The following is provided by fellow Deacon Jean Pierre Eugene of Christ Presbyterian Church. It is a helpful summary of the first 42 questions of the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
The Triune God consisting of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit created the world in six days. On the sixth day, this God, who is Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth, created man after His image endowing him in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. Our first parents, created in a state of innocence and being left to the freedom of their will, fell from that estate when they ate from the forbidden fruit. This act is known as original sin. Through this act, all of mankind sinned in Adam and fell with him. In this, we fell into the estate of sin and misery. As a result of this estate, we lost communion with God, are under His wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself and the pains of hell forever. Out of God’s good pleasure, He did not leave all to live in this estate forever. Before the foundations of the world, God did elect some to everlasting life. He did so by entering into a covenant of grace to deliver them out of the state of sin and misery and bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer. This Redeemer being none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. The Christ, the second person of the Trinity, became a man by taking to Himself a true body and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin. As Redeemer, Christ executes three offices: that of a Prophet, a Priest, and a King. As a prophet, He does so by revealing to us, by His Word and Spirit the will of God for our salvation. As a priest, He does so by offering up Himself as a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice, reconcile us to God, and make continual intercession for us. As a king, He does so by subduing us to Himself, ruling and defending us, and restraining and conquering all His and our enemies. These offices Christ executes in His estate of humiliation and exaltation. We are made partakers of this redemption purchased by Christ by the Holy Spirit applying it to us by working faith in us and thus uniting us to Christ in our effectual calling. Those who have been effectually called by the Father are the benefactors of several blessings which include partaking of justification, adoption, and sanctification along with all the benefits that accompany or flow from them in this life. Once the life of those who have been saved has reached its end, their souls are made perfect in holiness and pass immediately into glory. Their bodies, still being united to Christ, rest in the grave until the resurrection. At that point, believers, being raised up in glory, shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God to all eternity. Being as our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, we do so by being obedient to His revealed will, in particular, His moral law, which is found in the Scriptures and summarized in the Ten Commandments.
