Theology Matters

(Sorry for the audio; I had to use phone audio in the middle for about 10 minutes.)

Lesson 12: Questions  19 and 20

In Lesson 11 we considered the Fall itself. We saw that our first parents did not continue in the estate wherein they were created, but fell by sinning against God (Q16), defined sin as any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God (Q17), and saw that the particular sin of the Fall was their eating the forbidden fruit (Q18). That raises the next question naturally: did Adam’s first sin affect only himself, or did it bring the whole human race down with him? And if it did, what estate are we now in as fallen men and women?

Question 19: Who fell with Adam?

This question presses us into one of the most important and, for many people, one of the hardest doctrines in the catechism. Did all mankind fall in Adam’s first transgression? The catechism answers “yes”. Adam did not stand in Eden as a private individual only. He stood as the covenant head and representative of all his posterity. Therefore, when he sinned, we sinned in him and fell with him.

That language is not philosophical speculation. It is the Bible’s own way of teaching us how the human race is related to Adam. Notice first how the catechism begins: “The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself but for his posterity”. This takes us back to the Covenant of Works we considered earlier. Adam was not merely being tested as a private person. He was placed in a representative position. His obedience would have had federal consequences, and so did his disobedience. 

If he stood, his seed would stand in him. 

If he fell, his seed would fall in him.

This is exactly the logic of Romans 5:12, where Paul says, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned”. That last phrase is especially important. Paul does not say merely that all men imitate Adam. He says that all sinned. The point is not only that Adam opened a bad example before us, but that there is a real union between Adam and those whom he represented. His first transgression is reckoned to the race.

Paul develops that point further in Romans 5:15-19. Again and again he emphasizes the “one man”, the “one trespass”, and the “many”. 

[15] But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. [16] And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. [17] For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

That passage is decisive. Paul does not explain the entrance of sin and death into the world merely by saying that Adam influenced us badly. No, Adam represented us. One man’s disobedience made the many sinners. That is why the catechism says we “sinned in him, and fell with him”.

This doctrine often offends modern ears. We are deeply shaped by individualism. We instinctively think in terms of isolated persons, each standing or falling only for himself. But Scripture does not speak that way. God deals with men covenantally and representatively. We see that throughout the Bible. 

Kings represent nations. 

Priests represent the people. 

Above all, Adam and Christ stand as the two great covenant heads in redemptive history. 

If we reject the representative principle in Adam, we will have no stable ground for rejoicing in the representative obedience of Christ. As I said last week: 

If we do not have a real, historical Adam who stood in our place, then we do not have a real Savior Who can save us. Our understanding of salvation hinges on our understanding of Adam and the Fall.

That is one of the great pastoral uses of this doctrine. The same structure that troubles us in Adam is the structure that saves us in Christ. If it seems unfair that one man’s disobedience condemns all, what will we say when Scripture tells us that one Man’s obedience justifies many? Paul does not apologize for the parallel. He glories in it. 

Adam is the head of fallen humanity. 

Christ is the head of redeemed humanity. 

If there is no covenantal union with Adam, then the parallel with Christ unravels. But since God appointed a representative head at the beginning, it makes glorious sense that He would appoint a better Head in the gospel.

1 Corinthians 15:21-22 makes the same point in a slightly different way: “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” That phrase “in Adam” matters. It describes union. Men are not merely dying near Adam, after Adam, or like Adam. They die in Adam. 

He is the head of the old humanity, the humanity under sin and judgment. 

In a parallel way, believers live in Christ, united to Him by grace through faith.

The catechism adds one more important phrase: “all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation”. That qualification matters because it preserves the uniqueness of Christ. Every mere human being descended from Adam in the ordinary way fell in Adam. But Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He is truly man, yet not implicated in Adam’s guilt and corruption in the way we are. He is not another sinner needing rescue, but is the sinless Redeemer.

This doctrine also helps us answer a common mistake. People often say, “I am not judged for Adam’s sin; I am judged for my own.” There is a half-truth in that statement, but only a half-truth. It is certainly true that each of us adds our own actual sins to Adam’s first sin. No one will stand before God able to say, “Adam may have fallen, but I remained personally righteous.” We confirm Adam’s rebellion daily. But Scripture will not let us reduce our problem to imitation alone. We are not born morally neutral and then become sinners later. We are born into a fallen race under Adam’s headship.

That is why death reigns even where personal acts of conscious rebellion may not be identical in form to Adam’s. Romans 5 presses that very argument. Death’s universal reign is not accidental. It testifies to a universal connection to Adam’s guilt and fall. The cemetery is one of the great witnesses to the doctrine of original sin. Death reigns because Adam sinned, and in him the race fell.

This should humble us. We like to imagine ourselves as self-made moral agents who just need a little better guidance, a little more discipline, a little more education. But the catechism teaches us to reckon with something deeper. Our problem is not merely that we have made some bad choices as otherwise healthy souls. Our problem is that we belong, by nature, to a ruined humanity. We do not begin life standing where Adam once stood. We begin life east of Eden.

And yet, again, this doctrine is not given to drive us into despair. It is given to make the gospel make sense. Since our ruin is covenantal and representative, our rescue must be covenantal and representative as well. We do not need mere advice. We need a new Head. We need One Who will stand where we cannot stand, obey where Adam disobeyed, bear the judgment and wrath Adam brought upon us, and bring His redeemed people to obtain that which Adam lost.

Question 20: What are the effects of the Fall?

If Question 19 explains how Adam’s first transgression became ours, Question 20 tells us where that fall left us. What estate are we now in? The answer is brief and devastating: 

The Fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery.

That phrase, “an estate of sin and misery”, is worth sitting with. The catechism is not talking about a few bad experiences sprinkled into an otherwise healthy life. It is describing a condition, a state, an entire order of existence east of Eden. Fallen man is not merely inconvenienced. He is ruined. He is totally depraved. And that ruin has two inseparable dimensions: sin and misery.

An Estate of Sin

First, the Fall brought mankind into an estate of sin. That means we are not only guilty for Adam’s first transgression; we are also corrupted in our nature. The race did not merely incur a bad legal standing while remaining inwardly sound. The Fall twisted man at the root. The understanding is darkened, the will is bent, the affections are disordered, and the whole person is inclined away from God. We do not become sinners only when we commit our first conscious outward act of disobedience. We commit those acts because we are already sinners by nature.

Belief in a so-called “age of accountability” is common, but its roots are philosophical, not biblical.

Romans 5:12 sets the stage plainly: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned”. Sin entered the world through one man. Death entered through sin. The human condition after Adam is therefore inseparably moral and judicial. We sin because we are sinners, and the wages of sin is death.

This helps explain why the Bible does not speak of the natural man as “spiritually healthy but uninformed”. Scripture does not say we simply need better data. It says we need new birth. Why? Because the Fall brought us into an estate of sin. The problem is not superficial; it reaches to the heart.

In fact, it reaches to all of the faculties of human beings. As the 1689 Baptist Confession puts it:

From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.

This is Total Depravity; not that all humans are as evil as they could be, for we are not, due to God’s restraining common grace. Rather, it is the teaching that all (total) of man’s faculties are fallen (depravity). To put it another way, as Romans 8:8 says, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

An Estate of Misery

Second, the Fall brought mankind into an estate of misery. Misery is the fruit of sin. Always. Once man rebelled against God, the world could no longer remain as it had been. 

Shame entered. Fear entered. Alienation entered. Pain entered. 

Toil entered. Conflict entered. Death entered. 

The curse spread across the whole field of human existence.

The misery of this fallen estate includes bodily suffering, inward turmoil, broken relationships, frustration in labor, disease, decay, and death itself. The world as we now know it is marked by groaning. Families bury their dead. Bodies fail. Consciences accuse. Creation itself bears the marks of the curse. All of that belongs to this estate of misery.

But we should be careful here. Misery is not merely hardship in the abstract. It is misery under God’s judgment. The Fall did not only make life difficult. It placed man under righteous condemnation. Therefore, death matters in Romans 5. Death is not a natural process. It is judicial consequence.

Modern man often admits that the world is broken, but wants to explain that brokenness only in therapeutic, traumatic, or tragic terms. The catechism goes deeper. It teaches that man’s misery is rooted in man’s sin. Misery is not random. It is the bitter fruit of rebellion against God. And if we separate misery from sin, we will also separate healing from atonement. The deepest remedy for man’s misery must deal with man’s guilt and corruption.

At the same time, this doctrine should produce compassion as well as sobriety. Christians should be the last people to speak lightly about suffering. We know why the world groans. We know why death hurts. We know why human life so often feels heavy and fractured. Every funeral, every sob, every tear, and every broken thing reminds us that the world is not as it ought to be.

But the catechism does not leave us there. The darker the estate of misery, the brighter the Redeemer. Since the Fall has brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery, we need salvation to bring us out of that estate. Christ bears sin, bears curse, and tastes death so that He might deliver His people. The more honest we are about the estate of sin and misery, the more precious Christ becomes, which makes the following Scriptures all the sweeter:

[13] Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree” (Galatians 3:13, ESV)

Conclusion

Questions 19 and 20 hang closely together. 

As I said last week, these are hard truths, but they are necessary truths. They explain why sin is universal, death reigns, misery marks human life, and no human remedy can save us.

The catechism teaches us to stop thinking shallowly about our condition. 

We are not basically good people who have made a few mistakes. 

In Adam, we are fallen, guilty, corrupted, and miserable.

But the point is not to leave us staring only at Adam. The point is to prepare us to see Christ clearly. 

One man’s disobedience brought condemnation.

One Man’s obedience brings justification. 

In Adam all die; in Christ all live. 

The Fall brought us into an estate of sin and misery; 

the Redeemer can bring us into an estate of grace and salvation.

So as you go into this week, let these questions do two things in you:

In Adam as our covenant head, we fell.

In Christ as our covenant head, we stand.

Lesson 11: Questions  16, 17, and 18

In our last lesson we considered two truths that must be held together. 

Q14: God governs all His creatures and all their actions in His most holy, wise, and powerful providence. 

Q15: In the estate wherein man was created, God entered into a covenant of life with Adam, upon condition of perfect obedience, forbidding him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil upon pain of death. 

This lesson brings us to the next questions: the Fall, sin itself, and the sin of the Fall.

Question 16: Were our first parents faithful?

The answer is brief, but it is one of the great turning points in all Christian doctrine: no, they did not continue. They fell. Up to this point the catechism has taught us about God’s goodness in creation, man’s original uprightness, and the covenant arrangement in Eden. Now we are told that our first parents did not remain in that blessed state. They fell from it.

The catechism says they were “left to the freedom of their own will”. That phrase must be handled carefully. It does not mean Adam and Eve were outside God’s providence, nor does it mean they were independent of Him. It means their sin was voluntary. They were not forced into rebellion. God did not make them sin. He did not compel them against their will. They sinned willingly, and therefore they sinned truly.

That is exactly the point of Ecclesiastes 7:29: “See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.” The verse assigns the blame with clarity. God made man upright. What went wrong did not come from the Creator’s hand as evil. It came from the creature’s turning. Man was made straight, but man sought out crooked paths.

That matters because sinners are always looking for excuses. Ever since Eden, man has tried to move blame away from himself. We are happy to blame circumstances, pressure, weakness, upbringing, or other people. There can be partial truths in some of those explanations, but none of them removes guilt. The catechism will not allow us to blame God, and it will not allow us to hide behind circumstances. God made man upright. Man fell by sinning against God.

[6] So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. [7] Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. [8] And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. (Genesis 3:6-8, ESV)

Genesis 3:6-8 shows the shape of that fall. Eve saw, desired, took, and ate. Adam, who was with her, also ate. Then came the immediate consequences: shame, exposure, covering, and hiding. Sin did not raise them upward. It did not make them godlike. It stripped them. The first response of fallen man was not joy but shame, and not confession but concealment. As soon as sin entered, fellowship was broken and fear took its place.

