We love the gospel at Cornerstone Bible Church.
We are convinced it is the most important message in the world because it comes from God. It is the means He uses to draw people into a relationship with Himself and it is the power of God for salvation.
And we need salvation.
We come into this world sinners and throughout our lives do a lot of sinning against God. This sin is serious. It deserves death. Every single one of us deserves to perish and experience the judgment of God, but God is loving and sent His Son Jesus into the world to provide a complete salvation for those who repent of their sins and put their faith in Him.1
This salvation is good news.
God has done through Jesus what we never could do for ourselves.
We need forgiveness and God has provided a sacrifice for sin through Jesus’ death on the cross.2 We need righteousness and God has provided a perfect righteousness through Jesus’ obedience.3 We need someone to defeat death for us and God has done just that through the resurrection of Jesus.4
And He’s going to do even more.
Throughout the Bible, God makes a lot of promises about the way He is going to reverse the consequences of man’s rebellion and establish a perfect kingdom where He is going to dwell with His people and pour out His blessing on them forever and the gospel tells us that Jesus is going to make that happen.
After living a perfect life, dying on the cross and rising from the dead, Jesus ascended to heaven where He is now sitting at the right hand of God working for the good of His people until the day He returns and defeats God’s enemies and rules over this world forever as God’s chosen representative. He is coming back to fulfill every single one of the promises God made in Scripture.
1 John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
2 2 Corinthians 5:19: “Through Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” Romans 8:1: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
3 Romans 5:19
4 1 Corinthians 15
For more resources about the gospel and God's story, please see this page.
This means in spite of all the terrible things we see all around us, there is hope, and the church exists to tell people about it. We are not a political organization or a social club. We are here to deliver a message about Jesus Christ and to show the difference that message makes in our lives and relationships.
Our church was planted on February 14th, 1999, by a small group of men and women deeply committed to exalting God, edifying the saints, evangelizing the lost. We exist to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that Jesus has commanded us.”
And at Cornerstone, we really don’t want that just to be a statement on our website.
We want to live that out.
Practically this means when you come to Cornerstone Bible Church, we pray it will be obvious that:
We put God first: Our main priority is not our comfort. Our main priority is not our agenda. Our main priority is God’s glory.
We rely on Jesus: We know we need a Savior and that Savior is not us. Our only hope comes from outside of us, from what God has done and will do through His Son Jesus. We have absolutely no hope apart from Him and we demonstrate that we believe that by relying completely on Him.
We constantly talk about the gospel: The gospel is the power of God for salvation. It is a message from God about what He has accomplished through Jesus; it is a message that has the power to save people from judgment, completely change their lives forever, and give them the hope of eternal life. One of our main jobs is to talk about that message with each other and to take that message out to a world that desperately needs to hear it.
We study the Bible: The Bible is literally the most important book in the entire world because it is the only book in the entire world inspired by God. As men wrote the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit caused them to say exactly what God wanted them to say. This means in the Bible, God speaks! But to benefit from what God says, we have to understand what the Scripture means, which is why we make a priority out of studying the Bible.
We work at being obedient: We are saved completely by grace. That’s good news. We want to shout it out. And part of the grace God shows in saving us is giving us the desire and ability to obey Him. However, we need help doing that—lots of help! One of the tools God has designed to help us change and mature is the local church. We gather together to learn how to obey, to be motivated to obey, and to help each other obey Jesus.
We prioritize relationships: The goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. The way the world knows we are Christians is by our love for one another. But unfortunately we are not always very good at that. Obeying the command to love our neighbor as ourselves is hard. That’s part of why we have the church. The church is a place where we are learning how to love others the way God loves us.
We partner together to serve others: Our lives don’t belong to us. We have been bought with a price. Jesus died for us so that He might make us a people zealous for good works. We partner together as a church family to help each other do as much good for God’s glory as we possibly can.
We live for eternity: This life right now is short, and we want to enjoy it and live it all out for God’s glory, but this life right now is not all we have. Jesus rose from the dead and so will we. Since we are going to live with Him forever, we want to help each other live for what is going to matter forever.
These are our values. These are also our goals. Though we have been radically changed by God, we are still in the process of changing. We are not as good at living this way as we wish, but that’s part of why we are so committed to the local church—they are a means God uses to help identify believers to the world and equip them to live differently in this world. We partner together to represent Jesus and help each other become more and more like Him.
Please go here for more information about our church.