The term \u201cReformed\u201d has its origins in the 16th\u00a0century.\u00a0During this period\u00a0a work of restoration was undertaken by God after many centuries of spiritual decline in the medieval church. Through men such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox and others, priority was\u00a0given to the faithful\u00a0proclamation of God’s Word.\u00a0Scripture once again became the regulating principle of doctrine and practice rather than superstition\u00a0or church tradition.\u00a0These men have become known as\u00a0\u2018The Reformers\u2019 and the result of their labours \u2018The Reformation\u2019.<\/p>\n
It is often asked what it is that constitutes a Reformed church. The following points provide a brief summary.<\/p>\n
Belief in a sovereign God
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By sovereignty\u00a0we mean that\u00a0God controls every detail\u00a0of the universe;\u00a0He has a purpose in\u00a0all things\u00a0in order to bring glory to Himself. The sovereignty of God by no means\u00a0violates the free choice of human beings nor does it diminish\u00a0human responsibility.<\/p>\n
Sufficiency of scripture
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God communicates to us through His Word, the Bible. We do not rely on extra-Biblical revelation such as dreams, visions or words of knowledge to guide us. God has in time past used such means and could continue to do so, however He has chosen\u00a0to reveal Himself and His purposes\u00a0through scripture.\u00a0By\u00a0the enabling of the Holy Spirit the scriptures are a light to our path and a lamp for our feet.<\/span><\/p>\n The doctrine of salvation The grace of God to save is sovereign and it is free. Salvation is accomplished according to God’s eternal and sovereign plan. Within this plan God commands all men everywhere to repent; He freely and sincerely offers salvation to all through Jesus Christ. For those who hear the Gospel and remain unsaved, it is because they refuse to believe, not because God is unwilling to save. Those who do believe are eternally secure receiving eternal life. <\/p>\n Reverent worship Most Reformed churches approach corporate worship according to God\u2019s holy character. As such He is worshiped in a way that is reverent and orderly (this however does not mean joyless!). It is popular today to equate worship with creativity and self-expression,\u00a0the Bible however doesn’t\u00a0describe worship in these terms.\u00a0The aim of our worship\u00a0is to bring\u00a0honour to God and to do this we are to worship\u00a0Him in Spirit and in truth.<\/p>\n Creeds and confessions While we maintain that the Bible is the only infallible rule for faith and practice we also acknowledge the importance of confessions and creeds. Many Christians find the use of these documents unnecessary and even uncharitable. This is unfortunate\u00a0because they provide an excellent\u00a0means of studying the Bible and\u00a0clarifying\u00a0doctrinal beliefs. The concept of confessional statements is actually found in scripture itself (see 1 Tim 3:16 as an example).<\/p>\n SDRBC uses the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith as a summary of belief.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The term \u201cReformed\u201d has its origins in the 16th\u00a0century.\u00a0During this period\u00a0a work of restoration was undertaken by God after many centuries of spiritual decline in the medieval church. Through men …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-56","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sdreformedbaptist.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sdreformedbaptist.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sdreformedbaptist.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sdreformedbaptist.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sdreformedbaptist.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/sdreformedbaptist.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4934,"href":"https:\/\/sdreformedbaptist.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/56\/revisions\/4934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sdreformedbaptist.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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