Genesis 3:13 sharpens the point. When God asks the woman what she has done, she says, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” That statement includes a real element of truth, but it is still evasive. She was deceived, yes, but she also ate. The deception was the occasion; the eating was the act. She does not simply say, “I sinned.” Already the instinct to shift blame is at work.

This is part of what the Fall means. It means more than the first sin itself. It means the loss of original righteousness, the entrance of guilt and corruption, and the rupture of communion with God. It means that the world we know is not the world as God first made it. Shame, fear, alienation, and death are intruders. They belong to a fallen order, not to the goodness of creation as it came from God’s hand.

But before you judge Adam too harshly, remember that he was our perfect representative, both upright and pure. We often imagine that if we had been in Adam’s place, we would have done better. But the history of our own lives says otherwise. As Voddie Baucham put it, “if God had substituted you or anyone else for Adam, the fall would have still happened. It would have just happened faster. Maybe with more flair.” The pattern of Eden repeats itself in us constantly. We question God’s goodness, we treat His command as negotiable, we reach for what He has forbidden, and then we hide. The Fall is not only something that happened back then. It explains what we are by nature now.

At the same time, this question prepares the way for hope. If man truly fell, then man cannot restore himself. If the problem is not superficial but moral and spiritual, then the remedy must come from outside us. The catechism is not leading us into despair. It is laying the groundwork for the necessity of a Redeemer. But first, we must receive the bad news.

Question 17: What is sin?

Having told us that our first parents fell by sinning against God, the catechism now asks the obvious next question: what is sin? The answer it gives is short, but remarkably full. It tells us that sin includes both what we fail to be and what we actively do. It includes falling short and crossing the line. It includes omission and commission.

First, sin is any want of conformity (omission) unto the law of God. The older word “want” here means lack. Sin is not only doing what God forbids. It is also failing to be what God requires. That matters because many people think of sin only in outward terms. They think mainly of obvious acts: lies, theft, adultery, drunkenness, blasphemy. Those are certainly sins. But the catechism, reflecting the Scriptures, is wiser and deeper than that. It reminds us that sin also includes deficiency, inward crookedness, and falling short of the full obedience God deserves.

Where God’s law requires love, lack of love is sin. 

Where God’s law requires truth in the inward parts, inward falseness is sin. 

Where God’s law requires holiness, pride, envy, and unbelief are sin, even when “internal”. 

We do not have to commit scandalous public evil to be sinners. To fail to conform to the law of God entirely is itself sin. We often think of God’s Law as a list of “thou shalt not” commands, but:

[4] “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. [5] You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5, ESV)

Second, sin is any transgression (commission) of the law of God. This is sin in the more obvious sense: stepping over the boundary God has set. It is disobedience to a known command. This is the sense emphasized in 1 John 3:4: “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.” That is plain and direct. Sin is not merely unfortunate or unwise; it is lawlessness.

That word matters. It tells us that sin is not defined by personal preference, social trends, or cultural consensus. Sin is measured by the law of God. Yes, even under the New Covenant. What makes sin sinful is that it stands against His rule. The issue is not simply that a person has made a mess of his life, though sin certainly does that. The issue is that he has violated the authority of God.

Put those two halves together and you begin to see how searching this definition is. Sin covers what we should not do, but do. But it also covers what we should do, but do not. It covers wrong acts, but it also covers defective hearts. It covers open rebellion, but it also covers inward lack of conformity. The definition leaves us nowhere to hide.

That is one reason why modern man prefers softer vocabulary. We often hear people speak of mistakes, wounds, trauma, struggles, unhealthy patterns, or bad choices. Some of those words can describe aspects of real experience. But none of them is large enough to carry the full moral weight of sin. The Bible does not flatten sin into mere pain, nor does it reduce it to poor judgment. Sin is not merely “missing the mark”. Sin is lawlessness. It is want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.

This is also why sin is ultimately Godward. The law at stake is His law. To sin is not merely to malfunction. It is to offend the holy God. That is what makes forgiveness necessary, atonement necessary, and reconciliation necessary. 

If sin were merely ignorance, we would need instruction. 

If sin were merely weakness, we would need strengthening. 

But since sin is lawlessness before God, then we need pardon, cleansing, and righteousness.

And that is exactly what the catechism is doing here. It is not trying to crush us for the sake of crushing us. It is trying to teach us to speak truthfully about our condition. Until we understand what sin is, we will not understand why Christ had to come. A small view of sin will always produce a small view of grace. But when we see that sin is broad, deep, and Godward, then the gospel begins to appear as the glorious thing it truly is.

So this question should do two things in us. 

It is not enough to ask whether we avoided certain outward sins today. We must also ask whether we conformed entirely to what God requires. By that standard, every mouth is stopped.

Question 18: What was the sin of the Fall?

Now the catechism returns from the general definition of sin to the particular act by which the Fall entered history. The answer is striking in its simplicity: they ate the forbidden fruit. That may sound almost too simple. But the simplicity is part of the point. The Fall was not an abstraction. It was not a myth about human limitation. It was a real act of disobedience in space and time (~6,000 years ago).

Genesis 3:6 identifies that act. Eve took of the fruit and ate, and gave some to Adam, and he ate. The outward act was not complicated. But it was full of meaning. God had spoken clearly. He had set one boundary in the midst of abundance. Every other tree was freely given. This one tree was forbidden. The issue, then, was not the fruit as such. The issue was obedience to God’s Word.

That is important. The seriousness of the first sin is not measured by the apparent smallness of the act. Proud human reason looks at the eating of fruit and thinks, “surely the matter cannot be that serious.” But Scripture teaches us otherwise. The heinousness of a sin is measured not merely by the outward act, but by the God against Whom it is committed. Adam and Eve were not merely taking food. They were rejecting the authority of their Creator.

Genesis 3:12 shows how quickly this disobedience bore bitter fruit. Adam says, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” He admits the act, but he does not own the guilt plainly. He shifts blame toward the woman and, indirectly, even toward God. Sin had hardly entered the world before it began to distort human relationships and corrupt honest confession.

Genesis 3:16-17 shows the judicial consequences that followed. To the woman God speaks of multiplied pain in childbearing and sorrow in the marriage relation. To Adam He says, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it’, cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.” The result of that one act is not minor inconvenience. It is curse, sorrow, toil, disorder, and death.

That teaches us something we must never forget: sin is never small. We are tempted to think lightly of “little” acts of disobedience. But Eden teaches us that there is no little sin against a holy God. The first transgression was one act of eating, yet from it came misery for the whole race. That does not make God severe in the wrong sense. It reveals how glorious and holy He is, and how serious rebellion against Him really is.

This question also keeps before us the covenantal character of Adam’s sin. Adam did not stand merely as a private person. He stood as the federal, covenantal head of the human race. His obedience would have had public consequences, and so did his disobedience. That is why the catechism gives an entire question to this apparently simple act. The eating of the forbidden fruit is not an embarrassing detail to be hurried past. It is the hinge on which the history of man turns.

And here again, the catechism is preparing us for Christ. 

Since one man’s disobedience brought ruin, we need One Man’s obedience to bring life. 

Since Adam fell in paradise by disobedience, we need Christ to stand under trial by obedience. 

The doctrine of Adam’s first sin is not a distraction from the gospel. It is one of the things that makes the gospel intelligible. If we do not have a real, historical Adam who stood in our place, then we do not have a real Savior who can save us. Our understanding of salvation hinges on our understanding of Adam and the Fall.

We should also let this question search us personally. We are not standing before the same tree, but the root issue remains the same. Will we live by God’s Word, or will we decide that our judgment is better? Will we submit as creatures, or will we grasp at autonomy? Every temptation carries some echo of Eden. Sin still says that God’s boundary is too narrow, His warning too strict, and His gifts not enough.

Conclusion

These questions belong together.

These are hard truths, but they are necessary ones. They explain why the world is as it is, why we are as we are, and why salvation cannot come from man himself. The catechism is teaching us to tell the truth about sin so that we will be ready to hear the truth about grace. 

Since man fell, man needs rescue. 

Since sin is lawlessness, we need more than advice. 

Since Adam’s disobedience brought curse, only Christ’s obedience can bring blessing.

So as you go into this week, let these questions do their work. 

The first Adam brought ruin. 

The last Adam brings life.

Lesson 10: Questions  14 and 15

In our last questions we considered God’s work of creation and the creation of man. We saw that the world is not self-made but God-made, spoken into being by His word, and declared “very good” (Genesis 1:31). We also saw that mankind is not an accident or an animal with religious feelings, but God’s image bearer, created male and female with a real calling in the world (Genesis 1:26-28; Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24). Today we take the next step: once God creates, what does He do with His world, and what special relation did He establish with man in the garden?

Question 14: What is providence?

The word “providence” is not a mysterious religious label for coincidence. It is the Bible’s way of describing God’s active rule over the world He made. Remember Q11, “God executeth His decrees in the works of creation and providence.”

The catechism’s answer is carefully packed: it speaks of God’s character in providence (most holy, wise, powerful), it speaks of God’s action in providence (preserving and governing), and it stretches providence to its full scope (all His creatures, and all their actions).

1. Providence is “most holy”

We often begin with the harder questions: suffering, injustice, apparent randomness. The catechism begins with God’s holiness, because Scripture insists that God’s rule is never morally compromised. “The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works.” (Psalm 145:17) Notice the comprehensiveness: not only some of His ways, but “all his ways”. Not only some of His works, but “all His works”. That does not mean every event is pleasant or that every human decision is pure. It means God is never stained by the evil He permits and overrules. His providence is holy even if mysterious.

This is one of the main pastoral uses of the doctrine. When you cannot trace God’s hand, you can still trust God’s heart. But we should be precise: we are not trusting a vague benevolence. We are trusting the Holy One. Providence does not mean God shrugs at sin, or that He makes peace with wickedness. It means He rules over it without sharing in it. He remains righteous in all His ways.

2. Providence is “wise”

If holiness guards God’s character, wisdom guards God’s purpose. Providence is not raw power without plan. “This also comes from the Lord of hosts; he is wonderful in counsel and excellent in wisdom.” (Isaiah 28:29) The verse is striking because it places God’s wisdom in the realm of practical governance. God gives farmers skill and timing. He teaches them when to plow, when to sow, when to thresh. Isaiah’s point is that ordinary life is saturated with God’s wise ordering.

Psalm 104 celebrates the same truth on a cosmic scale: “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all” (Psalm 104:24). God’s wisdom is not only seen in the creation of things, but in their sustained “fitting-ness”: ecosystems, seasons, patterns of creaturely life, provision through ordinary means. The world holds together because the Creator is wise and continues to rule wisely.

Here is a challenge for our humility. We often think wisdom means we can explain everything. Scripture’s definition is different. God’s wisdom often surpasses our ability to comprehend it, but it never fails to be real. To humbly confess providence is not to claim you can decode every trial. It is to confess that God’s counsel, not untethered chaos, is at the center of the universe (Isaiah 28:29).

3. Providence is “powerful”

Wisdom without power would be admirable but ineffective. Power without wisdom would be terrifying. God’s providence is both. Hebrews 1:3 describes the Son as “upholding the universe by the word of his power.” That sentence should recalibrate how we picture the world. The universe is not a machine that God built and then left running on its own. It is upheld. Actively held up. Sustained. The continued existence of all things depends on the continuing will of God, expressed through the powerful word of the Son.

That means providence includes preservation. God preserves what He has made. Your next breath is not ultimately guaranteed by strong lungs or medical technology, but by the preserving hand of God. That fact is not meant to make us anxious, but humble and grateful. It also means that prayer is not an irrational interruption of the natural order. It is a creature speaking to the One Who upholds the natural order.

