Category Archives: Heidelberg Catechism
I Belong
As human beings, it is normal to crave that sense of belonging. We feel comfort in the knowledge that there are people with whom we identify that will claim us as their own and who will not leave us utterly alone. Of course, on the most basic level, this ought to be found in one’s family, though with so many dysfunctional and broken families in our world, people often have to look elsewhere. In principle, too, this ought to be found in the church, but again, churches are made up of fallen and sinful people who sometimes fall into a group of cliques. For much of my adolescence and into my adult years, belonging was found in a small group of friends. Yet, for many youth in America, this need for belonging finds its expression in destructive and violent forms like gangs, secret societies, and the like. This drive to belong to a group is so profound and cross-cultural that the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, referred to mankind as “the political animal” (people deriving their identity from life in the city).
The Heidelberg Catechism, question 1, presents another response to the matter of belonging. It asks, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” — in other words, if we draw comfort from our sense of belonging…to whom do we belong? The first part of the answer is, “That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”
In other words, while your friends will fail you and your church will fail you, while even your friends will fail you, there is one who will never fail you. And the one who will never fail or abandon you is the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we are believers, we belong to him body and soul, in life and in death.
With this, though, comes an important reality. You see, belonging to Christ is not quite the same as belonging to a group of friends or to a civic organization. With a civic organization, one picks and chooses in what they will participate; with a group of friends, sometimes the bond of friendship is conditional or just for a season. When it comes to belonging to Christ, it is permanent and Christ has the right and power to make demands on your life. It is not a voluntary association, but it is a bondage akin to slavery. In fact, that is what the Apostle Paul calls his relationship with Christ (Romans 1:1; 1 Corinthians 7:22-23; Galatians 1:10; Ephesians 6:6).
Many people struggle with the idea that the Christian is a slave to Christ, but as Paul points out in 1 Corinthians (above), we were bought at a price. But think about it this way, we never were truly free in an autonomous sort of way. We were born as slaves to sin (John 8:34). Paul goes further than that and says that you are slaves to the one whom you obey (Romans 6:16) and the author of Hebrews makes it very clear that Jesus delivered us from our lifelong slavery (Hebrews 2:15). So, we can think of it this way…we were born into this world as slaves to sin but Christ bought his elect, making us slaves to himself. Absolute and autonomous freedom is a myth. The real question is not whether you are a slave, but “to whom do you submit your obedience?”
The irony of it all is that if you submit your obedience to Christ, you will find true freedom — not autonomous freedom, but freedom to a God who will lead you down a path that will offer true and eternal satisfaction and joy. In the Old Testament, slaves who had served a truly benevolent master could choose to remain his slave rather than to be set free (see Exodus 21:1-6). This is the kind of relationship we have with Christ as our benevolent master. Yes, that means he can make demands on our lives. Yes, that means he will command us to do things and go places that will stretch us out of our comfort zones. Yes, that means sometimes he will call us to sacrifice our earthly lives for the building of His kingdom. And yes, that also means there will be times when the cost of being Christ’s disciple will be greater than you can dream. Nevertheless, across the scope of eternity, despite the costs that might be experienced on earth, in Christ there is eternal joy…and in that, Heidelberg reminds us, we will find our true comfort.
And by the way, in light of this and what Paul is discussing in Romans 6, if you are not sacrificing to live for Christ, if you are living for yourself, or just playing lip-service to Jesus and then no being intentionally obedient to his Word…then you are still a slave and you are a slave to sin…repent and believe on the name of Jesus Christ.
Comfort
“Comfort, Comfort, my people, says your God.”
Isaiah 40:1
So, what is comfort and why is it important? The Hebrew word that Isaiah uses is נחם (nacham), which means “to ease one’s regrets or griefs.” When the Hebrew scribes translated this passage into Greek, they translated נחם (nacham) as παρακαλέω (parakaleo), which means “to encourage, to treat with care and hospitality, or simply to call out to someone — to exhort (which is an aspect of preaching). When Jerome translated this into Latin, he used the term consolor, which means “to console or to lighten someone’s spirit.” By the time Wycliffe was translating this text, he chose to use the word, “comfort,” which comes from the Latin root, comfortis, which means “to forcefully strengthen.”
