The need for a philippine gospel network
We are a band of brothers in Christ united in our passion for the gospel, to see it take deeper root into our hearts and spread wider toward many other pastors and their churches.
In our generation, we are concerned that many churches are departing from the true gospel in varying levels. The gospel is being distorted, misunderstood, assumed, and marginalized by many professing Christians. Even gospel-confessing and gospel-preaching churches suffer from a lack of confidence in its sufficiency and its transforming power in life and ministry.
We are convinced that one of the Filipino Church’s greatest need today is to recover, reaffirm and proclaim the biblical gospel, and to rediscover its centrality in our lives and our churches.
This is no easy task for a few men. So we recognize and humbly state that we are not the solution to this problem. But we believe that we can offer a unique and focused help to the body of Christ to address this problem. That is why we commit to unite and stand together for the gospel, edify and encourage one another, and offer gospel-centered resources to many local churches. As we spread this gospel passion to other pastors, we will strive to let the gospel and the gospel alone be the glue that holds us together.
So as we cherish the glory of God in the gospel, and help in the building up and in uniting many churches in the gospel, we pray that the Spirit will enable us to declare and display his glory among the nations.
what we believe in
We express our agreement with the following confessional documents:
The following statement of faith is adapted from the abovementioned documents.
1. The Triune God
We believe that there is one God, eternally existing in three equally divine persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—who know, love, and glorify one another. This one true and living God is infinitely perfect both in his love and in his holiness. He is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible, and is therefore worthy to receive all glory and adoration. Immortal and eternal, he perfectly and exhaustively knows the end from the beginning, sustains and sovereignly rules over all things, and providentially brings about his eternal good purposes to redeem a people for himself and restore his fallen creation, to the praise of his glorious grace. Everything God does in creating, sustaining, judging, and redeeming the world reflects who God is, the one whose perfections, including love, holiness, knowledge, wisdom, power, and righteousness, have been revealed in the history of salvation.
2. Revelation and Holy Scriptures
We believe that God has graciously disclosed his existence and power in the created order, and has supremely revealed himself to fallen human beings in the person of his Son, the incarnate Word. Moreover, this God has spoken and continues to speak in and through Scripture, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, which are both record and means of his saving work in the world. These writings alone are the only infallible and sufficiently clear rule and authority for Christian faith, thought, and life (sola Scriptura). Because of our finiteness and sinfulness, it is impossible for us to know God’s truth exhaustively, but we can know God’s revealed truth truly through the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is to be believed in all that it teaches, obeyed in all that it commands, trusted in all that it promises, and revered in all that it reveals. As God’s people hear, believe, and do the Word, they are equipped as disciples of Christ and witnesses to the gospel.
3. Creation and Humanity
We believe that God communicates his goodness to all creatures, but in particular to human beings, whom he has made in his own image, both male and female. Human beings are to serve as God’s agents to care for, manage, and govern creation, living in holy and devoted fellowship with their Maker. Men and women, equally made in the image of God, enjoy equal access to God by faith in Christ Jesus and are both called to move beyond passive self-indulgence to significant private and public engagement in family, church, and civic life. Adam and Eve were made to complement each other in a one-flesh union that establishes the only normative pattern of sexual relations for men and women, such that marriage ultimately serves as a type of the union between Christ and his church. In God’s wise purposes, men and women are not simply interchangeable, but rather they complement each other in mutually enriching ways. God ordains that they assume distinctive roles which reflect the loving relationship between Christ and the church, the husband exercising headship in a way that displays the caring, sacrificial love of Christ, and the wife submitting to her husband in a way that models the love of the church for her Lord. In the ministry of the church, both men and women are encouraged to serve Christ and to be developed to their full potential in the manifold ministries of the people of God. The distinctive leadership role within the church given to qualified men is grounded in creation, fall, and redemption and must not be sidelined by appeals to cultural developments.
4. The Fall
We believe that the original goodness of the whole creation has been marred and that all human beings have been corrupted by sin in every aspect of their being. This was brought about by the self-defeating choice of the first human beings to deny the Creator and the created order by going their own way, breaking God’s law for life. As a result, all human beings are alienated from God, the image of God in us is distorted, our relationship with others and the rest of the created order is fractured, and we justly incurred divine condemnation instead of approval, and death instead of life—apart from God’s own gracious intervention. The supreme need of all human beings is to be reconciled to the God under whose just and holy wrath we stand; the only hope of all human beings is the undeserved love of this same God, who alone can rescue us and restore us to himself.
5. The Plan of God
We believe that God has freely purposed from before the foundation of the world to elect a great multitude of guilty sinners from every tribe and language and people and nation, to save them and form a people for himself to be his treasured possession. God justifies and sanctifies those who by grace have faith in Jesus, and that he will one day glorify them—all to the praise of his glorious grace. In love God commands and implores all people to repent and believe, having set his saving love on those he has chosen and having ordained Christ to be their Redeemer.
