Heidelberg Musings: Week 1 (redux)

(NOTE: This is a repost of the first and only entry from my “Heidelberg Musings” two years ago. I’m re-starting the series on a one-post-per-week basis.)

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Q1: What is your only comfort in life and in death?

“Comfort” – in some sense or another, comfort is probably the most fundamental human desire. More fundamental than our desire for love and relationship, for food, for wealth, for pleasure, for anything. In fact, meeting any of these desires is just a means to an end: our comfort. Whether we’re having a long talk with a good friend, popping pills, going to the shrink, or drinking a latté, we’re ultimately doing it for our comfort. We hate to be uncomfortable in any sense, and everything that we do is designed to get us back to that place of comfort. I guess that’s why the writers of the Heidelberg Catechism decided to address comfort in the very first question. It resonated with their first readers in 17th-century Holland, and it resonates with us today.

A1: That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyrrany of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit He assures me of eternal life and makes me willing and ready from now on to live for Him.

Jesus, in every sense imaginable, is the definitive answer to our discomfort. We can rest in him, knowing that we are his, our debts are forever paid, and that even in the midst of doubt and suffering, he sovereignly orders our steps (and others’) and works them together for our good and his glory.

Q2: What do you need to know in order to live and die in the joy of this comfort?

It’s one thing to be comforted. It another to have “joy” in being comforted. Joy requires a constant awareness of just how bad-off you were beforehand, and an equally constant awareness of how great your comfort is now. Those two things not only naturally produce joy, but thankfulness.

A2: First, how great my sins and misery are; second, how I am delivered from all my sins and misery; third, how I am to be thankful to God for such deliverance.