The Confession of 1967
United Presbyterian Church
Preface
The church confesses its faith when it bears a present witness
to God's grace in Jesus Christ.
In every age the church has expressed its witness in words and
deeds as the need of the time required. The earliest examples of confession are
found within the Scriptures. Confessional statements have taken such varied
forms as hymns, liturgical formulas, doctrinal definitions, catechisms,
theological systems in summary, and declarations of purpose against threatening
evil.
Confessions and declarations are subordinate standards in the
church, subject to the authority of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, as the
Scriptures bear witness to him. No one type of confession is exclusively valid,
no one statement is irreformable. Obedience to Jesus Christ alone identifies the
one universal church and supplies the continuity of its tradition. This
obedience is the ground of the church's duty and freedom to reform itself in
life and doctrine as new occasions, in God's providence, may demand.
The United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America
acknowledges itself aided in understanding the gospel by the testimony of the
church from earlier ages and from many lands. More especially it is guided by
the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds from the time of the early church; the Scots
Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Second Helvetic Confession from
the era of the Reformation; the Westminster Confession and Shorter Catechism
from the seventeenth century; and the Theological Declaration of Barmen from the
twentieth century.
The purpose of the Confession of 1967 is to call the church to
that unity in confession and mission which is required of disciples today. This
Confession is not a "system of doctrine," nor does it include all the
traditional topics of theology. For example, the Trinity and the Person of
Christ are not redefined but are recognized and reaffirmed as forming the basis
and determining the structure of the Christian faith.
God's reconciling work in Jesus Christ and the mission of
reconciliation to which he has called his church are the heart of the gospel in
any age. Our generation stands in peculiar need of reconciliation in Christ.
Accordingly this Confession of 1967 is built upon that theme.
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The Confession
In Jesus Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.
Jesus Christ is God with man. He is the eternal Son of the Father, who became
man and lived among us to fulfill the work of reconciliation. He is present in
the church by the power of the Holy Spirit to continue and complete his mission.
This work of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, isthe foundation of all
confessional statements about God, man, and the world. Therefore the church
calls men to be reconciled to God and to one another.
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I. God's Work of Reconciliation
A. The Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ
1. Jesus Christ
In Jesus of Nazareth true humanity was realized once for all.
Jesus, a Palestinian Jew, lived among his own people and shared their needs,
temptations, joys, and sorrows. He expressed the love of God in word and deed
and became a brother to all kinds of sinful men. But his complete obedience led
him into conflict with his people. His life and teaching judged their goodness,
religious aspirations, and national hopes. Many rejected him and demanded his
death. In giving himself freely for them he took upon himself the judgment under
which all men stand convicted. God raised him from the dead, vindicating him as
Messiah and Lord. The victim of sin became victor, and won the victory over sin
and death for all men.
God's reconciling act in Jesus Christ is a mystery which the
Scriptures describe in various ways. It is called the sacrifice of a lamb, a
shepherd's life given for his sheep, atonement by a priest; again it is ransom
of a slave, payment of a debt, vicarious satisfaction of a legal penalty, and
victory over the powers of evil. These are expressions of a truth which remains
beyond the reach of all theory in the depths of God's love for man. They reveal
the gravity, cost, and sure achievement of God's reconciling work.
The risen Christ is the savior for all men. Those joined to
him by faith are set right with God and commissioned to serve as his reconciling
community. Christ is head of this community, the church, which began with the
apostles and continues through all generations.
The same Jesus Christ is the judge of all men. His judgment
discloses the ultimate seriousness of life and gives promise of God's final
victory over the power of sin and death. To receive life from the risen Lord is
to have life eternal; to refuse life from him is to choose the death which is
separation from God. All who put their trust in Christ face divine judgment
without fear, for the judge is their redeemer.
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2. The Sin of Man
The reconciling act of God in Jesus Christ
exposes the evil in men as sin in the sight of God. In sin men claim mastery of
their own lives, turn against God and their fellow men, and become exploiters
and despoilers of the world. They lose their humanity in futile striving and are
left in rebellion, despair, and isolation.
