“HGC IS A CHURCH HOME FOR ALL WHO WILL FOLLOW CHRIST – A PLACE TO GROW DEEPER, WALK WITH JESUS BEYOND TRADITION, & SERVE OTHERS AS HE SERVED US.”
YOUR WORD IS A LAMP FOR MY FEET AND A LIGHT TO MY PATH. PSALM 119:105
God’s Word reveals God’s mind, His thoughts, His wisdom, and His heart for us. Over time, church traditions and post‑biblical creeds have often taken the place of Scripture as the primary source of Christian belief. We hold that no tradition or creed carries the authority or trustworthiness of God’s Word. Today, believers have direct access to the Scriptures, and each person—guided by God—is responsible for seeking, understanding, and deciding their own faith through His revealed truth.
THE BIBLE ANSWERs THE GREAT QUESTIONS!
WHO IS GOD?
Why It’s Important – The true God is the single most important being in the universe. Without Him, neither humanity nor our world would exist. To know our Creator is the greatest privilege any person can have. But when we are unclear about who the One True God is, our faith becomes clouded. Clear understanding is essential for a clear faith.
There is only one who is truly God – He is the Father! He declares of Himself:
I am God, and there is no one else; I am God, and there is none like Me (Isaiah 46:9).
The Father is the only Creator. He declares that He alone is God and that He alone brought the heavens and the earth into existence. He Himself declares:
This says the LORD, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: “I am the LORD, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself (Isaiah 44:24).
To make anyone else God other than the Father, takes away from the glory that is His alone and transfers it to another! But He says:
For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for why should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another (Isaiah 48:11).
Why It’s Important – God has no God – Jesus has a God. As followers of Christ, we are called to serve the God whom Jesus himself serves.
Jesus declares that the Father is both his God and the God of his disciples:
Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” (John 20:17).
In the agony of the cross, he notably cried out, “My God, my God…” (Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34).
Even after being taken up into heaven, Jesus still has a God. He refers to his God in the Book of Revelation. Jesus said:
Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God (Revelation 3:2).
Shortly after, Jesus speaks of His God four times in a single verse:
He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God… I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God… which comes down out of heaven from my God… (Revelation 3:12).
His apostles affirm the same truth. Even after Jesus was taken up into heaven, Paul, Peter and John speak of the God of our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 15:6; 2 Corinthians 1:3; 11:31; Ephesians 1:3, 17; 1 Peter 1:3; Revelation 1:6).
WHO IS JESUS?
Why It’s Important – Jesus taught that knowing God—and knowing Him—is “eternal life.” These are the most important relationships a human being can have. But it’s hard to truly know someone when we’re confused about who they are. When we’re unclear about who Jesus is, our faith in Him becomes confused.
Jesus is clear and emphatic about the identification of God and of Himself. The Father is the only true God, and Jesus is the Christ, God’s Messiah. Praying to His Father, He said:
And this is eternal life, that they may know you Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (John 17:3).
The words of John 17:3 are Jesus’ own confession about God and about Himself. If we are to be loyal disciples of Jesus, we must make His confession our own. No church creed or doctrinal tradition – no matter how common – should ever take the place that Jesus’ own words hold. We must stand with Him in confessing that the Father alone is the only true God, and that Jesus is the Christ, God’s Messiah.
Why It’s Important – Knowing that Jesus is God’s only begotten Son matters because it is critical to understanding why he is uniquely loved by the Father. He is not merely a remarkable man – he is truly God’s own human Son. God really is this man’s Father.
Simon Peter confessed to Jesus, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus answered, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven” (Matthew 16:16–17).
Jesus never claimed to be God; rather, He affirmed that He is the Son of God. It is the “man” Jesus who is God’s Son. By a miraculous act of God, He was born of a virgin, and “for that reason” He truly is God’s human Son (Luke 1:35).
Adam was also “son of God” (Luke 3:38). He was uniquely created by God from the earth, without a mother. Jesus is the “last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45). God brought forth this Son by a miracle in a young woman – a virgin (Galatians 4:4).
Relying fully on God’s Spirit (Luke 4:1), Jesus withstood every temptation, lived a sinless life and obeyed God in all things. (John 8:29). Just as the man Adam brought death into the world through his disobedience, so the man Jesus brings life to us through His love and obedience to God. Paul explains it this way:
For just as through the disobedience of the one man (Adam) the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man (Jesus) the many will be made righteous (Romans 5:19).
God’s only begotten Son is God’s Christ – the Messiah. The word “Christ” refers to one who has been anointed for service to God and His people. In the New Testament, Jesus is called Christ around 550 times. God Himself anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit. As Peter explained to the Roman centurion Cornelius:
God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him (Acts 10:38).
The culmination of Peter’s great message on the day of Pentecost was this declaration:
God has made Jesus both Lord and Messiah (Acts 2:36).
Jesus is “Lord” because God has made him “Lord”. He is the “Christ,” because God made him “Christ.” Jesus is now Lord to all who obey him (Hebrews 5:9). He is God’s Christ forever (Hebrews 13:8).
The man Christ Jesus now serves forever as humanity’s one mediator with God:
For “there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).
