To be forgiven is the highest worship of Christ

Born in sin as children of wrath we possess no merit or worthiness that God should wish to call us His own. Entirely through Jesus’ work of the Law and sacrificial death does God’s grace alone save us. Our Lord calls us to repentance, delivering faith and forgiveness so that we may daily bear His Name as holy, beloved children.

[Ephesians 2:1-9, Colossians 1:13-14, Titus 3:5-7, John 20:22, 23, Romans 5:8, 1 John 3:2]

Christ’s victory over sin, death and the devil is personally received solely through our Lord’s gift of faith alone. The Holy Spirit personally authors and perfects this faith in us exclusively through the means of Word and Sacrament (Holy Baptism and the Lord's Supper). 

[Ephesians 2:8-9,  Romans 10:17, Acts 2:38, Matthew 26:26-28]

Without reservation we joyfully accept the Scripture of the Old and New Testaments as the inspired, infallible, inerrant Word of God. Subject to none, Scripture alone is the authoritative rule and norm for faith, practice, correction, comfort, wisdom and truth. Accordingly, we subscribe wholeheartedly to the teachings of our Lord confessed in the creeds of the Christian church (the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds) and the Lutheran confession of Holy Scripture contained in the Book of Concord of 1580. We put forth Luther's Small Catechism as a simple instruction for the Christian family.

Scripture assures us that our Lord knits our inmost being together from conception. From dust and in His image God made male and then female. This same God continues in the same order of creation to make us male and female from birth, designed for marriage and family. God instituted marriage as a blessed gift and covenant between one man and one woman. Scripture declares the difficult truth that the wages of sin is death and delivers the unwavering promise that if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

[2 Timothy 3:16-17, 2 Peter 1:21, Psalm 139:13-16, Genesis 1:27, Genesis 2:24, Romans 6:23, 1 John 1:9-10]

God graciously provides eternal life to the fallen sinner by the atoning work of Christ alone. Our Heavenly Father’s only begotten Son, Jesus, was humbly born into His own creation, shed His holy, innocent blood on the cross as a sacrifice and won payment for the sins of the world. Jesus rose from the dead as the firstfruit of the ultimate resurrection of the dead.

Until that day, Jesus is precisely where He promises to be. Jesus miraculously and graciously comes to us in the Word and gives Himself to us in the Holy Communion of bread and wine, which are the very body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins and strengthening of faith.

[John 3:16, John 6:53-56, Hebrews 10:19-25, Colossians 1:19-23, 2 Corinthians 5:19, 21]

God places us into the many vocations we daily find ourselves. Jesus frees us to praise God and serve others as He bid us in His great commandment to love the Lord with our whole heart, soul and mind and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Through a life of repentance, it is the Holy Spirit who actively works this sanctification within us. The gifts we bring to our Lord are truly His gifts. The works we do for our neighbor are truly Christ’s works.

As we humbly love, serve and live in Christ's Name, we confidently and eagerly await His coming. On that day Jesus will not come in humility, but in triumphant power and glory for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. To God alone be the glory!

[Matthew 22:36-39, Ephesians 2:10, John 5:28-29, 1 Corinthians 6:11, Isaiah 26:12, Hebrews 9:27-28, Corinthians 15:42-45]