What we believe.

We believe the Bible is the inspired, infallible, written Word of God. Every word in it is given by God Himself, and it is the final authority for everything we believe and how we live.

Because the Bible says it, that settles it for us. We do not lean on feelings, traditions, or modern opinions when those contradict what is written. We read it, study it, meditate on it, and shape our lives by it.

We believe in one God who eternally exists in three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each Person is fully God, each shares the same divine essence, and yet there are three.

God is good. He is faithful to His Word. He is the God of truth. What He says, He performs. What He promises, He fulfils.

We believe Jesus is the Son of God, fully God and fully Man. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life. He died on the cross for our sins, was buried, and rose again on the third day. He ascended to the right hand of the Father, where He intercedes for us today. He is coming again.

The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the centre of everything we preach. It is not one teaching among many for us. It is the foundation that holds every other teaching in place.

We believe salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. No one earns it by good works or religious effort. It is the free gift of God, received the moment a person believes in their heart and confesses with their mouth that Jesus is Lord.

When a person is saved, they are made completely new. The old life passes away. The new life begins.

We believe that the moment you are saved, your identity changes. You are no longer who you used to be. The Bible calls you a new creation in Christ. You are a child of God, an heir of God, the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, a temple of the Holy Spirit, blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places.

This is not what you become through years of effort. This is who you are the day you believe. The Christian life is learning to live from this identity, not towards it.

A lot of our teaching at TLLC centres on helping believers see and walk in who they truly are in Christ. We teach the books of Ephesians, Romans, and Colossians often, because these books open up this identity.

We believe in the Holy Spirit as the third Person of the Trinity, fully God, sent by the Father and the Son. He convicts the world of sin, draws people to Christ, fills believers, teaches us, comforts us, leads us, and empowers us for ministry.

We believe every believer should be filled with the Holy Spirit, and that this filling is continuous, not a one-time event. We are commanded to be being filled with the Spirit.

We believe the gifts of the Holy Spirit listed in 1 Corinthians 12 are for the Church today. They did not stop with the apostles. They are available to every believer for the building up of the Body of Christ and for ministry to the world.

We particularly believe in the gift of speaking in tongues. The Bible says that when a believer speaks in an unknown tongue, they edify themselves; they are built up. Tongues is also a doorway into the other gifts of the Spirit. We encourage every believer to receive and use this gift in their personal devotion and, with interpretation, in the gathering of the saints.

We are not embarrassed by the gifts of the Spirit. We do not hide them. We expect them to operate when we come together.

We believe the local church is God’s chosen instrument on the earth. It is the gathering of believers in a place, devoted to four things the early Church was devoted to: the apostles’ doctrine, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayers.

When we come together, we expect God to teach us through His Word, the Holy Spirit to have free course in our midst, and every believer to be edified. We do not gather out of habit; we gather because we cannot grow apart from one another.

We hold to the fivefold ministry of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, given by Christ Himself for the equipping of the saints and the building up of the Body until we all come to the unity of the faith.

We believe in continuing in the apostles’ doctrine. Paul, Peter, John, James, and the other apostles received the revelation of Christ and the mysteries of the gospel directly from the Lord. The letters they wrote to the early churches are the doctrine the Spirit gave them to pass on, and that doctrine is what we hold to today.

Any teaching that contradicts the apostles’ doctrine is, in the words of Paul, another gospel. We test every teaching by the Word.

We believe in confessing what God has said over our lives. The Greek word for confess in the New Testament is homologeo, which means to say the same thing as. When we confess God’s Word, we agree with what He has already said about us, our situation, and our future.

Speaking faith over our lives is not name-it-and-claim-it. It is the believer agreeing with God instead of agreeing with fear, sickness, lack, or the opinions of the world. We say what God says.

We believe the Christian life is a life of consecration to God, lived daily in prayer, in the Word, in worship, in fellowship with other believers, in obedience to the Spirit, and in service to others.

We are saved for good works. Our lives belong to God now, not to ourselves. Our time, our resources, our gifts are His.

We believe Jesus has given the Church a clear mandate: to make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything He has commanded. We take this commission as our own, in Abeokuta and beyond.

We believe eternal life is the very life of God Himself, given to every believer the moment they are born again. It is not only a future promise; it is a present reality. The Greek word is aionios zoe, the life of the age to come, given to us now.

We also believe in the literal return of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, and the new heavens and new earth. Those who have believed in Christ will be with Him forever. Those who reject Him will be eternally separated from Him.