The Heidelberg Catechism is golden. We're teaching it to our children. And the first question is the sweetest and most precious of them all. Here it is:
Question 1: What is your only comfort, in life and in death?
Answer: That I belong—body and soul, in life and in death—not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that he protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.
—Mark A. Noll, ed., Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991), 137.