The Heidelberg Catechism begins by speaking of the only “comfort” for the Christian in life and in death — the word which Ursinus and Olevianus (Heidelberg’s principle authors) chose here in the original German was trost, again, a word that means to comfort or console and the word that Luther used to translate this passage in Isaiah. Yet, this first question to the catechism assumes that comfort is something that Christians both want and need, which brings us back to the question, why is it important?
While the question needs to be asked, lest we be unclear as to the “why,” it ought to be rather obvious to the Christian as to why we need comfort in this world. It is a world that is fallen, a world that is marked by sin, and it is a world that is filled with death and decay. And, as we grow older and mature every day, our bodies weaken and grow more frail; disease wreaks havoc on young and old and the wicked in this world seek to use the weak to gain power for themselves. While we have little stabs of joy in this life, how much more often do we need to face trial and discouragement. Hence, we need comfort — we need to be forcefully strengthened, we need to be consoled in our times of sorrow, and we need to have the weight of our grief lessened. That is why we need comfort and question 1 in the catechism will explore wherein we find that comfort as Christians. For now, though, it is important to be reminded that not only is comfort something that we need as God’s own, it is something that God desires and designs to give to us in his Son, Jesus Christ — hence the language of the prophet Isaiah who looks forward toward the coming of the suffering servant.
Seek your comfort in Christ, dear friends, and not in the decaying things of this world. Further, recognize that this world is not our home, so why would we ever think we can be contented here?
What Must a Christian Believe?
One of the debates that circulates around Christian church circles has to do with what that core body of information happens to be to which all Christians must assent. There are many who would say that the Apostles’ Creed stands as the most basic test of the Christian faith. Yet, I think that we would all agree that there are essentials to the faith that the Apostles’ Creed does not cover: the inspiration of Scripture, the dual nature of Christ, that we are justified by Grace through faith alone, etc… Further, most Mormons that I have interacted with will claim to affirm the Apostles’ Creed, though arguably there are differences by way of definition. So, while the Apostles’ Creed clearly provides a starting point, it is by no means able to stand on its own.
The Heidelberg Catechism addresses this very question prior to launching into a long exposition of the Apostles’ Creed. Question 22 asks: “What then must a Christian believe?” The answer is: “All that is promised to us in the Gospel, which are taught in summary in the articles of the universal Christian faith.” In other words, the Apostles’ Creed is at best a summary that needs clarification, thus questions 23-58 provide that clarification within the Heidelberg Catechism.
But what does it mean when it says, “All that is promised to us in the Gospel”? To answer that question, we must first address the question of what the Gospel is. Certainly, we use the word to refer to a variety of things. Our Bibles contain four books (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) that are explicitly referred to as “Gospels.” Further, when we speak to others about the “Gospel,” what we usually mean is explaining the basis of the Christian faith — man is a sinner in need of redeeming (and cannot redeem himself); Jesus, who had no sin and is the Son of God, came and died a substitutionary death for all who believe; so, repent and believe and you can share in this eternal promise…
Yet, on the most basic level, the word “Gospel” means “good news.” And where can this good news be found? It can only be found in the Bible. What is the good news? The good news is that though man is rebellious and fallen from the beginning, God had ordained a plan to redeem an elect people for himself through faith in His Son, Jesus. Where is that found? In the Bible. It is found in all of the Bible. The Old Testament lays the foundation for and prefigures the work of Christ in the New Testament, and the New Testament makes little sense unless rooted firmly in the Old. It is one complete book that contains and records the complete revelation of God. It is indispensable to the Christian faith…all of it. And thus, Heidelberg states unambiguously that we must believe all of the promises contained in he Gospel.
