One unique incomparable Savior

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 18
Q. And who is this mediator—
true God and at the same time
truly human and truly righteous?

A. Our Lord Jesus Christ,¹
who was given us
to set us completely free
and to make us right with God.²

Note: mouseover footnotes for Scripture references (does not work in IE 6).

As Reformed Christians, we affirm that salvation is all of Christ and none of us, because no one but he could have accomplished it. He is unique, and not in any minor way; he is the only one who could encompass the work that needed to be done and the price that needed to be paid so that we might be saved, and no one else could even have begun to approach it. We don't have to be worthy, we have no claim on pride in our own salvation, we cannot undo or lose this great gift—it is all of Christ, bestowed on us through his Holy Spirit by his incomparable grace and unfathomable love toward us who were his enemies, until he redeemed us despite ourselves and made us his friends.

We need an extraordinary savior

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 16
Q. Why must he be truly human
and truly righteous?

A. God's justice demands
     that human nature, which has sinned,
     must pay for its sin;¹
     but a sinner could never pay for others.²

Note: mouseover footnotes for Scripture references (does not work in IE 6).

This is the keystone of the dilemma: no one who is not truly and fully human, fully participating in human nature and human life, could possibly serve as the mediator we need and pay the penalty for human sin—it had to be one of us; what human beings had put wrong, another human being must put right. At the same time, no one who participated in human sinfulness, no one who was himself or herself guilty of sin, would have the ability to pay that price. "Pretty good" isn't good enough for the salvation we need; not even the best human being we've ever known or heard of is up to the task. No one less than a completely perfect human being could do it.

Q & A 17
Q. Why must he also be true God?

A. So that,
     by the power of his divinity,
he might bear the weight of God's anger in his humanity
     and earn for us
     and restore to us
righteousness and life.¹

Logically, then, we need a savior who is both fully human and fully God, since only God can be perfect enough to satisfy his own demands. And yet, there's more to it than that. Only God could bear the weight of what had to be done; only God could endure bearing the near-infinite guilt of all human sin and suffering. Only God could lay down a life of infinite worth, in a deliberate choice of infinite love, as an act of infinite grace, to wash away that near-infinite guilt.

The answer to the dilemma

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 13
Q. Can we pay this debt ourselves?

A. Certainly not.
Actually, we increase our guilt every day.¹

Note: mouseover footnote for Scripture references (does not work in IE 6).

God's justice must be satisfied; restitution for our sin must be made. Unfortunately, it's beyond us to do it—we can certainly work to improve ourselves, but we can never even get to the point of perfection in this life, let alone become good enough to start paying the price for past sin. If we're going to get out from under this debt, we're going to need help. But from whom?

Q & A 14
Q. Can another creature—any at all—
pay this debt for us?

A. No.
To begin with,
     God will not punish another creature
     for what a human is guilty of.¹
Besides,
     no mere creature can bear the weight
     of God's eternal anger against sin
and release others from it.²

In other words, nobody and nothing else in this world is able to pay the price for us either. Which leaves . . . who?

Q & A 15
Q. What kind of mediator and deliverer
should we look for then?

A. One who is truly human¹ and truly righteous,²
yet more powerful than all creatures,
     that is, one who is also true God.³

This is the crux of the matter. If there was ever to be any hope for our salvation, it could only come from God; if anyone was ever to satisfy the demands of God's justice and deliver us from the penalty due our sin, it could only be God himself.

The necessity of justice

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 12
Q. According to God's righteous judgment
we deserve punishment
both in this world and forever after:
how then can we escape this punishment
and return to God's favor?

A. God requires that his justice be satisfied.¹
Therefore the claims of his justice
must be paid in full,
either by ourselves or another.²

Note: mouseover footnote for Scripture references.

This begins Part II of the Heidelberg Catechism, its account of our deliverance from sin and death; but where we might expect this to begin with an immediate declaration of the good news, the text demurs. Its authors knew that we can only understand the good news of the gospel as good news if we have come fully to appreciate the bad news from which it sets us free. The good news isn't that God thinks we're good enough as we are; the good news is that we aren't good enough as we are—indeed, we're worse than we think we are—but that God loves us anyway, and that though we cannot be good enough to satisfy him, he made a way to be good enough for us.

