What We Believe
NPC is a member church of the Presbyterian Church in America.
We believe that our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, and that God’s Word contained in the Old and New Testaments is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him. Our more complete statement of faith is found in the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechism. Below are summary statements of belief on core doctrines.
The Bible
We believe that the Bible is the written word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit, completely trustworthy and true, the only authority for faith and practice, through which God reveals to us what we must believe about himself and what he requires of us.
God and Creation
We believe that there is only one living and true God, the creator and sustainer of everyone and everything, eternal, infinite, and unchangeable in his power and perfection, goodness and glory, wisdom, justice, and truth, and that nothing happens except through him and by his will.
This one God, infinite and unchanging, exists eternally in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the same in substance and equal in power and glory.
We believe that God created us male and female in his own image to be like him in character, to know him, love him, live with him, and glorify him.
Christ and Redemption
We believe that all have rejected God and are sinners, rebelling against him, unable and unwilling to do what he requires in his word, liable to God’s justice and totally unable to save themselves.
We believe that Christ died willingly in our place to deliver us from the power and penalty of sin and reconcile us to God, and that by his death, Christ alone redeems us from hell and gains for us forgiveness of sin, righteousness, and everlasting life.
We believe that all those who receive and rest on Christ alone for salvation as He is offered to us in the gospel are saved and have everlasting life.
The Holy Spirit and Growing in Grace
We believe that the Holy Spirit draws us by grace through faith in Christ, and lives in and through us, giving us the strength and wisdom to trust Christ and follow Him, and imparting to us spiritual gifts.
We believe that God makes us new in his image, causes us to grow in righteousness and renews us by his Holy Spirit, so that our lives may show love and gratitude to God, that we may be assured of our faith, and that by our godly behavior others may believe in Christ.
The Sacraments
We believe that the sacraments given by God and instituted by Christ are baptism and the Lord’s Supper, both visible signs and seals that represent Christ and the benefits of the New Covenant to us. They are means of God’s grace to us.
We believe that baptism is a sacrament whereby the washing with water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, signifies and seals our ingrafting into Christ, partaking of benefits of the covenant of grace, and our engagement to the Lord’s. Only those who profess faith in Christ, and infant children of members, should be baptized.
We believe that the Lord’s Supper is a sacrament showing forth Christ’s death so that believers, by faith, are made partakers of his body and blood, with all his benefits, to our spiritual nourishment and growth in grace.
The Church
We believe that the Church is all the people all over the world who gather throughout the ages to profess faith in Christ. This community God chooses and preserves for himself; and united by faith, love, follow, learn from, and worship God together as people sent out by God to proclaim the gospel and model Christ’s kingdom by the quality of their life together and their love for one another.
Everlasting Life
We believe that Christ triumphed over sin and death by being physically resurrected, so that all who trust in him are raised to new life in this world and to everlasting life in the world to come.
We believe that this present fallen world is not all there is; soon we will live with and enjoy God forever in the new heaven and the new earth, where we will be fully and forever freed from all sin and will inhabit renewed, resurrection bodies in a renewed, restored creation.