Of Sanctification

The law will not create that desire for holiness. Only the gospel of Christ has the ability to affect that sort of deep transformation. It is the gospel that changes our hearts so that we want to walk in Christlikeness. As Jesus said, it is those who love Him who keep His Word. We all want to grow as Christians. Our remaining sin weighs us down, doesn't it? But how do we grow in holiness?

How does God, through His Spirit, conform us more and more into the image of His Son? That's what Michael Reeves will help us think through today on Renewing Your Mind. What you'll hear today is a message from Ligonier's recent winter conference. We've already heard about the role of doctrine in the Christian life. We've considered God as our Father, Jesus as our mediator, and today the Spirit as our sanctifier.

If you'd like to watch all of the sessions from this conference, they are available in the free Ligonier app or on Ligonier's YouTube channel. So how do people experience the kind of deep transformation that Michael Reeves mentioned earlier? Well, here's Dr. Reeves as he looks to Scripture and the Westminster Confession of Faith to answer. We believe. Well, Christian creeds, being Christian, are shaped by the nature of the Christian God, and therefore they are always elegantly Trinitarian in shape, as we must be in our thinking. And so last night we considered God the Father. Earlier this morning we were looking at His Son, the mediator. And now we come to the Holy Spirit, the one who remakes us in the image and likeness of God. Now, the first thing that the Nicene Creed says about the Spirit is that we say, I believe in the Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life. In the beginning it was the Spirit who breathed life into creation, who hovered over it, nurturing it like a mother dove. And likewise it is the Spirit who breathes out new life on us. And to have said that, that the Spirit is the giver of life, is to have said something more profound than we would realize at first glance. It means we do not have life in ourselves. We depend entirely on the Spirit.

And if that is how we were created to be, how much more is that true of us now? For when Adam and Eve turned away from God in Genesis 3, they turned to death. And as a result, we now come into the world spiritually stillborn. Ephesians 2.1, dead in our transgressions and sins.

Now death here of course doesn't mean non-existence. It means enmity with God, cut off from the source of life. It is that like Adam and Eve, our hearts are turned away from the Lord. And so naturally we love and desire other things and especially ourselves, not Him who is the source of life.

And that is a real problem. For we are made to follow our hearts, to do what we want. And we always do what we want.

Adam and Eve followed their hearts' desires when they first sinned. And so we continue, in his heart a man plans his course, Proverbs 16.9. But here's the problem, while we're always doing what we want, we do not want the Lord of life. And if we do not want Him, we will never choose Him.

And so we must remain prisoners of death. And therefore Martin Luther wrote, the first thing that belief in the Spirit means is that by my own reason and strength, I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him. But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel. He saw the problem is with our hearts. Our hearts are misaligned and therefore the Spirit must give us new birth into a new life precisely by dealing with that problem and giving us new hearts. And missing this is where so many misunderstand Christianity.

Take as an example William Tyndale, the man who translated the bulk of the New Testament and much of the Old Testament from its original Hebrew and Greek into English. Now Tyndale grew up believing that, before the Reformation he was growing up, believing that Christianity is largely a matter of external things, of right behaviour and right ritual. And then he started reading Scripture and came to see that his thinking had been all the wrong way around. And he would later write, sin is not that outward work only committed by the body. Sin springs from the heart with all the powers, affections, appetites, wherewith we can only sin. He said, the Scripture looks to the heart, to the root and original fountain of all sin, which is unbelief in the bottom of the heart. So our problem is with our desires, that naturally we are born with no appetite for God. And we place all our affections elsewhere.

Our only hope is with the Lord, the giver of life. Who, said Tyndale, he put this in a very old English way. He said, the Spirit brings lust.

Isn't that striking? What he means by lust there is not a sinful lust, but a holy desire. But it's a striking word, you see, the strengths of new desire the Spirit brings. He said, the Spirit brings lust, looseth the heart, makes a man free, sets him at liberty. The Spirit changes desires.

