About New Life
What we Believe
As a member of the Evangelical Friends denomination - Eastern Region, we uphold and honor the statement of faith reflected in the 2025 edition of the Faith and Practice document which can be found here:
https://www.efcer.org/uploads/1/3/3/2/133267097/faith_and_practice_2025_edition.pdf
God
We believe in one eternal, omnipresent, unchanging, personal God; perfect in holiness, wisdom, love, power, and justice without preceding cause or beginning; creator and preserver of all things, visible and invisible.
He exists as one divine being and yet as a trinity of three distinct persons, identical, inseparable, and equal in divinity, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
God revealed Himself in the past in many and various ways, though supremely in the person of Jesus Christ. He continues to reveal Himself today through His creation, the Holy Scriptures, and the workings of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of people.
He alone is worthy of our worship, honor, praise and thanksgiving, now and forevermore.
Matthew 3:16-17 | Matthew 28:19-20 | Ephesians 2:18Jesus Christ
We believe that Jesus Christ, the word who was with God and was God is the only begotten son of God. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary and is the expressed image of the invisible God. He combines within himself both the divine nature of God and human nature in one perfect indivisible personality, the God-man.
He lived and suffered in the world to show the Way of Life. He was crucified and died as the atonement for the sins of the whole world, making the only provision whereby people can find forgiveness of sins and cleansing from all unrighteousness.
He died in our place? and was raised the third day for our justification; He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God, ever living as our only Mediator and High Priest making intercession for us, and from there will return again to receive His church unto Himself and to judge the world in righteousness.
Ephesians 1:3-5 | Romans 5:1-11 | Acts 12:4 | I Peter 1:18-19
Holy Spirit
humanity
We believe that Adam and Eve fell from this original state by a voluntary act of disobedience, thus suffering the immediate loss of a perfect relationship with God and making self the center of their lives. By this act, they suffered a spiritual death, and sin entered the world and death by sin, so that death passed upon all. The devastating effects of the fall extend to all areas of God’s created order, including our physical bodies, our relationships with others, and the cosmos.
We further believe that as a consequence of the fall, all people are born with a nature which is thoroughly sinful and not subject to the law of God, so that only through the operation of the grace of God can they repent and call upon him.
We believe that as image bearers of God, all human beings are of infinite and equal value, worthy of dignity and respect from conception through natural death. We reject all forms of racism and any philosophy that claims the inherent superiority of one group of people over others. We recognize and celebrate the great diversity of human ethnicities as we together reflect the image of God, affirming our biblical duty to seek justice for all people.
We believe that as a part of God’s good design for humankind, people are purposefully and immutably created as male or female. These two distinct genders together reflect the image and nature of God and are essential to God’s design for human flourishing. Consequently, God’s holy purposes in creation serve as the foundation for our identity as male or female in accordance with our biological sex at birth.
We believe that family is the basic unit of human relationship, and as such is also the foundational unit of society. From the beginning, God blessed and encouraged families, commanding Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. The Bible describes children as a gift to be received with joyful gratitude and to be lovingly dicipled in the ways of the Lord. The trinitarian family of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit demonstrates the unique bond of self-giving love and nurture that God intends to be shared with our own families.
We believe that those who are called to singleness within God’s family receive a good gift from God as seen in the life of Jesus and later affirmed by the apostle Paul. It is an opportunity for focused communion with God, increased opportunity for community with others, and service for God’s purposes.
We believe that God designed marriage for humanity.As first described in Genesis and later affirmed by Jesus, marriage is a God-ordained, covenant relationship between a biologically born male and a biologically born female. This lifelong, sexually exclusive relationship brings children into the world and thus sustains the stewardship of the earth. Biblical marriage — marked by faithfulness, sacrificial love and joy — displays the relationship with God and His people. We believe it is God’s intention that sexual relations occur only within the marriage covenant between one man (husband) and one woman (wife).
Genesis 1:26-27 | Romans 3:12-16 | Romans 5:12-13 | Ephesians 4 | Psalm 127 | Matthew 19
Scripture
We believe that all Scripture, both of the Old and New Testaments, is given by inspiration of God, without error in all that it affirms, and is the only infallible rule of faith and practice. It is fully authoritative and trustworthy, fully sufficient for all believers now and always, and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.
