“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” (Colossians 2:6–7)

The Christian life progresses the same way it begins… through faith in Christ. We receive Christ Jesus the Lord by faith and we walk in him by faith. And like a tree can only grow when its roots are firmly planted in rich soil, our faith (verb) grows out of “the faith” (noun). Paul frequently refers to “the faith” in his letters as the unified truth of the gospel and its essential doctrines.

On the positive side, the faith is something one can “hold with a clear conscience” (1 Timothy 3:9), “keep” (2 Timothy 4:7), “stand firm in” (1 Corinthians 16:13), “strive side by side for” (Philippians 1:27), “attain to the unity of” (Ephesians 4:13), and “examine yourself, to see whether you are in” (2 Corinthians 13:5).

On the negative side… the faith is also something one can “depart from” (1 Timothy 4:1), “deny” (1 Timothy 5:8), “wander away from” (1 Timothy 6:10), “swerve from” (1 Timothy 6:21), or even be “disqualified regarding” (2 Timothy 3:8).

So being clear about the “one faith” (Ephesians 4:5) that unites us as the true body of Christ is of utmost importance. Our statement of faith is an expansion of the gospel itself and crucial to our understanding of the faith in which we are to be rooted.

This summer we will take 14 weeks to preach the Scriptures upon which these statements are grounded and, Lord willing, root our faith more firmly in the gospel we have received and in which we now walk.

This Sunday Erik Thoennes will get us started with an introduction to the series and a message on the character of God from the first half of statement one.

We believe in one God, Creator of all things, holy, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing in a loving unity of three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

One suggestion for preparing your heart for each Sunday service would be to spend some time reflecting on the portion of our statement of faith that will be preached on and the cross-referenced Scripture passages which you can find HERE.

To help our roots go deeper into these truths each week, we will offer a weekly passage of Scripture for meditation and memorization, included in the notes page of our bulletin and posted to our Grace social media feeds the following Monday.

See you Sunday, Grace. Come hungry!