The doctrinal bases of Hope Church are the fundamental truths of Christianity, as revealed in the Bible, including:
- There is one God in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
- God is sovereign in creation, revelation, redemption and final judgement.
- God has revealed himself supremely in the person of his Son, the incarnate Word of God. Moreover, he speaks to us through the Bible which, as originally given, is ‘God-breathed’ and therefore infallible and inerrant. It is fully reliable in fact and doctrine, and our final authority in all matters of belief and behaviour.
- All men, women and children, being created in the image of God, have inherent and equal dignity and worth; their greatest purpose is to love, worship and obey God. Since the fall, the whole of humankind is sinful and guilty, so that everyone is subject to God’s wrath and condemnation.
- The Lord Jesus Christ, God’s incarnate Son, is fully God and fully man; he was born of a virgin; his humanity is real and sinless; he died on the cross, was raised bodily from death and is now reigning over heaven and earth.
- Sinful human beings are redeemed from the guilt, penalty and power of sin only through the sacrificial death once and for all time of their representative and substitute, Jesus Christ, the only mediator between them and God.
- Those who believe in Christ are pardoned all their sins and accepted in God’s sight only because of the righteousness of Christ credited to them; this justification is God’s act of undeserved mercy, received solely by trust in him and not by their own efforts.
- The Holy Spirit alone makes the work of Christ effective to individual sinners, enabling them to turn to God from their sin and to trust in Jesus Christ.
- The Holy Spirit lives in all those he has regenerated. He makes them increasingly Christ-like in character and behaviour and gives them power for their witness in the world.
- The one holy universal church is the Body of Christ, of which Christ himself is the Head and to which all true believers belong; it is normally made visible in local churches, in which believers are gathered together to worship God, to build up one another in love and service and to bear witness to the world: and in which the Bible is faithfully taught, and baptism and the Lord’s Supper are duly practised.
- The Lord Jesus Christ will return in person, to raise the dead, to judge everyone, to execute God’s just condemnation on those who have not repented and to receive the redeemed to eternal glory.