4. Providence “preserves and governs”

The catechism uses two verbs:

Psalm 103:19 is a clear statement of government: “The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.” Providence is not limited to the spiritual realm. God’s kingdom rules over all. There is no square inch of reality that is outside His authority, no creature too small, no ruler too powerful, no event too mundane.

But Scripture also insists that God’s governing reaches into details that we are tempted to dismiss as trivial. Jesus says, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.” (Matthew 10:29) Then He presses the point further: “Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” (Matthew 10:31) In context, Jesus is preparing His disciples for opposition. He is not offering a sentimental thought. He is grounding courage in providence. If the Father governs the fall of a sparrow, then persecution is not outside His notice. If the Father counts even the hairs of your head, then your life is not at the mercy of blind forces.

This is also where we need to be careful and seminary-level in our thinking. God’s providence does not erase creaturely action. The catechism says He preserves and governs “all His creatures, and all their actions.” That includes human actions, angelic actions, and the entire chain of causes in the world, top to bottom, beginning to end. Yet Scripture also holds human responsibility intact. God governs without violating the nature of His creatures. He can rule through secondary causes without being reduced to them. He can direct history without turning humans into puppets.

One helpful way to say it is this: God is the first cause, and creatures are real secondary causes. When I speak, my mouth truly moves, my mind truly chooses, my will truly acts. Yet none of those realities escape God’s government. Providence is not God doing everything instead of creatures. Providence is God governing everything through creatures, above creatures, and sometimes in spite of creatures, while remaining holy, wise, and powerful.

Summary

Question 15: What is the Covenant of Works?

This question narrows the lens. Providence is God’s government of all things, but God’s providence toward man in Eden had a particular form: covenant. The catechism calls it a “covenant of life”. Many theologians also call it the Covenant of Works. The label matters less than the substance. The substance is that God related to Adam not only as Creator to creature, but as King to covenant partner. God gave a clear command, attached a clear promise of life, and warned of a clear penalty.

1. When God had created man, He entered into a covenant of life with him

Genesis 2 presents Eden as more than a beautiful habitat. It is a holy temple setting where God speaks to man, assigns work, provides abundance, and then gives a specific command with a sanction. The covenantal shape appears in the elements: a God-given stipulation, a threat of judgment, and by implication a promised blessing of life.

Genesis 2:17 states the prohibition and the penalty: “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” God is not vague. He does not say, “Try to be good.” He gives a definite command, and He tells Adam exactly what disobedience will earn.

Why call this a covenant? Because Scripture later speaks of the principle at work: life is held out on the condition of obedience. Paul articulates the works principle plainly: “the one who does them shall live by them.” (Galatians 3:12) In context, Paul is contrasting law and faith as ways of justification. He is not saying the law is evil. He is saying the law, as a covenant principle, demands doing, and it offers life on that basis. That works principle is not invented at Sinai. It is rooted in creation, because Adam stood in a probationary arrangement: obey and live, disobey and die.

2. Upon condition of perfect obedience

The catechism is intentionally strict: perfect obedience. Not mostly. Not sincerely. Perfect. That is not harsh; it is simply the nature of God’s holiness and the nature of moral law. God does not grade on a curve. To obey God is to obey Him entirely.

This exposes one of the deepest temptations of fallen religion: to think that God’s standard is negotiable. We instinctively want to imagine that “good intentions” can substitute for obedience. But Eden teaches otherwise. The moment we picture God’s command as flexible, we have already started to drift from the God Who is most holy (Psalm 145:17). The demand of perfect obedience is the necessary backdrop for understanding both sin and grace. Until we feel the weight of “perfect”, we will not feel the wonder of Christ’s righteousness.

3. Forbidding him to eat … upon pain of death

Genesis 2:17 includes both prohibition and penalty. The tree was not poisonous. The act of eating was not biologically lethal. The death threatened is covenantal judgment: the judicial consequence of rebellion against God. “You shall surely die” means the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), because sin is treason against the Creator King.

Notice also the mercy hidden within the command. God’s prohibition is narrow. The permission is wide. Adam may eat of every other tree. God gives abundance and then places one boundary. The command is not a trap. It is a test of trust and allegiance. Will man live as a creature under God’s word, or will he grasp at autonomy?

And this sets up the whole storyline of Scripture. Adam’s failure will not merely be personal. He is the head of the human race. His obedience or disobedience has public, even universal, consequences. That is why the covenant is so important. If you do not see Adam as standing in a covenantal arrangement with real stakes, you will struggle to understand why Christ’s obedience matters so much. The gospel is not only that Christ dies for sinners. It is also that He obeys for sinners. Where Adam broke covenant, Christ fulfills it. Where the first man’s one act of transgression curses the entire human race, the last Adam’s one act of righteousness heals and restores and reconciles all who are in Him. 

Summary

Conclusion

Put Questions 14 and 15 together and you begin to see the catechism’s genius. God is not only the Creator; He is the Governor. His throne is established, His kingdom rules over all (Psalm 103:19), and even sparrows do not fall apart from the Father’s will (Matthew 10:29). That should make us steady. The world is not godless and your life is not meaningless. The universe is upheld by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:3), and He is righteous in all His ways (Psalm 145:17).

But providence is not abstract. In Eden, God’s providence toward man took the shape of covenant. He gave a command, attached the condition of perfect obedience, and warned of death for disobedience (Genesis 2:17). Paul later states the principle without apology: “the one who does them shall live by them.” (Galatians 3:12) That is not the gospel, but it is the necessary backdrop for the gospel. It tells us what God’s holiness requires and what we cannot produce in ourselves.

As you go into this week, I would encourage you to respond in two ways:

These truths prepare us for what comes next in the catechism: how man fell, what misery came by sin, and why we need a Redeemer Who not only dies, but obeys, in the place of His people. 

Guest Speaker: Tadd Smoak

Why Creeds & Confessions?  

Shortly after we moved to Summerville, a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses showed up at our door. Two ladies, humbly dressed and smiling, gave a presentation from Psalm 37. The thesis of their speech was from verse 29 that “the righteous will inherit the land” (v. 29). If we seek good for our neighbors, we will be righteous and live forever, they said. After they finished, I asked to hold one of their bibles (they were holding NIV’s, not the NWT you would usually see) and opened it to Ephesians 2, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (vv. 8-9). 

I told them, “you’re telling me that if I’m a good person, I will live forever, but that’s not what the Bible says.” I tried to persuade them that not only is what they’re saying unbiblical, but that they are endangering their souls and the people they share their presentation with. The older of the two ladies, with a confused look said, “How can we be doing something wrong if we’re doing it for the Bible?” 

Herein lies the problem. The Bible is our source of truth, but what happens when somebody else makes claims contrary to scripture while assuring everyone they believe the Bible too? How can the true believers of Christ and scripture differentiate themselves from not only other believers who may have errant beliefs, but pseudo-christian religions like Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons who also claim the bible as their own? 

Creeds & Confessions Address Controversies of their Time

There is some debate over which one came first, but the first well-established confession is the Nicene Creed, written in 325. At the time, there was a man named Arius, a priest in Alexandria, Egypt, who taught that Jesus was created and not co-eternal with the Father. His popularity accelerated in the ancient church as he was a musician and wrote catchy songs to go along with his heresy. The controversy grew so much it led to the emperor, Constantine, calling a meeting of all the bishops and overseers of the Roman Empire to address it. At this council, the controversy led to the Nicene Creed and an important clarification on Christ’s eternal nature and essence:

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,

When the Nicene Council gathered, they realized they had a big problem. As they would start to say things they believed from the scriptures, Arius would tell them he agreed. Then, when he would start to say what he believed using the same terminology, they realized they needed a word he could not claim to believe. They needed something specific to address Arius’s heresy, so they used the word “Homoousious.” That is the word “consubstantial” in the creed above and it means something is of the same substance or essence. It is a way of clearly stating the Son is co-eternal and co-equal with the Father.

This same pattern repeats itself throughout history with creeds and confessions. Somebody attempts to contradict God’s word, then God’s people respond with a written document to clarify what the scriptures teach. We benefit greatly from being in the time we are in, because many issues that could have arisen have already been dealt with by faithful Christians before us. 

The First London Baptist Confession

A significant chunk of our time this morning will be dedicated to the First London Baptist Confession (LBC) because the occasion for the first is very similar to the second, though we will talk about both. The first LBC was originally published in 1644 and then again in 1646 with some revisions. At the time, various Protestant denominations were popping up: Particular (Calvinistic) Baptists, General Baptists, Anabaptists, Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Mennonites, to name a few. Denominations were all attempting to distinguish themselves from others, but for the authors of the first LBC, this was especially true of Anabaptists. The confession opens with: 

A confession of faith of seven congregations or churches of Christ in London, which are commonly, but unjustly called Anabaptists; published for the vindication of the truth and information of the ignorant;

The Anabaptists had grown a reputation for being anarchists and were, in the eyes of Calvin and Luther, heretics. Some of their reasoning for believing they were heretics included some doctrine our church would hold to, like credobaptism, but they were also staunch arminians with a strong emphasis on man’s free will in choosing their own salvation. However, their reputation was primarily driven by the Münster Rebellion. 

In the early 1500s, an Anabaptist named Jan Matthys started teaching others that Jesus is returning soon and that Münster, Germany, is the New Jerusalem, claiming to have direct communication from God. Even in casual conversations, he would pretend to talk to God on the side as he talked to other people. Eventually, his teaching started to catch on, and a large movement of Anabaptists gathered in the city until they had enough members to completely take over the local government. They started to get rid of private property, remove the Catholic bishop, and re-organize the social order around their brand of Christianity that would likely remind you of a pseudo-christian communist utopia. Anyone who was not considered a true believer was forced to either convert and be baptized, flee, or die (if you fled, you could not take anything with you).

Catholics and protestants teamed up to retake Münster and besieged the city. After resisting the siege for a few months, Jan Matthys claims to have a vision from God that he can fight thousands of men with only 12 men (a reference to the 12 tribes of Israel). He is quickly killed, his head placed on a pike outside of the city (his other remains thrown over the city walls), and his right-hand man, Jan van Leiden, leads in his place. Van Leiden adds additional rules, including polygamy, allowing him to eventually marry 16 wives with one of the wives ruling over the other 15. Women whose husbands fled the city or died resisting were forced to remarry as Jan van Leiden decreed no woman of marriageable age was permitted to be single. An insurrection was started to protest the polygamy taking over the city, but it was quickly quashed and the sexual degeneracy continued to ramp up. 

After roughly 2 years of sieging, Münster is finally taken over and the Anabaptist leaders are captured. Jan van Leiden and several other leaders were executed publicly and their bodies placed in cages at the top of the cathedral in Münster. Those cages still hang there to this day. 

Following the events of the Münster rebellion, Anabaptists were severely persecuted, and several thousand were executed and thrown in prison, both by Catholics and Lutherans. According to James White, the word Anabaptist was considered a swear word for several generations. Given all of this, you can imagine why the Particular Baptists in London wanted no part of the Anabaptist stigma. Making sure the surrounding authorities did not believe them to be Anabaptists would be critical in making sure they would not be executed. Distancing themselves from the Anabaptists could be a literal matter of life or death. 

Confessions are protections for us against incidents like Münster. What happened there is how many world religions started. Think to yourself, how many religions can you think of that start with one man having a revelation, claiming to hear directly from God, which leads to them inventing their own religion? 

Joseph Smith started to have visions in the 1820s. He believed that God and Jesus (remembering he does not believe Jesus to be God), appeared to him and said there were no more true churches and that it was up to him to create his own. An angel appears to him several years later with some golden tablets that he translates into the Book of Mormon. Not long after he’s promoting polygamy, racism, and the belief that people will occupy their own planets. 

