Questions and answers from: Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English © 1986 Reformed Theological Seminary of Jackson, Miss.
January 31 - February 6, 2011
Question 1. What is man's primary purpose?
Answer: Answer: Man's primary purpose is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
February 7 - February 13, 2011
Question 2. What authority from God directs us how to glorify and enjoy Him?
Answer: Answer: The only authority for glorifying and enjoying Him is the bible, which is the word of God and is made up of the Old and New Testaments.
February 14 - February 20, 2011
Question 3. What does the bible primarily teach?
Answer: Answer: The Bible primarily teaches what man must believe about God and what God requires of man.
February 21 - February 27, 2011
Question 4. What is God?
Answer: Answer: God is a spirit, Whose being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth are infinite, eternal, and unchangeable.
February 28 - March 6, 2011
Question 5. Is there more than one God?
Answer: Answer: There is only one, the living and true God.
March 7 - March 13, 2011
Question 6. How many persons are there in the one God?
Answer: Answer: Three persons are in the one God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three are one God, the same in substance and equal in power and glory.
March 14 - March 20, 2011
Question 7. What are the decrees of God?
Answer: Answer: The decrees of God are His eternal plan based on the purpose of His will, by which, for His own glory, He has foreordained everything that happens.
March 21 - March 27, 2011
Question 8. How does God carry out His decrees?
Answer: Answer: God carries out His decrees in creation and providence.
March 28 - April 3, 2011
Question 9. What is creation?
Answer: Answer: Creation is God's making everything out of nothing by His powerful word in six days - and all very good.
April 4 - April 10, 2011
Question 10. How did God create man?
Answer: Answer: God created man, male and female, in His own image and in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, to rule over the other creatures.
April 11 - April 17, 2011
Question 11. What is God's providence?
Answer: Answer: God's providence is His completely holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing every creature and every action.
April 18 - April 24, 2011
Question 12. What did God's providence specifically do for man whom He created?
Answer: Answer: After the creation God made a covenant with man to give him life, if he perfectly obeyed; God told him not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil or he would die.
April 25 - May 1, 2011
Question 13. Did our first parents remain as they were created?
Answer: Answer: Left to the freedom of their own wills, our first parents sinned against God and fell from their original condition.
May 2 - May 8, 2011
Question 14. What is sin?
Answer: Answer: Sin is disobeying or not conforming to God's law in any way.
Question 15. By what sin did our first parents fall from their original condition?
Answer: Answer: Our first parents' sin was eating the forbidden fruit.
May 9 - May 15, 2011
Question 16. Did all mankind fall in Adam's first disobedience?
Answer: Answer: Since the covenant was made not only for Adam but also for his natural descendants, all mankind sinned in him and fell with him in his first disobedience.
May 16 - May 22, 2011
Question 17. What happened to man in the fall?
Answer: Answer: Man fell into a condition of sin and misery.
May 23 - May 29, 2011
Question 18. What is sinful about man's fallen condition?
Answer: Answer: The sinfulness of that fallen condition is twofold. First, in what is commonly called original sin, there is the guilt of Adam's first sin with its lack of original righteousness and the corruption of his whole nature. Second are all the specific acts of disobedience that come from original sin.
May 30 - June 5, 2011
Question 19. What is the misery of man's fallen condition?
Answer: Answer: By their fall all mankind lost fellowship with God and brought His anger and curse on themselves. They are therefore subject to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever.
June 6 - June 12, 2011
Question 20. Did God leave all mankind to die in sin and misery?
Answer: Answer: From all eternity and merely because it pleased Him God chose some to have everlasting life. These He freed from sin and misery by a covenant of grace and brought them to salvation by a redeemer.
June 13 - June 19, 2011
Question 21. Who is the redeemer of God's chosen ones?
Answer: Answer: The only redeemer of God's chosen is the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, who became man. He was and continues to be God and man in two distinct matures and one person forever.
June 20 - June 26, 2011
Question 22. How did Christ, the Son of God, become man?