Understanding that begins with understanding the greatness of God's righteousness and holiness and the absolute character of his hatred of and intolerance for sin; grace must begin with the satisfaction of his justice, either by ourselves or by another. As M. Eugene Osterhaven writes (44-45),

God requires that the creature made in his image give him unconditional obedience and love, and that man love his neighbor as himself. this is the essence of the law. Law and obligation are necessary because God is God. . . .

Man thus stands in debt to God. He owes him the obedience of perfect love but does not give it. Nor is there any escape from full payment. . . .

God is not a man who forgets. He is rather a righteous judge who will "render to every man according to his works" (Romans 2:6). He does not live in some distant place and he does not forget those whom he has made in his own image nor their moral relationship to him. He is the Lord of heaven and earth and he tells all men everywhere that someday they shall stand before him to give account (John 5:28-29; II Corinthians 5:10).

This is why James doesn't say, "Mercy replaces judgment," but rather says, "Mercy triumphs over judgment"; God's judgment doesn't disappear, nor is it set aside, it is rather redirected in his mercy.

Mercy and justice

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 11
Q. But isn't God also merciful?

A. God is certainly merciful,¹
but he is also just.²
His justice demands
     that sin, committed against his supreme majesty,
     be punished with the supreme penalty—
     eternal punishment of body and soul.³

Note: mouseover footnote for Scripture references.

Andrew Kuyvenhoven writes (33-34),

The last of the three excuses attempts to play off God's justice against God's mercy. Polytheists . . . do that; they call on one god for protection against another. But our God is one (Deut. 6:4), and in the heart of our Father-Judge are no such contradictions. . . .

You and I have to do with a righteous God. He always punishes sin, temporally, eternally, in body and soul. Now our sins are either punished in Jesus—then it is all over—or we have to bear our own punishment.

Dr. Kuyvenhoven is right: God's justice and mercy are not opposed, but united; and his mercy does not come by simply ignoring his justice. How it does come, how that happens, is the gospel.

Let it slide?

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 10
Q. Will God permit
such disobedience and rebellion
to go unpunished?

A. Certainly not.
He is terribly angry
      about the sin we are born with
      as well as the sins we personally commit.

As a just judge
he punishes them now and in eternity.¹

He has declared:
      "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do
      everything written in the Book of the Law."²

Note: mouseover footnote for Scripture references.

God will not let sin slide, because he cannot; it would be unjust, it would be against his nature, it would be wrong, and it would be inherently contradictory. At its core, sin is the assertion of our own self-will against God's will in a declaration of mistrust: it is the insistence that God neither knows nor truly cares what is best for us, and that we're better off going our own way. That is a defiant falsehood in the eye of the one who is Truth, a falsehood straight from the pit of Hell; he could not simply ignore it without ceasing to be true, nor would he be doing us anything but ill if he could. Nor, in truth, would his doing so be welcomed; having rebelled against God, why would we want him to come crawling to us to take him back?

Not fair?

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 9
Q. But doesn't God do us an injustice
by requiring in his law
what we are unable to do?

A. No, God created humans with the ability to keep the law.¹
They, however, tempted by the devil,²
      in reckless disobedience,³
      robbed themselves and all their descendants of these gifts.⁴

Note: mouseover footnote for Scripture references.

Jerome De Jong writes (35-36),

After having considered the greatness and the extent of man's sinfulness, disobedience and wretchedness, the Catechism concludes this division on human guilt by suggesting three possible objections. . . .

The initial objection concerns the Creator himself. Is not God unjust? . . . Is it right for God to require what man cannot do? But what is it really that God requires—a series of regulations and commandments and ordinances? Let us remind ourselves again that the entire law is summarized in one word: love! If man now has become a sinner, must God now say that it is no longer necessary for the sinner to love him? Of course not; God remains the same. His requirements do not change. But supposing this to be correct, can man fulfill the requirements of the law? The answer is No, but the answer was Yes! God created man able to perform and to do all the good pleasure of God. But Adam deliberately turned his back on God and disobeyed.

Dr. De Jong elaborates on this with the example of a contractor who agrees to build a home, then takes the money for materials and spends it on a drinking binge; he asks, reasonably enough,

Is it unjust for the original party to demand that his home be built? Can the contractor claim immunity because of his weak character? The contractor was given the means with which to build the house and willfully squandered them.