And phrases like that keep cropping up in Tyndale's writings. And I think like furrows of white on the surface of the sea, when you see phrases like that, you see there is something very powerful moving beneath. Because if the Spirit's first work is to loose our hearts, change desires, well then, the Christian life must be about something a lot deeper than just getting heaven. If we're simply about getting heaven, why would the Spirit be interested in changing our desires? No, the Spirit is about drawing us into the divine life. The Father has eternally delighted in his Son through the Spirit. The Son in the Father and the Spirit's work in giving new life is nothing less than bringing us to share the mutual delight of the Father and the Son. And so the life that the Spirit gives is not some abstract package of blessing. It is his own life that he shares with us, the life of fellowship with the Father and the Son, of enjoying then. So the Spirit is not like a divine milkman. As a milkman leaves milk at the door, the Spirit is not just leaving the gift of life only to then depart. No, he is life. He has life.

Without him there is no life. So in giving life, he comes to be with us and remain with us, to stay to make that life grow and blossom. Tyndale said, Where the Spirit is, there it is always summer. For there, there are always good fruits, that is to say, good works.

And Tyndale wasn't just picking any image at random. The warmth of the Spirit's summer is important. Because just as the Spirit first warms us into life by turning our hearts and their desires to Christ, so he continues to warm us. The new life the Spirit gives is a life of warmth. For it is his life of delighting in, enjoying the Father and the Son. God has poured his love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit he's given us, Romans 5-5. And that is how the Spirit breathes out his life on us. He enlightens us to know the love of God and that light draws us to love him in return and to overflow with love for others. The Spirit gives us new hearts. But that makes us ask a very key question. How? How does the Spirit change hearts?

And isn't this the question everyone wants to know? How can I change? How does change happen?

We want to be different to how we are. So how does the Spirit bring about that deepest change in our hearts? Well, the Westminster Confession is fascinating in how it speaks here on sanctification. It says, Those who are effectually called and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, listen, they are sanctified through the virtue of Christ's death and resurrection.

Now, what does that mean? Westminster has just given us the key to growth as a Christian. So what does it mean to be sanctified through the virtue of Christ's death and resurrection? Well, how does the Spirit transform sinners?

Well, in a sense, this is no surprise. The Spirit uses the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation, Romans 1. In the Gospel, Titus 2, the grace of God has appeared, training us to renounce ungodliness. It's the grace of God that trains us to renounce ungodliness.

But still, how? How does the grace of God do that in us? Because if we can get that, then we understand how change works and comes about. Well, in Scripture, we hear both commands, let's call them law, and promises, let's call them Gospel.

And we need to know how each works. The great Puritan preacher, William Perkins, believed that for preachers, this distinction was critical to understand. And he said this, when the Word is preached, the law, the commands, and the Gospel, the promises, operate differently, he said. The law, the commandments, expose the disease of sin and stimulate and stir up sin.

But, he said, here's the key thing, but, he said, the law provides no remedy for sin. However, the Gospel not only teaches us what is to be done, it also has the power of the Holy Spirit in it. So, the law, the commandments in the Word of God, they are good and useful. The law shows us our need for the Gospel.

It shows us how we fall short. It shows us what holy living looks like. And Christians, as they mature, increasingly want to live in godliness.

So, they want to turn to the law to know what that should look like. But, the law will not change their hearts or create that desire for holiness. Only the Gospel of Christ has the ability to affect that sort of deep transformation of our affections. It is the Gospel that changes our hearts so that we want to walk in Christlikeness. As Jesus said, it is those who love Him who keep His Word. To see that distinction between law and Gospel, good parents, they very quickly learn the importance of both law and Gospel in nurturing their children. For on the one hand, children need to be told, they need to be given commands being told, there are certain things you may not do. Don't run out onto the road.

Don't bite your brother. They need such commands to keep them safe and let them know what behavior is acceptable. But, those commands only act as fences around their behavior. Those commands do nothing for their hearts. To grow healthily, children also need promises.