Wise and virtuous men through the ages have sought the highest
good in devotion to freedom, justice, peace, truth, and beauty. Yet all human
virtue, when seen in the light of God's love in Jesus Christ, is found to be
infected by self-interest and hostility. All men, good and bad alike, are in the
wrong before God and helpless without his forgiveness. Thus all men fall under
God's judgment. No one is more subject to that judgment than the man who assumes
that he is guiltless before God or morally superior to others.
God's love never changes. Against all who oppose him, God
expresses his love in wrath. In the same love God took on himself judgment and
shameful death in Jesus Christ, to bring men to repentance and new life.
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B. The Love of God
God's sovereign love is a mystery beyond the reach of man's
mind. Human thought ascribes to God superalatives of power, wisdom, and
goodness. But God reveals his love in Jesus Christ by showing power in the form
of a servant, wisdom in the folly of the cross, and goodness in receiving sinful
men. The power of God's love in Christ to transform the world discloses that the
Redeemer is the Lord and Creator who made all things to serve the purpose of his
love.
God has created the world of space and time to be the sphere
of his dealings with men. In its beauty and vastness, sublimity and awfulness,
order and disorder, the world reflects to the eye of faith the majesty and
mystery of its Creator.
God has created man in a personal relation with himself that
man may respond to the love of the Creator. He has created male and female and
given them a life which proceeds from birth to death in a succession of
generations and in a wide complex of social relations. He hwas endowed man with
capacities to make the world serve his needs and to enjoy its good things. Life
is a gift to be received with gratitude and a task to be pursued with courage.
Man is free to seek his life within the purpose of God: to develop and protect
the resources of nature for the common welfare, to work for justice and peace in
society, and in other ways to use his creative powers for the fulfillment of
human life.
God expressed his love for all mankind through Israel, whom he
chose to be his covenant people to serve him in love and faithfulness. When
Israel was unfaithful, he disciplined the nation with his judgments and
maintained his cause through the prophets, priests, teachers, and true
believers. These witnesses called all Israelites to a destiny in which they
would serve God faithfully and become a light to the nations. The same witnesses
proclaimed the coming of a new age, and a true servant of God in whom God's
purpose for Israel and for mankind would be realized.
Out of Israel God in due time raised up Jesus. His faith and
obedience were the response of the perfect child of God. He was the fulfillment
of God's promise to Israel, the beginning of the new creation, and the pioneer
of the new humanity. He gave history its meaning and direction and called the
church to be his servant for the reconciliation of the world.
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C. The Communion of the Holy Spirit
God the Holy Spirit fulfills the work of reconciliation in
man. The Holy Spirit creates and renews the church as the community in which men
are reconciled to God and to one another. He enables them to receive forgiveness
as they forgive one another and to enjoy the peace of God as they make peace
among themselves. In spite of their sin, he gives them power to become
representatives of Jesus Christ and his gospel of reconciliation to all men.
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1. The New Life
The reconciling work of Jesus was the supreme crisis in the
life of mankind. His cross and resurrection become personal crisis and present
hope for men when the gospel is proclaimed and believed. In this experience the
Spirit brings God's forgiveness to men, moves them to respond in faith,
repentance, and obedience, and initiates the new life in Christ.
The new life takes shape in a community in which men know that
God loves and accepts them in spite of what they are. They therefore accept
themselves and love others, knowing that no man has any ground on which to stand
except God's grace.
The new life does not release a man from conflict with
unbelief, pride, lust, fear. He still has to struggle with disheartening
difficulties and problems. Nevertheless, as he matures in love and faithfulness
in his life with Christ, he lives in freedom and good cheer, bearing witness on
good days and evil days, confident that the new life is pleasing to God and
helpful to others.
The new life finds its direction in the life of Jesus, his
deeds and words, his struggles against temptation, his compassion, his anger,
and his willingness to suffer death. The teaching of apostles and prophets
guides men in living this life, and the Christian community nurtures and equips
them for their ministries.
The members of the church are emissaries of peace and seek the
good of man in cooperation with powers and authorities in politics, culture, and
economics. But they have to fight against pretensions and injustices when these
same powers endanger human welfare. Their strength is in their confidence that
God's purpose rather than man's schemes will finally prevail.
Life in Christ is life eternal. The resurrection of Jesus is
God's sign that he will consummate his work of creation and reconciliation
beyond death and bring to fulfillment the new life begun in Christ.