To be sure, as Kuyvenhoven admits (32), this doesn't exhaust our objections on this point:

Still, we bristle in self-defense: That temptation happened . . . millennia ago. Why should we be doomed for what none of us remembers?

Here again, it's a matter of perspective. We protest like individualists. But the Bible says that the very fact that we are able to think of ourselves as unrelated, disunited individuals presents evidence of our sinful perspective. God's revelation views the human race not as a pile of gravel but as a giant tree. We are not pebbles thrown together but twigs and branches on a tree, all organically united.

We form a corporate unity. In many respects you and I have never doubted it. The national debts . . . are your and my debts. Yet when the debts were incurred, some of us were not yet born and none of us were asked. Similarly, the debt of the human race is yours and mine.

It's an interesting illustration, since nobody really does deny our liability for the national debt; perhaps it's because the corporate unity represented by the nation is visible, tangible, and human-created. It's a reminder that, however hard we may try to avoid the fact, our responsibility in life goes beyond merely that for which we want to admit responsibility.

Total dependence

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 8
Q. But are we so corrupt
that we are totally unable to do any good
and inclined toward all evil?

A. Yes,¹ unless we are born again,
by the Spirit of God.²

Note: mouseover footnote for Scripture references.

This is the doctrine typically referred to as "total depravity," and it's one that confuses some people. Andrew Kuyvenhoven's explanation (28) is helpful here:

Sin is worse than we are inclined to think, and salvation is bigger than any church can tell.

The Bible teaches that, by nature, people are "totally depraved." This is again a technical term, and it might be helpful to say, first, what it does not mean. We don't mean to say that people are as bad as they can possibly be. Most of the time, most of them are not. Neither do we mean that ordinary decent people cannot perform acts of kindness, helpfulness, courtesy, and so on. Many people do, and we thank God for the milk of human kindness and the paint of civilized surroundings.

By total depravity, we mean that sin has affected every part of every human being. . . .

The only solution to total depravity is total renewal. No person can do anything that is really acceptable to God unless he or she has a new heart.

The Christian life is a life of total dependence on the grace and the power of God. There is no "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" here, and no suggestion that if you just work harder, you can be good enough (nor the corollary that if anything's wrong in your life, it must mean you're not trying hard enough); nor is there any trace of the idea that to keep your salvation, you have to keep working harder. Rather, there is the call to joyful acceptance of our deliverance by Jesus Christ, who set us free from our slavery to sin, who took our death and gave us life.

Parents, children, and sin

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 7
Q. Then where does this corrupt human nature come from?

A. From the fall and disobedience of our first parents,
      Adam and Eve, in Paradise.¹
This fall has so poisoned our nature²
      that we are born sinners—
      corrupt from conception on.³

Note: mouseover footnote for Scripture references.

Our first ancestors fouled the well, and poisoned our inheritance. Kuyvenhoven puts it well, I think, when he says (27),

[The catechism] intentionally calls Adam and Eve our "parents," thereby teaching that, just as black parents get black children and white parents get white children, so sinful parents get sinful children, whether they are yellow, red, black, or white. None of us can escape this poison, for all of us have parents. That's the teaching.

And none of us can avoid passing it on, for all of us are sinners. As the father of three, I can testify that I am far more aware of my own depravity now than I ever was before they came along.

"God made me this way"? Not exactly

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 6
Q. Did God create people so wicked and perverse?

A. No.
God created them good¹ and in his own image,²
      that is, in true righteousness and holiness,³
so that they might
      truly know God their creator,⁴
      love him with all their heart,
      and live with him in eternal happiness
for his praise and glory.⁵

Note: mouseover footnote for Scripture references.

There's a real tendency these days to appeal to genetics to explain behavior—and increasingly, to excuse behavior, as action is reframed as identity. The church can't appeal to the word of God with regard to homosexual activity without someone else (or a number of someones) standing up and saying, "God made me this way, and therefore this is how I'm supposed to be, and therefore God can't really have meant that"; and the repetition of that assertion has convinced a lot of folks (especially younger folks) who consider themselves evangelicals, and thus has done considerable damage to the authority of Scripture in the American evangelical church.

