Heidelbergian Children's Catechism (age 8- 10 years)
Lord's Day 33
When you see a crawling caterpillar, you are looking at an unfinished animal. It is not yet the beautiful butterfly it will become. After a while it finds a spot in a corner of the wall or under a window sill. It winds thin, silk-like threads around its body. These form a shell around it, a cocoon, which looks like a wad of cotton wool. But after some time, a beautiful butterfly emerges from the cocoon. The old caterpillar has become a new animal. Much more could be said about caterpillars and butterflies. But now we want to talk about people who need to change. You, too, must change from ugly to beautiful. Not on the outside, but inside. Are you and I ugly on the inside? If Adam and Eve in paradise had been obedient, their children would have been good. But sin has made everything ugly. My sins and your sins make us really ugly on the inside. We are just like a caterpillar that spins threads about itself. We spin threads of unfriendliness, and threads of evil and disobedience. We become a caterpillar in a cocoon, closing ourselves off from God. We are often like that, but this should not go on. Your cocoon must be broken open. Those sinful threads must be removed. You cannot do that all by yourself; the Holy Spirit must help you. And when you pray for it, then He will help you. He uses the Bible for that, for the Bible shows you that you must fight against the ugliness inside you. So you must fight to break the threads around you, just like the caterpillar. Break away those threads of sin. A caterpillar becomes a beautiful butterfly. You too can become beautiful for God. You too can begin to enjoy doing what God Iikes and wants. Detest sin more and more. The Catechism calls these good works. Already in the previous Lord’s Day you read about them. Are Christians the only ones who do good? No, other people do things that are good. However, if they do not do these works out of love to God, that is sin. Then they are not really good works