Our series continues and now enters the second section drawn from the book I am His: Learning from the Prayer Book Catechism, All that a Christian ought to Know and Believe to his Soul’s Health.
The key to knowing ourselves, the church, the human race, the world, is in knowing God. False gods ensnare our hearts, and must be renounced; but the true God has revealed himself for us to know him, in creation, in redemption, and in sanctification, as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
The obligations of the baptismal covenant arise out of the very nature of the benefits it confers: they are the conditions upon which I realize and experience the benefit. If I am made “a member of Christ” and belong to him as a member belongs to a body, I cannot adhere to those powers that would divide me from him. I must renounce the three foes of man and God named in Scripture, “the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanity of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the flesh”. Robert Crouse gives the rationale: “We cannot serve two masters. Insofar as we are followers of the world - insofar as we look to the world around us as the standard and measure of our lives - we cannot be followers of God. Insofar as we are followers of the flesh - insofar as we measure our lives according to what is immediately pleasant and agreeable to us - we cannot be followers of God. Insofar as we are followers of the devil - that is to say, insofar as we put ourselves in the place of God as arbiters of good and evil - we cannot be followers of God”. When we follow them, we are led not into righteousness but into sin, which is the Bible's word for separation or alienation from God. When we follow them, we become enemies to God.
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