In 600 BC, Muhammad starts to have his own visions, believing to hear from God through the angel Gabriel, starts to teach that the Israelites also have it wrong (remember this is before Christ’s birth) and that God’s kingdom is brought through conquest called Jihad. He marries a 6-year-old child and gives birth to the most violent mainstream religion in the world. 

Today, there are churches in America that believe that their faith is shown through their bravery in handling venomous snakes. If you’ve never seen what I’m talking about, google “snake handling church” and you can find plenty of videos. 

The long story short is that these churches wrongly interpret Mark 16:18:

“they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them;” 

The people will dance around with snakes during the music, and the snakes will repeatedly bite them. Some people have even died from the practice. To us, this and stories of other religions’ origins are unfathomable. We think we would never believe such a thing, but we would. We underestimate the sinfulness of our own hearts.

The LBC isn’t just a protection against those who seek to persecute the Particular Baptists, but a safeguard to keep us from being led astray by our own sinful inclinations. 2 Timothy says: 

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

All of these false religions and doctrines pop up because in the depths of our sinful hearts, our flesh WANTS to believe the wrong things. We do not naturally desire to be obedient to God. We want the things that please our flesh. It requires the guidance of the Holy Spirit to direct us toward the truth. As Mike often says, we do not drift towards faithfulness. Many men have been led into error by sexual sin; it's no wonder that some of the first sinful practices that are established in Münster, Mormonism, Islam, and other false teachings are some brand of sexual degeneracy. Having a timeless, faithful document that sums up the whole of scripture allows us to point to it and tell false teachers, “We will not allow you to drag us into the eternal fire with you” (Jude 23). 

The Savoy Declaration & Westminster Confessions

Around the same time as the first LBC, two robust paedobaptist confessions were written that (for the sake of time) I’ll address together: The Savoy Declaration and The Westminster Confession. The first draft of Westminster came first in 1646 with the Savoy coming much later in 1658 by Puritan John Owen. The church was in desperate need of reform, leading to these confessions re-establishing core truths of scripture in almost every part of the Christian life. Both seek to answer at length, “What does a Christian believe?” 

The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARP) still teach the Westminster Confession today as their church’s official confessions. Minor changes have been made over the years, but their strong stance on infant baptism and the sovereignty of God are some of the core tenets of what makes their confession different from others at the time. If you want to know what most orthodox Presbyterians believe, reading these confessions is a great place to start.

The places where the Savoy and Westminster differ are primarily related to ecclesiology–the church’s structure and polity. John Owen and the Savoy are congregationalists, while Westminster defines church leadership as controlled by a presbytery. 

If you compare the Westminster, Savoy, and the 1689 LBC you’ll find a plethora of overlapping themes and, in a lot of places, identical language. I will include a link to a side-by-side view of the 3 confessions at the bottom of the page if you’d like to see more examples.

The 1689 copies the Savoy and Westminster word-for-word in many sections. For example, in the very first article titled Of the Holy Scriptures, the section on which books are included in the Bible is the same in all three, except the Savoy & Westminster use “Song of Songs”, while the 1689 says “Song of Solomon.” These are some of the types of minute differences you’ll find throughout–primarily minor word changes that would help Baptists, Presbyterians, and other orthodox denominations have the confidence to wrap their arms around each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. 

The 1689 London Baptist Confession

Though the first London Baptist Confession was a good start, it was not as comprehensive as the Westminster and Savoy. Particular Baptists were still trying to separate themselves from Anabaptists and align themselves with the broader Protestant church. The Particular Baptist church also needed to clarify what they believed about topics not included in the first one, like the Sabbath, Covenant Theology, Marriage, and Church Polity. In addition, they wanted to strengthen their language surrounding the sovereignty of God.

There are 32 chapters in total, intended to cover a broad swath of Christian orthodox doctrine, like: the character of God, the Trinity, creation, justification, eternal security (perseverance of the saints), government, baptism, communion, church, Christian liberty, and more. One reason the 1689 is influential is that it speaks to nearly every aspect of the Christian life. You would be hard-pressed to find an issue a believer could be faced with that is not at least broadly discussed in the confession and by extension, scripture. Each section and statement has at least one scriptural reference to show where in God’s word it is derived from. It is intended to be a document soaked in God’s word.

The document was originally published anonymously in 1677, then later adopted by the general assembly in London. Nobody knows for sure who the exact authors are. After its acceptance, it became the confession for over a hundred particular Baptist churches in Britain. It builds on the strengths of the first one, showing how Baptist doctrine is properly in keeping with the scriptures and the greater protestant network of churches being formed in the Reformation.

Where you’ll find significant differences from it and the Westminster and Savoy are concerning Baptism, covenant theology, and church structure. These are not small differences in opinion, but significant issues that are worth having different churches for. There is a reason we do not have Presbyterians in our church leadership. It is not because we believe they are not brothers in Christ, but because we are seeking to be faithful to true doctrine and maintain the unity of the church. 

Staying Grounded in History

Some of the stories we talked about today may seem like just that, stories. Whether you realize it or not, the London Baptists in particular (pun intended) are important for understanding how even the SBC began. They are the men and women who laid the groundwork for modern, congregational Baptist life. They re-established core doctrines like believer’s baptism, Christian liberty, and salvation by grace through faith alone. Though we owe much to Christians even before them, we are still reaping the benefits from the work of the authors of the 1689. They stood in the face of persecution and created a timeless document that we can rely on to help defend us from forces that might seek to turn us away from God. If persecution ever finds us, may God find us as faithful as they were to live courageously and stand for the truth. 

Lesson 8: Questions  12 and 13

Last time we considered how God not only decrees all things from all eternity, but also carries out His decree in real history, especially through His works of creation and providence. Today we focus on creation itself, and then on man as God’s image-bearer.

Question 12: What is the work of creation?

This answer is short, but it gives us a worldview. It teaches us to see the world as God’s world, and ourselves as God’s creatures. Hebrews 11:3 also reminds us that creation is something we ultimately know because God has spoken. “By faith we understand…” does not mean “by blind leap we guess.” It means we trust God’s Word about the beginning. There are many things we can observe and measure in the created order, but none of us was there at the first moment. Genesis 1 and Hebrews 11:3 teach us to receive God’s account as true and to let it set the boundaries for all our thinking about origins.

1. God’s making all things

Genesis opens with a sharp distinction: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) There is God and there is everything else. That Creator/creature distinction is the foundation for worship. God is not the biggest thing in the universe; He brought the universe into being. The world is not self-originating. It exists because God willed it (Revelation 4:11) and it belongs to Him by right of creation. That means creation is not meaningless. Since God made all things, then creation has a given purpose. We may explore, cultivate, and study it, but we are not free to assign it whatever meaning we prefer. The most basic fact about reality is not “I think,” but “God created.”

Genesis 1:1 is not simply a poetic way of saying “things happened a long time ago.” It is a declaration of ultimate reality: God is, and everything else is created. That means the universe is not its own cause. The created order is real, orderly, measurable, and worth studying, but never independent, ultimate, or self-originating. That Creator/creature distinction also exposes why the dominant “origins story” of our age is not neutral. Modern culture often urges us to interpret the world as if matter is all that exists, as if time and chance are the only “creators”, and as if life is an accident that became meaningful only because we assigned meaning to it. But that is not science. It is a religion that rivals biblical Christianity. Genesis will not let us speak that way. Genesis, indeed the Bible as a whole, insists that the most basic fact underneath every fact is not “nature did it”, but “God created”.

This is why Christians must reject macro-evolution, the claim that all living things arose by an undirected process from a common ancestor over immense time, so that God’s creative work is either reduced to a distant trigger or removed entirely. This evolutionary story, as commonly framed, asks us to treat death, struggle, waste, and survival-by-competition as the engine that builds life. Yet Scripture teaches that God made the world by His command, with purposeful order, and pronounced it “very good”. Creation is craftsmanship, not accident. It is a work of the living God.

And we should say plainly: we do not reject science. Christians have every reason to love true science, because Scripture teaches that the world is intelligible: it comes from the mind of God, not from chaos. We welcome careful observation, honest measurement, repeatable testing, and humble conclusions. But we refuse the rule that says, “God is not allowed as an explanation.” That rule is not scientific; it is a religious commitment. Our conclusions must be bounded by God’s Word.

So Genesis 1:1 is not merely the Bible’s first sentence; it is the boundary stone of all our thinking. It tells us who we are (creatures), what the world is (created), who created (God), why (God’s glory), and how we should study it: as servants under the Lordship of the Creator, receiving Scripture as our highest authority even while we gladly investigate His handiwork.

2. Of nothing

The catechism says God made all things “of nothing”. Hebrews 11:3 teaches the same doctrine: “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.” God did not shape pre-existing matter; He called matter itself into being.

This guards us from two opposite errors. On one side is the instinct (both ancient and modern) to treat matter as eternal and ultimate, with God reduced to an organizer. On the other side is the temptation to treat the world as an extension of God, as if creation were somehow divine. Scripture refuses both. God alone is eternal. Everything else is contingent and created, dependent on His will.

3. By the word of his power

Genesis 1 is built on a repeated refrain: “And God said…” (Genesis 1:3,6,9,11,14,20,24,26). Creation happens by divine speech. “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3) That is why the catechism calls it “the word of his power”. God’s word is not merely informative; it is effective. When He commands, reality conforms to His will.

Notice also the wisdom and order of God’s speech. God separates and arranges. He forms realms and fills them. He gives the world rhythm and structure: “evening and morning”, seasons, days, and years (Genesis 1:14). The universe is intelligible because it comes from the mind of God. This is one reason Christians can love learning about the created order. We study it as craftsmanship, not as deity.

4. In the space of six days

The catechism’s phrase, “in the space of six days”, is not an incidental detail. Rather, it’s a straightforward echo of what Scripture itself presents in Genesis 1-2. The repeated cadence of “evening and morning” (Genesis 1:5,8,13,19,23,31) reads like ordinary days, and Genesis 2:1-3 crowns the account by showing that God finished his work and then rested on the 7th day, setting a real pattern into the fabric of the world. Later, when God gives the 4th commandment, he explicitly grounds Israel’s weekly rhythm in God’s own Creation Week: “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Exodus 20:11) In other words, the weekly Sabbath command is not built on a metaphorical week, but on God’s own 6-day work followed by a 7th-day rest. The catechism is simply teaching believers to receive that biblical pattern as it stands: a genuine, historical Creation Week — 6 normal days of divine work, followed by a 7th day of rest.

And that truth shapes more than our timeline; it shapes our theology and our lives. God is not hurried or improvisational. He creates with purpose, order, and completion. He speaks, it is done; He finishes, and then he rests, not because He is weary, but because His work is perfect and complete. That means our limits are not defects. The day-night cycle, the week, the rhythm of labor and rest, these are gifts, woven into pre-Fall creation itself. We learn to live as creatures under a wise Creator: working diligently within the boundaries he gives, resting gladly when he commands, and refusing the old temptation to live as though time, structure, and dependence are problems to overcome rather than mercies to receive.

5. And all very good

Finally, the answer ends where Genesis 1 ends: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31, emphasis mine). Before sin enters, the creation is good. Matter, bodies, marriage, fruitfulness, and work are all good. The world is God’s gift, not a mistake.

This matters because many spiritualities despise the physical world, as if holiness meant escaping matter. Scripture goes the other way. It teaches us to receive God’s gifts with gratitude, and to use them rightly. Sin will distort what God made good, but it does not make creation itself evil. That is why redemption is not God throwing creation away, but God restoring what He made. (Romans 8:18-25)

So Question 12 teaches us to confess the living God as Creator: making all things from nothing, by the word of His power, in the space of six days, and all very good (Genesis 1; Hebrews 11:3). That confession fuels worship, humility, and gratitude.

Question 13: How did God create man?

Genesis slows down when it reaches humanity. God has spoken many creatures into being, but when He comes to man He speaks as if He is marking something special: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26) The catechism summarizes five key truths.

