In 1563, saints in Heidelberg, Germany put together a summary of their beliefs to teach their children. This came to be known as the Heidelberg Catechism. It is divided into three sections: misery, deliverance, and gratitude. It was instructive for me this week to look at how this wonderful teaching tool described the role of Law in our lives.

First, if you were to write a few paragraphs on Law, which section would you put it in? Would law be in your discussion of our misery as sinners, our deliverance in Christ, or our gratitude for salvation?

For our German brothers and sisters over 400 years ago, the answer was to put it in all three.

The Law Reveals Our Misery

As they noted, it is the law that teaches us how sinful we are. The very first question in the catechism is this:

   Q. How do you come to know your misery?
   A. The law of God tells me.

Our first experience with law, whether human or divine, typically has the effect of making us feel bad – it shows us we are unable to meet expectations. This is often humiliating or exasperating when we face human law. It is terrifying when we see our misery in view of God’s law.

But that is only one function of law. Law shows up again in the catechism when the topic switches to deliverance.

The Law Defines Our Deliverance

As the writers of the Heidelberg Catechism correctly understood, the work of Jesus was not a workaround for God’s law, it was a satisfaction of that law.

Watch the development of this principle over this series of questions:

   Q. According to God’s righteous judgment we deserve punishment both now and in eternity: how then can we escape this punishment and return to God’s favor?
   A. God requires that his justice be satisfied. Therefore the claims of this justice must be paid in full, either by ourselves or by another.

Q. Can we make this payment ourselves?
A. Certainly not. Actually, we increase our debt every day.

Q. Can another creature—any at all—pay this debt for us?
A. No. To begin with, God will not punish any other creature for what a human is guilty of. Furthermore, no mere creature can bear the weight of God’s eternal wrath against sin and deliver others from it.

Q. What kind of mediator and deliverer should we look for then?
A. One who is a true and righteous human, yet more powerful than all creatures, that is, one who is also true God.

The Advent of Jesus that we celebrate at this time of the year is the coming of a law-keeper who can mediate for law-breakers. We cannot appreciate His coming without a high regard for the law He came to fulfill. But even this is not the end of the law for us. In all this discussion of law, the topic of the Ten Commandments has still not been broached. So where do they fit into our Christian theology? For the believers living in Heidelberg, the Ten Commandments were not to be understood as primarily about our misery or our deliverance, but about our gratitude.

The Law Expresses Our Gratitude

Let me close with this final question from the Catechism that served as an introduction to the Ten Commandments, and leave us with this thought: is this where the Law fits into your own theology?

Q. Since we have been delivered from our misery by grace through Christ without any merit of our own, why then should we do good works?
A. Because Christ, having redeemed us by his blood, is also restoring us by his Spirit into his image, so that with our whole lives we may show that we are thankful to God for his benefits, so that he may be praised through us, so that we may be assured of our faith by its fruits, and so that by our godly living our neighbors may be won over to Christ.

That sounds like a recipe for a very merry Christmas.