August 5 – LD 32, Day 1: A Knowledgeable Faith and Gratitude

John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

The Christian faith is a knowledgeable faith. Christ expressed this truth in John 17:3 when He declared that the purpose of His bestowal of eternal life to us is exactly for true knowledge!

Little wonder then, that Lord's Day 1, Q/A 2 reminds us that true comfort is enjoyed in the way of a triple knowledge - knowing our misery, knowing how we are delivered from all our sins and miseries, and knowing how to show gratitude to God for His salvation of us.

Lord's Day 32 is the first Lord's Day of the third part of that Triple Knowledge.

We have learned that the knowledge of our misery is the knowledge of our sin, captured by the term, “total depravity”.

Knowing that we are totally depraved, we then know that all our salvation comes from God to us through faith in Christ. Against the idea that the Christian faith is “simple” and has little content, our Reformed fathers rightly maintain that “true faith is ... a certain knowledge, whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in His Word...” and included an exposition of the historic Apostles' Creed as a summary of the content of faith.

True gratitude is also a knowledgeable gratitude. God Himself reveals to us how we are to show thanks to Him. Gratitude is expressed by a life of good works arising out of a life of daily conversion (LD32-33). It is further expressed by a loving obedience to God's law (LD34-44) and engaging in covenant speech with God through prayer (LD45-52).

By spelling out these truths, our Catechism helps us to relate to God rightly and properly by steering us clear from sin.

For Meditation: Many do not value precise knowledge in Christianity today. Yet, in other spheres of life, we have little use for one who wants to be a surgeon, engineer or lawyer if he has no desire to have good and precise knowledge in his field of study. Give thanks to God for guiding our Reformed fathers to this precise summary of God's Word and pray that we may daily desire to grow in this knowledge of God.