What is your only comfort in life and in death?

Question 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism

What is your only comfort in life and in death?

Answer

That I am not my own, but belong – body and soul in life and in death – to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. (1-3)

He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. (4-5)

He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven in fact all things must work together for my salvation. (6-8)

Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him. (9-10)

(1) 1Co_6:19-20 (2) Rom_14:7-9. (3) 1Co_3:23; Tit_2:14. (4) 1Pe_1:18-19; 1Jo_1:7; 1Jo_2:2. (5) Joh_8:34-36; Heb_2:14-15; 1Jo_3:8. (6) Joh_6:39-40; Joh_10:27-30; 2Th_3:3; 1Pe_1:5. (7) Mat_10:29-31; Luk_21:16-18. (8) Rom_8:28. (9) Rom_8:15-16; 2Co_1:21-22; 2Co_5:5; Eph_1:13-14. (10) Rom_8:14.

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Be careful not to stand over doctrine

Sometimes as we consider a doctrine about God we study it, evaluate and form our opinions about it, almost standing in judgment over it. John Calvin diagnoses our error in the quote below.

… experience teaches us that we are inflated with too much self-confidence for we look down, as it were from on high, on that doctrine which ought, on the contrary, to be reverently adored by us.

Source: John Calvin while commenting on Zechariah 4:11-14

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Not embarrassed in heaven

We should strive to hold our beliefs with a charity and kindness that won’t embarrass us in heaven.

source: Joshua Harris, Dug Down Deep, p. 229.

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1689 Baptist Confession of Faith

Chapter 1: Of the Holy Scriptures

1. The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience, although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and his will which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord at sundry times and in divers manners to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his church; and afterward for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan, and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which maketh the Holy Scriptures to be most necessary, those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people being now ceased.

(2 Tim 3:15-17; Isa 8:20; Luk 16:29, Luk 16:31; Eph 2:20; Rom 1:19-21; Rom 2:14-15; Psa 19:1-3; Heb 1:1; Pro 22:19-21; Rom 15:4; 2 Pet 1:19-20)

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