The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 1:
Q: What is man’s primary purpose?
A: Man’s primary purpose is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 2:
Q: What authority from God directs us how to glorify and enjoy him?
A: 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.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 3:
Q: What does the Bible primarily teach?
A: The Bible primarily teaches what man must believe
about God and what God requires of man.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 4:
Q: What is God?
A: God is a spirit, whose being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice,
goodness, and truth are infinite, eternal, and unchangeable.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 5:
Q: Is there more than one God?
A: There is only one, the living and true God.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 6:
Q: How many persons are in the one God?
A: 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.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 7:
Q: What are the decrees of God?
A: 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.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 8:
Q: How does God carry out his decrees?
A: God carries out his decrees in creation and providence.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 9:
Q: What is creation?
A: Creation is God’s making everything out of nothing by his powerful word
in six days - and all very good.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 10:
Q: How did God create man?
A: God created man, male and female, in his own image and in knowledge,
righteousness, and holiness, to rule over the other creatures.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 11:
Q: What is God’s providence?
A: God’s providence is his completely holy, wise, and powerful preserving
and governing every creature and every action.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 12:
Q: What did God’s providence specifically do for man whom he created?
A: 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.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 13:
Q: Did our first parents remain as they were created?
A: Left to the freedom of their own wills, our first parents sinned
against God and fell from their original condition.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 14:
Q: What is sin?
A: Sin is disobeying or not conforming to God’s law in any way.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 15:
Q: By what sin did our first parents fall from their original condition?
A: Our first parents’ sin was eating the forbidden fruit.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 16:
Q: Did all mankind fall in Adam’s first disobedience?
A: 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.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 17:
Q: What happened to man in the fall?
A: Man fell into a condition of sin and misery.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 18:
Q: What is sinful about man’s fallen condition?
A: The sinfulness of that fallen condition is twofold. First, in what is commonly
called the original sin, 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.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 19:
Q: What is the misery of man’s fallen condition?
A: 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 pains of hell forever.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 20:
Q: Did God leave all mankind to die in sin and misery?
A: 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.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 21:
Q: Who is the redeemer of God’s chosen ones?
A: 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.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 22:
Q: How did Christ, the Son of God, become man?
A: Christ, the Son of God, became man by assuming a real body and a reasoning soul. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, who gave birth to him; yet he was sinless.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 23:
Q: How is Christ our redeemer?
A: As our redeemer, Christ is a prophet, priest, and king in both his humiliation and his exaltation.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 24:
Q: How is Christ a prophet?
A: As a prophet, Christ reveals the will of God to us for our salvation by his word and Spirit.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 25:
Q: How is Christ a priest?
A: 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.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 26:
Q: How is Christ a king?
A: As a king, Christ brings us under his power, rules and defends us,
and restrains and conquers all his and all our enemies.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 27:
Q: How was Christ humiliated?
A: Christ was humiliated: by being born as a man and born into a poor family; by being made subject to the law and suffering the miseries of this life, the anger of God, and the curse of death on the cross; and by being buried and remaining under the power of death for a time.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 28:
Q: How is Christ exalted?
A: Christ is exalted by his rising from the dead on the third day, his going up into heaven, his sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and his coming to judge the world at the last day.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 29:
Q: How are we made to take part in the redemption Christ bought?
A: We take part in the redemption Christ bought when the Holy Spirit
effectively applies it to us.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 30:
Q: How does the Holy Spirit apply to us the redemption Christ bought?
A: The Spirit applies to us the redemption Christ bought by producing faith in us and
so uniting us to Christ in our effective calling.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 31:
Q: What is effective calling?
A: Effective calling is the work of God’s Spirit, who convinces us that we are sinful
and miserable, who enlightens our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and who renews
our wills. This is how he persuades and makes us able to receive Jesus Christ, who is
freely offered to us in the gospel.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 32:
Q: What benefits do those who are effectively called share in this life?
A: In this life those who are effectively called share justification, adoption, sanctification,
and the other benefits that either go with or come from them.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 33:
Q: What is justification?
A: Justification is the act of God’s free grace by which he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight. He does so only because he counts the righteousness of Christ as ours. Justification is received by faith alone.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 34:
Q: What is adoption?
A: Adoption is the act of God’s free grace by which we become his sons with all the
rights and privileges of being his.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 35:
Q: What is sanctification?
A: Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace by which our whole person
is made new in the image of God, and we are made more and
more able to become dead to sin and alive to righteousness.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 36:
Q: What benefits in this life go with or come from justification, adoption, and sanctification?
A: The benefits that in this life go with or come from justification, adoption, and
sanctification are: the assurance of God’s love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Spirit, and growing and persevering in grace to the end of our lives.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 37:
Q: What benefits do believers receive from Christ when they die?
A: When believers die, their souls are made perfectly holy and immediately pass into glory. Their bodies, which are still united to Christ, rest in the grave until the resurrection.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 38:
Q: What benefits do believers receive from Christ at the resurrection?
A: At the resurrection, believers, raised in glory, will be publicly recognized and declared not guilty on the day of judgment and will be made completely happy in the full enjoyment of God forever.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 39:
Q: What does God require of man?
A: God requires man to obey his revealed will.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 40:
Q: What rules did God first reveal for man to obey?
A: The rules he first revealed were the moral law.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 41:
Q: Where is the moral law summarized?
A: The moral law is summarized in the ten commandments.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 42:
Q: What is the essence of the ten commandments?
A: The essence of the ten commandments is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind, and to love everyone else
as we love ourselves.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 43:
Q: What introduces the ten commandments?
A: These words introduce the ten commandments: I am the Lord your God,
who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 44:
Q: What does the introduction to the ten commandments teach us?
A: The introduction to the ten commandments teaches us that, because God is Lord and is our God and redeemer, we must keep all of his commandments.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 45:
Q: What is the first commandment?
A: The first commandment is: You shall have no other gods before me.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 46:
Q: What does the first commandment require?
A: The first commandment requires us to know and recognize God as the only true God and our God, and to worship and glorify him accordingly.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 47:
Q: What does the first commandment forbid?
A: The first commandment forbids denying God or not worshipping and glorifying him as the true God and our God. It also forbids giving worship and glory, which he alone deserves, to anyone or anything else.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 48:
Q: What are we specifically taught in the first commandment by the words before me?
A: The words before me in the first commandment teach us that God, who sees everything, notices and is very offended by the sin of having any other god.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 49:
Q: What is the second commandment?
A: The second commandment is: You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything
in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing
love to a thousand [generations] of those who love me and keep my commandments.

The Shorter Catechism in Modern English, Question 50:
Q: What does the second commandment require?
A: The second commandment requires us to receive, respectfully perform, and preserve
completely and purely all the regulations for religion and