QUESTION # 1: What is your only comfort, in life and in death?

ANSWER # 1: That I belong–body and soul, in life and in death (1)–not to myself (2) but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ (3), who at the cost of His own blood (4) has fully paid for all my sins (5) and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil (6); that He protects me so well (7) that without the will of my Father in Heaven, not a hair can fall from my head (8),indeed, that everything must fit His purpose for my salvation (9). Therefore, by His Holy Spirit,He also gives me assurance of eternal life (10), and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him (11).”

THE HEIDELBERG CATECHISM
Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus; Heidelberg, Germany; January, 1563

SCRIPTURE TEXTS:

(1) Romans 14:8

(2) I Corinthians 6:19-20

(3) I Corinthians 3:23

(4) I Peter 1:18-19

(5) I John 1:7 and 2:2

(6) I John 3:8 (cf. Hebrews 2:14)

(7) John 6:35, 39

(8) Matthew 10:29-31 (cf. Luke 21:16-18)

(9) Romans 8:28

(10) II Corinthians 1:21-22 (cf. II Corinthians 5:5; Romans 8:16
and Ephesians 1:14)

(11) Romans 8:14-17

SPECIAL NOTE: The Heidelberg Catechism (along with the Lutheran Augsburg Confession, the Episcopalian Thirty Nine Articles of Religion, the Presbyterian Westminister Confession, the Congregational Savoy Declaration, and the Baptist 2nd London Confession of 1689) was one of the great doctrinal formulations coming out of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries.