In this episode, Nate and Ben discuss New City Catechism Question 1:
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 Savior Jesus Christ.
They dig into the meaning of the answer, as well as how it helps form us in ways that cut against dominate views in our modern culture. They also address how an understanding of this question gets to the heart of the gospel, and how we can use it in our discipleship.
In this episode, Nate and Ben discuss New City Catechism Question 1:
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 Savior Jesus Christ.
They dig into the meaning of the answer, as well as how it helps form us in ways that cut against dominate views in our modern culture. They also address how an understanding of this question gets to the heart of the gospel, and how we can use it in our discipleship.
Welcome to another episode of the All of Life podcast. I'm your host, nate Claybourne, and once again, after a long hiatus, I'm back on here with our pastoral formation and mission. Benjamin Cant, how are you doing, ben?
Speaker 2:Doing well. New year, new you, I guess.
Speaker 1:Kind of it's kind of new both of us, we both have fresh haircuts.
Speaker 2:Well, we used to get a lot of reps together on this podcast and I hope that we get more reps coming in the future, both for the catechism but also for our Bible reading plan. That's right. It will be really great to be able to talk through some of these things together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this is our second episode this week and they are both starting two new ongoing. Our hope for them is that they're weekly series.
Speaker 1:So, one's going to be on the McShane Bible reading plan. One is what we're doing right now on the New City catechism, which we did. People know I hope they know that we did it as our confession of faith all last year and we decided let's do it again this year, but let's actually do some supporting material for it, just because we're hoping that it's actually helpful for family discipleship. It's not just this thing that we do every Sunday that turns into white noise in some way where you don't really pay attention to it the rest of the week. So we're here to talk today about catechism.
Speaker 2:question one, yep. Well, and so one of the things that we want to make sure that you hear from us is we intend for this podcast to be about 15 minutes long, something that parents and kids could listen to in the car, and it's really just us pastorally unpacking and applying the question and answer, and it's helpful that it's called the New City catechism, although it has nothing to do with us as a church called New City Right.
Speaker 1:There's a space in between New and City.
Speaker 2:That's how you can tell it apart. That's exactly right, and so the things that we really want to do is talk about okay. What does this question actually mean? What is the theology here we want to answer? How does this question actually help create us, shape us, form us as a counterculture for the common good? In other words, christians, and the church in particular, are meant to be a distinctive people among all the peoples in the world, and what does that mean? Well, how does this question and answer shape us to be a different people, a distinctive people, but not just in the world, but rather in the world, not of the world, but for the world. We want to actually be, for the common good. We want these questions and answers to actually help us to be more kind, more gentle, more generous, more humble, more patient, bringing more goodness into the world. Because of the theology of these questions, yeah, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1:So that kind of gives people what our framework is little expectations.
Speaker 1:We're doing 10, 15 minutes. Today might be a little bit longer because we're doing a little more introductory work at the top. That's right, but why don't we just? We'll just jump right in to catechism, question one that we're going to be using as our confession of faith this coming Sunday. It is what is our only hope in life and death? And then the answer is that we are not our own, but belong body and soul, both in life and death, to God and to our Savior, jesus Christ. So good.
Speaker 2:This is one of the most beautiful sentences maybe ever written by a human pen that was not divinely inspired. It really comes from the Heidelberg Catechism, question one, which is very, very similar to this in many ways. But just to start with this idea of belonging to God and many of us know what that means in the sense that when a husband and a wife get married to show the world that they belong to one another, they take the last name, the same last name when children, when you are born into your family's home, you get your mom and dad's last name. Why? Because you belong together.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, similarly, in Christian baptism what happens is is God puts His name the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit on the person being baptized, and so we belong to God. That's the way that baptism works. Is that? It's a way, it's a sign and a seal of our belonging to God. And so it's a beautiful picture, because if something belongs to me, I take good care of it.
Speaker 2:If something belongs to me, I protect it. If something belongs to me, I will sacrifice in order to keep it. If something belongs to me, it has a higher level or higher value to me than something that maybe doesn't belong to me. And so, if we belong to God and it's not just your spirit, nate, or your mind or your heart, it's your whole person, your body and your soul, it's all of you belongs to God. That means that nothing, as Romans 8 ends, can separate you from belonging to God. That's such good news for us because it means that even our sin, our suffering, our sorrow, the things that we go through, nothing can separate us from this belonging that we have to God, the Father, by faith in Jesus Christ. That's the good news of this question and answer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I like how, in this way of phrasing the question, it frames it as a hope.