Notice, too, that Genesis 1:26 uses the plural: “Let us make man…” We should not press that line as if the doctrine of the Trinity rests on it, but we also should not ignore it. By the time we reach the full light of the New Testament, we learn that the one God eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Remember Question 9. Here at the beginning, the language fits comfortably within that later clarity: the Creator is not solitary and lonely, but personal and rich in fellowship.

1. God created man

Human beings are creatures. That means dependence: we receive life; we do not originate it. It also means accountability: the One who made us has authority over us. But it also means dignity. If God created man, then human life has value that cannot be earned or lost based on usefulness. The unborn, the disabled, and the elderly all share the same ground with us: they are made by God.

2. Male and female

Genesis 1:27 states, “male and female he created them”, and Genesis 1:28 immediately connects that to God’s blessing and commission. Two truths must be held together. 

Scripture treats our bodies as gifts to be received, and our sex/gender as part of God’s wise design for human life and fruitfulness. God does not confuse male and female and neither should we!

This is not merely a “biology lesson”. It is a theological foundation. Since God made us male and female, then we learn something about God’s wisdom and goodness in design, and we learn something about ourselves: we are not self-defining. We receive ourselves from God. That is both humbling and relieving. Humbling, because we are not autonomous. Relieving, because we do not invent or determine our identity; we are to live in joyful alignment with what the Creator has given.

In our own day, this bears directly on the rise of transgender claims. When a person professes to be “transgender”, they are not discovering a hidden truth about themselves, but contradicting the Creator’s design and seeking to redefine what God has given. That is not liberation but rebellion, an attempt to be self-made, a refusal of creaturely limits imposed by the Creator.

At the same time, we must not respond with mockery or disgust. Those who struggle here are not sub-human, nor outside the reach of Christ. Even when someone rebels against God’s design, they still bear God’s image and therefore retain real, inviolable dignity. This dignity cannot be earned, cannot be lost. And we speak the truth precisely because we love our neighbor and want them to be reconciled to God and restored to joyful alignment with what the Creator has given. 

3. After his own image

To be made in God’s image is to be made to reflect Him. In the ancient world, an “image” represented the king’s authority; it marked out what belonged to him and displayed his rule. In a creaturely way, humans are appointed to represent God on the earth: to live before Him, to reflect His character, and to steward His world. We humans are His vice regents, His representatives.

The image of God is not a single human ability, like intelligence, as if those with lesser mental capacity bear less of God’s image. The image is tied to humanity itself. It includes our moral responsibility, our rational and relational life, and our calling to worship and stewardship.

4. In knowledge, righteousness, and holiness

The catechism specifies that the image includes “knowledge, righteousness, and holiness”. The New Testament helps us see why. Colossians 3:10 describes the believer’s “new self” as being “renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” Ephesians 4:24 describes the “new self” as “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

That language is profoundly instructive. Salvation is described as re-creation and renewal “after the image/likeness of God”. That implies that man, as created, possessed a true knowledge of God, and an upright moral orientation — real righteousness and holiness — before sin entered. The fall did not erase the image, but it defaced it. We still bear God’s image, which is why every human life remains dignified; yet our minds are darkened and our hearts are bent.

And this is where the gospel becomes immediately practical. If you are in Christ, God is restoring what sin has damaged. Sanctification is not merely learning better habits; it is the Spirit renewing you after the image of your Creator, growing you in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. That means repentance is never pointless. God’s goal is not to make you less human, but to heal your humanity.

5. With dominion over the creatures

Finally, God created man “with dominion over the creatures” (Genesis 1:26,28). Dominion is part of the image: God rules wisely, and humans are appointed to rule under Him as stewards. Dominion is delegated, so it is accountable. Dominion is stewardship, so it is not exploitation. It includes the call to cultivate, order, and care for the world God has made, through work, family life, and the faithful use of our gifts. In a fallen world, that stewardship will be frustrated and imperfect, but the vocation remains: to live under God’s authority, for God’s glory, in the world He made.

Practically, this means Christians should resist two equal and opposite sins: indifference and idolatry. 

Indifference treats the material world as disposable. 

Idolatry treats it as ultimate. 

Dominion-as-stewardship treats creation as a gift entrusted to us. We work, build, organize, and care, not to prove ourselves, but to honor the One whose image we bear.

Conclusion

Questions 12 and 13 anchor us. God made the world; therefore reality is not an accident. God made it good; therefore creaturely life is not shameful. God made man in His image; therefore human dignity is non-negotiable. And God gave man dominion; therefore our lives are meant for responsible stewardship, not self-indulgence.

These truths also set up the next questions. If creation was “very good”, why is the world now so broken? If man was created in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, why do we now find ignorance, guilt, and corruption in our own hearts? Scripture will answer that through the Fall and then, by mercy, through Christ.

For now, let the New Testament’s language give you hope. The “new self” is being renewed “after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:10), and it is “created after the likeness of God in… righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). The Creator Who spoke light into existence is able to restore His image in sinners. So worship the Creator, receive His gifts with gratitude, and, if you belong to Christ, lean into the Spirit’s renewing work as God remakes you into what humanity was created to be.

As you go into the week, consider taking two simple steps:

Lesson 7: Questions  10 and 11

In Lesson 6 we asked who God is. We saw that:

This week we ask a different kind of question. If this is who God is, what has He purposed to do; and how does He bring those purposes about in the real world? Questions 10 and 11 introduce us to the decrees of God and to His works of creation and providence as the way those decrees are carried out.

Question 10 — What Are the Decrees of God?

This answer gives us four key phrases to think about: 

We will take them in turn and then ask what difference this makes for Christian discipleship.

1. His eternal purpose

The decrees of God are first of all described as “His eternal purpose”. That means that God’s plan is not something He invented part way through history as He reacted to human choices or unexpected events. Before He created the world, God already knew and willed all that would come to pass.

Paul writes in Ephesians 1:4 that God “chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” A few verses later he says that God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). Election is one part of that eternal purpose, but the language is broader. God works all things according to His will. There is nothing outside the scope of His purpose.

Lamentations 3:37 pushes in the same direction. In the middle of a book full of tears, Jeremiah asks, “Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it?” Behind every event stands the sovereign Lord. His decree is not a cold, abstract blueprint; it is His settled, personal intention about the world He has made.

2. According to the counsel of His will

The catechism says that God’s decrees are His eternal purpose “according to the counsel of His will”. That phrase reminds us that God does not decree blindly or arbitrarily. He does not cast lots in heaven to decide how history will go. His decree reflects His own perfect justice, goodness, and truth.

When Scripture speaks of the “counsel” of God, it is using human language for something that happens within the life of God Himself. He needs no advisers, yet His purposes are fully thought out and perfectly wise. In Isaiah 46:10, the Lord says, “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.” There is no gap between what God decides and what God does; there is no gap between what would be wise and what He actually decrees.

This means that, even when we do not understand why something has happened, we are not dealing with random fate or blind necessity. We are dealing with the counsel of a Father Who is wise and good, even when His ways are hidden from us. We can trust even when we don’t understand. 

3. For His own glory

Next, the catechism tells us that God’s decrees are “for His own glory”. God’s purpose is God-centered. That can sound unsettling or selfish until we remember who God is. If the triune God is the first and chiefest Being, then His own glory really is the highest and best end of all things. There is nothing higher for Him to aim at or glorify.

Scripture is unashamed about this. Paul says that God chose us, predestined us, redeemed us, and sealed us with the Spirit “to the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:6) and again “to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:12, 14). Romans 9:22-23 goes even further and says that God endures vessels of wrath and prepares vessels of mercy “in order to make known the riches of his glory”. His decrees display who He is, ordered toward the glory of His excellencies for the good of His people. 

This does not mean that God’s glory is in competition with our good. On the contrary, our deepest good is to see and share in the glory of God. If God decreed anything less than His own glory, He would be decreeing something less than our true joy. Romans 8:28 reminds us that “for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (emphasis mine)

4. Foreordained whatsoever comes to pass

The most sweeping part of the definition is the last clause: God has “foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.” Nothing that happens in heaven or on earth falls outside His decree. Nothing. That includes the rise and fall of nations; the length of our days; the details of our lives; and, in a way that stretches our minds, even the sinful actions of creatures. Romans 9:22-23 again reminds us that God’s purpose encompasses even the hard realities of judgment. Isaiah 46:10 has the Lord “declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done”. He does not merely know the future; He declares it. History is not a film He has watched in advance; it is a story He has authored.

Lamentations 3:37 exposes our instinct to limit God’s control. That question expects the answer: no one. If something comes to pass, it is because the Lord has, in some sense, commanded it.

At this point we must be careful. Scripture is equally clear that God is not the author of sin and that humans are responsible for their actions. But we are not puppets. Sin is what we want to do; our choices are real and morally charged. Yet those choices are never outside God’s sovereign purpose.

The clearest example is the cross. Acts 2:23 says that Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” and yet Peter tells the crowd, “you crucified and killed” Him. God decreed the crucifixion for our salvation; the people who carried it out are still accountable. Later in Acts, the believers say, “for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” (Acts 4:27-28) If God decreed the most heinous evil to ever exist, the crucifixion of Christ, then all other troubling evil falls under His provision, too.

5. Why this doctrine matters

The decrees of God are not given to win arguments, but for our comfort and our humility.

Question 11 — How Doth God Execute His Decrees?

Question 10 told us that God has an eternal purpose whereby He has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. Question 11 tells us how that purpose is carried out in time. The answer is beautifully simple. God executes His decrees in two great works: creation and providence. Everything God does in history fits under one of these two headings.

1. Creation as the beginning of the decree in time

Creation is the moment when God’s eternal purpose begins to unfold in space and time. Until God speaks, there is no world, no history, no human story in which His decree can be carried out. Genesis 1 presents God creating by His Word and Spirit. He calls things into existence that did not exist; He orders and fills the world; He makes man in His image.

The doctrine of decree guards us from thinking of creation as a whim or an experiment. God did not create because He was lonely or bored. He created in line with His eternal purpose to display His glory. The world exists so that the triune God might be known and praised.

This gives weight to the created order. The physical world is not a distraction from God’s plan; it is the stage on which that plan is enacted. Human bodies, material culture, time, and place all matter, because they are the arena where God executes His decree.

2. Providence as God’s ongoing execution of His decree

Providence is the ongoing work by which God sustains, governs, and directs all His creatures and all their actions. Creation is God’s decree beginning; providence is His decree worked out in time.

Although Question 11 does not list proof texts, Scripture is full of them. Hebrews 1:3 says that Christ “upholds the universe by the word of his power.” Colossians 1:17 says that in Him “all things hold together.” Jesus tells us that not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from our Father and that the hairs of our heads are all numbered (Matthew 10:29-30). Proverbs reminds us that “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.” (Proverbs 16:9) Providence has several strands.

Again the cross is the clearest illustration. Human rulers, motivated by jealousy and fear, condemn Jesus. Soldiers do their brutal work. Yet all of this happens according to God’s definite plan. (See Acts 2:23, 4:27-28 above). Providence is not God occasionally intervening in an otherwise independent universe; it is His constant, active rule over all that He has made.

3. Decrees and responsibility

At this point many Christians worry: if God is executing His decree in all things, does that not make our choices meaningless or God the author of sin? We have already touched on this, but it is worth stating plainly. Scripture holds two truths side by side.

How these truths fit together goes beyond what we can fully grasp. The Bible does not explain the mechanics; it simply asserts both, so we must believe both. Our task is not to solve the mystery but to trust the God Who has revealed Himself as both sovereign and righteous.

Practically, this means that we never get to blame God for our sin. When we disobey, we own that disobedience. At the same time, when we obey, we give Him the credit, “for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13) His providence is not an excuse for passivity; it is the hope that our labor in the Lord is not in vain.