WHAT ABOUT THE SPIRIT OF GOD?
Why It’s Important – Through His Spirit, the Father actively works in His creation and among His people. However, to turn the Father’s Spirit into another “person” distinct from the Father is to create confusion. It gives honor and glory that belong to our Father alone to an imagined other “person.”
The Spirit of God is not a separate person or entity from the Father. It is the Father’s own personal Spirit. Jesus said to His disciples:
When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak… For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you (Matthew 10:20).
When the “Holy Spirit” speaks, it is the voice of the Father that is heard. The Holy Spirit is the Father Himself in presence, touching and accomplishing His purposes in creation. God our Father is holy above all (I Samuel 2:2), and His Spirit is “the” Holy Spirit. Just as the spirit of a man is not a different person from that man, neither is the Spirit of the Father a different “person” from the Father.
Whatever is done by the Spirit of God is done by the Father Himself. It was by God’s Spirit that Jesus was begotten in the virgin Mary (Matthew 1:18, 20; Luke 1:35). Yet Jesus never speaks of a “person” called the Holy Spirit as being His Father. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus refers to God as “My Father” around sixty times—always directing attention and devotion toward the Father, Himself.
The Scriptures speak of “the hand of God” (1 Peter 5:6), but we do not think of the hand of God as though it were another person from the Father Himself. We do not address prayers to the “hand of God.” We pray to the One whose hand it is. Likewise, we do not pray to or thank God’s Spirit. We look to the One whose Spirit it is.
Jesus was “full of the Holy Spirit” (Luke 4:1). He overcame temptation and carried out His mighty works by the Spirit of God (Luke 4:17–21, Acts 10:38). Yet when He explains the source of those works, He tells His disciples that it is the Father in Him who is doing them: “The Father who dwells in Me does the works” (John 14:10).
Jesus never prays to a “person” called the Holy Spirit. He consistently prays to His Father, teaches His disciples to pray to the Father, and never once models prayer addressed to the Holy Spirit. Jesus is not recorded as even speaking to God’s Spirit. He notably taught His disciples:
Pray then in this way: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9).
In Luke 10:21, even when Jesus is “in the Holy Spirit” – rejoicing, moved, empowered – His prayer there is still addressed, “Father, Lord of heaven and earth.”
Jesus is our model for prayer and for addressing God. Yet He never prayed to the Holy Spirit, and never taught His disciples to do so. When modern ministers urge Christians to pray to the Spirit as a separate person, they are introducing something Jesus Himself did not practice. Jesus consistently directed prayer, worship, and devotion to the Father. So should we.
HOW CAN HUMAN BEINGS HAVE ETERNAL LIFE?
Why It’s Important – Yes! Eternal life is real. And human beings can have unending lives. From the beginning, the heart of Christ’s message and the foundation of original Christianity is this: our Creator has opened a way for human beings to live in peace with him – Forever! That “way” is not a philosophy or a system, but a person. – His human Son, Jesus.
Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
Jesus doesn’t just make a way for us to come to the Father; this man himself is the way to the Father. He doesn’t just have a plan by which we can have eternal life; he himself is the plan! Eternal life for mankind is found by coming into relationship with Christ Jesus. We as men come to belong to the man Jesus. This is life! Paul explains it this way:
For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But every man in his own order: Christ the first fruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming (1 Corinthians 15:21-23).
For just as through the disobedience of the one man (Adam) the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man (Jesus) the many will be made righteous (Romans 5:19).
It is by relationship with Jesus – coming to belong to Christ – to be “in Christ,” that we come to peace with God and to eternal life.
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God (Romans 5:1-2).
Jesus is the one of us who stands before God for all of us. He died for our sins and was buried, but God raised him from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). He lives forever – He will never die again (Romans 6:9–10). Now, the man Jesus Christ belongs to God and the key to all things for the rest of us as human beings is that we come to belong to Jesus (1 Corinthians 3:23). God has promised that all who belong to Christ will also be raised and given everlasting life with him.
“In Christ” our relationship is that God, himself, is indeed our Father and Jesus is our eldest brother whom God has made to be our Lord and Master. Jesus speaks of this when he talks to Mary at the time of his resurrection:
Jesus said to Mary, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” (John 20:17).
Jesus is the firstborn among many brothers in God’s new creation.
For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers (Romans 8:29).
It is Christ himself who in spirit calls us his brothers. Speaking to God he says:
“I will proclaim your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you” (Hebrews 2:12).
The Apostle Paul sums all of this up when he writes:
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57).
The reason it is crucial to be “in Christ” is that, when we belong to him, the amazing favor God has toward his true human Son Jesus flows over onto us. He will live forever. We who are his people will live forever with him.
God has great favor for his human Son Jesus Christ. On the Mount of Transfiguration God literally spoke from heaven and said of him:
This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him! (Matthew 17:5).
As God’s only begotten human Son, Jesus is unique and the one man whom God loved so greatly that he accepted his life as a ransom for the rest of us.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16).
Jesus did give his life for the rest of us. He did die for us. We do not find grace and peace with God by relying on our own wisdom or merit. Instead, we place our trust in the merit of another – the man Jesus.