Now, I have no interest in the debate over whether or not or to what degree homosexual desires are a matter of genetics; to be blunt, I consider the whole question a red herring, as we understand full well when it comes to other issues. From the information I've seen, the heritability of alcoholism is about the same as the heritability of homosexual preferences, and nobody uses that as a defense for driving drunk. Certain cancers, we well know, come to us through our genes, yet we don't tell cancer patients, "God made you this way, so he must want you to die of cancer." (The federal government might, if Obamacare passes, but that's another matter.) It would be quite consistent to label homosexual tendencies just another inherited disease—but we don't do that; this makes it clear that it's not the genetic element that's driving the argument, but the affective element, the fact that those who practice such behaviors don't want to give them up.

And yet, given that the appeal to genetics has been effective (whether logical or not), we can expect to see it raised as a defense for other behaviors as well; over time, it will become increasingly hard for the church to call people to holiness without hearing, "God made me this way!" As such, it's important to remind Christians that the Scriptures give the church a firm answer to this, to which the Heidelberg bears witness: No, he didn't. We are all sinners, we are all bent to defy the will of God and to prefer evil to good in at least some areas of our lives, and all of our natural tendencies, preferences, orientations and desires arise out of sin-distorted hearts—but God didn't make us that way. God created us good, in his own image; our sinful desires are someone else's fault altogether.

As such, just because something is natural to us, just because we inherited it along with our hair and eye color, doesn't make it right, and doesn't mean that God approves of it. All it means is that we're born sinful, just like everybody else.

Falling short

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 5
Q. Can you live up to all this perfectly?

A. No.¹
I have a natural tendency
to hate God and my neighbor.²

Note: mouseover footnote for Scripture references.

This is what causes all the problems. This is what people don't want to admit; but it's true. Left to ourselves, we can't live up to what God wants from us, because we aren't bent to really love God or the people around us. We're oriented all wrong; we need to be re-oriented and straightened out.

The core of God's commands

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 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.¹

And the second is like it:
Love your neighbor as yourself.²

All the Law and the Prophets hang
on these two commandments.

Note: mouseover footnote for Scripture references. Also, earlier and better manuscripts of Matthew 22 omit the words "and with all your strength." They are found in Mark 12:30.

As Kuyvenhoven notes (19),

our Lord Jesus made the love-commandment the centerpiece of his teaching. In fact, his whole ministry was designed to teach us that love is God's law, which everyone has broken, as well as God's gift that enables all of Jesus' followers to lead a new life.

Along with that, it must be said, his ministry was also designed to teach us what love really is, and to correct the false ideas we learn about love from our fallen world. We're perfectly happy to believe that love is God's law if we get to be the ones defining what that means . . . but we don't.

Hope begins with the right diagnosis

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 3
Q. How do you come to know your misery?

A. The law of God tells me.¹

Note: mouseover footnote for Scripture references.

For John Calvin, this is the first use of the Law: it shows us our sin by showing us our fundamental inability to keep it. It strips away our self-deception and our rationalizations and forces us to face ourselves as we really are—which is the necessary predicate for our salvation, because we won't accept God's grace until we accept that we need it.

As well, the Law shows us the true reason for human misery, and thus points us in the direction in which salvation can be found. This is an important gift, because even when we've admitted the problem, we tend to want to misdiagnose it (usually out of wishful thinking of some sort or another) as being something we can address on our own. As Jerome de Jong asks in Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude,

Man seems to be aware of the fact that he is miserable, but has he found the true source of his misery?

Left to our own devices, the answer is, "No, not really."

When man seeks to find the source of his misery within the context of his own experience, the answers which he gives are false. His answers turn him in upon himself and the things with which he hopes to satisfy self. So far is man's own understanding of his misery from leading him to God that all about us we see those who have experienced bitterness, despair, and utter hopelessness, who have out of this experience denied the reality of God. Man's understanding of himself will have to come from outside himself. It must be revealed to him.

The shape of comfort

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 2
Q. What must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort?

A. Three things:
first, how great my sin and misery are;¹
second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery;²
third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance.³

Note: mouseover footnotes for Scripture references.

