First Christian Church
Elizabethton, TN
WHAT WE BELIEVE
At First Christian Church we have some beliefs that we consider to be essential when it comes to God, Jesus, the Bible and more. They come directly from Scripture (both Old and New Testaments).
​
How we Know God…
God can be known because He wants to be known. It is within His nature to know us, and He has hard-wired us to want to know Him by setting eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Many people know a great deal about God without really knowing Him intimately and deeply. There are three fundamental and connected ways we can come to know God.
-
God reveals Himself to people everywhere through observing His general revelation through creation. General revelation suggests that God reveals Himself in a very generic way through what He has created. Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” The Apostle Paul echoes that view in Romans 1:20, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made so that men are without excuse.” So, we can know God generally through looking long and hard at what God has created.
-
We can know God more concretely by exploring His written Word, the Bible, and receiving it as the Holy Spirit teaches and enables us to understand it and live it out. The Bible is God speaking His truth to us in human words. Through the Bible, we hear God’s articulate voice as we intentionally take time to know to Scripture. Through the Bible, we hear God’s articulate voice as we take the intentional time to listen to Scripture read, preached, and taught; as we read it for ourselves, study it, memorize it, meditate upon it, and obey it.
-
We come to know God by embracing His special revelation, the Living Word, Jesus Christ. General revelation is helpful and true, but it is insufficient to bring us to the place where we can know that God put on flesh, lived among us, loved us, died for us on a cross for our sins, and triumphantly rose again. This way of knowing God comes through following and experiencing the life of Jesus. Through studying carefully, respectfully, and obediently His life (John 1:1&12-14). Jesus’s own words state clearly that the only way to a relationship with God is through knowing Him – Jesus (John 14:6-7).
Who God is…
God is one being in three persons – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit (Mt. 28:19; Acts 2:38-39; and 2 Cor. 13:14), co-existing in perfect community and harmony. All of creation finds its source in Him (Gen. 1:1; Job 41:11; Ps. 50:10-12; Jn. 1:1-2; and Rev. 4:11). He is all knowing, all powerful, everywhere, and exists eternally (Exo. 3:14-15; Ps. 90:1-6; Isa. 40:13-14; 66:1; Rom. 11:33-36; and 1 Tim. 6:15-16). He holds everything together and is in the process of redeeming everything (Col. 1:17 and Rom. 8:19-22). God loves us and longs for us to be in relationship with Him (1 Jn. 1:3).