Heidelberg Catechism, Question 5
Question 5
Canst thou keep all these things perfectly?
In no wise (1 John 1;8); for I am prone by nature to hate God (Rom. 8;7) and my neighbor (Titus 3;3).
Scripture references for paragraph 1
Berean Standard Bible. Public domain text and source credits.
1 John 1:88If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
Romans 3:10-1210As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one.
11There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
12All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
Jeremiah 13:2323Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Neither are you able to do good— you who are accustomed to doing evil.
Romans 8:77because the mind of the flesh is hostile to God: It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.
Psalms 14:11The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt; their acts are vile. There is no one who does good.
Ephesians 2:33All of us also lived among them at one time, fulfilling the cravings of our flesh and indulging its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature children of wrath.
Romans 1:3030slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent new forms of evil; they disobey their parents.
Titus 3:33For at one time we too were foolish, disobedient, misled, and enslaved to all sorts of desires and pleasures—living in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.
Romans 1:3131They are senseless, faithless, heartless, merciless.
Galatians 5:1919The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery;
Galatians 5:2020idolatry and sorcery; hatred, discord, jealousy, and rage; rivalries, divisions, factions,
Source and edition
Heidelberg Catechism. RCA English, E. R. Good & Bro., Tiffin, 1879. RCA English, E. R. Good & Bro., Tiffin, 1879
Public Domain (historic text); CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikisource transcription). Source transcription.
Transcription licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0.
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