Olive Street Presbyterian Church is an evangelical congregation in the Reformed Biblical tradition. The one Triune God calls sinners to repentance and new life in Christ through the finished redemptive work of Jesus on the cross. Christ has conquered death and sin by His resurrection. He has ascended into Heaven and will come again to judge sinners and to save His people. Our task is to make, mobilize, and mature disciples to glorify God.

We subscribe to the historic Christian faith as taught in the inerrant and infallible Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and expressed in the historic Ecumenical Creeds, and the great creeds forged in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation:

The Westminster Larger Catechism
The Westminster Shorter Catechism

The Bible

We believe in the verbal, plenary divine inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy of the 66 books of the Bible, the only infallible and sufficient rule and authority for faith and practice.

God

We believe in one God, perfect in every aspect of His nature and character. In the unity of the Godhead there are three persons of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost: The Trinity, one God in three persons. We believe that God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass, yet God is not the author of sin, and man retains the ability to make choices in accordance with his nature and is morally responsible before God.

Mankind

We believe that God created human beings in His image. In the Garden of Eden, God entered into a covenant of works with Adam, promising him and his descendants after him eternal life on the basis of perfect obedience. Through the disobedience of Adam and our union with him, man inherits both the guilt of Adam’s sin, as well as a totally corrupted nature, making him dead in his trespasses and sin, alienated from God, and unable to respond savingly to God.

Jesus Christ

We believe that Jesus Christ is one person with two distinct natures, being truly God and truly man, perfect in nature, teaching, and obedience. We believe in His virgin birth; sinless life; miracles; and His substitutionary atonement on the cross whereby He paid the penalty for all of the sins of His people, securing and guaranteeing their salvation. We believe in His bodily resurrection from the dead; His bodily ascension into Heaven at the right hand of God the Father where He ever lives to make intercession for His people; and His personal return in glory to judge the living and the dead.

The Holy Spirit

We believe that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and giver of life. The Holy Spirit convicts people of sin and brings about spiritual regeneration by the Word of God, and indwells, empowers, comforts, leads, guides, teaches, and sanctifies believers.

Salvation

We believe that before time began, God chose in Christ unto salvation a multitude of hell deserving sinners on the basis of His free and sovereign grace alone, not on the basis of anything good in them or an act of foreseen faith, to the praise of His grace.

After the fall, God entered into a covenant of grace with man, whereby He offers salvation to all on the basis of His grace alone, through faith alone, in and by Jesus Christ alone, all to God’s glory alone.

By God’s grace, those who are born again by the Spirit freely repent and trust in Christ alone, and are justified before God, being forgiven of all their sins, and declared righteous only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to them. They are adopted into God’s family, enabled by God’s Spirit to die to sin and live unto righteousness, and by God’s grace will persevere to the end to live and reign with the Lord forever.

The Church

We believe that the universal, visible church on earth consists of all those throughout the world that profess the Gospel; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.

This universal, visible church is composed of many local/particular congregations throughout the world that are organized under the governance of elders, and that exhibit the marks of the true proclamation of the Word of God, the right administration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and the faithful exercise of church discipline.

The Scriptures thus require believers to be covenantly joined to a local expression of the visible body of Christ that they might worship the Lord in Spirit and in truth, receive the means of God’s grace for their growth in Christ, and discover and use their spiritual gifts to love and serve the body of Christ. (See this article for more on the necessity and importance of church membership)

Christ’s Return

We believe that the Kingdom of God came in the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, that it continues to expand by the ministry of the Holy Spirit through the Church, and that it will be consummated in the glorious, visible, and triumphant appearing of Christ. We believe that after Christ returns, He will bring about the ultimate defeat of Satan, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, and the eternal blessing of the righteous. The coming of Christ, at a time known only to God, demands constant expectancy and, as our blessed hope, motivates the believer to godly living, sacrificial service and energetic mission.

Affiliation

Olive Street Presbyterian Church is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).