What We Believe

The Winchester Cumberland Presbyterian Church belongs to the Cumberland Presbyterian Denomination. Below are a few of our core beliefs. These statements are taken from our Confession of Faith. To get the full Confession of Faith please follow the link below. https://cpcmc.org/cof/

We believe in the only true and living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; who is holy love, eternal, unchangeable in being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. God speaks through scriptures, the events of nature and history, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, but uniquely in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. God invites persons into a covenant relationship. 

God's words and actions in creation, providence, judgment and redemption are witnessed to in the scriptures of the Old and New Testament. God inspired persons to write the scriptures. The scriptures are the infallible rule of faith and practice, the authoritative guide for Christian living. God's word spoken in and through the scriptures should be understood in the light of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

God is the creator of all that is known and unknown. Among all forms of life, only human beings are created in God's own image. In the sight of God, male and female are created equal and complementary. To reflect the divine image is to worship, love, and serve God. 

Adam and Eve rejected their dependence on God and in willful disobedience, disrupted community with God, for which they had been created. As did Adam and Eve, all persons rebel against God, loose right relationship to God, and become slaves to sin and death. All people need to be saved by God's grace through Jesus Christ. 

God acts to heal the brokenness and alienation caused by sin and to restore the human family to community through the reconciliation effected in Jesus Christ. God acts to restore sinful persons. God's mighty act of reconciling love was accomplished in Jesus Christ, the divine Son who became flesh to be the means by which the sins of the world are forgiven. Jesus Christ willingly suffered sin and death for ever person. On the third day after being crucified, Christ was raised from he dead. 

There is only one, holy, universal, apostolic church. She is the body of Christ, who is her Head and Lord. The church, as the covenant community of believers who are redeemed, includes all people in all ages, past, present, and future, who respond in faith to God's covenant of grace, and all who are unable to respond, for reasons known to God, but who are saved by his grace. The church in the world never exists for herself alone, but to glorify God and work for reconciliation through Christ. 

Death is both a spiritual and physical reality. The church proclaims that in Jesus Christ, God acts to redeem persons from bondage to death both in spirit and body. Those who have been regenerated with Christ live with joyful and confident expectation that after death their redemption will be complete in the resurrection of the body.