Speaker 2:So it's like an expectant reality.
Speaker 1:But I think in Heidelberg they use the word comfort. Yeah, that's right, it's sort of an ongoing day-to-day dimension that, if you meditate on this truth, it provides comfort day-to-day, but it also provides hope for the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so well said, and maybe that's one of the ways in which this question helps us to become a counterculture for the common good.
Speaker 1:Look at that segue right into the second part of our discussion.
Speaker 2:And that is that we are people of hope, and people of hope can endure pain. People of hope can endure suffering. In fact, there's a guy named Victor Frankel who survived the Holocaust and he has this quote. He says what forms a person more is what they believe about the future than what they suffered in the past. In other words, our hope, what we believe about the future, which is that the hope that tomorrow is brighter than today, and by tomorrow I mean it might not be literally tomorrow when we wake up tomorrow, but it's the future. It's when we look forward to the future, no matter what. If you belong to God, your future is brighter than your today, regardless, no matter who you are, no matter what you've gone through, no matter what tomorrow actually looks like. That's the good news of this question, and it helps us actually to love our neighbors sacrificially, because I can experience pain and suffering. I can experience feeling like people I'm thinking about our kids that are listening to this and you go out of your way to befriend somebody that maybe nobody else really wants to be friends with. Well, that might cost you something, but the reason why you do that is because you have a hope that tomorrow is always going to be brighter than today, that the future is actually a bright future, even if today is costing you something, and so this helps us to actually love people well.
Speaker 2:The other thing is that there's a phrase in here which says that we are not our own. That's a big deal, because we live in a culture that says things like my body, my choice. We live in a culture that is all about how nobody has rights over me but me. And in fact, if you try to have any, if you try to infringe or push back on my rights in any way, shape or form, that's the highest form of injustice. And what Christians do is we confess in this question and answer we say I'm not my own, I don't belong to me.
Speaker 2:Ben does not belong to Ben. Ben fundamentally belongs to God and to our Savior, Jesus Christ, and that's what 1 Corinthians 6 says when it says you are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. Your body actually is this dwelling place for the Holy Spirit, which is pretty high. I mean, that's body positivity, if there ever was one, that your body is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. But then there's the second piece. Not only does your body really matter because God himself dwells there, but your body really matters because God has taken it as his home, which means it belongs to him and not to you. That's a significant truth of this Cratochism question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when, even as you're unpacking that, it makes me think of how it really cuts against two opposing ideas in our culture, and you brought up one of them, this idea that no one can have rights over me. It's my body, my choice, it is I am the captain of my fate mentality, which we would reject. But then we would also reject that you shouldn't just be open to being taken advantage of by whoever may come along, and so that idea that no one has rights over me is pushing back against one type of injustice that people of different races, different ethnicities, different genders have been subjugated, taken advantage of, experienced injustice, and so it's pushing back on that. But then the flip side of it is you're not just sort of open to that, whatever comes along.
Speaker 1:And so this is kind of cutting in between those two ideas by saying, yeah, you're not your own, so it's denying something but you belong to God, that's right. Who is going to take care of you and is going to make sure that you're not subjected to injustice, at least in the ultimate sense? You may experience temporary injustices here and now, but your hope in life and death is ultimately beyond the here and now.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's so well said. Well, and so then, how this actually shapes us in our discipleship, our formation as we follow Jesus, is we're a people of hope that's more durable than death. That's a big deal. I've reflected recently on how the plot of every action movie is much less exciting if you don't fear death. Every action movie is just not that exciting if you're just like, yeah, I could die, full stop period. What's a big deal?
Speaker 2:And this is a very biblical thought, which is in Hebrews 2,. It talks about how Jesus tasted death for everyone, and then, a few verses later, in verse 14 and 15. And the purpose of that is that through death, he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who, through the fear of death, were subject to lifelong slavery. In other words, if you fear death, you are a slave of the fear of death. That's what Hebrews 2 says. But if you're free from the fear of death because you belong to God in body and in soul, and the worst thing that can happen to you is that you seemingly that you die, that's what I think most people would say. So the worst thing that can happen is that you die, maybe die alone.
