not believe in repeated regeneration. Free Will Baptists believe that an individual maintains his or her free will to follow Christ, but in the event a believer turns from faith in Christ, there is no remedy for this apostasy (based on an interpretation of Hebrews 6:4-6. Simply stated, we believe that God has given to the believer Scriptural grounds for knowing positively that he is saved; that God has promised and provided to keep His children even in times of failure, when they fall out of fellowship with Him; that God has assured His followers that as believers they are secure in Christ and shall never perish; but that God has also clearly warned the Christian against the possibility of making ship-wreck of his personal faith in Christ, and thereby, becoming an apostate in which there is no way he could be restored again to salvation.