Good Morning!
We’re entering a part of the Catechism that can have some words and phrases that may either sound foreign to us, or at least at first glance be difficult to understand. Part of the fun of learning is getting to know stuff we didn’t know before. Think about some things you really enjoy doing. When you first started working on cars, knitting, taking photos, hunting, etc… did you begin at the expert level? Before your dad taught you about the innerworkings of carburetors and your grandma introduced you to a garter switch did you intuitively just know how to do it? Well, of course you didn’t.
Someone had to take the time to walk you through the process and present you to concepts that were alien to you beforehand. Remember how excited you were as you got better and better at it? Those were joyful times that I am sure you look back at with fondness. I bet you also recall that it was also not always an easy thing to do.
But it is all part of the effort of getting better at things we love. It makes it worth it.
The same can be true of the Christian faith.
There are a lot of great things to learn about God, Christ, and the Bible and if we love the Lord we will have a desire to dig deeper into the “big stuff” so that it no longer is unfamiliar to our ears and mind. When compared to stuff like trigonometry or valences or white muscle disease spiritual ideas like regeneration, incarnation, and perichoresis aren’t that much harder to comprehend. It is all a matter of want to. This is part of the wisdom behind catechizing and things like a Sunday Night Bible Study, Sabbath School, and Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting. Just like we get to trigonometry by starting our kids out with basic arithmetic we come to understand providence by learning about who God is. If the Lord made everything, and if He is in charge of everything, and likewise guiding history and giving assurance to our daily steps, then it makes it easier to comprehend how God is doing that mechanically. It also grows our adoration of the goodness of the Lord in our life, and it motivates us to learn more and more so that we can love God deeper and with more knowledge.
A similar illustration is made for us in the Song of Solomon. Discovering the beauty of your spouse is part of the joy of Christian love in marriage and the believer’s desire to see more of Christ is the same. The Song is a letter describing the affection of Christ for His bride and the bride’s love for her bridegroom. The Shulamite woman has a moment where she cannot find her man and she drops everything to search the city to see where he can be found.
The story goes like this in Song of Songs 3:1-4:
“By night on my bed I sought the one I love; I sought him, but I did not find him.
‘I will rise now,’ I said, ‘And go about the city; in the streets and in the squares I will seek the one I love.’ I sought him, but I did not find him. The watchmen who go about the city found me; I said, ‘Have you seen the one I love?’ Scarcely had I passed by them, when I found the one I love. I held him and would not let him go.”
Here is a perfect picture of the heart of a Christian’s love of the Lord God. As we find ourselves in situations where we may not be able to see or realize what is happening our first thought should be like the Shulamite: we are to run to Christ Jesus and when we find Him in the Scriptures we hold on and have Him in our grasp for all of time. Think of the feeling of safety and peace which comes from taking on that knowledge of the Lord and see again why it is so vital for our daily life to know Him more.
If that is not true of us, if we do not desire to learn more of our bridegroom, and actively come up with reasons why we can’t meet with him how can it be said that we actually love the Lord Jesus Christ? Do we treat our earthly spouses this way?
With all that being said let’s go to our catechism question for this week:
Q. 13. Did our first parents continue in the estate wherein they were created?
A. Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the estate wherein they were created, by sinning against God.
As each of the catechism Q/A’s pass from the basic “Who is God?” to more involved like “What Special Act of Providence Did God Exercise Toward Man in the Estate Wherein He Was Created?” I hope that you can see what the Westminster Divines are doing in allowing each following question to build on the one before. Sometimes it can be helpful if you are struggling with a particular inquiry that you are reading to back up a few questions and read them in order. There are also commentaries available that I will link at the bottom of this post.
But back to this week’s question. Did Adam and Eve continue to live in the garden? The answer is sadly no. Adam because he failed to teach his wife about the tree that God had covenanted with him to not eat from, and because Adam had failed to protect his wife from the serpent, trouble came into Eden. There are more sins involved in this scene then just the first man taking the fruit onto his lips. The same pattern often befalls us when we get into a deeper, darker transgression of the law of God. It rarely begins with adultery. It starts primarily with failing to love your wife, or in cases of celibacy, seeking a wife/husband in the manner the Lord has prescribed. The Apostle Paul tells us it is better to marry than to burn, and he says this not because Christian marriage is in itself a solution to quit breaking the 7th Commandment, but since we are made to bear the image of God our desire, our will, should always be to align with whatever it is the Lord has called us to do. A negative is always the result of our failing to embrace the positive plan showed to us be the gracious hand of Christ in His word.
This is what we are meant to learn in this week’s catechism question. Adam’s failure to guard his own heart by embracing his first true love has cast all of humanity into turmoil and sin. Let that be a lesson and an example to you today.
As I said at the end here are a couple options for commentaries, including two for parents to use with their children to help them better understand the catechism. They are of great assistance as well for both private devotion and family worship.
Here are four:
From the Lips of Little Ones by Rev. Jeff Kingswood (an ARP minister in Canada)
Training Hearts and Teaching Minds by Starr Meade
The Shorter Catechism Explained by Thomas Vincent
https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/christian-living/the-shorter-catechism-explained-from-scripture/
The Westminster Shorter Catechism by G.I. Williamson
Y’all have a blessed day!
By His Grace,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church