What We Believe: The Faith of the Presbyterian Church (Who Are We?)

At Sligo Presbyterian Church, we're discussing what Presbyterians believe and how Presbyterian congregations govern themselves. During the series, we’re answering the following questions:

• Session 1 - Who are we?
• Session 2 - Who is God?
• Session 3 - Why did Christ come?
• Session 4 - What does the Holy Spirit do?
• Session 5 - How can we respond?

In our first session, we answered the question, "Who Are We?" A recording of the discussion and the passages used are below.

Ecclesiastes 9:1-3 [New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

All this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God; whether it is love or hate one does not know. Everything that confronts them is vanity, since the same fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to those who sacrifice and those who do not sacrifice. As are the good, so are the sinners; those who swear are like those who shun an oath. This is an evil in all that happens under the sun, that the same fate comes to everyone. Moreover, the hearts of humans are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.

John 6:44 [New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me, and I will raise that person up on the last day.

Romans 1:18-32 [New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those who by their injustice suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been seen and understood through the things God has made. So they are without excuse, for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. Their females exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the males, giving up natural intercourse with females, were consumed with their passionate desires for one another. Males committed shameless acts with males and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to an unfit mind and to do things that should not be done. They were filled with every kind of injustice, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die, yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.

Romans 3:9-12 [New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

What then? Are we any better off? No, not at all, for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, as it is written:

“There is no one who is righteous, not even one;

    there is no one who has understanding;

        there is no one who seeks God.

All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;

    there is no one who shows kindness;

        there is not even one.”

Romans 5:12 [New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned—

Romans 8:7-8 [New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed, it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.