I think that it is high time, as a church, that we make a commitment to the doctrine of scriptural inerrancy the test of orthodoxy. Of course, that leaves a lot of people that we know, love, and care about in the cold. Then again, did Jesus not say that it is those who keep his commandments that love him (John 14:21)? Did Jesus not say that all authority in heaven and on earth is his (Matthew 28:18)? Does Moses not say that this Word was our very life (Deuteronomy 32:47) and that man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8:3)? Every word… And does not Peter point out that all things that pertain to life and godliness come to us through the knowledge of God (2 Peter 1:3)? And how shall we have knowledge of God apart from embracing the Scriptures? Without the Scriptures we could know nothing about the God we worship. And since men are not qualified to give counsel to God (Romans 11:33-36), of which part of Scripture can man say to God, “I do not need this”? No, it is all breathed out by God to equip us for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
So, what am I suggesting? I am suggesting that the test of orthodoxy be that the Scriptures are inspired by God in the original manuscripts (every word and letter — what is called “plenary inspiration”) and are thus inerrant (without error and without the possibility of error in what they teach) and are infallible (they will not fail the one who puts their trust in them). It is a commitment to the whole counsel of God that we must look to and our friends in the community who might believe otherwise may very well not be Christians as they are not being Christian as the Bible so presents.
Does this mean that we shut out as heretics everyone who disagrees with us? No. There are certainly areas of disagreement that take place within the orthodox church, areas where believers with a commitment to inerrancy have honest disagreements. Further, there may very well be some genuine believers who are being deluded into error by the false churches they attend. While in the first case, we can discuss and debate and not break fellowship, in the second case, we evangelize, we make an apologetic, and we try and sway those friends attending bad churches to seek out a church that upholds the Bible. It is by this manner that we add light and clarity to the muddled mess of our watered-down and politically correct church environment.
The Law of God
The longer I live the more things about the mindset of our culture just makes me scratch my head. When I was younger, we used to talk about “Things that make you go, Hmmm…” Today, I wonder if the phrase should be, “Things that make you go, huh?!?” And one of those things that I find a head-scratcher today is the way the Gospel has been redefined into something that it was never meant to be…at least if we have any sense of propriety to the Bible. And while it is true that this is not a new trend, it amazes me just how prevalent the idea is today.
Don’t misunderstand me, I do understand the context in which we live. The world is getting small, churches of pretty much every flavor exist on nearly every corner of America, yet overall, American church attendance is dropping. Buildings, also, are expensive. Old ones cost money to maintain and new ones cost money to build. There are also salaries to pay, activities to finance, and other costs that go along with doing business.
And so, churches behave like businesses, yes, and this is the first step down a path that leads away from fidelity to the Bible. How so? The purpose of a business is to make money and they do so by promoting their brand over the brand of others. So churches often enter into a kind of feeding frenzy, trying to grow by pulling members from one church into their own…typically by the programs and services that they have to offer. In addition, there is a phrase in business that goes: “The customer is always right.” That of course, is not true and few real businesses truly believe that sentiment, but it is still said. And, if you view church members as customers, your goal is to fill their needs and make them feel good about themselves, ready to go about the next week.
To do that, Law must be deemphasized. Why? Law makes us feel bad. It makes us feel guilty for the things we have done over the week. We’ve thought bad thoughts, we’ve coveted things that are not our own, we’ve even taken the Lord’s name in vain and have gone our own way on the Sabbath. People don’t want to be told they are sinners and deserving of the wrath of God. People want to be told that God forgives them anyway and that they should just keep doing their best and he will overlook the other stuff.
What’s wrong with a message like that? Well, apart from being entirely unbiblical, it belittles the Gospel. It’s a form of watered-down universalism. Why? Here’s the thing, if the bad news is that God is not happy with our sin, but that he will tolerate it anyway, do we really need him? No. The Gospel then is only about us feeling better about ourselves. And worship becomes a kind of “spiritual recharge” that kind of earns us the right to receive blessings from God (you never thought of the “prosperity gospel” as a works-righteousness movement, but it is — the more you do, the more you earn from God — that’s essentially their lie).
