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Lesson 2 The Misery of Man Lord's Day II-IV
Lord's Day II-IV are the first part of the Heidelberg Catechism. Questions 3-11 are dealt with here. In this part, the misery of man comes up for discussion. Lord's Day II
Q. 3.Whence knowest thou thy misery? (a) Rom.3:20 What is misery? What actually is misery? It means that we are in a wretched or extremely unhappy situation. There are many examples: war, hunger, quarreling, unemployment, addiction, homelessness, poverty, illness and death. There is much trouble, sorrow, and misery in this world. All this misery is the result of sin. But true, actual misery is much more far-reaching. We can read this in Genesis 3: We lack God. Because of the fall of man, we are without God in the world. The cause of all misery is sin, the falling away from God. We lost God's gracious goodness and His wrath rests upon us. After the fall, a curse was laid upon man. In Romans 3:9-20 we can read how great our misery is. Knowledge of Our Misery Out of the Law Most of the time we don't feel our misery. We do not act like miserable people. Often we live on cheerfully. Hence, we have the question: "Whence knowest thou thy misery?" The answer is, "Out of the Law of God". This is a biblical answer. In Romans 3:20 we read: "For by the law is the knowledge of sin." We do not learn our misery out of the newspaper, but out of the Law of God. We find an example in Romans 7:7, where Paul writes that he had not known sin but by the Law. A law is a rule to live by. God, our Creator gave us the Ten Commandments (Ex.20:1-17 and Deut.5:6-21). The Law can be compared with a mirror. A mirror shows us what we look like. The Law of God is such a mirror. The Holy Spirit shows us by the Law of God how miserable we are.. We will never again be able to live according to that Law. The more I see how God wills me to be, the more I feel how sinful I am. I will then say: "Is that me? So wretched?"
Q. 4. What does the Law of God require of us?
(a) De.6:5, Le.19:18, Ma.12:30, Lu.10:27. The Law Requires Love We have seen that we learn to know our misery out of the Law of God. What does that Law require of us? Love! Perfect love toward God and our neighbor. That is the summary of the Law of God. To Love God In His Law, God requires first and foremost that we love Him from the bottom of our heart. We must love God in everything we do, want and think of. In His Law, God requires more than just the outward deed. It matters why and how we do something. God requires from us that we serve Him with all our hearts. The Lord Jesus says so in Matt.22:37-40. He was not the first to say that the crucial point is love. He just repeated what Moses already said in Deut.6:5: "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." To Love Our Neighbor In the second place we must love our neighbor as ourselves. By our neighbor, we understand all people, but especially all those with whom we associate every day. This also includes all our enemies. A clear example is the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). As a creature of God, each person is to love himself. This means to reject harmful things and promote good things. We should deal with our neighbor in this way as well. We must love our neighbor as ourselves. So in summary, the Law of God requires us to love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves.
Q.5. Canst thou keep all these things perfectly?
(a) Ro.3:10, 20, 23. 1 Jo.1:8, 10. God's Requirement So we must learn to know our misery out of the Law of God. This Law requires love toward God and our neighbor. Can we comply with this? Can we do everything God requires from us in His Law? Can we love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves? This is what God requires. God requires perfection. He is not satisfied with anything less. Because He is God and Goodness itself, He can not tolerate evil. Not even a little, because He has created us perfect. Haters of God and Our Neighbor Can I keep all these things perfectly? The answer to this question is: "No". Here the student gives an honest answer. One can only give such an answer if the Holy Spirit works in one's heart. From ourselves we think that we can keep this Law. We are usually satisfied with ourselves. We can not keep the Law of God perfectly. And why not? Because by nature we hate God and our neighbor. That is our misery! "By nature" means that it is innate. "Prone" means that we cannot and will not do otherwise. We are born as haters of God and our neighbor. "Living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another" (Titus 3:3). Happily, God often restrains this hatred and wickedness. It is not our goodness if we are not hateful or wicked, but God keeps us from evil, because anything good in this world comes from God.
Q.6. Did God then create man so wicked and perverse?