They need to know that they're loved. And in the same way, the law is useful for Christians, but it cannot bring about what it commands. It commands love the Lord your God with all your heart, but it can't make you do it. Only the Gospel will bring you to love the Lord your God with all your heart. And to make sense of this, why is it and how is it that the Gospel does that? Come with me to John chapter 3, where Jesus describes how the Spirit changes hearts.

And if you want to know about how change happens, John 3 is a profoundly helpful chapter. Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born again of the Spirit. This is verses 1 to 8. And Nicodemus is completely baffled.

And he asks, how can these things be? And Jesus replies, verses 9 and 10, are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? So clearly Nicodemus should have understood, because Jesus was speaking of the scriptural promise of the new covenant, which Nicodemus knew. The promise in Ezekiel 36, the Lord says, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put in you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

And I will put my spirit in you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. So Nicodemus should have understood, but he doesn't. So, look at what Jesus does. Immediately from verse 14, Jesus goes on to speak of his redemption.

If you don't understand how it is that the new birth works, well then. Look at the redemption of the Son. Verse 14, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of God be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

It is that gospel that will melt and renew hearts of stone. It is that sight of the Son of Man lifted up on the cross, proving the love of the Father, that is what realigns our affections. Because there on the cross we see the full gravity of our sin, in what it cost him.

There, all our blithe hopes of self-righteousness die. There, on the cross we see a love in God's heart beyond anything we had dreamed of in our wildest fantasies, where once we had dreaded God as an awful judge. On the cross we see an unexpected goodness and kindness in God. And it is that revelation that makes us go, oh, oh, that's not the God I thought there was in heaven.

And it's that revelation that wins us. And so no longer do we shrink from him, but seeing his love displayed on the cross, we find our hearts welling up with love for him in return. We love because he first loved us. If we say, oh, that's who God is, infinitely more beautiful than I'd ever dreamed. And so the sin that once pleased me becomes odious for how it offends him. And the God I once flinched from becomes entrancing when I see his graciousness. And you know, at first the good news of our redemption and forgiveness might only make us grateful.

But his grace acts as a breadcrumb trail, leading us from the gift to the giver, from marvelling at what he's done for us to marvelling at who he is in himself. And when it begins to sink in how gracious he must be, then the forgiven find themselves like the sinful woman in Luke 7, not only thanking much, but loving much. The law cannot have that effect because sinners naturally love their sin.

We cannot simply command people out of it because they love it. If we demand people stop behaving sinfully, you can change their behaviour, but unless people are brought to love differently, their good behaviour will just be a hypocritical mask covering over self-dependence and self-righteousness. Only the grace of God, the gospel of Christ's redemption can win affections, change us deep down so that we're not just putting on the pretense. We actually love the Lord. John Bunyan wrote, There is nothing in heaven or earth that can sow all the heart as the grace of God. Nothing has that majesty and commanding greatness upon the hearts of the sons of men as the grace of God.

Why? Because it is through the gospel that the Spirit opens our eyes to see the sheer loveliness of God, the beauty of his holiness. And it's only when we see his compassion, his kindness in the gospel that we're drawn to him. And this was right at the heart of Martin Luther's discovery of the gospel in the Reformation.

And he explained it like this. Luther said, I could not have faith in God if I did not think he wanted to be kind to me. For this makes me feel kindly disposed to God, and I move to trust him with all my heart and look to him for all good things. And then Luther goes, I love how blunt Luther is here.

He can never be English. He says, Look here, this is how you must cultivate Christ in yourself. This is how you must cultivate Christ in yourself. Faith must spring up and flow from the blood and wounds and death of Christ. If, he says, you see in these that God is so kindly disposed toward you, he even gives his son for you, then your heart in turn must grow sweet and disposed toward God. We never read, he said, that the Holy Spirit was given to anyone because he performed some works, but always when men have heard the gospel of Christ and the mercy of God. That's how the Spirit sanctifies, by opening our eyes to see the glory of Christ.