The problem is that God is not unhappy with us for our sin. God is enraged at our sin. It is outright rebellion and it always has been — going all of the way back to Adam and Eve (remember, they basically accused God of being a liar). The problem is that we stand in rebellion against God and deserve his wrath in the fires of Hell. Yep, that is far more serious than him just being unhappy with us…and no, he tolerates no sin in his presence (Isaiah 65:16; Habakkuk 1:13); he is light and in him is no darkness (1 John 1:5). And, as I have said repeatedly across the twenty-some years that I have been in the pulpit, and as many who have gone before me have said: “Until you come to terms with the greatness of your sin, you will never appreciate grace.”
So how do we come to terms with the greatness of our sin? That is essentially the question that is asked in the third question of the Heidelberg Catechism: “How do you know your misery?” We must indeed recognize that sin, whether small or great on human terms, brings misery to our souls. The answer is short and succinct: “The Law of God tells me.” In other words, until you let the Law weigh down your soul and nurture a sense of godly sorrow for your wicked state, grace will be nothing but a feel-good promise that eludes your life.
What then is the Law of God? Probably the best summary of it is found in the Ten Commandments — one law with ten interwoven parts. Heidelberg reminds us too of Jesus’ summary of the Ten Commandments, found in the command to Love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40). Yet, these are summaries (convicting summaries, indeed!), but the outworking and application of this moral law is found throughout the Scripture. Thus, no matter how well we know the summaries, every passage of scripture has the power to approach you and to convict your soul.
So, the message of the Gospel is not, God is displeased but he will forgive you anyway, just come and worship him. That would portray God as a kind of senile grandfather doting on his children. No, the Gospel is much more powerful than that. You are a rebel. You are guilty of breaking the Law of God both knowingly and unknowingly and thus deserve wrath and the eternal torment of the fires of Hell. That is rightfully yours. Yet, in spite of that, God has elected to save some — a remnant from humanity for himself — not because of who we are or because of something we have done, but because he has graciously chosen to do so. And that does not mean that our sins are excused if we are part of that remnant. No, nothing of the sort. Our sins are not excused, but the punishment for our sins was borne by another — God’s own sinless Son. He did for us what we could never have done for ourselves.
This, folks, is grace, but it only makes sense under the conviction of the Law. That means that the message of Sunday morning is not to make you feel better about yourselves. It is not to give you a spiritual recharge during the week. The message of Sunday morning is to convict you of your sins, to show you the mighty nature of our God in contrast to our lowliness, and to reveal the work of Christ that gives us hope, lowly worms that we are. We do not come to invoke God’s blessings on our lives, we come to submit to the Word — to be crushed under its weight even — and to be exhorted to live a life of gratitude on the basis of that knowledge. Anything short of that is another Gospel, and in the words of the Apostle Paul:
“But, even if we or an angel from heaven were to proclaim a gospel incompatible with the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have already told you, now I say again, if someone preaches something incompatible to what you have received, let him be accursed!”
(Galatians 1:8-9)
Christian Delight
Question ninety in the Heidelberg Catechism asks, “What is the birth of the new man?” In other words, it wants to know what it is that distinguishes the believer from the unbeliever…or more personally, what distinguishes your life today as a Christian from the way you lived before as a non-Christian. The answer to this question is both telling and convicting. It is simply that we take a “heartfelt joy” in the Lord. So, beloved, up front, does that describe you when it comes to your church attendance, your devotional time, your family worship, and your prayer? If it doesn’t, then you may need to reevaluate your priorities a bit.
Yet, in case we are unclear as to what “heartfelt joy” looks like in our lives, the question goes further. It describes heartfelt joy as taking delight in two things: living according to the will of God and doing good works. In English, “delight” means that we take pleasure in these things — that they satisfy our hearts.
