SHOALHAVEN GOSPEL CHURCH
Nowra, New South Wales – Australia
Here We Stand
We seek to uphold, explain, promote and preach the message of God’s free grace in Christ and the absolute necessity of divine power to initiate, apply and secure the salvation of sinners. We do not look to man to save himself for we know he cannot. We do not appeal to men to save themselves for we know they cannot. We believe God’s grace alone can save a soul, and we try to say it clearly.
This means we have no time for the teaching that man has a freewill with which to accept or reject God’s offer of salvation. We do not believe God has saving love for everyone, nor a will to save everyone. We do not hold there is grace from God for everyone. The nature of our sovereign almighty God and the existence of hell and judgment preclude such ideas. We do not believe the Lord Jesus Christ died for everyone on the cross nor that His death was ever intended to redeem and atone for any but those called in scripture God’s elect from every nation, from before the foundation of the world.
We believe all men and women have sinned and are enemies of God by nature. We believe, nevertheless, God the Father in eternity chose a people to justify and recover from their lost state. We believe the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, came into the world to save those chosen individuals and effectually did so by His death on the cross. We believe God the Holy Spirit quickens and converts those for whom Christ shed His blood through the preaching of saving grace and divine mercy in the gospel. We believe, once saved, those blessed individuals never will be, never can be, lost and will most certainly spend eternity in heaven in the presence and company of their God and Saviour.
We believe God in His three persons has done everything necessary for the salvation of His chosen people and there remains nothing for them to do. Beyond Christ’s sacrifice there are no works of obedience required, either to make the elect eligible for salvation, or to enable them to keep their salvation. Grace is not of works, otherwise grace is no more grace. Everything necessary for salvation is a good gift, a perfect gift and it comes from the sovereign God.
These beliefs separate us from a large part of today’s Christian church who seem neither to understand the nature of God nor the nature of man. They preach of common grace flowing from universal love, and of a frustrated desire on God’s part to save everyone. They believe Christ’s blood redeemed everyone but fails actually to save anyone. They believe in a Holy Spirit who courts the wicked with offers of mercy, but ultimately bows to man’s will and withdraws defeated. We have no sympathy with this message and we can have no fellowship with its promoters.
The essence of the gospel is good news. Good because salvation is a sovereign work of grace. Good because the Lord Jesus Christ actually achieved and accomplished all our peace with God as our substitute on the cross. Good because no part of our deliverance is dependent upon our weak, wayward flesh. This is where we stand. This is what we believe. This is the heart of our message. This is the Gospel of Sovereign Grace.