Grace Reformed Church of the Antelope Valley

By Rev. Matt Powell

A Reformed church is one that follows in the footsteps of the Protestant Reformation, teaching the sovereignty of God over all things including our salvation, the forgiveness of sins by God’s free grace through faith in Jesus Christ, the centrality of the work of the Spirit through the church in God’s plan for the salvation of the human race, and the supremacy of the Bible as our only infallible guide and authority.

Because we believe that the Scriptures are the only infallible authority for faith and life, we make the teaching of those Scriptures the center of our worship and the life of our church. We do not preach the opinions of men. The worship of God is not a time for a comedy show, a motivational speech, or a college lecture; it is the public announcement of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the training up of disciples to Christ.

Because we believe in God’s sovereignty over all things, we teach that God elected His people to salvation before the world began. God sends His Spirit to His elect to work faith in them at His appointed time, so that our conversion is the result of His first working in us.

Because we believe that the church is central to the Spirit’s work of propagating the saving faith of Christ throughout the world, we follow the Scriptures’ teaching closely in how a church is to function and what it is to do. We believe in the importance of healthy church government, so that our leaders and our people are accountable to one another, and because we believe that the church of Christ is to be unified, we belong to a denomination, so that we can work together with other Christians in other places as much as possible, while remaining true to our convictions.

We teach covenant theology, the belief that God works with the human race through covenant. God instituted the covenant of grace with His people after the race fell into sin through Adam. In that covenant God promised a savior who would free His people from the ruin and destructiveness of sin, and this He has done through Jesus Christ. God has always had a visible people on earth that are known as His “covenant people”, because God preserves the knowledge of His covenant in that people. Before Christ that people was the nation of Israel; after Christ, it is the church, as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost transforms Israel into the spiritual body it was always intended to be, and as national Israel was rejected for their rejection of the Messiah.

We baptize babies as well as adults, since the Scriptures teach that baptism is the sign of membership in the covenant people of God, and children are members of the covenant people just as their parents are. But salvation only comes by true faith, not merely outward membership in church or by the administration of sacraments. The sacraments are visible teachings of the grace of God and promises to us, that if we truly believe in the gospel, the blessings which the sacraments display to us will truly be ours. This is in contrast to the Roman Catholic Church who, while they also baptize babies, do so for completely different reasons, believing that the sacrament itself, without the presence of faith, takes away the sins of the infant.

We believe that the Spirit of God works through the church to accomplish what the church was created for, which is the spreading of the gospel throughout the world, and the training of disciples. The Scriptures teach that repentance from sin is an essential aspect of conversion. Therefore we promote and teach the application of Scriptural principles to every area of our lives, including our families, our vocational lives, our duties as citizens, our entertainment, and our care for our bodies. God created Adam to be in dominion- to be a wise steward of all of creation. Though Adam failed in that task, Christ came to restore us to it, and therefore the gospel has application to all we do in our lives. The Scriptures teach us that this task is best accomplished through the establishment of a Christ-centered community which seeks to build real fellowship with one another, lovingly building each other up in the truth and holding each other accountable when we need it.

The Reformed Church in the United States holds to the three creeds known as the Three Forms of Unity- the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession and the Canons of Dordt. These confessions do not replace Scripture, or even supplement it. They are our common understanding of what the Scriptures teach, since even the devil comes quoting Scripture for his own evil ends.

The History of the Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century was one of the most significant events in the history of the church, since the life of Christ and the founding of the church. Men like Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John Knox and John Calvin all began to question many of the different practices and beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church, which was at the time the only Christian church in Europe. These “reformers” did not believe that the pope was infallible, that Christians should be praying to saints, that the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper turned into the real body and blood of Christ, or that the sacraments of the church all by themselves could take away sin. Originally, many of these men were part of the Roman church and did not intend to start a new church; they wanted to reform the church, and because of this were called Reformers. But the church leadership rejected their protests and excommunicated many of them, including Martin Luther, perhaps the most prominent figure in the early Reformation. So they had no choice but to start new churches, and these churches were known as Protestant churches, because they began as protests against the abuses of the Catholic Church.

The Protestants taught the “Five Solas” in contradiction to the teaching of the Catholic Church:

-Sola Scriptura- The Scriptures are the only infallible authority for faith and life. This rejected the teaching of the Roman Church which puts the traditions of the church on an equal level with the Scriptures. Likewise today, the opinions of men, scientific discoveries, or the standards of a culture can never override the word of God.

-Sola gratia- We are saved by grace alone, meaning that nothing in us merits the great gifts that God gives us, but that He gives them solely because He is gracious and good. The Roman church taught that the sinner cooperates with the grace of God to receive salvation. Man always seeks to add his own merit to God’s grace so that he can take credit for his own salvation. But the Scriptures teach that we are saved by grace through faith, so that no one can boast before God.

-Sola fide- We are justified by faith alone. “Justification” means that our sins are forgiven and we are regarded as being righteous before God in Christ, solely because we believe in Jesus Christ. Jesus said that he who believes in Him will have eternal life, and He did not add any conditions to that one, faith.

-Solus Christus- Christ alone is the mediator between God and man. The Protestants rejected any idea of a priesthood or saints that stood between God and man, that dispensed grace from God to man. They taught the “priesthood of the believer”, that every believer stands as a priest before God. The clergy serve in the church as leadership and as teachers, but they do not occupy some higher position in a hierarchy between man and God. Further, the Protestants rejected any idea of a pope or bishop as the vicar of Christ and condemned the practice of praying to saints or angels.

-Soli deo gloria- To the glory of God alone. Mary and the saints should not be worshiped and bowed down to, or have holy days dedicated to the remembrance of their good works. Only God can be worshiped, and only God should be given credit for our salvation and our good works, since God is completely sovereign in bringing about the salvation of sinners.

The two major groups early on in the Protestant Reformation were the Lutherans and the Reformed. The Lutherans were those churches which followed Martin Luther’s doctrine most closely, while the Reformed adhered more closely to the theology of Calvin and Zwingli. They differed on the nature of the Lord’s Supper; the Lutherans believed that the physical body of Christ was present in the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper, while the Reformed believe that Christ is present only in a spiritual sense. The Lutherans also denied the doctrine of election that the Reformed taught. Finally, they differed on worship- the Lutherans believed that they could worship God in any way not explicitly forbidden in Scripture, while the Reformed believed that God could be worshipped, and must be worshipped, by the means which He Himself taught us in His word.

Reformed churches today follow in the footsteps of these believers who were blessed by God to preserve true doctrine in the face of severe opposition and persecution by the corrupt medieval church. We believe that the Scriptures are our only infallible guide and authority for all that we do in the church and in our lives. We seek to be faithful to Christ’s command to preach the gospel and to make disciples of all the nations.