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The latest translation of the Heidelberg Catechism (1975, updated 1988) approved by the synod of the Christian Reformed Church. This version includes all supporting Scripture texts (NIV) printed out for easy reference. Ideal for anyone studying the scriptural sources of the catechism.

The Heidelberg Catechism

From the view point of the Sin and Misery

The core theme of the Heidelberg Catechism is a comfort.  It teaches us that we need to know three things to live in the only and real comfort given by the Trinity.

1)       How big is my sin and misery?

2)       How did I get saved from all of my sins and miseries?

3)       How can I be thankful to whom who gave me that salvation?

The Sin, Misery, Salvation, and Thanksgiving, all these three things are intimately connected.  Without the understanding of the sin and misery, there is no way to know the salvation, and when we do not understand the salvation, the life of thanksgiving cannot be followed.

Because of these reasons, the sin and the misery is one of the most important themes in the Heidelberg Catechism.  In reality, the sin and the misery is also a very important theme in the whole Bible.

Interestingly, the Heidelberg Catechism is not dealing with the sin and the misery itself.  It looks like that the authors of the Catechism have the idea that the readers already know about this matter enough in the background.  The Heidelberg Catechism does not ask “What is the sin?”, but it asks “How do you come to know about your sin and misery?”  The Westminster Confession of Faith, question No. 14 defines the sin as what you are disobedient to God’s law and comes when you are in lack of being obedient to God.  The basic concept of the sin is that it is what you are going against the law. 

Then why the sin is a problem?  That is because the sin gives fatal harm to the sinner.  The Heidelberg Catechism explains this fatal harm as the misery.  There is no reason to deal with the sin seriously if nothing happens to the sinner.  The seriousness of the sin can only be recognized by the result of the sin.  Today, the reason why people understand the sin separately from the misery is because they don’t recognize the misery as a result of the sin.

The misery is the opposite concept from the comfort.  The misery is intimately related with the comfort.  If we don’t know the misery well, we cannot understand our comfort as well.    The word misery is “Elend” in German.  The world is used in the meaning of “being kicked out of the land”.  This word makes you think of Adam and Eve who were kicked out of the Garden of Eden.  This misery is clearly described again when the Israelites were kicked out of the Canaan and got pushed into the Babylon as refugees.  But this misery was born because of the sin, in another word, it happened because God’s people did not obey to the King’s order, as a result, they were kicked out of the land where God gave them.  That is the definition of misery.

There is no comfort for the refugees, prisoners, slaves, wanderers (foreigners).  Their lives are always unstable because they don’t know when and how their lives will be changed.  They cannot make a decision on their lives independently.  Because their destiny is grabbed by a uncertain group which is much bigger than themselves.  It is like a status of being deeply into the wet land, as they move more, the more they get into a greater amount of the misery.  So without a help from the outsider, there is no way for them to be out of this miserable situation.

The need of the law: the way to know the Sin and the Misery

The problem is that many people even don’t know they are living in the middle of the sin and the misery.  The person who does not recognize the sin and the misery, they can never be saved.  Because they don’t think they need a savior, they cannot have a faith, which is a necessary factor to their salvation.  Then why they cannot recognize their desperate status?  That is because they cannot see themselves objectively.  The reason why many people think they are not sinners is because they have different standard to the sin.  For example, even though they think themselves as sinners, they don’t think they are evil people as bad as worth going to the hell as a subject of God’s wrath and the judgment.

In reality, we don’t even know well of our apparent appearances of ourselves.  So we need a mirror, which can show ourselves to us.  When we look at the mirror, we clean our dirty parts.  We can see our body with a mirror, but how can we see our spiritual appearances?  That is through a law (Heidelberg Catechism, question number 3).  Only through the law of God, we recognize our sin and misery, when we know of our sin and misery; we get eager to the salvation.  Therefore, to look deeply into ourselves, we always need to portrait in the mirror of the law.  But this idea should have a background thinking that a human cannot satisfy the requirements of the law.  In the Bible, there are many different kinds of laws but Jesus summarized all the laws as follows.  “ Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ^{38  this is the first and greatest commandment.   39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)}

Then why the worldly law is interested in the behavior, but God’s law is interested in the people’s hearts?  The reason is simple.  Worldly judges cannot read people’s hearts, but God can see the center of the human heart, He looks into our hearts and judge whether we really love God or not.

Here we can learn one important thing.  To be out of the sin and the misery, the beginning of a blessed and everlasting life is to accept the fact that we are sinners in front of God, and recognizing the fact that we are spiritually unable.  There is no reason for God to save those who accept the fact that they are in the middle of the sin and the misery, but dare to say “so what?”  In the first chapter of the book of Romans in the Bible, God desserts those people as they are.  And that itself is the misery for them.  That’s because the misery is “being deserted by God”.

The ultimate reason why we deal with the sin and the misery is because those things teach us why the salvation through savoir is such a necessary requirement for human being.  Because Adam’s disobedient, human beings fell off; as a result human beings got reached to the point where they cannot save themselves.  However, God cannot save sinners as it is because of His character itself.  To resolve the problem of the sin and the misery, God’s fairness needs to be satisfied and human being’s basic characteristics need to be re-born. 

This salvation ministry is only possible through the Savior who is God and Human at the same time.  This is how the Heidelberg Catechism deals with the sin and the misery.

Written by SungHo Lee

in the book titled “A Story of the Dutch Reformed Church” published in Feb. 2015 (302 pages total) as an Appendix.

He is a Historical Theology professor in KoShin Theological Seminary in South Korea.

He graduated from Seoul National University then Calvin Seminary for his Ph. D. in Historical Theology under the advice of Richard A. Miller.

Summarized and Translated by Naomi Nah Schult on the 28^th of May, 2015

The HEIDELBERG CATECHISM with SCRIPTURE TEXTS can be purchased at