The 129 questions and answers of the Heidelberg Catechism are divided up into 52 parts, one for each Sunday of the year; in the old Dutch Reformed tradition, you're supposed to go through it every year in church on that basis. I don't know anyone who actually preaches or teaches through the Heidelberg every year, though I've heard there are folks in churches that still have Sunday evening services that use those to that purpose.

In any case, Q & A 1-2 make up Lord's Day 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism and together serve as its introduction. #1 lays out the reason for our comfort: "That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ." #2 then connects that to the rest of the Heidelberg, which is laid out according to that threefold structure.

Andrew Kuyvenhoven, in his Heidelberg commentary Comfort and Joy, notes that the folks who wrote this weren't talking about comfort in any light sense (14):

The people who confessed this in the time of the Reformation were being persecuted for their faith. They feared for their lives. But, they said, even if we get killed, we belong to Jesus, body and soul, in life and in death. They confessed their comfort in the face of all threats. . . .

It is the Christian's answer to life's deepest questions and death's darkest riddles. For here and for now it is the only comfort available. Without this comfort, life is senseless and death is hopeless. We need to say with great emphasis that this is the one and only comfort for all people.

And as the Heidelberg says in Q & A 2, this is a comfort which can only be found through the profound knowledge—not merely of the head but in the heart—of the bad news of human sin, the good news of our redemption, and the response of grateful and humble service. Kuyvenhoven lays this out well (16):

True faith has knowledge of sin, grace, and gratitude. If people have a superficial faith, they have a superficial knowledge of sin, of salvation, and of gratitude. Anyone who is growing in faith is growing in the knowledge of guilt, grace, and gratitude. And those of us who have deep faith have a deep knowledge of sin, a warm knowledge of our Savior, and a profound sense of gratitude.

He's right; so was Donald Bruggink when he titled the commentary he edited on the Heidelberg in honor of its 400th anniversary in 1963 Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude. The Christian life is a life of gratitude, born out of the awareness of the depth of our sin and the height of our salvation, or it's nothing at all.

My only comfort in life and death

For a brief explanation of what I'm doing here, see the previous post. Mouse over the footnotes for the Scripture references. This is, in my book, as wonderful an opening as the famous Q & A 1 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, even if not as well known; I may very well come back to this one tomorrow and write something about it, but I'm too tired tonight. And then again, maybe I'll just let it speak for itself.

Heidelberg Catechism
Q & A 1
Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?

A. That I am not my own,¹
but belong—
body and soul,
in life and in death—²
to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.³

He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood,⁴
and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.⁵
He also watches over me in such a way⁶
that not a hair can fall from my head
without the will of my Father in heaven:⁷
in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.⁸

Because I belong to him,
Christ, by his Holy Spirit,
assures me of eternal life⁹
and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready
from now on to live for him.¹⁰

Explanatory note on Heidelblogging

Jared Wilson sparked a thought for me with his latest post, which quotes a section of the Westminster Confession. As a pastor ministering in the Presbyterian Church (USA), I am in some sense connected to the Westminster standards, and I do appreciate them a great deal—but though I serve a Presbyterian congregation, and though I was baptized in one (Northminster, in San Diego), my home ground within the church universal is the Dutch Reformed stream, and specifically the Reformed Church in America. As such, though I appreciate Westminster, it's somewhat foreign to me; it's the RCA's doctrinal standards that I value most, and especially the one that (as it happens) the PC(USA) also affirms, the Heidelberg Catechism.

As such, I've decided I want to blog my way through the Heidelberg, question by question. I don't know that I'll get through all 129 questions and answers in 129 days—this isn't a death march—but I expect I'll post a Q&A most days. No doubt I'll comment on some and not on others, and there will probably be more than a few times as well that I'll quote one of the commentaries I have on the Heidelberg. (There are actually three on my shelves—Andrew Kuyvenhoven's, the one Donald Bruggink edited, and the one by Zacharius Ursinus, who was one of the Heidelberg's authors—which I suppose marks me out as the Reformed geek I am; the Kuyvenhoven was a gift from Hap back in college, which I suppose marks her out as perceptive.) One thing I haven't figured out is how I want to handle the Scriptural footnotes; if I can find a way to include them that doesn't look irritatingly intrusive to my eye, I will.