4. Decrees, providence, and everyday Christian life

The doctrine of God’s decree executed in creation and providence is not meant to live on a shelf. It shapes ordinary Christian living.

In short, God’s decrees executed in creation and providence make it possible to say that our lives are meaningful and yet not ultimate. We are real actors in a story whose Author is God.

Conclusion — Resting in the God Who Plans and Acts

In Questions 7 to 9 we met the God Who is there: Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable; one God in three persons. In Questions 10 and 11 we have begun to see how that God relates to His world. He is not a distant observer. He has an eternal purpose, according to the counsel of His will, for His own glory, whereby He has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. He executes that purpose in the works of creation and providence.

For some, this doctrine is unsettling. It confronts our desire to be in control. It tells us that, in the most ultimate sense, our lives are not our own. Yet for the believer in Christ, it is one of the most stabilizing truths in the Christian faith. Since the God Who loved us and gave His Son for us is the same God Who plans all things and works all things according to His will, then we can rest. Nothing comes to us that has not first passed through His wise and loving hands. (Romans 8:31-39)

As you go into this week, I would encourage you to respond in two ways.

The God Who plans is the God Who acts.

The God Who acts is the God Who has come near to us in Jesus Christ. 

To know His decrees and His providence is, in the end, to know Him.

Glory with me in His character and meticulous providence.

Lesson 6: Questions 7 , 8, and 9

In lessons 3, 4, and 5, we stood together on the “front porch” of the catechism. We saw that God is the first and chiefest Being (Q1), that everyone ought to believe there is a God (Q2), that He has made Himself known in creation and conscience, and that He speaks savingly in His Word by His Spirit (Q3). We learned that the Holy Scriptures are the only certain rule of what we are to believe and how we are to live (Q4), that all men are allowed, required, and encouraged to know God’s Word (Q5). Now we step “inside the house”. Part 1 of the catechism begins to unfold “what man ought to believe concerning God” (Q6, Part 1), and it starts with the most basic questions of all: 

Question 7 – What Is God?

This is one of the most important sentences in the whole catechism. It does not tell us everything about God. That would be impossible. But it gathers up some of the Bible’s clearest and most basic truths about who He is. And getting to the bottom of this answer could fill a lifetime of study.

1. God is a Spirit

The answer begins, “God is a Spirit”. Jesus says in John 4:24, “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” God is not made of matter. He does not have a body like we do. He is invisible, not confined to one place, not limited by physical weakness. When Scripture speaks of His “hand” or “eyes”, it is using picture language so that we can understand His power and knowledge; it is not telling us that He has a physical body.

2. Infinite, eternal, and unchangeable

Next the catechism says that God is “infinite, eternal, and unchangeable”. These are sometimes called “incommunicable” attributes, ways in which God is utterly unlike His creatures.

3. …in His wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth

The catechism then takes this threefold description and lays it over seven specific perfections of God: His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. Three adjectives and seven nouns give us ten strokes of the brush, a way of signaling fullness. These seven are often called “communicable” attributes, which are real, though faint and dependent, creaturely echoes in us as His image-bearers. That is, we have finite, creaturely, changeable reflections of them because we are made in the image of God.

Taken together, these seven perfections, stretched out under the banner “infinite, eternal, and unchangeable”, give us a rich starting point for knowing the God of Scripture. He is not only above us in being; He is also the fountain of every created reflection of being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

Question 8 – How many gods are there?

1. The basic confession of Israel and the Church (Spiritual Israel)

The fundamental text here is Deuteronomy 6:4, the “Shema”: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” In a world filled with idols and rival deities, Israel is taught to confess that the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is one. There are not multiple gods sharing power and competing for attention. There is one Creator, one Lord, one Judge, one Redeemer.

The New Testament takes up this same confession. Paul writes, “We know that ‘an idol has no real existence’, and that ‘there is no God but one.’” (1 Corinthians 8:4) The “gods” of the nations are not rival deities in the same category as the Lord; they are not truly gods at all. Behind them may stand demonic powers or simply human imagination, but in terms of true deity there is but one only.

2. The living and true God

The catechism does not merely say “one God”; it says “the living and true God.” That language echoes several passages. For example, in Jeremiah 10:10 we read, “But the Lord is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King.” The prophets contrast the living God with lifeless idols that have mouths but do not speak, eyes but do not see, hands but do not feel.

3. Monotheism that makes room for Question 9

This strict monotheism is not the opposite of the Trinity; it is the starting point. Before we say anything about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we must be clear: Christians are not tritheists. We do not believe in three gods. We confess with Israel of old that the Lord is one. The one God is the living and true God, and we will soon see that this one God exists eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Question 9 – What about the Trinity?

1. One God in three persons

The answer is carefully balanced:

The word essence points back to what we said in Question 7: God’s being or nature; i.e., what God is. There is one divine essence. The word person points to the three distinct whos who each fully possess that one divine essence: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This is mystery but not contradictory. Scripture forces us to hold three truths together:

The doctrine of the Trinity is simply the Church’s way of honoring all three truths without collapsing any of them.

2. Baptistic use of 1 John 5:7 and our approach today

Historically, many 17th-century Baptists cited 1 John 5:7 in the form found in the King James Version: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” That phrase (“the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one”) is called the Johannine Comma.

Today, most scholars and modern translations agree that this longer wording is not part of John’s original letter. It appears in later Greek manuscripts and seems to have been a marginal note that eventually slipped into the text. Because of that, they do not include it in the body of the text.

So what do we do with that as readers of a 17th-century Baptist catechism?

3. Biblical foundations for Question 9

One of the clearest texts is Matthew 28:19. Jesus commands His disciples, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Notice:

Other passages fill out the picture. The New Testament begins with John’s Gospel saying of the Word (the Son), “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). He is with God (personal distinction) and He is God (unity of essence). The Holy Spirit is described not as an impersonal force but as a divine person Who speaks (Acts 13:2), teaches (John 14:26), intercedes (Romans 8:26-27), can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30), and is called “the Spirit of God” (Romans 8:9) and “the Spirit of Christ” (also Romans 8:9). When Paul gives his benediction in 2 Corinthians 13:14 (“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”), he casually places the three side by side as the single source of blessing. The NT writers are monotheists, confessing but one God only, but they speak in a threefold way that only the Trinity makes sense of. Therefore, this is NOT a 4th century invention by Constantine, but a biblical witness.

4. Equal in power and glory

Finally, the catechism says that these three persons are “the same in essence, equal in power and glory.” The Father is not more God than the Son. The Son is not more God than the Spirit. They are co-equal and co-eternal, sharing the same divine life. Within that equality there are real personal distinctions and relations: the Father begets the Son; the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. But those relations do not divide the essence or create a ranking of “more” and “less” divine. When we sing praise to the Father, we are not leaving out the Son and the Spirit; when we pray in Jesus’ name, we are not bypassing the Father; when the Spirit works in our hearts, it is the triune God acting.

The doctrine of the Trinity is not an abstract puzzle. It is the framework of the gospel itself. The Father sends the Son; the Son accomplishes redemption; the Spirit applies the redemption, bringing us to the Father through the Son. The God Who saves is the God Who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Conclusion: Worshipping the God Who Is There

With Questions 7, 8, and 9 we have crossed the threshold from the “front porch” into the first main room of the catechism. We have asked, What is God? (Q7) How many are there? (Q8) What is the Trinity? (Q9) The answers have reminded us that God is not a vague higher power or a projection of our own wishes. He is Spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in His being and in all His perfections. There is but one only, the living and true God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: 3 persons, 1 essence, equal in power and glory.

These truths are not just for theologians in ivory towers; they are for ordinary Christians who need a big, stable God. In a world of change, you belong to the God Who does not change. In a world of many voices and many “gods”, you confess the one living and true God. In a world where “god” can mean almost anything, you know that the God of the Bible is the Father Who loved and chose, the Son Who came and died and rose, and the Spirit Who dwells in you and sanctifies you.

As you go into this week, I would encourage you to do two things. 

We have only begun to explore Who this God is. But if we hold fast to what the catechism has summarized from Scripture, we will have a sure foundation for everything that follows.

Lesson 5: Questions 5 and 6 

In Lessons 3 and 4 we saw that God is the first and chiefest Being (Q1), that everyone ought to believe there is a God (Q2), and that He has not left Himself without witness. The light of nature in us and the works of God around us plainly declare that there is a God, but His Word and Spirit alone reveal Him fully and savingly (Q3). We also saw that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God and the only certain rule of faith and obedience (Q4). Today we stay on that “front porch” of the catechism for two more questions. Now that we know what the Scriptures are, we ask two questions: 

Question 5 – Who can read the Bible?

1. A radical “yes” in a world that said “no”

This answer was not written in a vacuum. In the centuries before the Reformation, the ordinary people of God in the West had very limited access to Scripture. The Bible was chained to pulpits, kept in Latin, read and explained chiefly by clergy. In various times and places, the Roman Catholic Church discouraged or even forbade laypeople from owning or reading vernacular translations without permission. Some men who fought for a Bible in the common tongue were martyred. The practical message was clear: the Bible is not for you; it is for the Church to manage on your behalf.

Against that backdrop, this question lands with a thunderclap: “May all men make use of the Holy Scripture?” The answer is a resounding, Reformation-shaped YES. Not only may they; they must. The catechism insists that all people are “not only permitted, but commanded and exhorted” to read, hear, and understand the Scriptures. That is a huge statement.

The Bible itself teaches this. Jesus says to His opponents in John 5:39, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.” He assumes that they are reading. The problem is not that they go to the Scriptures; the problem is that they refuse to come to Him to Whom the Scriptures point. The Lord does not rebuke them for studying the Bible; He rebukes them for missing Christ in the Bible.

In the Old Testament, God requires even kings to be personally under the Word. Deuteronomy 17:18-19 says that when the king sits on the throne he is to write for himself a copy of the law, keep it with him, and read it “all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God” and carefully keep His words. If the highest political authority in the land is commanded to be a daily Bible reader so that he may fear and obey God, then the Scriptures are clearly meant for more than a small religious elite.

At the beginning of Revelation we read: “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it” (Revelation 1:3). There is blessing for the one who reads and for the many who hear and keep. God has tied spiritual blessing to exposure to the words He has written.

So the catechism is not being bold for the sake of boldness. It is simply drawing out what Scripture already teaches: God intends His written Word to be used by all His people. To withhold the Bible from them is to resist His design.

2. God’s goodness in permission, command, and exhortation

Notice how the answer piles up verbs. We are: permitted, commanded, and exhorted 

[1] “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat!

This is sheer kindness. God knows that left to ourselves we drift. He knows that our hearts are prone to wander and that we will try to live on our own wisdom. So He permits us to read His Word, commands us to do so, and then exhorts us to obey that command, all for our good. In Scripture we find Christ, and in Christ, by the Spirit, we find life.

The story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 illustrates all of this. Luke tells us that he was sitting in his chariot, reading Isaiah the prophet aloud. Philip runs up and asks, “Do you understand what you are reading?” (Acts 8:30). The eunuch is not rebuked for reading; he is helped to understand. God sends a preacher to come alongside his reading so that he might see Christ in the text and believe. That is still how God works: He puts the Word into our hands and then, by teachers and by His Spirit, helps us to grasp its meaning. This helps us to avoid two ditches: 

3. Read, hear, understand – and help one another

The catechism says we are to read, hear, and understand the Scriptures.

Putting Question 5 together, then, we can say this: God has not locked His Word away from ordinary believers; He has opened it to them, and in opening it He has loved them. He permits, commands, and exhorts us to do what is good: to attend to the Scriptures in which, by the Spirit, we meet His Son.

Question 6 – What does the Bible teach me?

If Question 5 tells us that the Bible is for all of God’s people, Question 6 tells us, in one sentence, what the Bible is mainly about. It gives us a simple, reliable framework for reading Scripture and for understanding the shape of the catechism itself.

