Heidelberg Catechism Week 2

3. Q. How do you come to know your misery? A. The law of God tells me.

4. Q. What does God's law require of us? A. Christ teaches us this in summary in Matthew 22 - "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

5. Q. Can you live up to all this perfectly? A. No. I have a natural tendency to hate God and my neighbor.

My reflections on the reading from the book...

Misery... law... depravity... Ah yes, such happy topics. Not.

But the joyful news of the gospel cannot begun to be grasped and enjoyed without an honest look at my sinful heart. Only by catching glimpses of God's blindingly holy character revealed in His law, and comprehending the gravity of my desperately hopeless sinful condition, can I begin to get past the misery and cling to the comfort and hope of the gospel. (This is the total opposite approach of those smooth-talking pseudo-preachers' "positive-thinking" motivational speeches they call sermons!)

Kevin DeYoung puts it bluntly:

Christianity is not a religion mainly about a moral code to keep. Christianity is about a God who saves people who don't keep the moral code. The law doesn't inspire me to be a better me or find the god within me. The law beats me down and shows me how miserable I am...

My own efforts to be a good person are, in comparison to what God requires of me, positively miserable. I'll be damned, discouraged, and dismayed if being a follower of Jesus means nothing but a new set of things I'm supposed to do for Him. Instead, my following Jesus should be, first of all, a declaration of all that He has done for me.

How thankful I am to have a Saviour who kept the Law in my place and dresses me in the spotless robes of His righteousness!