WHAT WE BELIEVE

Truths that Promote Unity and Stability

Though Compassion Connection is not a local church, it does exist to support local churches both in the USA and Ecuador, as well as wherever God may allow us to extend our ministry. While we have worked and continue to work with people from a wide range of evangelical backgrounds, our teaching and practical ministry are formed from the following truths:

The Scriptures

We believe that God has inspired the words preserved in the Scriptures, the sixty- six books of the Old and New Testaments, which contain His Story and His plan of redemption. We believe that all these scriptures were inspired in their original writings and are authoritative for teaching and practice. All that we are to believe and do are contained in these 66 books (39 Old Testament and 27 New Testament.) It is the final authority for truth in all that it speaks to (2 Tim 3:16-17, 2 Peter 1:20-21).

The Triune God

We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who know, love, and glorify one another. This one true and living God is infinitely perfect both in his love and in his holiness. He is complete and perfect in all of His attributes. He is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible, and is therefore worthy to receive all glory and adoration. Immortal and eternal, he perfectly and exhaustively knows the end from the beginning, sustains and sovereignly rules over all things, and providentially brings about his eternal good purposes to redeem a people for himself and restore his fallen creation, to the praise of his glorious grace. (Mat 3:16-17, 28:19, 2 Cor 13:14)

The Person and Work of Jesus Christ

We believe that the Word became flesh, fully God and fully human being, one Person in two natures. The man Jesus, the promised Messiah, was conceived through the miraculous agency of the Holy Spirit, and was born of the virgin Mary. He perfectly obeyed his heavenly Father, lived a sinless life, performed miraculous signs, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, arose bodily from the dead on the third day, and ascended into heaven. He continues His role from the right hand of God the Father as mediator between man and God, interceding for us. All authority has been given to Him in heaven and on earth by which He has commissioned His church that He is building to make disciples of all nations. Through His incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension Jesus has fully satisfied, as our substitute, all that the Father required for our justification and redemption, bringing eternal life to all those have placed their trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death on a cross, and was raised triumphant over death and exalted to the highest place with God, and was given a name that is above every name. One day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Jesus will come again to rule and reign eternally with His chosen people who have come to salvation in Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone. Because of His work, we come to Christ as lowly, weak, despised and nothing, recognizing that only in Christ is righteousness, redemption, holiness and wisdom. To Him be glory forever and ever. (John 1:1, 14; Rom 3:21-26, 8:34; 2 Cor 5:17-21, Phil 2:5-11)

The Nature of Humanity

We believe that God created human beings, male and female, in his own image. Adam and Eve belonged to the created order that God himself declared to be very good, serving as God's agents to care for, manage, and govern creation, living in holy and devoted fellowship with their Maker. Men and women, equally made in the image of God, enjoy equal access to God by faith in Christ Jesus and are both called to move beyond self-focused living to a life of loving service in family, church, and society. Adam and Eve, created as a complement one to the other in a one-flesh union established the norm for sexual relations between men and women, with the sanctity of marriage serving as the image of Christ and His church. In this complementarity relationship, men and women are equal and yet distinct in their roles in both family and church. As Christ is the Head of the Church, so God ordains husbands are called to be the head of their wives manifesting this through a sacrificial love that is based on Christ's love for His Church. As such, the wife, who exemplifies the role of the Church to Christ, has the privilege of representing the divine characteristic of submission to her husband in the same way as the Church submits itself to Christ. This same equality with distinctive roles plays out in the church in which God has chosen biblically qualified men to serve as the overseers/pastors/elders of the local church while all members of the church seek to grow to their full potential and giftedness as the each member offers their ministry to the Lord. (Gen 1:26-28, 2:15-25; Eph 5:21-33; 1Tim 3:1-7; Tit 1:5-9)

The Fall

We believe that Adam, made in the image of God, distorted that image and forfeited his original standing before God—for himself and all his progeny as well as for creation itself—by falling into sin through Satan's temptation. As a result, all human beings are alienated from God, corrupted in every aspect of their being (e.g., physically, mentally, volitionally, emotionally, spiritually) and condemned finally and irrevocably to death—apart from God's own gracious intervention. The supreme need of all human beings is to be reconciled to the God under whose just and holy wrath we stand; the only hope of all human beings is the undeserved love of this same God, who alone can rescue us and restore us to himself. (Gen 3, Romans 3:1-23, 8:19-22; Eph 2:1-3)

The Work of Salvation

We believe that God in His sovereign plan and in order to display His unconditional love and mercy, has chosen and predestined a great multitude of helpless and guilty sinners to be saved. Through the preaching of the good news of Jesus Christ, these same chosen people are regenerated “born again” by the Holy Spirit and demonstrate this new birth through hearing Christ's call to salvation through the gospel, and responding through genuine repentance and faith in Christ, becoming children of God instead of children of wrath only through this work of grace. This same grace empowers believers to continue in their walk of salvation through the work of sanctification in their lives, becoming increasingly like Christ. This salvation will ultimately culminate in the glorification of the believer. This great salvation has one aim and that is God's glory. (Eph 1:3-14; 2:1-10; Rom 6; 8:28-30; Phil 1:6)