The declarations contained in scripture rest on the authority of God Himself, and there can be no appeal from them to any other authority whatsoever. They are the only divinely authorized record of the doctrines which we are bound as Christians to believe, and of the moral principles which are to regulate our behavior. Only such doctrines as are contained in the Scripture can be regarded as Articles of Faith. The Holy Spirit, who inspired the Scripture, must ever be its true interpreter. Whatever any person says or does which is contrary to the Scripture, though under profession of the guidance of the Spirit, must be reckoned and accounted a delusion.
The Scripture demands of believers complete obedience and is made increasingly open to those who study and obey it.
2 Tim. 3:16 | 1 Thessalonians 2:13 | Romans 1 | Psalm 119 | 2 Peter 1Salvation
We affirm the truth that salvation can only be found through faith in Jesus Christ. We believe that by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, through the direct and immediate agency of the Holy Spirit, persons may be reconciled to God and recovered from their fallen state through justification, regeneration, sanctification,and ultimately the resurrection of the body.
Justification: In response to sinners’ repentance, surrender of themselves, and sincere faith in the power and sufficiency of Jesus’ atoning death and shed blood,38 God pardons them from past sins and declares them righteous, not for anything they have done but because of the obedience and atoning death of Christ.
Regeneration: In response to sinners’ repentance, surrender of themselves, and sincere faith in the power and sufficiency of Jesus’ atoning death and shed blood, God also by His gracious power makes them new creatures.
By the Holy Spirit they are born again into the family of God to a new life of love to God and to people. Their minds are enlightened to understand His truth, and their wills are renewed to do His will, as He begins to conform them to His image. The evidence of this regeneration of the believer is the fruit of the Spirit.
Sanctification: We believe that children of God at the moment of their conversion do receive the Holy Spirit. As they trust in Him and obey His will, they manifest more and more of the fruit of the Spirit, conform more and more to the likeness of God, and thus are being continuously sanctified.
It is also the will of God that believers receive the fullness of the Spirit, which He will graciously grant in response to their full consecration to His will and their faith in Christ’s promises and in His atoning death. Sanctification is thus ma process in which the Holy Spirit continuously disciplines the believer into paths of holiness and an act in which He cleanses the heart from an imperfect relationship and state.
We further believe that the fullness of the Holy Spirit does not make believers incapable of choosing to sin, nor even from completely falling away from God, yet it so cleanses and empowers them as to enable them to have victory over sin, to endeavor fully to love God and people, and to witness to the living Christ.
Evangelical Friends believe that the security of the believer, even for eternity, is indicated in God’s Word and witnessed to by the Holy Spirit to the individual, but we do not hold this security to be unconditional. As repentance and faith are the human conditions of acceptance of God’s free offer of salvation, so faith manifested by obedience is necessary to continuance in that salvation.
Second Coming
We believe that Christ will visibly and bodily return to earth to judge the world and gather His Bride.
I Thessalonians 4:13-18 | Revelation 1:7
Church
We believe that the Church is Christ’s spiritual body on earth today. It consists of born-again believers with both universal and local expressions.
Matthew 16:18 | Acts 20:28
Heaven and Hell
We believe in the doctrines of eternal punishment for the lost and eternal bliss for the saved; hell for the unsaved and heaven for the saved.
John 14:1-3 | Revelation 20:11-15
Satan
We believe that Satan is a fallen, created being who operates as the “god of this world.” Alongside his organized company of demons, he actively opposes the Kingdom of God and seeks to harm and hinder believers. However, while his actions are real, Satan and his demonic forces were decisively defeated and overpowered through Christ’s victory on the cross.
Luke 10:17-20 | Colossians 2:13-15 | Ephesians 6:10-18
Sacraments
We believe that water baptism and the Lord’s Supper are sacred practices of the Church, and they should be observed regularly as expressions of faith and devotion.
Acts 2:38 | Romans 6:3-10 | 1 Corinthians 10:16-21