Speaker 2:Christians already have that taken care of. There's no way I can die alone. I can die but I'm belonging already to God, so it's not alone and I can die. But all that is is death is now become a doorway to me, knowing and being with and experiencing God more fully than I do here now. And so Christians who die in Christ, those who belong to Jesus that die, are more fully alive in one sense after their death than they were before their death. That means death is a doorway. Death is no longer a grave. Jesus has put a doorway on the backside of our casket. In that sense, the poet George Herbert said the resurrection of Jesus has turned death from an executioner into a gardener, and so death all it is is a way in which we actually are ushered into a more fully alive life in the presence of God, with God, and that's the hope that is belonging to God in life and in death. If I belong to myself, I don't have a hope that's more durable than death.
Speaker 2:But, if I belong to God in body and in soul, both in life and in death, then I have a hope that transcends or goes beyond death itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you highlight too that I think maybe in our culture and reflected, as you noted, in action movies, the ultimate fear is death in a lot of ways, and we have certain voices in culture, existentialists, that are sort of recognizing that and saying, well, yeah, you just have to stare into the abyss and get on with your life. And so they're recognizing, yeah, this is the ultimate fear, but their solution is very shallow and very ultimately unhelpful and instead this is saying, well, yeah, the ultimate fear is death, but here's an actual solution to that fear, because whatever you're afraid of, especially in that sense, you really belong to the thing you're afraid of it controls you it animates in one way or another.
Speaker 1:Your avoidance of it.
Speaker 2:That's so well said.
Speaker 1:It controls you, and so in this sense, you're releasing control to be belonging to someone greater than death.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, in Leo Tilstoy, the great Russian author, said man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. And there's something so powerful about that that as long as you fear death, everything can be taken from you. And that's the fear of death right that your life, your family, your friends, your possessions, your reputation, like everything, can be taken from you by death. But if you don't fear death, then everything belongs to you. And the only way you can have that kind of fearlessness in the face of death is if you have confidence that Jesus already tasted death for you and then rose and defeated death, so that now he can give you confidence that you too will defeat death. You will be a conqueror, an overcomer, not on your own, but because you belong to the one who has already overcome death.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is, again, to bring it full circle, a comfort in the here and now and a hope for the future as well. Amen, yeah, well, let's, we're right up, kind of at the end of time, but we forgot earlier. I'm just now remembering to mention there is an app that people can get. That's right.
Speaker 1:I know we're always talking about apps and we would love to have everything be in the one app that we use for everything New City, our church center app but in this case it's already duplicated in a new space city catechism app that people can download and they can see all the questions in here. It's a good way to go through and maybe even try to memorize questions together as a family, but you have a hack for it that's helpful that you can tell people about real quick.
Speaker 2:That's right. So we do this with our four year old and the longer version. So the question and answer is made for adults, young adults, children, teenagers, for everybody to memorize. But there's a shorter version. If you click in the top right corner there's a little cog that looks like a settings gear. If you click that there's a children's mode. If you turn that on, you just swipe that to turn it on. Then when it says the answer, it's actually shorter answer. So question one the shorter answer is that we are not our own but belong to God. And then in the bottom right corner you'll see a play button that appears now and if you press that play button there's a song for all 52 questions. That can help you with your little ones to memorize this question and answer. And so we've done that. It's been really helpful. I get the jingle stuck in my head. They're kind of like the those. You know what? Do they call them? Ear worms? I guess yeah.
Speaker 1:But there's not a bad thing, it's not a full song, it's just like a phrase over and over and over again. So like it really does stick in there, it's just a little jingle.
Speaker 2:So we'd encourage you to use that at mealtimes maybe breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever with your children and begin memorizing this question and answer questions together, and I think that that'll be it'll be a worthwhile way for you to do some family discipleship in your home around the new city. Catechism yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I didn't even realize this because I don't have the app and I haven't listened to it in children's mode.
Speaker 1:But, even what you just said. Right now, it maybe helps us appreciate something and we'll close with this that there is a concise answer to this question. That already feels kind of concise when you said it's that we're not our own but belong to God. That's right. Like that is the essence of this answer the more expanded versions what we say on Sunday, and then we're giving you an even more expanded version in the discussion that we're having here. So there's something for everyone that's true, so well said.
Speaker 1:Well, ben, this was great. I will look forward to talking with you again next week. As we get into questions, and some questions as we move forward.