(a) Ge.1:31. Created Good We will now look for the cause of our wickedness. Does this wickedness come from God or from us? In Job 34:10 we read: "Far be it from God that He should do wickedness and iniquity." So the fault is not in God and neither in our creation by God. How then did God create man? In Genesis 1:31 we read "very good, perfect." That means without blemish in body and soul. After God's Image Man was created after the image of God. In our answer we read that man was created in true righteousness and holiness. This shows us that the image of God consisted in spiritual attributes. Righteousness or equity means that in Paradise man perfectly met all the requirements of God's Law. Everything was good between God and man. Sin did not exist. Man possessed holiness. Holiness indicates that man was entirely God-oriented. Man was created with a pure knowledge of God, with a holy mind and a good will. And only in this way, could man know his Creator rightly, that is, perfectly. Through the possession of God's image, man was distinguished from animals, capable of having perfect communion (= intercourse) with God. Having this image of God man was able to love his Creator and to live with Him in eternal happiness, to glorify and praise Him eternally. To love Him heartily means that man neither could nor wanted to do otherwise. Man would live happily with God to glorify and praise Him for ever and ever.
Q. 7. Whence then proceeds this depravity of human nature?
(a) Gen. 3, Rom. 5:12, 18, 19. Man's disobedience The origin of sin is not in God and in His creation, but in man himself. Adam had been created without sin and without shortcomings. Neither was he created to die one day, but to live eternally in glorious Paradise. This applied to Adam, Eve, and to all their descendants. Voluntary Love Required But God had not created Adam and Eve in such a way that they could not sin. For God did not want to receive an enforced obedience and love, simply because they then could not do otherwise. No, God wanted obedience and love of their own volition. Therefore he left the choice with Adam. He made a covenant with Adam. With this He put Adam to the test: Adam and Eve were allowed to eat from all the fruits of the trees in Paradise, except of one tree, which stood in the midst of Paradise. This was "the tree of knowledge of good and evil." God forbade Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit of that tree. If Adam and Eve loved God voluntarily and perfectly by not eating of this tree, they would live eternally in perfect happiness. But if they were disobedient and ate of this tree, then they would have to die and lose God's favor. Adam and Eve were created perfectly good and were therefore capable of obeying. well, There was no temptation from within to sin either. They only had to resist the temptation from without. And the reward was unprecedented bliss: the eternal enjoyment of God's favor and communion - eternal life which they would never lose. The covenant also implied that Adam's obedience would be imputed to all his posterity and the reward would also be given them. But if he should sin, then this disobedience and its punishment would also be imputed and given to his posterity. In this covenant Adam, the ancestor all mankind, represented the whole human race which had to be born yet. He was their covenant head. As he could earn salvation in this covenant, we call this the covenant of works. The Fall But alas, Adam did not remain obedient Satan moved man to be disobedient. Satan said, "You can be like God". Then Eve listened to the devil and so did Adam. Adam and Eve did what Satan whispered in their ears and they ate of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. By doing this Adam broke the covenant and impugned God's sovereign authority since the tree was the token of God's authority. Not eating of that tree signified that only God determines what is good and evil. But Adam wanted more. He wanted to be like God: he himself wanted to determine what is good and evil. Through this one deed Adam became a sinner. By doing this he destroyed the masterpiece of God's creation, the perfect man. Adam became sinful: from now on he was prone to sin. And through his disobedience all men became sinful. Conceived and born in Sin Through the sin of Adam and Eve, our nature, became so corrupt that all of us are born in sin and iniquity. We read this in Psalm 51:5: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me". Here David does not only speak about the sin he has committed, but he also confesses to have a sinful heart. Not only are our deeds, words and thoughts wrong, but our nature is sinful. Man lost God's image and through this he became a sinner. "To sin" means: "to miss one's mark". Through sin man misses the mark for which God created him: to live to God's honor and to obtain eternal happiness.
Q. 8. Are we then so corrupt that we are wholly incapable of doing any
good, and inclined to all wickedness?
(a) Gen.8:21 and 6:5, Job 14:4 and 15:14, 16, 35, Joh.3:6, Isa.53:6. Lost God's Image By his deep fall man lost God's image. There is no righteousness or holiness in him anymore. Granted, man is a rational being, which means that he remained gifted with reason and judgment. Man has still some knowledge of God and of good and evil. His conscience still speaks. But man is powerless to do any good. What is more, he is prone to all evil. It is impossible for fallen man, who is spiritually dead through sin, to return to God. And really, man does not want to. He persists in his first sin and wants to determine himself what is good and evil. Man is incapable of raising himself out of this fall. Paul writes to the Ephesians, "And you has he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph.2:1). Regeneration What must happen then? Man must be born again by the Holy Spirit. This is not reincarnation, but a total spiritual renewal in this life. God must work a wonder. He must renew the heart of a man altogether. Jesus taught: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God". (John 3:3). Regeneration must take place. A new beginning must be made by God. When Nicodemus heard about regeneration he did not understand what Jesus meant. It is the same with us. It is a spiritual and not a natural birth. Regeneration is making alive, a birth through Word and Spirit, an inner renewal, a new creation. Man is so utterly lost that nobody but God can save him. Regeneration is not an act of man, it is an intervention of God. A miracle must happen to man: his heart must be renewed. Only in this way will the image of God be restored in man.