1. What we ought to believe concerning God

First, the Holy Scriptures “chiefly contain what man ought to believe concerning God”. The Bible is, before anything else, God’s self-revelation. It tells us who He is: His being, His attributes, His purposes, His works in creation and providence, His covenants, His promises, His judgments, and His mercy in Christ.

Paul urges Timothy, “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” (2 Timothy 1:13) That “pattern of sound words” is the apostolic teaching about God and His saving work. Scripture gives us that pattern in written form. It tells us what to believe about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; about Christ’s person and work; about sin, grace, and glory.

In 2 Timothy 3:15, Paul reminds Timothy that from childhood he has known “the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” The way the Scriptures make us wise for salvation is by telling us the truth about God and about His way of saving sinners. 

Therefore, faith is not a leap into the dark; it is trust in what God has actually said. 

If we separate Christian living from Scriptural truths that the Bible teaches us to believe about God, we end up with either moralism or mysticism. The first half of Question 6 guards us against that. 

The Bible is not mainly about us; it is mainly about God.

2. What duty God requireth of man

Second, the Scriptures “chiefly contain… what duty God requireth of man”. The Bible does not only reveal God; it reveals His will for our lives, what obedience looks like: His commandments, His warnings, His encouragements, His examples. So, doctrine and duty belong together.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 continues, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” Scripture teaches what to believe. It reproves and corrects us. It trains us in righteousness so that we may be “equipped for every good work”, i.e., what to do. What God commands, He defines. We do not have to guess what love for Him and neighbor should look like; He tells us.

The order in the catechism matters: what we ought to believe concerning God comes first; what duty He requires flows out of that. God’s commands are always grounded in His character and His saving work. He does not ask for obedience in a vacuum. The law is not given as a ladder by which we climb to earn salvation; it is given as the path along which redeemed people walk in gratitude and trust, because salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

This saves us from both antinomianism and legalism. 

If we emphasize belief without duty (antinomianism), we pretend that someone can truly know the God of Scripture and yet live however they please. 

If we emphasize duty without belief (one form of legalism), we turn the Bible into a book of rules disconnected from the grace and glory of God. 

Question 6 holds the two together: Scripture shows us who God is and what obedience He requires.

3. A roadmap for the catechism and for our reading

Question 6 also quietly sketches the structure of the catechism. 

From Question 7 through 43, the catechism will largely unfold “what man ought to believe concerning God”: His nature, His decrees, His works, our sin, Christ’s person and work, the application of redemption. 

Then, from Question 44 through the end (114), it will concentrate on “what duty God requireth of man”: the moral law, the Ten Commandments, the means of grace, and the life of prayer and obedience. 

Doctrine and duty. 

Faith and faithfulness.

This same framework is immensely useful for reading the Bible. When you open a passage, you can ask two simple questions:

You will not always see both elements with equal clarity in every verse, but across the whole of Scripture these two themes run together. They give you a grid for preaching, teaching, parenting, counseling, and your own personal reading. 

The Scriptures mainly address what we ought to believe about God and what duty He requires of us.

This gives us 2 guiding categories: belief and practice.

That is the map we will follow for the rest of the year.

Conclusion – A People Who Hear and Do

With Questions 5 and 6, the catechism finishes its brief introduction to Scripture. We have seen that the Bible is not a specialist book for experts, but a gracious gift for all of God’s people. We are not only permitted, but commanded and exhorted, to read, hear, and understand it. 

That command is kindness: God knows we need His Word, so He orders us to do what is good for our souls, and then, by His Spirit, He uses that very Word to bring us to life in Christ.

We have also been given a simple summary of what Scripture primarily discusses: what we ought to believe concerning God and what duty He requires of us, that is, what we ought to do. The rest of the catechism, and indeed the rest of the Christian life, will live within those two categories. We will learn Who God is and what He has done; then we will learn how redeemed people are to live before Him.

So as you go into this week, let me encourage you in two directions. 

The God Who is the first and chiefest Being has spoken, and He has spoken in a book that He has placed in the hands of His people. May He, by His Spirit, make us a congregation that gladly reads, hears, understands, believes, and obeys His Holy Scriptures.

Lesson 4: Questions 3 and 4 

In our first two lessons we asked what a catechism is, why it is worth our time, and how this particular Baptist Catechism is structured. In Lesson 3 we began the catechism itself and saw that God is the first and chiefest Being, and that everyone ought to believe there is a God. Today we go one step further and ask two very basic but very important questions: 1) How may we know there is a God? and 2) Where, exactly, do we hear His voice? Questions 3 and 4 move us from the duty to believe in God to the way He makes Himself known and the place His people must look for a sure word.

Question 3: How do we know Him?

This question assumes what we saw in Question 2: everyone ought to believe there is a God. Now the catechism asks, “How may we know it? Where does that knowledge come from?” The answer has two parts. First, it speaks of the light of nature in man, and the works of God. Second, it speaks of His Word and Spirit. In other words, God makes Himself known in creation and conscience (natural revelation), and He makes Himself known in Scripture and by His Spirit (special revelation). The first declares Him plainly; only the second reveals Him fully and savingly.

1. The light of nature and the works of God

The “light of nature in man” refers to the knowledge of God that is built into us as creatures made in His image. Human beings are not blank slates. We are born into a world God has made, and we are born with a capacity, and an obligation, to recognize Him. Paul says in Romans 1 that “what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.” (Romans 1:19) How has He done that? “For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” (Romans 1:20) Creation itself preaches. The world is not silent about its Maker. And God’s witness is not only around us but within us: even the Gentiles “show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness” (Romans 2:15).

Psalm 19 speaks in the same way. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.” (Psalm 19:1-3) Every sunrise and every starry night is a type of sermon. The created order is saying, “There is a God, and He is glorious and powerful and wise.” When Paul addresses the philosophers in Athens he begins here: “The God Who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth…” (Acts 17:24). Before he names Christ, he reminds them that they live in God’s world, breathe God’s air, and depend on Him for life itself.

So how may we know there is a God? The catechism says the light of nature in us and the works of God around us plainly declare it. Denying God’s existence is not an honest mistake; it is a rejection of what creation and conscience are constantly pressing upon us. As Romans 1 puts it, people “are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20) To call back to Question 2, this is why unbelief is a “great sin and folly”: it is a refusal to receive what God has made plain.

At the same time, this general revelation has limits. It tells us that there is a God, that He is powerful, wise, and worthy of honor, but it does not tell us how a sinner can be reconciled to Him. The stars do not preach the cross. The mountains do not announce the resurrection. Our consciences can accuse us, but they cannot cleanse us. For that we need something more.

2. His Word and Spirit only, for the salvation of sinners

The second half of the answer says, “but His Word and Spirit only, do it fully and effectually for the salvation of sinners.” The “it” here is the declaration of the knowledge of God. Creation tells us truly that there is a God, but only God’s Word and Spirit give the full and saving knowledge of Him that sinners need.

Paul reminds Timothy that “the sacred writings… are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” (2 Timothy 3:15) The same Scripture he goes on to describe as “breathed out by God”

Yet even Scripture, read merely as an ancient book, will not save. Many people have studied the Bible as literature or history and remained unchanged. That is why the catechism joins Word and Spirit together. Paul says, “these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:10) The same Spirit Who inspired Scripture must illumine our minds and open our hearts so that we not only understand the words on the page but receive them as God’s living and active Word to us.

This keeps us from two opposite errors. On the one hand, we must not think that the Spirit speaks saving truth to us apart from the Word. The Spirit is not a free-floating source of new revelations. He works through the Scriptures He inspired. On the other hand, we must not reduce Bible reading to a bare exercise of intellect, as if a clever mind could reason its way to salvation without the Spirit’s work. The Word is the sword of the Spirit. He wields it where He pleases, but He does not work without it.

What, then, does this mean for us?

First, it means that we should learn to hear God’s voice in creation without stopping there. Let the heavens remind you of His glory; let your conscience remind you that you are accountable to Him. When you watch a storm roll in or see a newborn child, say with the psalmist, “This is my Father’s world.” But do not imagine that this is enough. Let creation push you toward the Scriptures, where God speaks not only as Creator but as Redeemer.

Second, it means that we ought to take the Word seriously and depend on the Spirit consciously. When you open your Bible, you are not doing a merely human exercise. You are coming to the God Who has breathed out this Word and Who delights to make it living and powerful in the hands of His Spirit. Pray as you read: “Lord, by Your Spirit, show me Yourself. Make these words wise unto salvation, deeper unto obedience.”

Third, it gives shape to our evangelism. When we speak with unbelieving friends, we can appeal to the world they already inhabit and the conscience they already have. We can say, in effect, “You know there is a God; creation and your own heart testify to Him.” But we must then move to the Word, especially the Word about Christ, trusting that only the Scriptures, attended by the Spirit, can bring about a saving knowledge of God. Arguments may clear away some objections; only the Word and Spirit can give life.

Question 4: What Scriptures has He revealed?

Question 3 ends by telling us that God’s Word and Spirit fully and effectually reveal Him for the salvation of sinners. Naturally, the next question is, “What is this Word of God we are talking about?” The answer is precise and wonderfully simple: “The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, are the Word of God, and the only certain rule of faith and obedience.”

1. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament

The catechism does not leave “Word of God” vague. In an age when people speak easily of “hearing from God” in all sorts of ways, it ties the phrase firmly to a specific, concrete collection of writings: the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. These sixty-six books, no more and no less, are the Word of God written. (The Confession defines exactly which sixty-six books we mean.)

Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16 that “all Scripture is breathed out by God”. The word he uses points to the divine origin of Scripture. These are not merely human opinions about God; they are God’s own speech through human authors. Peter can therefore say, “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:21) When Scripture speaks, God speaks.

Ephesians 2:20 tells us that the church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone.” The “apostles and prophets” here are the authorized messengers whose teaching we now have preserved in Scripture: the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles. The image of a foundation implies something laid once for all. God is not continually adding new layers of authoritative revelation; He has given His church a fixed, written standard.

By identifying the Word of God with the Old and New Testaments, the catechism is teaching us that the canon is closed and that God’s people are to look to the Bible, not to new supposed revelations, for the standard of truth. God may providentially guide, impress, convict, and encourage His people in many ways, but none of those impressions are equal to Scripture, and none of them may correct or compete with it.

This also means that the Old and New Testaments stand together as one Word of God. We do not have a harsh God of the Old Testament and a kind God of the New (a common objection, both ancient and modern), or an obsolete revelation followed by a superior one. The same God Who spoke by Moses and the prophets has now spoken finally by His Son and by those He appointed as apostles. Christ does not set aside the Scriptures that came before Him; He fulfills them.

2. The only certain rule of faith and obedience

The second half of the answer says that Scripture is “the only certain rule of faith and obedience.” “Rule” here means canon, standard, measure, or norm. The Scriptures are the yardstick by which all other teaching, traditions, and impressions must be measured. They are the only certain rule that will not mislead, precisely because they are the very Word of God. This has several implications.

First, Scripture is the only certain rule of faith, that is, of what we are to believe. Creeds, confessions, catechisms, and teachers (including me) may help us understand Scripture, but they all stand under Scripture. We welcome them only insofar as they faithfully echo the Bible. The moment a human authority contradicts or goes beyond Scripture, it loses its claim on our conscience. As the Reformers insisted, Scripture alone is the final court of appeal. (cf. LBCF 1.10) 

Second, Scripture is the only certain rule of obedience, that is, of how we are to live. We do not get to decide our own ethical standards, and neither does the culture around us. God has spoken. His commandments and His instructions, as given in Scripture, define what love for Him and love for neighbor actually look like. This gives great freedom. We are not left to guess what might please God; we have His own Word on the matter.

