Reading With the People of God - #4 ComfortExemplo

What do we mean when we say we belong "body and soul" to Jesus Christ?

In his book on the Heidelberg Catechism, Body and Soul, Craig Barnes writes,

Body and soul. The catechism beckons us to realize that all of life is under the liberating redemption of Jesus Christ. We are free from the despairing notion that our bodies and souls are disconnected. We have long been tempted to think that God may have our souls, but this bodily life is our own responsibility. This makes us suppose that the only point of religion is to take care of our anxieties about what happens after death. In the meantime we are left on our own to do the best we can with our fleeting years on earth. But the work of God in Jesus Christ is so much more than punching our ticket to heaven.

It can be easy to fall into the ditch of living with a disconnected body and soul mindset, to live as if we should live our lives as we wish and wait until the afterlife to belong to God. But the truth is, we cannot trust ourselves; our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately sick (Jeremiah 17:9). This is why we declare we belong to Jesus in Body and Soul!

As we confess our faith today, may the declaration of belonging to Christ in body and soul be a statement of submission to Jesus, and may His Kingdom come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven!

If we cannot trust ourselves to desire and pursue what is good for us, and we certainly cannot trust other humans to desire and pursue our good, what remains? To whom can we safely belong? To whom can we trust our existence without fear of abuse? We need to belong to someone who is perfectly able to desire our own good while desiring their own good, someone for whom there cannot be a conflict between our good and their good (John 3:16; Romans 8:28; 2 Peter 3:9). We need to belong to Christ.*

Today's prayer of illumination:

Come, Lord Jesus, come. I know that I was created to belong to you. Help me today, Lord. Guide in your Word, by Your Spirit. Show me the way today! Amen.

Memorization Challenge of the Month:

Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 1

Q1. What is your only comfort in life and in death?

A1. That I am not my own, but belong— body and soul, in life and in death— to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.

Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

*Alan Noble, You Are Not Your Own