Answer: Answer: Christ, the Son of God, became man by assuming a real body and a reasoning soul. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, who gave birth to Him; yet He was sinless.
June 27 - July 3, 2011
Question 23. How is Christ our redeemer?
Answer: Answer: As our redeemer, Christ is a prophet, priest, and king in both His humiliation and His exaltation.
July 4 - July 10, 2011
Question 24. How is Christ a prophet?
Answer: Answer: As a prophet, Christ reveals the will of God to us for our salvation by His word and Spirit.
July 11 - July 17, 2011
Question 25. How is Christ a priest?
Answer: Answer: As a priest, Christ offered Himself up once as a sacrifice for us to satisfy divine justice and to reconcile us to God, and He continually intercedes for us.
July 18 - July 24, 2011
Question 26. How is Christ a king?
Answer: Answer: As a king, Christ brings us under His power, rules and defends us, and retrains and conquers all His and all our enemies.
July 25 - July 31, 2011
Question 27. How was Christ humiliated?
Answer: Answer: Christ was humiliated: by being born as a man and born into a poor family; by being made subject to the law and suffering the miseries of this life, the anger of God, and the curse of death on the cross; and by being buried and remaining under the power of death for a time.
August 1 - August 7, 2011
Question 28. How is Christ exalted?
Answer: Answer: Christ is exalted by His rising from the dead on the third day, His going up into heaven, His sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and His coming to judge the world at the last day.
August 8 - August 14, 2011
Question 29. How are we made to take part in the redemption Christ bought?
Answer: Answer: We take part in the redemption Christ bought when the Holy Spirit effectively applies it to us.
August 15 - August 21, 2011
Question 30. How does the Holy Spirit apply to us the redemption Christ bought?
Answer: Answer: The Spirit applies to us the redemption Christ bought by producing faith in us and so uniting us to Christ in our effective calling.
August 22 - August 28, 2011
Question 31. What is effective calling?
Answer: Answer: Effective calling is the work of God's Spirit, Who convinces us that we are sinful and miserable, Who enlightens our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and Who renews our wills. This is how He persuades and makes us able to receive Jesus Christ, Who is freely offered to us in the gospel.
August 29 - September 4, 2011
Question 32. What benefits do those who are effectively called share in this life?
Answer: Answer: In this life those who are effectively called share justification, adoption, sanctification, and the other benefits that either go with or come from them.
September 5 - September 11, 2011
Question 33. What is justification?
Answer: Answer: Justification is the act of God's free grace by which He pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in His sight. He does so only because He counts the righteousness of Christ as ours. Justification is received by faith alone.
September 12 - September 18, 2011
Question 34. What is adoption?
Answer: Answer: Adoption is the act of God's free grace by which we become His sons with all the rights and privileges of being His.
September 19 - September 25, 2011
Question 35. What is sanctification?
Answer: Answer: Sanctification is the work of God's free grace by which our whole person is made new in the image of God, and we are made more and more able to become dead to sin and alive to righteousness.
September 26 - October 2, 2011
Question 36. What benefits in this life go with or come from justification, adoption, and sanctification?
Answer: Answer: The benefits that in this life go with or come from justification, adoption, and sanctification are: the assurance of God's love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Spirit, and growing and persevering in grace to the end of our lives.
October 3 - October 9, 2011
Question 37. What benefits do believers receive from Christ when they die?
Answer: Answer: When believers die, their souls are made perfectly holy and immediately pass into glory. Their bodies, which are still united to Christ, rest in the grace until the resurrection.
October 10 - October 16, 2011
Question 38. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at the resurrection?
Answer: Answer: At the resurrection, believers, raised in glory, will be publicly recognized and declared not guilty on the day of judgment and will be made completely happy in the full enjoyment of God forever.
October 17 - October 23, 2011
Question 39. What does God require of man?
Answer: Answer: God requires man to obey His revealed will.
October 24 - October 30, 2011
Question 40. What rules did God first reveal for man to obey?
Answer: Answer: The rules He first revealed were the moral law.
