As leaders in Christ’s church, we don’t get to establish our own guiding principles. But rather, we must do exactly what Christ commands. In this series, we will discover several hallmarks that Scripture defines as essential to being a biblical church.

On today’s program, Tom Pennington demonstrates from Scripture that all biblical churches must have a high view of God—and their philosophy of ministry must flow from that commitment.

For a church to be a biblical church, they must affirm that the Bible is God-breathed, it is sufficient, and it speaks authoritatively for all of life, including how churches should conduct themselves.

In order for a church to be both biblical and spiritually healthy, it’s essential they have a high view of God’s Word. In other words, they must treat the Bible with the utmost respect as they would God Himself.

The truth is that a biblical church understands and embraces what the Bible teaches about man: his nature, problems, and their solutions. While the culture continues to understand man through psychology and other philosophies, we, as Christians, must be committed to what the Bible says about man.

As Tom will show us in today’s study, a biblical understanding of man puts into perspective man’s condition before a holy God: He is a wretched sinner, one who has rebelled and sinned against a holy God and is thus unable to save himself.

Today we come to the fourth hallmark, and it’s how a biblical church intentionally structures church life to reflect what the Bible teaches. Friend, does your own church place a high priority on that? One that reflects what the Bible actually teaches?

According to the New Testament, it starts by regularly coming together for corporate worship on the Lord’s day, as well as regularly observing the ordinances of believer’s baptism and the Lord’s table, two ordinances that Scripture commands faithful churches to administer.

A church that does not hold to the biblical Jesus and the biblical gospel is not a true church. In today’s message, Pastor Tom explains why the gospel of Jesus Christ is one of the hallmarks of a biblical church.