6. Jesus Christ and His Redemptive Work
We believe that, moved by love and in obedience to his Father, the eternal Son became human: the Word became flesh, fully God and fully human being, one Person in two natures. The man Jesus, the promised Messiah of Israel, was conceived through the miraculous agency of the Holy Spirit, and was born of the virgin Mary. He perfectly obeyed his heavenly Father, lived a sinless life, performed miraculous signs, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, arose bodily from the dead on the third day, and ascended into heaven. As the mediatorial King, he is seated at the right hand of God the Father, exercising in heaven and on earth all of God’s sovereignty, and is our High Priest and righteous Advocate. We believe that by his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus Christ acted as our representative and substitute. He did this so that in him we might become the righteousness of God: on the cross he canceled sin, propitiated God, and, by bearing the full penalty of our sins, reconciled to God all those who believe. By his resurrection Christ Jesus was vindicated by his Father, broke the power of death and defeated Satan who once had power over it, and brought everlasting life to all his people; by his ascension he has been forever exalted as Lord and has prepared a place for us to be with him. We believe that salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved. Because God chose the lowly things of this world, the despised things, the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, no human being can ever boast before him—Christ Jesus has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption.
7. The Gospel
We believe that the gospel is the good news that the triune God has poured out his grace in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that through his work we might have peace with God. Jesus lived in perfect obedience yet suffered everything sinners deserved so that sinners would not have to pursue a righteousness of their own, relying on their own works, but rather through trust in him as the fulfillment of God’s promises could be justified by faith alone (sola fide) in order to become fellow heirs with him. Christ died in the place of sinners, absorbing the wages of sin, so that those who entrust themselves to him also die with him to the power, penalty, and (eventually) practice of sin. Christ was raised the firstborn of a renewed and restored creation, so that those whom the Spirit unites to him in faith are raised up and created a new humanity in him. Renewed in God’s image, they are thereby enabled to live out his life in them. One with Christ and made alive in him who is the only ground of salvation, sinners are reconciled with God – justified, adopted, sanctified, and eventually glorified children of the promise.
8. The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit
We believe that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, the unseen yet active personal presence of God in the world, who unites believers to Christ, regenerating and making them new creatures with hearts oriented to the light and life of the kingdom of God and to peace and justice on earth. The Spirit indwells those whom he makes alive with Christ, through faith incorporates them into the body of Christ, and conforms them to the image of Christ so that they may glorify him as they grow in knowledge, wisdom, and love into mature sainthood, the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. The Spirit is the light of truth and fire of love who continues to sanctify the people of God, prompting them to repentance and faith, diversifying their gifts, directing their witness, and empowering their discipleship. Sealed by the Spirit, believers are guaranteed to receive God’s promised inheritance in Christ.
9. The Church
We believe that the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church is God’s new society, the first fruit of the new creation, the whole company of the redeemed through the ages. This universal church is manifest in local churches of which Christ is the only Head; thus each “local church” is, in fact, the church, the household of God, the assembly of the living God, and the pillar and foundation of the truth. The church is distinguished by her gospel message, her sacred ordinances, her discipline, her great mission, and, above all, by her love for God, and by her members’ love for one another and for the world. Crucially, this gospel we cherish has both personal and corporate dimensions, neither of which may properly be overlooked. Christ Jesus is our peace: he has not only brought about peace with God, but also peace between alienated peoples. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both Jew and Gentile to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. The church serves as a sign of God’s future new world when its members live for the service of one another and their neighbors, rather than for self-focus. The church is the corporate dwelling place of God’s Spirit, and the continuing witness to God in the world.
10. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper
We believe that these two ordinances, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which some among us call “sacraments,” are bound to the Word by the Spirit as visible words proclaiming the promise of the gospel, and thus become places where recipients encounter the Word again. Baptism is connected with entrance into the new covenant community, the Lord’s Supper with ongoing covenant renewal. Together they communicate life in Christ to the faithful, confirming them in their assurance that Christ, the gift of God for the people of God, is indeed “for us and our salvation” and nurturing them in their faith. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are physical focal points for key Reformation insights: the gifts of God (sola gratia) and the faith that grasps their promise (sola fide). They are tangible expressions of the gospel insofar as they vividly depict our dying, rising, and incorporation into Jesus’ body, truly presenting Christ and the reconciliation he achieved on the cross. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper strengthen the faithful by visibly recalling, proclaiming, and sealing the gracious promise of forgiveness of sins and communion with God and one another through the peace-making blood of Christ.
11. The Christian Life
We believe that through participating in baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as well as prayer, the ministry of the Word, and other forms of corporate worship, we grow into our new reality as God’s people, a holy nation, called to put on Christ through his indwelling Spirit. It is through the Spirit’s life-giving power that we live in imitation of Christ as his disciples, individually and corporately, a royal priesthood that proclaims his excellent deeds and offers our bodies as spiritual sacrifices in right worship of God and sacrificial service to the world through works of love, compassion for the poor, and justice for the oppressed, always, everywhere and to everyone bearing wise witness to the way, truth, and life of Jesus Christ.
12. Restoration of All Things
We believe that in God’s own time and way, the bodily risen and ascended Christ will visibly return to consummate God’s purpose for the whole cosmos through his victory over death and the devil. We believe in the bodily resurrection of both the just and the unjust—the unjust to judgment and eternal conscious punishment in hell, as our Lord himself taught, and the just to eternal blessedness in the presence of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb, in the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness. He will give rest to restless hearts and life to glorified bodies as they exult in joyful fellowship with their Lord and delight in the new heaven and the new earth. There they shall reign with him and see him face to face, forever rapt in wonder, love, and praise.
