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: mouse over 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.