Lord's Day #4 The Fairness of Condemnation

As part of our morning worship service we read and I make a few comments about the Lord's Day of the Heidelberg Catechism that corresponds to the week of the year.

Our hope for preserving these is they can provide some instruction for those who are learning the catechism and or wanting to understand it better.

Today's Lord's Day deals with justness of God's punishment of sin. Mankind has no valid excuse for sin and God has every right to condemn. Our sins deserve temporal and eternal punishment of body and soul.

Lord’s Day 4
9.Does not God, then, do injustice to man by requiring of him in His Law that which he cannot perform?

No, for God so made man that he could perform it;1 but man, through the instigation of the devil, by willful disobedience deprived himself and all his descendants of those divine gifts.2
[1] Eph. 4:24. [2] Rom. 5:12.

10.Will God allow such disobedience and apostasy to go unpunished?

Certainly not,1 but He is terribly displeased with our inborn as well as our actual sins, and will punish them in just judgment in time and eternity, as He has declared, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.”
[1] Heb. 9:27. [2] Deut. 27:26; Gal. 3:10; *Rom. 1:18; *Matt. 25:41.

11. But is not God also merciful?

God is indeed merciful,1 but He is likewise just;2 His justice therefore requires that sin which is committed against the most high majesty of God, be punished with extreme, that is, with everlasting punishment both of body and soul.

[1] Ex. 34:6–7. [2] Ex. 20:5; Ps. 5:5–6; 2 Cor. 6:14–16; *Rev. 14:11.