Scripture

We believe the Bible is God’s authoritative, timeless directive for our lives.  Although it was written to a culture and a time very different from ours, it was nonetheless written to sinful people just like us.  We believe that God has given us within the Scriptures all the information needed to live perfectly before God.  We believe the Scriptures to be inerrant and infallible in the original autographs, without error in all truths, whether related to salvation or any other topic.

God

We believe in one God, the God who revealed himself through the Jewish Scriptures known as the Old Testament.  He is one God, yet he exists in three distinct Persons; Father, Son, and Spirit.  Each Person is fully God, yet God is one.  The Father sent forth the Son to eternally unite his nature with humanity in the Incarnation.  The Father and the Son then sent forth the Spirit to convict the world of sin and permanently indwell those who have been united by faith to the Son.  The Son is equal in power and nature to the Father, yet submissive in role to the Father.  The Spirit is equal in power and  nature to both the Son and the Father, yet he is submissive in role to both the Son and the Father.

Salvation

Salvation is the work of God in which he resurrects the spiritually dead soul of sinful man back to spiritual life.  Salvation is an undeserved gift of God that must be received by placing saving faith in the work of Christ on the cross.  Christ accepted in his body and his soul the full punishment for the sin of all mankind.  By our birth and our sin, we are united to Adam in lostness, but by faith we are united to Christ in salvation.  Salvation is completely a work of God, yet a free-will response by man to the genuine offer of salvation given to all people is necessary.  Christ extends a true and genuine offer of salvation by grace to all people.  Faith is brought to men and women through the preaching of God’s Word (Rom. 10:17)

Worship

We believe that worship should be dynamic and Spirit-filled, yet orderly and not chaotic.  Music should serve to remove distractions from our minds and focus our energies on the God we worship. Worship should never be dull or uninteresting, but it should serve to prepare our hearts to worship God.  All of God’s children are required to give him worship, and the true child of God desires to give worship to God.  If the child of God considers worship to be simply a chore, then that is an indicator of a greater spiritual problem.

Men and Women

We are complimentarians.  That simply means that we believe that God has created men and women to be equal, yet distinct.  In other words, the two sexes compliment one another, they do not duplicate one another.  God created men, fathers, and husbands for different roles than women, mothers, and wives.  God has reserved the office of pastor for men only.  God created the institution of marriage, and he has determined that it works best when his guidelines are followed.  These guidelines include the unqualified sacrificial love of the husband for the wife, and the Christ-like submission of the wife to the spiritual headship of the husband.

Gifts of the Spirit

We believe that God is certainly capable of gifting individuals with spiritual gifts that are charismatic in nature.  We also believe that many Christians who hold the belief that God still does this today, hold those beliefs sincerely, having come to their positions through searching the Scriptures.  At OBC, however, we do not practice any of the charismatic spiritual gifts, and so a worshiper who desires to speak in tongues would likely worship more comfortably in a different setting.

Sin and Judging Others

We believe that all people are indeed sinners by nature and deed.  We also believe that the true child of God can never again sin and enjoy it.  We will still be tempted and even stumble into sin, but the indwelling Holy Spirit will never again allow us to knowingly sin against God and feel good about it.  We also  believe that one of the main purposes of God’s Word is to help the believer identify sin, both in himself and others.  Calling sin what it is is not judging others.  We stand in ultimate judgment of no person, but in order to be faithful servants of God, we must sound the warning (Ezek. 33:1-9).  God has a better plan for every person.  To allow sin to abide in others is not an act of love, but hatred.  We love others when we desire for them to be free from the bondage of sin.

The Law and Legalism

God’s moral law (i.e.: the Ten Commandments) is eternal.  It will never pass away.  The moral law of God is not a set of rules that God decided upon before creating the world.  Instead, it is a revelation of his character.  The law tells us to be faithful people (Ex. 20:14, the 7th Commandment) because God is a faithful God.  The law tells us to respect life (Ex. 20:13, the 6th Commandment) because God is the giver of life.  The law tells us to be honest and trustworthy people (Ex. 20:15-16, the 8th and 9th Commandments) because God is an honest and trustworthy God.  Therefore, since God’s law is not a set of arbitrary rules but a description of his character-his law has not passed away.  This is not the same as “legalism.”  Legalism is literally the worship of the law, or as Paul described in the letter to the Galatians, it is depending on the law (i.e.: our keeping of the law) for salvation.  We oppose legalism but we promote the keeping of the law.

Last Things

We believe that Jesus Christ is returning bodily to judge all mankind.  This world will pass away, and Christ will set up an eternal kingdom.  Those outside of Christ will be cast into eternal torment without hope, and those in Christ will enter into an eternal state of worship and fruitful service to God.  However, when and how Jesus will do all of these things is not clearly told to us in Scripture.  We believe that pre-millenialists and post-millenialists should be able to worship together.  We believe that pre-tribulationalists and post-tribulationalists can read the same Bible and worship the same God, and “agree to disagree.”  When and how Christ will return should not be a dividing issue among God’s people.

Denominations and the Universal Church

We believe that the church that Jesus Christ created transcends denominational boundaries.  True Christians are found in all Christian denominations who preach, teach, believe, and live the sinfulness of man and the exclusivity of salvation in Jesus Christ alone by faith alone.  Christian denominations will have differing ideas about secondary matters of Scripture, however, to be called Christian, they must agree on the fundamentals of our faith.  Christian denominations largely exist because of these disagreements over secondary matters in Scripture, which preclude us from worshiping together, but not from being in God’s family together.  No denomination has a monopoly on truth, and all denominations error in some matters, because we are all sinful people.  However, we are Southern Baptist by choice.  We choose to be Southern Baptist not because we like the worship style or because the Southern Baptist church is the closest one to our home.  We choose to be Southern Baptist because after searching the Scriptures, we feel that the Southern Baptist tradition is the most scripturally faithful position.  This is not the same as saying that we get everything right–we don’t.  Our goal is to have one and only standard for our faith and practices–the Scriptures.

Ossipee Baptist Church fully affirms the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, available here.