Q. 9. Doth not God then do injustice to man, by requiring from him in
His Law , that which he can not perform?
(a) Eph.4:24. An impossible Requirement? Is it not an injustice to oblige someone to do that which he cannot do? Is this not unfair and unmerciful? In His Law the Lord commands us to do things impossible for fallen man to do. Isn't God unjust then? No! God made man capable of doing what the Law commands. But through the fall, Adam and his descendants lost those gifts. Paul says, "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Rom.5:12).That we cannot keep the Law any more is no excuse, but guilt. We are not forced to sin, but we sin voluntarily. All Men are Sinners When God demanded obedience, Adam acted on behalf of all men. Alas, he was disobedient, and judgment came upon all of us. We call this original sin. This means that Adam's sin is imputed to us. But also that through his fall, we inherit a sinful nature. In Adam we all did sin. Man listened to the devil, who urged us to transgress God's Law. But at the same time we ourselves became willfully, that is with malicious intent, disobedient to God's Law. It is our own fault that we cannot do anymore what God requires from us.
Q. 10. Will God suffer such disobedience and rebellion to go unpunished?
(a) Gen.2:17, Rom.5:12. The Wrath of God The Lord is not only the Lawgiver, but also our Judge. He is terribly displeased with our sins. He has a holy abhorrence of sins and He punishes them. Moses says, "Who knoweth the power of Thine anger? Even according to Thy fear, so is Thy wrath" (Ps.90:11). Sin arouses wrath in the holy God. He is not indifferent in respect to evil. God punishes evil. This punishment has to do with our original sin, which is our innate sinful nature. But it also concerns our actual sins. By actual sins, we do not only mean sins committed in deed, but also sins of thoughts and words. We are born as sinners and every day we add more sins. And so our debts become as high as the heavens. Would God then leave them unpunished? No, sin stirs up God's wrath. We read in the epistle to the Romans, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness" (Rom.1:18). Punishments The Lord judges with a righteous judgment. He is perfectly fair. God is righteous, and therefore He must punish sin. Two kinds of punishment are mentioned: temporal and eternal. All of us receive temporal punishments during our lives: illnesses, adversities, calamities and death. All the miseries in this life are the consequences of sin. It is not God's fault that we suffer, but it is ours. Eternal punishments are those that everyone must suffer who dies without faith in Christ.
Q. 11. Is not God then also merciful?
(a) Ex.34:6,7 and 20:6. God is merciful God is merciful. Moses called out when God appeared unto him on Sinai, "The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth." (Ex.34:6). Everything in God is holy and perfect, also His love. God's love is not like much human love, which often consists in nothing but indulgence. God's love is not in conflict with His wrath. God's love is a holy love: He loves holiness and therefore He hates sin. He can never call straight that which is crooked. God is Also Righteous The love of God is sincere and is not in conflict with His authority and justice. God is not only love, but God is above all God! He is merciful but also righteous. David calls on Him, "O righteous God!" (Ps.7:10). Let us consider for once, against whom we have sinned. The Lord is full of majesty and glory. He is the King of kings. We have sinned against such a God. We have ventured to stand up against the highest of authorities. Don't we therefore deserve the severest punishment? Eternal Death The most serious punishment is death. God spoke to Adam, "For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen. 2:17). Did it happen like this? Yes, when the first man had sinned, he became separated from God and His communion. This is spiritual death. He lost God's favor. And at the end of his life death came. That is corporal death. He had to die. Eternal separation from God would have to follow, under God's awful wrath. This is eternal death. It would have been just if the history of man had ended here. But´God in His mercy (compassion) thought of a way of deliverance. Questions with lesson 2 (Lord's day 2-4)
1. What is our misery? (answ.3)
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