Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English§
Questions
● Q1. What is man's primary purpose?
Man's primary purpose is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
● Q2. What authority from God directs us how to glorify and enjoy Him?
The only authority for glorifying and enjoying Him is the Bible, which is the word of God and is
made up of the Old and New Testaments.
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● Q3. What does the Bible primarily teach?
The Bible primarily teaches what man must believe about God and what God requires of man.
● Q4. What is God?
God is a spirit, Whose being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth are infinite,
eternal, and unchangeable.
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● Q5. Is there more than one God?
There is only one, the living and true God.
● Q6. How many persons are in the one God?
Three persons are in the one God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three are one
God, the same in substance and equal in power and glory.
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● Q7. What are the decrees of God?
The decrees of God are his eternal plan, based on the purpose of His will, by which, for His own
glory, He has foreordained everything that happens.
● Q8. How does God carry out His decrees?
God carries out His decrees in creation and providence.
● Q9. What is creation?
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Creation is God's making everything out of nothing by His powerful word in six days - and all
very good.
● Q10. How did God create man?
God created man, male and female, in His own image and in knowledge, righteousness, and
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holiness, to rule over the other creatures.
● Q11. What is God's providence?
God's providence is His completely holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing every
creature and every action.
● Q12. What did God's providence specifically do for man whom He created?
After the creation God made a covenant with man to give him life, if he perfectly obeyed; God
told him not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil or he would die.
● Q13. Did our first parents remain as they were created?
Left to the freedom of their own wills, our first parents sinned against God and fell from their
original condition.
● Q14. What is sin?
Sin is disobeying or not conforming to God's law in any way.
, ● Q15. By what sin did our first parents fall from their original condition?
Our first parents' sin was eating the forbidden fruit.
● Q16. Did all mankind fall in Adam's first disobedience?
Since the covenant was made not only for Adam but also for his natural descendants, all
mankind sinned in him and fell with him in his first disobedience.
● Q17. What happened to man in the fall?
Man fell into a condition of sin and misery.
● Q18. What is sinful about man's fallen condition?
The sinfulness of that fallen condition is twofold. First, in what is commonly called original sin,
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there is the guilt of Adam's first sin with its lack of original righteousness and the corruption of
his whole nature. Second are all the specific acts of disobedience that come from original sin.
● Q19. What is the misery of man's fallen condition?
By their fall all mankind lost fellowship with God and brought His anger and curse on
themselves. They are therefore subject to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and to the
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pains of hell forever.
● Q20. Did God leave all mankind to die in sin and misery?
From all eternity and merely because it pleased Him God chose some to have everlasting life.
These He freed from sin and misery by a covenant of grace and brought them to salvation by a
redeemer.
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● Q21. Who is the redeemer of God's chosen ones?
The only redeemer of God's chosen is the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, Who
became man. He was and continues to be God and man in two distinct natures and one person
forever.
● Q22. How did Christ, the Son of God, become man?
Christ, the Son of God, became man by assuming a real body and a reasoning soul. He was
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conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, who gave birth to
Him; yet He was sinless.
● Q23. How is Christ our redeemer?
As our redeemer, Christ is a prophet, priest, and king in both His humiliation and His exaltation.
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● Q24. How is Christ a prophet?
As a prophet, Christ reveals the will of God to us for our salvation by His word and Spirit.
● Q25. How is Christ a priest?
As a priest, Christ offered Himself up once as a sacrifice for us to satisfy divine justice and to
reconcile us to God, and He continually intercedes for us.
● Q26. How is Christ a king?
As a king, Christ brings us under His power, rules and defends us, and restrains and conquers
all His and all our enemies.
● Q27. How was Christ humiliated?
Christ was humiliated: by being born as a man and born into a poor family; by being made