About me and my house:
I believe that the Scriptures teach that God has promised to be Savior and Lord to me and to my family, which is why I believe that the doctrines of covenant succession and infant baptism are thoroughly Biblical. I am convinced that these doctrines, when rightly understood, teach profound truths that are widely unknown or misunderstood by the church today, which is why I desire to encourage and challenge the people of God to search (Acts 17:11), test (1Cor. 4:6), and believe (Mark 9:24) the Scriptures.
I believe God's people are covenantally obligated and accountable to each other and therefore have the right to know whether another brother (or sister) is in good standing with a local church. My family and I are currently members of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (RPC) in Elk Grove, California. RPC is a member of the Covenant Presbyterian Church (CPC) denomination.
First things first. I believe the Bible teaches that salvation is based solely on the complete righteousness and work of Christ Jesus. (Rom. 3:24-26; 4:25; 5:15-21) I believe that salvation is by God's grace through [our] faith, which is a complete and unmerited gift from God. (Rom. 5:18; 2Cor. 5:19, 21; Eph. 2:8) I believe that faith, if it is true, will be exhibited by God's truth (faithfulness) in our lives (1 Thess. 2:13), by the love we have for Him and one another, and by our desire to live by His Spirit, and in our liberty, obey His perfect law (Rom. 1:5, 16:26), which always works in love. (Gal. 5:6, 16, 25; James 1:25; Rom. 8:4, 28; Matt. 5; Psalm 19:7)
And, of God's gracious covenant with his people, I agree with the words of John Calvin when he said, "He [God] regards it as the highest insult for the wicked to boast of His covenant while profaning His sacred Name by their whole lives." — John Calvin (Institutes of the Christian Religion)
My Covenant Household:
I am a husband to the love of my life and a father to seven children. By God's grace we believe and depend on God's covenant promise to be our God (Jer. 31:31-34), for which we praise Him, thank Him, and worship Him. I believe that our Father in heaven has extended His covenant-kindness to us in the same way that King David did with Mephibosheth (2Sam 9). We have become beneficiaries in the fulfillment of God's gracious and everlasting covenant based on absolutely nothing that we have said or done. (Zech. 9:11; Heb. 13:20)
My family is a family by adoption, so just as my children were chosen to be adopted into a covenant household they have also become members of God's covenant community, who I trust have also been predestined and chosen for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ. (Jer. 31:31-34; Eph. 2:12-13, 1:4-5, 11; Rom. 8:29-30) God has not only graciously turned the disappointment of not being able to have biological children, he has blessed us beyond our imaginations and has given us the desires of our hearts. (1John 4:19; Psalm 37:4)
I again echo the words of the great reformer John Calvin, when I pray, "I humbly beg God to wash us and cleanse us with the blood of our great redeemer, so that we may all appear before His face bearing His likeness, for we have no other hope of salvation."
My Journey of Faith:
While listening to the testimony of a mother and father sharing the story of their young son's illness and eventual death, God showed me, while they were speaking, that their God was the one true and living God. God had graciously opened my eyes and granted me the precious gift of faith - giving me a new heart. God gave me the ability to know Him, to hear Him, to speak to Him, and to endeavor to obey Him.
During the early years of my Christian life, I primarily learned God's word through a dispensational, arminian and antinomian viewpoint (or hermeneutic). However, my wife and I now believe the historic or Reformed covenantal perspective of God's word. We now know that we did not choose God, He actually knew us and choose us before He spoke the universe into existence. We have also learned that we are not Christian parents raising pagan children, we are a family in covenant with the one true God who are being set apart to live and worship the Lord our God with thankful hearts - for God has promised to be our God! We now all worship together, laboring with the saints to "bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ." My wife and I are privileged to raise up our covenant children in the church, in the discipline and instruction of the Lord where they are fed by Christ Himself. (Eph. 6:4) We worship and follow the Lord trusting that He who started a good work will finish it.
God's Covenant Truth:
Absolute, eternal and unchanging truth is found only in God's holy Word, the Bible, which is comprised of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. The Bible is the inspired, infallible, and inerrant truth of God, and as such, is the final standard and authority for all truth. God's word in Scripture is the standard for every area of life but it must be rightly understood and therefore should be tested (2Tim. 2:15, 3:16) The natural person, however, does not accept these truths because they are spiritually discerned. (1Cor. 2:14) As the Scriptures say, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." (Eph. 2:8)
I affirm the ancient historic Christian Creeds and the evangelical tenets of Protestantism, which include, the Apostles’ Creed (2nd century), the Nicean Creed (325 AD); the Definition of Chalcedon (451 AD), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563 AD), the Belgic Confession (1618 AD), the Canons of Dort (1618 AD), and the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646 AD), with a few exceptions and clarifications.