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2. The Bible
The one sufficient revelation of God is Jesus Christ, the Word
of God incarnate, to whom the Holy Spirit bears unique and authoritative witness
through the Holy Scriptures, which are received and obeyed as the word of God
written. The Scriptures are not a witness among others, but the witness without
parallel. The church has received the books of the Old and New Testaments as
prophetic and apostolic testimony in which it hears the word of God and by which
its faith and obedience are nourished and regulated.
The New Testament is the recorded testimony of apostles to the
coming of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, and the sending of the Holy Spirit to
the Church. The Old Testament bears witness to God's faithfulness in his
covenant with Israel and points the way to the fulfillment of his purpose in
Christ. The Old Testament is indispensable to understanding the New, and is not
itself fully understood without the New.
The Bible is to be interpreted in the light of its witness to
God's work of reconciliation in Christ. The Scriptures, given under the guidance
of the Holy Spirit, are nevertheless the words of men, conditioned by the
language, thought forms, and literary fashions of the places and times at which
they were written. They reflect views of life, history, and the cosmos which
were then current. The church, therefore, has an obligation to approach the
Scriptures with literary and historical understanding. As God has spoken his
word in diverse cultural situations, the church is confident that he will
continue to speak through the Scriptures in a changing world and in every form
of human culture.
God's word is spoken to his church today where the Scriptures
are faithfully preached and attentively read in dependence on the illumination
of the Holy Spirit and with readiness to receive their truth and direction.
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II. The Ministry of Reconciliation
A. The Mission of the Church
1. Direction
To be reconciled to God is to be sent into the world as his
reconciling community. This community, the church universal, is entrusted with
God's message of reconciliation and shares his labor of healing the enmities
which separate men from God and from each other. Christ has called the church to
this mission and given it the gift of the Holy Spirit. The church maintains
continuity with the apostles and with Israel by faithful obedience to his call.
The life, death, resurrection, and promised coming of Jesus
Christ has set the pattern for the church's mission. His life as man involves the
church in the common life of men. His service to men commits the church to work
for every form of human well-being. His suffering makes the church sensitive to
all the sufferings of mankind so that it sees the face of Christ in the faces of
men in every kind of need. His crucifixion discloses to the church God's
judgment on man's inhumanity to man and the awful consequences of its own
complicity in injustice. In the power of the risen Christ and the hope of his
coming the church sees the promise of God's renewal of man's life in society and
of God's victory over all wrong.
The church follows this pattern in the form of its life and in
the method of its action. So to live and serve is to confess Christ as Lord.
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2. Forms and Order
The institutions of the people of God change and vary as their
mission requires in different times and places. The unity of the church is
compatible with a wide variety of forms, but it is hidden and distorted when
variant forms are allowed to harden into sectarian divisions, exclusive
denominations, and rival factions.
Wherever the church exists, its members are both gathered in
corporate life and dispersed in society for the sake of mission in the world.
The church gathers to praise God, to hear his word for
mankind, to baptize and to join in the Lord's Supper, to pray for and present
the world to him in worship, to enjoy fellowship, to receive instruction,
strength, and comfort, to order and organize its own corporate life, to be
tested, renewed, and reformed, and to speak and act in the world's affairs as
may be appropriate to the needs of the time.
The church disperses to serve God wherever its members are, at
work or play, in private life or in the life of society. Their prayer and Bible
Study are part of the church's worship and theological reflection. Their witness
is the church's evangelism. Their daily action in the world is the church in
mission to the world. The quality of their relation with other persons is the
measure of the church's fidelity.
Each member is the church in the world, endowed by the Spirit
with some gift of ministry and is responsible for the integrity of his witness
in his own particular situation. He is entitled to the guidance and support of
the Christian community and is subject to its advice and correction. He in turn,
in his own competence, helps to guide the church.
In recognition of special gifts of the Spirit and for the
ordering of its life as a community, the church calls, trains, and authorizes
certain members for leadership and oversight. The persons qualified for these
duties in accordance with the polity of the church are set apart by ordination
or other appropriate act and thus made responsible for their special ministries.