The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit

As mentioned above, salvation is applied through the work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was sent by the Father and the Son, glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ, and, as the Helper, is present with and in believers. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and by his powerful and mysterious work regenerates spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance and faith, and in him they are baptized into union with the Lord Jesus, such that they are justified before God by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. By the Spirit's agency, believers are renewed, sanctified, and adopted into God's family; they participate in the divine nature and receive his sovereignly distributed gifts. The Holy Spirit is himself the guarantee and seal of the promised inheritance, and in this age indwells, guides, instructs, equips, revives, and empowers believers for Christ-like living and service. He administers God's gifts for the edifying of the Body of Christ, as well as making intercession for the saints according to the will of God. (John 14:15-17, 26; 16:7-15; Romans 8:26; I Cor 12; Eph 1:13-14)

The Church

We believe that all those who have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit are part of the people of God, His universal church, which is expressed through the gathering together of believers in local churches. Each “local church” is, in fact, the church, the household of God, the assembly of the living God, and the pillar and buttress of the truth. The church is the body of Christ, the Bride of Christ to whom He has covenanted His life. The church, in practice, is the family of believers, growing in grace and the knowledge of Christ, becoming more like Christ through the process of mutual sanctification as they practice their love for one another expressed in forgiveness, forbearance, encouragement, exhortation, practical care and sacrifice for one another. The Church practices the sacraments of the baptism of believers and the Lord's supper, as well as church discipline when necessary in order to see restoration of members who have fallen into sin and the need for repentance. In addition to the Church's care for one another, she is also called to express that love to share the gospel of the Kingdom in both word and through practical expressions of mercy. The Church is called to be the light of the world, and the salt of the earth, whereby people observe the good works of Christ's body and glorify the Father in heaven. Jesus Christ as the head of the Church, has brought about peace with God and and abolished in Christ the dividing walls that separate mankind, reconciling in Himself on the cross Jew and Gentile, and making all believers equal in Christ abolishing the hostility brought about by sin. The church is the corporate dwelling place of God's Spirit, and the continuing witness to God in the world. (Mat 5:14-16; 16:18-19; Eph 1:22-23, 2:13-22; 4:1-16; I Tim 3:15; Matt 28:18-20; Mark 16:16; Luke 22:19-20; 1 Cor 11:23-29)

The Kingdom of God

We believe that those who have been saved by the grace of God through union with Christ by faith and through regeneration by the Holy Spirit are not only part of the church, but also represent the kingdom of God here on earth as. As such they delight in the blessings of the new covenant: the forgiveness of sins, the inward transformation that awakens a desire to glorify, trust, and obey God, and the prospect of the glory yet to be revealed. As representation of the Kingdom of God, they proclaim the good news of the Kingdom to those who are lost, and their good works constitute indispensable evidence of saving grace. Living as salt in a world that is decaying and light in a world that is dark, believers should neither withdraw into seclusion from the world, nor become indistinguishable from it: rather, we are to do good to the city, for all the glory and honor of the nations is to be offered up to the living God. Recognizing whose created order this is, and because we are citizens of God's kingdom, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, doing good to all, especially to those who belong to the household of God. The kingdom of God, already present but not fully realized, is the exercise of God's sovereignty in the world toward the eventual redemption of all creation. The kingdom of God is an invasive power that plunders Satan's dark kingdom and regenerates and renovates through repentance and faith the lives of individuals rescued from that kingdom. It therefore inevitably establishes a new community of human life together under God. (Mat 5:13-16; Mat. 28:18-20; John 13:34-35)

The Second Coming of Christ

We believe in the personal, glorious, and bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ with his holy angels, when He will exercise his role as final Judge, and his kingdom will be consummated. We believe in the bodily resurrection of both the just and the unjust—the unjust to judgment and eternal conscious punishment in hell, as our Lord himself taught, and the just to eternal blessedness in the presence of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb, in the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness. On that day the church will be presented faultless before God by the obedience, suffering and triumph of Christ, all sin purged and its wretched effects forever banished. God will be all in all and his people will be enthralled by the immediacy of his ineffable holiness, and everything will be to the praise of his glorious grace. (Acts 1:11; 1 Thes 4:13-18; Col 1:15-23; Rev 21-22)

A Word on The Gifts of the Holy Spirit

We believe that God has gifted His Church for its edification and growth, giving every member of the body of Christ a measure of grace (gift) that God expects them to use in the ongoing work of maturity, love, and growth. While certain miraculous gifts were prevalent in the apostolic age to confirm the proclamation of the gospel and the authority of these men, today these gifts, while not ceasing, are also not normative in the church. God's word does not argue for the continuation or cessation of certain miraculous gifts, but rather focuses on the way all gifts are practiced in an environment of mutual love, edification, and submission, ensuring that the centrality of the gospel and of Jesus Christ is in no way distorted by promotion of gifts or individuals who practice them. (1Cor 12-14; Romans 12:5-8; Ephesians 5:1-16)