New City CatechismSample

Question: Will God allow our disobedience and idolatry to go unpunished?

Answer: No, every sin is against the sovereignty, holiness, and goodness of God, and against his righteous law, and God is righteously angry with our sins and will punish them in his just judgment both in this life, and in the life to come.

Commentary: If Jesus Christ did not take care to secure our standing, we should fall to our ruin. Adam fell, and, being our federal head, we fell in him…. "God (says the apostle) included all under sin."

What is sin but a breach, that is, a transgression, of the law; "the wages of sin is death;" every transgression of the law incurs damnation…. We must die, we are legally dead…. We have broken God's law, and are liable to eternal condemnation…every one of us without distinction; we are all upon a level…. It is not greatness of station, nor external differences, that make a difference in the internal state of the soul…. This is our state towards God, we have lived in trespasses and sins, [and] are legally dead now….

But, besides this legal death, there is a spiritual death, and the consequence of that is eternal death; if I die in that state, I must die for ever; that is, I must be a creature living eternally banished from God…. It is impossible to know, or to value, that life that Jesus Christ came into the world to impart to us, and procure for us without considering the nature of the death he delivers us from.