The New City Catechism is a resource aimed at helping children and adults learn the core doctrines of the Christian faith through 52 questions and answers. There's a mobile app available for Apple and Android devices, which makes it easy to take all 52 questions and answers with you wherever you go. The free app also includes Bible readings, short prayers, and a devotional commentary, as well as kid-friendly songs designed to help children (and adults!) memorise each question and answer. In our house we've started singing the songs after tea-time and during bath-time.
At the Prayer Meeting on Sunday afternoon we referred to the first question and answer: 'What is our only hope in life and death? That we are not our own but belong, body and soul, both in life and death, to God and to our Saviour Jesus Christ.'
Here is Tim Keller's devotional commentary on this question and answer:
'At one point in his writings John Calvin lays out the essence of what it means to live the Christian life. He says that he could make us a list of the commandments we should be keeping or a list of all the character traits we should be exhibiting. But instead, he wants to boil it down to the basic motive and the basic principle of what it means to live the Christian life.
The basic motive is that God sent his Son to save us by grace and to adopt us into his family. So now, because of that grace, in our gratitude, we want to resemble our Father. We want the family resemblance. We want to look like our Savior. We want to please our Father.
The basic principle then is this: that we are not to live to please ourselves. We’re not to live as if we belong to ourselves. And that means several things. It means, first of all, we are not to determine for ourselves what is right or wrong. We give up the right to determine that, and we rely wholly on God’s Word. We also give up the operating principle that we usually use in day-to-day life; we stop putting ourselves first, and we always put first what pleases God and what loves our neighbor. It also means that we are to have no part of our lives that is immune from self-giving. We’re supposed to give ourselves wholly to him—body and soul. And it means we trust God through thick and thin, through the good and the bad times, in life and in death.
And how do the motive and the principle relate? Because we’re saved by grace, we’re not our own. A woman once said to me, “If I knew I was saved because of what I did, if I contributed to my salvation, then God couldn’t ask anything of me because I’d made a contribution. But if I’m saved by grace, sheer grace, then there’s nothing he cannot ask of me.” And that’s right. You’re not your own. You were bought with a price.
Some years ago I heard a Christian speaker say, “How can you come to grips with someone who has given himself utterly for you without you giving yourself utterly for him?”
Jesus gave himself wholly for us. So now, we must give ourselves wholly to him.'
To find out more visit The New City Catechism website.