But do we really “delight” in living according to the will of God? You know, this ties in with Jesus’ statement that “if you love me you will obey my commandments” (John 14:15). Is obedience to God something that satisfies our soul and brings pleasure to our lives or is it something we do out of some sort of legalistic obligation? Do we groan on Sunday morning when it comes to getting out of bed and contemplate whether we really need to go on a given morning? Or to we rejoice that Sunday morning has come and look forward to being in the House of the Lord on this day with God’s own? Do we look forward to our personal Bible reading and devotional time, protecting a block of time so that we can practice it undisturbed? Or is it something we do some of the time so long as the “urgent” matters of the day do not distract us? Does our sin create in us a genuine and heartfelt sorrow? Or, do we just brush off our sin as no big deal, figuring that “God will forgive me anyway.” And, if you fall into this category, you may want to read Deuteronomy 29:18-20 just to refresh your mind as to God’s view of those who think this.
And, do we really delight in good works? Perhaps that is one that weighs easier on our souls because we all enjoy those random acts of kindness that we sometimes do. But, wait, the next question in Heidelberg reminds us that Good Works have three characteristics: they are done in faith, according to the Law of God, and are done for God’s glory alone. If all three of these criteria are not met, a work that someone does, no matter how noble, is not truly “good.” So, if we get the credit for it…or if anyone but God gets the credit for it, it is not good. So, do we truly delight in such works as are defined here?
Psalm 37:4 reads this way:
“Delight in Yahweh and he will give you the petitions of your heart.”
Does this mean that God gives us anything we want when we ask him? No. Does that mean that if our heart is in the right place and we pray in faith, God will give us anything for which we desire? No. What it does say is that if we truly delight in God, then our desire will be for a deeper and deeper relationship with God, and that he will give to us. Our error (and especially the error of the so-called “prosperity gospel” and the “word faith” movements) is that we tend to focus on the outcome and ignore the command. We need to focus on the imperative command that we find at the beginning of the verse: “Delight in Yahweh!”
Think about it this way. If you delight in the Lord then you will desire for your life whatever the Lord desires for your life. And God places into your life what he sovereignly designs for your life because it is designed to conform you into the image of Christ (and is thus, for your good). Sometimes that “good” is hard to see when you are in the middle of the “slough of despond” or the “valley of the shadow of death,” but through your delight in the Lord, these things become your heart’s desire and you can embrace them with thankfulness.
Churches Forsaking God
“And they forsook Yahweh, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt. And they went after other gods, after the gods of the peoples which surrounded them and they bowed to them. And Yahweh was provoked to anger”
(Judges 2:12)
Do you know what it means to forsake something or someone? It means to make a decision to abandon something, to leave it behind intentionally and to renounce your relationship to or connection with that which you have forsaken. The bottom line is that when you forsake someone, they become as if they are dead to you with no grave-marker for remembrance. When you think this through, it ought to give you chills when you think of the people of God doing just that with the God of the heavens who has revealed his power through many works.
May I suggest, though, that anytime God’s people choose to compromise the Word of God, then they are guilty of the same thing. God has revealed himself in his word that we might know him, but oh how quickly entire churches back away from what God has plainly revealed about himself in favor of pleasing the culture and the “itching ears” of those who are listening. When churches reframe God in their own image, then they are just as guilty of forsaking God as these Israelites were. And in turn, their modern apostasy angers God no less than the apostasy of the Jews.
Recognize too, that this is not just a matter of our own personal devotion. What we believe about God is reflected in our witness about God to a fallen world. They are intertwined and inseparable. The Israelites understood this to the degree that they believed that their central creed (Deuteronomy 6:4) was their essential witness to the world. Yet, when we bear false witness against God, we essentially take God’s name in vain (notice that a traditional rabbinic practice is to divide the 10 Commandments in half — five and five — and show parallels between one and six, two and seven, three and eight, etc…). One might be angered if someone committed false witness against them; God pours out his wrath justly for doing so. The Heidelberg Catechism says of the Third Commandment that it is this sin with which God is most angry (Question 100).
The Preacher's Study 