I now believe that when the fifteen Baptists' penned the First London Confession in 1644 as well as the "corrected and enlarged" Second Edition in 1646 (and subsequent third and fourth editions), and later when the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646 AD) was used as a base to produce the Second London Confession in 1689, they provided a few helpful clarifications. However, I believe, that many of their changes pertaining to the doctrines of soteriology (salvation), sacramentology (baptism and the Lord's supper) and ecclesiology (the church) were due to an unbiblical understanding of the eternal (everlasting) covenant of grace. This was due, in part, to a misunderstanding of the unity and continuity between the Old and New Testaments. I hold to the distinctive truths of the aforementioned reformational confessions, knowing that many faithful Christians have differed with portions of these confessions. However, I believe that these confessions faithfully represent Biblical truth, but I do not wish to divide with believers who differ, but rather to confess what I believe the Scriptures teach.
I believe in what is known as a partial-preterist, theonomic, postmillennial view of the end of the world. In short, this is the view that most biblical prophecy was fulfilled in 70 AD (the generation that Jesus was talking to in Matthew 24) and that Christ’s kingdom will be victorious on earth in history; that the millennium “thousand years” relates to a time on earth in history, not to the events after the end of the world as we know it. This theological perspective teaches that Christ's Kingdom has been established and is becoming manifest, and will be fully manifest at his second coming.
My Prayer:
Thank You God for Your covenant promise to be my God and God to my children. And although the following quote came from a man who may not have confessed faith in You, I believe that it was You who ripened his mind to the following truth:
"Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face
until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; then we behold them,
and the time when we saw them not is like a dream." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dear reader, I pray that this site encourages you, but more importantly, I pray that God, if He has not already done so, ripens your mind and opens your heart to His truths and that He grants you faith to believe in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. To God's covenant people, I pray that you keep your gaze on Christ and depend on Him alone. For He alone is worthy of our praise! Amen.
May the Lord give you increase, you and your children – to a thousand generations!
In Christ,
Steven Ward
Thank you for visiting Covenant Succession .com
I believe God's people are covenantally obligated and accountable to each other and therefore have the right to know whether another brother (or sister) is in good standing with a local church. My family and I are currently members of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (RPC) in Elk Grove, California. RPC is a member of the Covenant Presbyterian Church (CPC) denomination.
First things first. I believe the Bible teaches that salvation is based solely on the complete righteousness and work of Christ Jesus. (Rom. 3:24-26; 4:25; 5:15-21) I believe that salvation is by God's grace through [our] faith, which is a complete and unmerited gift from God. (Rom. 5:18; 2Cor. 5:19, 21; Eph. 2:8) I believe that faith, if it is true, will be exhibited by God's truth (faithfulness) in our lives (1 Thess. 2:13), by the love we have for Him and one another, and by our desire to live by His Spirit, and in our liberty, obey His perfect law (Rom. 1:5, 16:26), which always works in love. (Gal. 5:6, 16, 25; James 1:25; Rom. 8:4, 28; Matt. 5; Psalm 19:7)
And, of God's gracious covenant with his people, I agree with the words of John Calvin when he said, "He [God] regards it as the highest insult for the wicked to boast of His covenant while profaning His sacred Name by their whole lives." — John Calvin (Institutes of the Christian Religion)
My Covenant Household:
I am a husband to the love of my life and a father to seven children. By God's grace we believe and depend on God's covenant promise to be our God (Jer. 31:31-34), for which we praise Him, thank Him, and worship Him. I believe that our Father in heaven has extended His covenant-kindness to us in the same way that King David did with Mephibosheth (2Sam 9). We have become beneficiaries in the fulfillment of God's gracious and everlasting covenant based on absolutely nothing that we have said or done. (Zech. 9:11; Heb. 13:20)
My family is a family by adoption, so just as my children were chosen to be adopted into a covenant household they have also become members of God's covenant community, who I trust have also been predestined and chosen for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ. (Jer. 31:31-34; Eph. 2:12-13, 1:4-5, 11; Rom. 8:29-30) God has not only graciously turned the disappointment of not being able to have biological children, he has blessed us beyond our imaginations and has given us the desires of our hearts. (1John 4:19; Psalm 37:4)
I again echo the words of the great reformer John Calvin, when I pray, "I humbly beg God to wash us and cleanse us with the blood of our great redeemer, so that we may all appear before His face bearing His likeness, for we have no other hope of salvation."