The church thus orders its life as an institution with a
constitution, government, officers, and administrative rules. These are
instruments of mission, not ends in themselves. Different orders have served the
gospel, and none can claim exclusive validity. A presbyterian polity recognizes
the responsibility of all members for ministry and maintains the organic
relation of all congregations in the church. It seeks to protect the church from
exploitation by ecclesiastical or secular power and ambition. Every church order
must be open to such reformation as may be required to make it a more effective
instrument of the mission of reconciliation.
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3. Revelation and Religion
The church in its mission encounters the religions of men and
in that encounter becomes conscious of its own human character as a religion.
God's revelation to Israel, expressed within Semitic culture, gave rise to the
religion of the Hebrew people. God's revelation in Jesus Christ called forth the
response of Jews and Greeks and came to expression within Judaism and Hellenism
as the Christian religion. The Christian religion, as distinct from God's
revelation of himself, has been shaped throughout its history by the cultural
forms of its environment.
The Christian finds parallels between other religions and his
own and must approach all religions with openness and respect. Repeatedly God
has used the insight of non-Christians to challenge the church to renewal. But
the reconciling word of the gospel is God's judgment upon all forms of religion,
including the Christian. The gift of God in Christ is for all men. The church,
therefore, is commissioned to carry the gospel to all men whatever their
religion may be and even when they profess none.
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4. Reconciliation in Society
In each time and place there are particular problems and
crises through which God calls the church to act. The church, guided by the
Spirit, humbled by its own complicity and instructed by all attainable
knowledge, seeks to discern the will of God and learn how to obey in these
concrete situations. The following are particularly urgent at the present time.
a. God has created the peoples of the earth to be one
universal family. In his reconciling love he overcomes the barriers between
brothers and breaks down every form of discrimination based on racial or ethnic
difference, real or imaginary. The church is called to bring all men to receive
and uphold one another as persons in all relationships of life: in employment,
housing, education, leisure, marriage, family, church, and the exercise of
political rights. Therefore the church labors for the abolition of all racial
discrimination and ministers to those injured by it. Congregations, individuals,
or groups of Christians who exclude, dominate, or patronize their fellowmen,
however subtly, resist the Spirit of God and bring contempt on the faith which
they profess.
b. God's reconciliation in Jesus Christ is the ground of the
peace, justice, and freedom among nations which all powers of government are
called to serve and defend. The church, in its own life, is called to practice
the forgiveness of enemies and to commend to the nations as practical politics
the search for cooperation and peace. This search requires that the nations
pursue fresh and responsible relations across every line of conflict, even at
risk to national security, to reduce areas of strife and to broaden
international understanding. Reconciliation anong nations becomes peculiarly
urgent as countries develop nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, diverting
their manpower and resources from constructive uses and risking the annihilation
of mankind. Although nations may serve God's purposes in history, the church
which identifies the sovereignty of any one nation or any one way of life with
the cause of God denies the Lordship of Christ and betrays its calling.
c. The reconciliation of man through Jesus Christ makes it
plain that enslaving poverty in a world of abundance is an intolerable violation
of God's good creation. Because Jesus identified himself with the needy and
exploited, the cause of the world's poor is the cause of his disciples. The
church cannot condone poverty, whether it is the product of unjust social
structures, exploitation of the defenseless, lack of national resources, absence
of technological understanding, or rapid expansion of populations. The church
calls every man to use his abilities, his possessions, and the fruits of
technology as gifts entrusted to him by God for the maintenance of his family
and the advancement of the common welfare. It encourages those forces in human
society that raise men's hopes for better conditions and provide them with the
opportunity for a decent living. A church that is indifferent to poverty, or
evades responsibility in economic affairs, or is open to one social class only,
or expects gratitude for its beneficence makes a mockery of reconciliation and
offers no acceptable worship to God.
d. The relationship between man and woman exemplifies in a
basic way God's ordering of the interpersonal life for which he created mankind.
Anarchy in sexual relationships is a symptom of man's alienation from God, his
neighbor, and himself. Man's perennial confusion about the meaning of sex has
been aggravated in our day by the availability of new means for birth control
and the treatment of infection, by the pressures of urbanization, by the
exploitation of sexual symbols in mass communication, and by world
overpopulation. The church, as the household of God, is called to lead men out
of this alienation into the responsible freedom of the new life in Christ.