Jesus said, when the counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, he will testify about me. That is the Spirit's work. Knowing Christ and through him the Father, that is the life the Spirit gives.

That's where life is to be found. In 2 Corinthians 3, you remember how Paul writes of how Moses' face shone from having been with the Lord. And it is likewise, Paul says, it is by beholding the glory of the Lord that we are transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. That is how the Spirit transforms us, by fixing our eyes on the glory of Christ. The Puritan Richard Sibbes commenting on 2 Corinthians 3 said, the very beholding of Christ is a transforming sight. A man cannot look upon the love of God and of Christ in the gospel, but it will change him to be like God and Christ. For how can we see Christ and God in Christ, but we shall see how God hates sin.

And this will transform us to hate it as God does. And so seeing the holiness of God, it will transform us to be holy. When, Sibbes said, when we see the love of God in the gospel and the love of Christ in giving himself for us, this will transform us to love God. My new life began when the Spirit opened my eyes, there's the light, and won my heart, there's the heat, to Christ. And I began to enjoy and love Christ as the Father always has. And through Christ I began to love and enjoy the Father as Christ always has.

That was how it started and that's how the new life goes on. The Spirit keeps opening my eyes to the beauty, love, glory of Christ. And so the Spirit kindles in me a fresh adoration for God.

He stirs me to be ever more thinking of Christ and so ever less self-obsessed and more like God, Christ obsessed. It is the good news of Christ, the gracious Redeemer, that turns hearts from cherishing sin to adoring God. The gospel, friends, is the means the Spirit uses both to convert and to build us up in faith. It's not that the Spirit merely uses the gospel once to give us new birth and then leaves us to sweat out our sanctification by mere self-effort. It is always, ongoingly, the gospel that does the deepest plow work in our hearts. Indeed, John Owen wrote, holiness is nothing but the implanting, writing, and realising of the gospel in our souls. That is holiness, is the writing of the gospel on our hearts.

And without that gospel, even mature Christians feel the daily pull of sin outweighing their love for God, and so out of earshot of the message of God's kindness, they will quickly crawl away from God in guilt and dread. Left to ourselves, we will become ever more devilishly, ugly, self-obsessed, vicious. Without the Spirit, we would be ever more lovers of self rather than lovers of God. But by cultivating in us a taste for Christ, who is the epitome of beauty, by doing that, the Spirit polishes a new humanity who begin to shine with Christ's likeness. For friends, we become like what we worship. You will always become like what you focus on, gaze on, dream about.

You will become like that. And ultimately, it even applies to our bodies. The move towards sin from Genesis 3 means a fall down into spiritual death, physical death, rot, decay, mouldering bodies, and the Spirit undoes all of that, transforming, giving us new life spiritually, and then even transforming our fallen bodies to be one day like Christ's glorious body. So the Spirit beautifies His new creation.

It starts now spiritually. It'll one day mean the very transformation of our bodies. And just as it is the sight of Christ by faith now that makes us more Christ-like, so it is 1 John 3. When we see Him, we shall be like Him. It'll be the sight of Him in His returning, that in His glorious appearance that will transform our very bodies around us. And the way the Spirit changes us is by untwisting us. Naturally, we are, Luther said, incubatus in se, twisted in on ourselves.

We take a hellish delight in our own supposed independence. But if I'm to be like the outward-looking Father, Son, Spirit, the Spirit must take my eyes off myself, which He does by winning me to Christ. Now, if God only wanted me to live under His rules, the Spirit could be simply interested in making me a law-abiding citizen. My self-love need never be challenged. In fact, I could nurture my self-love by fixating on how well I'm keeping the rules, but the Spirit comes with a deep purpose, not just to affect our behaviour, but to look to and enjoy God in His glory. For looking to and knowing Him is life, is what will always give new life. It is what enlivens. Charles Spurgeon said, this is the secret to Christian happiness. Spurgeon said, it is ever the Holy Spirit's work to turn our eyes away from self to Jesus. But Satan's work is exactly the opposite of this. Satan is constantly trying to make us regard ourselves instead of Christ. But he said, we shall never find happiness by looking at our prayers, our doings, our feelings. It is what Jesus is, not what we are that gives rest to the soul.