My Journey of Faith:
While listening to the testimony of a mother and father sharing the story of their young son's illness and eventual death, God showed me, while they were speaking, that their God was the one true and living God. God had graciously opened my eyes and granted me the precious gift of faith - giving me a new heart. God gave me the ability to know Him, to hear Him, to speak to Him, and to endeavor to obey Him.
During the early years of my Christian life, I primarily learned God's word through a dispensational, arminian and antinomian viewpoint (or hermeneutic). However, my wife and I now believe the historic or Reformed covenantal perspective of God's word. We now know that we did not choose God, He actually knew us and choose us before He spoke the universe into existence. We have also learned that we are not Christian parents raising pagan children, we are a family in covenant with the one true God who are being set apart to live and worship the Lord our God with thankful hearts - for God has promised to be our God! We now all worship together, laboring with the saints to "bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ." My wife and I are privileged to raise up our covenant children in the church, in the discipline and instruction of the Lord where they are fed by Christ Himself. (Eph. 6:4) We worship and follow the Lord trusting that He who started a good work will finish it.
God's Covenant Truth:
Absolute, eternal and unchanging truth is found only in God's holy Word, the Bible, which is comprised of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. The Bible is the inspired, infallible, and inerrant truth of God, and as such, is the final standard and authority for all truth. God's word in Scripture is the standard for every area of life but it must be rightly understood and therefore should be tested (2Tim. 2:15, 3:16) The natural person, however, does not accept these truths because they are spiritually discerned. (1Cor. 2:14) As the Scriptures say, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." (Eph. 2:8)
I affirm the ancient historic Christian Creeds and the evangelical tenets of Protestantism, which include, the Apostles’ Creed (2nd century), the Nicean Creed (325 AD); the Definition of Chalcedon (451 AD), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563 AD), the Belgic Confession (1618 AD), the Canons of Dort (1618 AD), and the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646 AD), with a few exceptions and clarifications.
I now believe that when the fifteen Baptists' penned the First London Confession in 1644 as well as the "corrected and enlarged" Second Edition in 1646 (and subsequent third and fourth editions), and later when the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646 AD) was used as a base to produce the Second London Confession in 1689, they provided a few helpful clarifications. However, I believe, that many of their changes pertaining to the doctrines of soteriology (salvation), sacramentology (baptism and the Lord's supper) and ecclesiology (the church) were due to an unbiblical understanding of the eternal (everlasting) covenant of grace. This was due, in part, to a misunderstanding of the unity and continuity between the Old and New Testaments. I hold to the distinctive truths of the aforementioned reformational confessions, knowing that many faithful Christians have differed with portions of these confessions. However, I believe that these confessions faithfully represent Biblical truth, but I do not wish to divide with believers who differ, but rather to confess what I believe the Scriptures teach.
I believe in what is known as a partial-preterist, theonomic, postmillennial view of the end of the world. In short, this is the view that most biblical prophecy was fulfilled in 70 AD (the generation that Jesus was talking to in Matthew 24) and that Christ’s kingdom will be victorious on earth in history; that the millennium “thousand years” relates to a time on earth in history, not to the events after the end of the world as we know it. This theological perspective teaches that Christ's Kingdom has been established and is becoming manifest, and will be fully manifest at his second coming.
My Prayer:
Thank You God for Your covenant promise to be my God and God to my children. And although the following quote came from a man who may not have confessed faith in You, I believe that it was You who ripened his mind to the following truth:
"Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face
until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened; then we behold them,
and the time when we saw them not is like a dream." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dear reader, I pray that this site encourages you, but more importantly, I pray that God, if He has not already done so, ripens your mind and opens your heart to His truths and that He grants you faith to believe in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. To God's covenant people, I pray that you keep your gaze on Christ and depend on Him alone. For He alone is worthy of our praise! Amen.
May the Lord give you increase, you and your children – to a thousand generations!
In Christ,
Steven Ward
Thank you for visiting Covenant Succession .com
Sola gratia | Sola fide | Solus Christus | Soli Deo gloria | Sola scriptura