Reconciled to God, each person has joy in and respect for his own humanity and
that of other persons; a man and woman are enabled to marry, to commit
themselves to a mutually shared life, and to respond to each other in sensitive
and lifelong concern; parents receive the grace to care for children in love and
to nurture their individuality. The church comes under the judgment of God and
invites rejection by man when it fails to lead men and women into the full
meaning of life together, or withholds the compassion of Christ from those
caught in the moral confusion of our time.
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B. The Equipment of the Church
Jesus Christ has given the church preaching and teaching,
praise and prayer, and Baptism and the Lord's Supper as means of fulfilling its
service of God among men. These gifts remain, but the church is obliged to
change the forms of its service in ways appropriate to different generations and
cultures.
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1. Preaching and Teaching
God instructs his church and equips it for mission through
preaching and teaching. By these, when they are carried on in fidelity to the
Scriptures and dependence upon the Holy Spirit, the people hear the word of God
and accept and follow Christ. The message is addressed to men in particular
situations. Therefore effective preaching, teaching, and personal witness
require disciplined study of both the Bible and the contemporary world. All acts
of public worship should be conducive to men's hearing of the gospel in a
particular time and place and responding with fitting obedience.
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2. Praise and Prayer
The church responds to the message of reconciliation in praise
and prayer. In that response it commits itself afresh to its mission,
experiences a deepening of faith and obedience, and bears open testimony to the
gospel. Adoration of God is acknowledgment of the Creator by the creation.
Confession of sin is admission of all men's guilt before God and of their need
for his forgiveness. Thanksgiving is rejoicing in God's goodness to all men and
in giving for the needs of others. Petitions and intercessions are addressed to
God for the continuation of his goodness, the healing of men's ills, and their
deliverance from every form of oppression. The arts, especially music and
architecture, contribute to the praise and prayer of a Christian congregation
when they help men to look beyond themselves to God and to the world which is
the object of his love.
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3. Baptism
By humble submission to John's baptism Christ joined himself
to men in their need and entered upon his ministry of reconciliation in the
power of the Spirit. Christian baptism marks the receiving of the same Spirit by
all his people. Baptism with water represents not only cleansing brom sin but a
dying with Christ and a joyful rising with him to new life. It commits all
Christians to die each day to sin and to live for righteousness. In baptism the
church celebrates the renewal of the covenant with which God has bound his
people to himself. By baptism individuals are publicly received into the church
to share in its life and ministry, and the church becomes responsible for their
training and support in Christian discipleship. When those baptized are infants
the congregation, as well as the parents, has a special obligation to nurture
them in the Christian life, leading them to make, by a public profession, a
personal response to the love of God shown forth in their baptism.
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4. The Lord's Supper
The Lord's Supper is a celebration of the reconciliation of
men with God and with one another, in which they joyfully eat and drink together
at the table of their Savior. Jesus Christ gave his church this remembrance of
his dying for sinful men so that by participation in it they have communion with
him and with all who shall be gathered to him. Partaking in him as they eat the
bread and drink the wine in accordance with Christ's appointment, they receive
from the risen and living Lord the benefits of his death and resurrection. They
rejoice in the foretast of the kingdom which he will bring to consumation at his
promised coming, and go out from the Lord's Table with courage and hope for the
service to which he has called them.
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III. The Fulfillment of Reconciliation
God's redeeming work in Jesus Christ embraces the whole of
man's life; social and cultural, economic and political, scientific and
technological, individual and corporate. It includes man's natural environment
as exploited and despoiled by sin. It is the will of God that his purpose for
human life shall be fulfilled under the rule of Christ and all evil be banished
from his creation.
Biblical visions and images of the rule of Christ such as a
heavenly city, a father's house, a new heaven and earth, a marriage feast, and
an unending day culminate in the image of the kingdom. The kingdom represents
the triumph of God over all that resists his will and disrupts his creation.
Already God's reign is present as a ferment in the world, stirring hope in men
and preparing the world to receive its ultimate judgment and redemption.
With an urgency born of this hope the church applies itself to
present tasks and strives for a better world. It does not identify limited
progress with the kingdom of God on earth, nor does it despair in the face of
disappointment and defeat. In steadfast hope the church looks beyond all partial
achievement to the final triumph of God.
"Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to
do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, to him be glory in the church
and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen."
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