October 31 - November 6, 2011
Question 41. Where is the moral law summarized?
Answer: Answer: The moral law is summarized in the ten commandments.
November 7 - November 13, 2011
Question 42. What is the essence of the ten commandments?
Answer: Answer: The essence of the ten commandments is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind, and to love everyone else as we love ourselves.
November 14 - November 20, 2011
Question 43. What introduces the ten commandments?
Answer: Answer: These words introduce the ten commandments: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
November 21 - November 27, 2011
Question 44. What does the introduction to the ten commandments teach us?
Answer: Answer: The introduction to the ten commandments teaches us that, because God is Lord and is our God and redeemer, we must keep all His commandments.
November 28 - December 4, 2011
Question 45. What is the first commandment?
Answer: Answer: The first commandment is: You shall have no other gods before me.
December 5 - December 11, 2011
Question 46. What does the first commandment require?
Answer: Answer: The first commandment requires us to know and recognize God as the only true God and our god, and to worship and glorify Him accordingly.
December 12 - December 18, 2011
Question 47. What does the first commandment forbid?
Answer: Answer: The first commandment forbids denying God or not worshipping and glorifying Him as the true God and our God. It also forbids giving worship and glory, which He alone deserves, to anyone or anything else.
December 19 - December 25, 2011
Question 48. What are we specifically taught in the first commandment by the words before me?
Answer: Answer: The words before me in the first commandment teach us that God, Who sees everything, notices and is very offended by the sin of having any other god.
December 26, 2011 - January 1, 2012
Question 49. What is the second commandment?
Answer: Answer: The second commandment is: You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand [generations] of those who love me and keep my commandments.
January 2 - January 8, 2012
Question 50. What does the second commandment require?
Answer: Answer: The second commandment requires us to receive, respectfully perform, and preserve completely and purely all the regulations for religion and worship that God has established in His word.
January 9 - January 15, 2012
Question 51. What does the second commandment forbid?
Answer: Answer: The second commandment forbids our worshipping God with images or in any other way not established in His word.
January 16 - January 22, 2012
Question 52. What are the reasons for the second commandment?
Answer: Answer: The reasons for the second commandment are that God totally rules over us, that we belong to Him, and that He is eager to be worshipped correctly.
January 23 - January 29, 2012
Question 53. What is the third commandment?
Answer: Answer: The third commandment is: You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
January 30 - February 5, 2012
Question 54. What does the third commandment require?
Answer: Answer: The third commandment requires the holy and reverent use of God's names, titles, qualities, regulations, word, and works.
February 6 - February 12, 2012
Question 55. What does the third commandment forbid?
Answer: Answer: The third commandment forbids our treating as unholy or abusing anything God uses to make Himself known.
February 13 - February 19, 2012
Question 56. What is the reason for the third commandment?
Answer: Answer: The reason for the third commandment is that the Lord our God will not allow those who break this commandment to escape His righteous judgment, although they may escape punishment from men.
February 20 - February 26, 2012
Question 57. What is the fourth commandment?
Answer: Answer: The fourth commandment is: Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do nay work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
February 27 - March 4, 2012
Question 58. What does the fourth commandment require?
Answer: Answer: The fourth commandment requires us to set apart to God the times He has established in His word - specifically one whole day out of every seven as a holy Sabbath to Him.
March 5 - March 11, 2012
Question 59. Which day of the week has God designated as the Sabbath?
Answer: Answer: From the beginning of the world until the resurrection of Christ God established the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath. From that time until the end of the world the first day of the week is the Christian Sabbath.
March 12 - March 18, 2012
Question 60. How do we keep the Sabbath holy?
Answer: Answer: We keep the Sabbath holy by resting the whole day from worldly affairs or recreations, even ones that are lawful on other days. Except for necessary works or acts of mercy we should spend all our time publicly and privately worshipping God.
March 19 - March 25, 2012
Question 61. What does the fourth commandment forbid?
Answer: Answer: The fourth commandment forbids failing to do or carelessly doing what we are supposed to do. It also forbids tr