Question 6 will show us that these 2 parts (what we are to believe and how we are to live) form the structure for the rest of the catechism. 

Third, calling Scripture the only certain rule does not mean that it tells us everything about everything, but that it tells us everything we need to know in order to believe in Christ, obey God, and glorify Him. 2 Timothy 3:16 goes on to say that Scripture is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness”, and that the result is that “the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17) The Bible does not answer every curiosity we might have, but it does thoroughly equip us for a life of godliness.

How should this shape us?

First, it should make us a Bible-saturated people. If the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God and the only certain rule of faith and obedience, then we cannot be indifferent to them. Personally, we should cultivate the simple habits of reading, hearing, and meditating on Scripture. As families, we should bring the Bible into our tables and living rooms, not as a prop but as the voice of God speaking into our homes. As a church, we should insist that everything taught from the pulpit and in the classroom is actually drawn from and governed by the text of Scripture.

Second, it should also make us discerning. Many religious ideas and practices present themselves as Christian. Some sound pious; some sound new and exciting; some sound comfortingly traditional. Our question must always be: “What does Scripture say?” The catechism itself is teaching us to hold it loosely in one sense. It is useful only as it helps us see what the Bible says more clearly.

Finally, it should make us thankful. God was under no obligation to give us a book. Yet He has condescended to speak, and to preserve that speech in a written form that can be translated, copied, and carried all over the world. We are not left to wander in the dark, piecing together guesses about God from our own thoughts. We have His Word, and with His Word His Spirit, to teach and guide us.

Conclusion – Listening to the God Who Speaks

Questions 1 and 2 show that God is God and that everyone ought to believe in Him. 

Questions 3 and 4 show us how gracious God has been in making Himself known. 

The light of nature in us, and the works of God around us, plainly declare that there is a God. No one lives in a godless world. Yet because we are sinners, that natural knowledge cannot save us. We need His Word and Spirit to reveal Him fully and effectually for the salvation of sinners.

That Word, the catechism reminds us, is not floating somewhere in the clouds. It is located, concretely, in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. Those Scriptures are the Word of God, breathed out by Him, and they stand as the only certain rule of what we are to believe and how we are to live. Everything else, whether tradition, experience, reason, even cherished habits, must kneel before that Word.

As we move forward in this catechism, we will begin to unpack what these Scriptures teach: about God, His decrees, His works of creation and providence, our sin, Christ’s saving work, and the life of obedience He requires. But before we seek further understanding, these questions call us to a posture. We are creatures in God’s world, with consciences that testify to Him, and we are disciples sitting under His written Word, dependent on His Spirit.

So as you go into this week, let me encourage you to respond in two ways:

The God Who IS is also the God Who SPEAKS.

His Word and Spirit together are sufficient to bring sinners all the way home.

Lesson 3: Questions 1 and 2 

This is our first “real” catechism lesson after two weeks of introduction. We have asked what a catechism is, why we should use one, how it relates to Scripture and to confessions of faith, and how this particular Baptist Catechism is structured. Now we begin at the beginning. Today we take up Questions 1 and 2, which lay the foundation for everything that follows. Before we speak about sin or salvation, about the church or the Christian life, we must first ask: Who is God? And then: What is our basic obligation toward Him?

Question 1: Who is God?

The catechism does not begin by asking about us, our needs, our feelings, our destiny. It begins with God Himself. That is already a rebuke to our age. We are used to thinking of ourselves as the center of the story, but Scripture begins, “In the beginning, God…” (Genesis 1:1). The first question of the catechism simply follows the Bible’s own order: before there was a world, before there were angels or humans or anything else, there was God.

The language of the answer is carefully chosen. 

To say that God is the first being is to say that He is “before all things” (Colossians 1:17). He is not simply the first link in a chain of causes; He is the Creator, the One who “inhabits eternity” (Isaiah 57:15), the unique uncreated hook from which every chain of created causes hangs. There never was a time when He was not. Indeed, I believe that God exists outside of time and created time (which is admittedly a mind boggler). Everything else that exists has a beginning. Only God is eternal, without origin, without dependence. The theologians call this God’s aseity, His “from-Himself-ness”. He has life in Himself. He is not sustained by anything outside of Himself.

To say that God is the chiefest being is to confess that He is not only first in time but supreme in worth. There are many beings in God’s universe: angels, men and women, animals, and stars. But there is only One who is infinitely glorious, infinitely excellent, the fountain of all goodness and beauty and truth. God is not merely bigger or stronger than we are; He is in a different category altogether. He alone is the Creator; everything else is creature/creation. He alone is to be worshiped; everything else is to worship.

The catechism points us to passages like Isaiah 44:6, 48:12, and Psalm 97:9. In Isaiah 44:6 the Lord declares, “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.” In Isaiah 48:12, He calls Israel to listen to Him: “I am he; I am the first, and I am the last.” In Psalm 97:9: “For you, O Lord, are most high over all the earth; you are exalted far above all gods.” (There are no rival gods, as question 8 will make clear.) In each text, God takes to Himself the language of absolute priority and supremacy. He is the first, the last, and everything in between belongs to Him. When the risen Christ in Revelation says, “I am the first and the last” (Revelation 1:17), He is sharing in this divine identity; but here in the catechism we are starting at the beginning: the one living and true God is the first and chiefest Being.

What difference does this make?

First, it humbles us. If God is the first and chiefest being, then we are not. That sounds obvious, but functionally we often live as if our plans and our preferences were ultimate. This first question presses us to remember that we are creatures before we are anything else. We exist from God and for God. Our time, our breath, our gifts, our opportunities, all of it is from His hand. There is no such thing as an “independent” human being. We are radically dependent every moment on the God Who is not dependent on anyone.

Second, it clarifies the goal of all theology and all catechesis. Since God is the first and chiefest being, then the aim of our study is not primarily to gain control over the material or to master a system; it is to know, love, and worship Him. Doctrine is not an end in itself. I love doctrine. I love study. But if we treat those things like ends instead of means, we miss the goal. Instead, doctrine is a means of seeing the glory of the first and chiefest Being more clearly. The more clearly we see Him, the more we will understand ourselves and the world He has made.

Third, it grounds our comfort. If the universe began in blind chance, or in some impersonal force, then we are ultimately alone. But if everything flows from the wise and good God Who is the first and chiefest Being, then our lives are not accidents. The God Who stands at the beginning also stands over today and the end. Nothing in our experience surprises Him, and nothing is beyond His power. When we pray, we are not speaking into the void; we are coming to the One Who was “before all things” (Colossians 1:17) and Who “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3).

Finally, this question calls us to worship. If God is the first and chiefest Being, He is worthy of our highest thoughts and our deepest affections. There is no part of our lives that should be walled off from Him, as if He could be an “add-on” to an otherwise self-contained existence. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the source and goal of all things. The right response to this first answer is not simply to nod in agreement, but to bow in adoration: “Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together!” (Psalm 34:3).

Question 2: Must we believe in Him?

If Question 1 tells us who God is, Question 2 tells us what our most basic duty is in light of that truth. The catechism moves from God’s identity to our obligation. The moment we say, “God is the first and chiefest Being”, we are faced with another question: “What does that mean for me?” The answer begins at the ground floor: everyone ought to believe there is a God.

That word “ought” is important. It tells us that believing in God is not optional. We are not dealing here with a preference (some people enjoy coffee, others prefer tea) but with a moral obligation. Since God is the first and chiefest Being, then every creature made by Him and sustained by Him owes Him faith, honor, and obedience. To refuse to believe in Him is not a neutral position; it is disloyalty and rebellion at the deepest level.

The catechism supports this with Hebrews 11:6: “Whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” Faith, at its most basic, begins with belief in God’s existence and character. You cannot come to God if you insist on denying that He is there. Psalm 14:1 speaks even more sharply: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” The psalmist is not mocking intellectual weakness; he is diagnosing moral rebellion. To say “there is no God” in the face of God’s self-revelation in creation and conscience is not brave; it is seditious folly.

Notice, then, the seriousness of the catechism’s language: “it is their great sin and folly who do not.” In our culture, unbelief and skepticism are often treated as sophisticated or enlightened. Scripture treats persistent unbelief as culpable. Romans 1 tells us that what can be known about God is plain in the things that have been made, so that people are “without excuse.” (Romans 1:20) The problem is not that the evidence for God is too small; the problem is that the human heart does not want to honor Him as God. The refusal to believe is not neutral, but morally charged.

At the same time, the catechism’s bluntness should not make us harsh. The same Scriptures that call unbelief a great sin also remind us that faith itself is a gift of God’s grace. None of us believes simply because we are smarter or more spiritual than our neighbors. By nature we were all “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). If we now confess the living God, it is because He has opened our eyes. That should make us humble and compassionate. When we meet someone who denies God’s existence, we are looking at what we ourselves would be apart from His mercy.

How does this question shape the way we live?

First, it reminds us that faith in God is the fundamental duty of every human being. Before all else, God commands us to believe that He is and that He is worthy of trust. Evangelism, then, is not an optional hobby for a few extroverted Christians; it is our loving response to the reality that our friends and neighbors are accountable to the God they ignore. When we call them to believe, we are not inviting them to join a club; we are summoning them back to their Maker, Whom they deny.

Second, it helps us to see the moral dimension of doubt and unbelief in our own lives. Christians are not exempt from seasons of doubt. We can be confused, discouraged, or shaken by suffering. Those experiences are real and should be handled gently. Yet even in those seasons, Hebrews 11:6 reminds us of what is non-negotiable: “whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” When we are tempted to live as if God were small or distant or indifferent, this question calls us back to the basic posture of faith.

Third, this question teaches us how to speak in a world that treats unbelief as normal. The catechism will not let us say, “Some people believe in God, others don’t, and both choices are equally valid.” It tells the truth: it is a great sin and folly not to believe in the God Who made us and reveals Himself so clearly. That does not mean we are called to be abrasive or arrogant. But it does mean we must not be embarrassed by the Bible’s evaluation. Unbelief is not a harmless lifestyle choice. It is a betrayal of the first and chiefest Being. I call this “clarity with charity”.

Finally, this question invites us to rejoice that there is a God to believe in. The obligation to believe is not bad news, but good. Imagine if the universe really were godless, if no one were at the helm, if there were no justice beyond the grave, no purpose behind our suffering, no forgiveness for our sins. That would be despair. The command to believe there is a God is at the same time an announcement: there is a God to believe in, and He is worthy of your trust. He is not a cruel tyrant or a distant force, but the God Who sent His Son to save sinners. Faith in Him is both our duty and our joy, as is often true.

Conclusion: Beginning at the Beginning

These first two questions are deceptively simple. “Who is God?” “Should we believe in Him?” You could teach them to a child in a minute. Yet the truths they contain reach down to the roots of reality and up to the heights of worship.

We have seen that God is not merely one character among many in the story of the world. He is the Author. He is the first and chiefest Being, eternal, self-existent, supreme. That means we are always dealing with Him. Whether we acknowledge it or not, our lives are lived in His world, under His gaze, by His generosity. To forget Him is to lose touch with reality itself.

We have also seen that believing in this God is not optional. Everyone ought to believe there is a God, and it is a great sin and folly not to. That sounds harsh to modern ears, but it is actually a mercy. God is telling us the truth about our condition so that we will flee from our unbelief and come to Him. The God Who commands us to believe is the same God Who gives faith, through the gospel of His Son and the work of His Spirit.

As we continue through this catechism over the coming months, everything else will build on these two answers. When we talk about God’s attributes, we are talking about the first and chiefest Being. When we talk about man’s sin, we are talking about our failure to honor and trust that God. When we talk about Christ and His saving work, we are talking about the way the first and chiefest Being has moved toward guilty unbelievers in love.

So as you leave this lesson and move into your week, I encourage you to do two simple things. 

That is where the catechism begins, and it is where the Christian life begins as well.