If we would overcome Satan and have peace with God, it must be by looking to Jesus. And so through the giving of the Spirit, God catches us up into the life that is His. The Father has eternally enjoyed His Son, and through His Spirit, He opens our eyes that we might share His own pleasure. So our love for the Son is an echo of the Father's love. The Father is allowing us to enjoy what He most enjoys, His Son.

It was His overwhelming love for the Son that inspired Him to create us in the first place, and all that we might share that highest pleasure of His. It is by the Spirit that the Father has eternally loved the Son, and so by sharing their Spirit with us, the Father and the Son share with us their life. By the Spirit uniting me to Christ, the Father adopts me as His Son, and by the Spirit, I begin to know and love Him as my Father. By the Spirit, I begin to love aright. He unbends me from my self-love and wins me to share the Father's pleasure in the Son.

And so by the Spirit, I slowly begin to love as God loves. Now, let me come back to the Westminster Confession. We've seen what it means that the Spirit sanctifies us through the virtue of Christ's death and resurrection.

But there is more that is strange, if you pay attention to Westminster, more language that you think, what does that mean? So Westminster goes on, when it talks about sanctification, to show how the lusts of the flesh are weakened and mortified by the Spirit, our graces are more and more quickened and strengthened, how until the resurrection, we will experience a war in us of sinful flesh against Spirit. But then, it concludes. Through the continual supply of strength from the sanctifying Spirit of Christ, the regenerate part does overcome. And so the saints grow in grace.

We're all happy up to that point. Now it gets strange. Westminster says, And so the saints grow in grace, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. The fear of God.

Oh. Now, in one sense this is unsurprising, because this is simply what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 7.1, that we bring holiness to completion in the fear of God. But doesn't it sound weird? Because so far, everything we've seen, holiness looks like it is about loving the Lord your God with all your heart. That's the fulfilling of the law. It's about loving God, not fearing Him. So how can you perfect holiness if the Spirit is sanctifying us to perfect holiness? Why is He bringing us to fear God?

So let's be clear. The fear of the Lord, which Scripture commends and which the Gospel produces, is the opposite of being afraid of God. You remember Exodus 20, where the people of Israel, they get to Mount Sinai and they see all the thunder and the lightning and the trumpet blast, and they're so scared.

And Moses says, Exodus 20, verse 20, again, listen to this strange verse. Moses says, Do not fear, for the Lord has come to test you that the fear of God may be upon you. Do not fear that the fear of God may be upon you. In other words, those who have the fear of God, the fear of the Lord, will not be afraid of Him. So what is this fear of the Lord that the psalmist is talking about? It's not a fear that makes you run away from God.

And let's be clear, it's not just an Old Testament sort of worship. It is a blessing of the new covenant. The Lord said through Jeremiah, I will make with them, Jeremiah 32, an everlasting covenant, and I will put the fear of Me in their hearts, that they may not turn from Me. Well, is that just a fear that He might punish us if we walk away? Is that what He's talking about?

No. Jeremiah 33, He explains. Jeremiah 33, verse nine, and they shall fear and tremble because of all the good and all the prosperity I provide. This is not a fear of punishment.

Quite the opposite. In Jeremiah 33, the Lord had reeled off a catalogue of blessing and grace. He would cleanse them, forgive them, do great good for them, and they fear and tremble because of all the good He does for them. Here is not a fear that stands on the flip side of the grace and goodness of God. It's the sort of fear Hosea describes when he said that the people of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to His goodness. What is this fear of the Lord? Ultimately, it is Jesus' own fear as a son before His Father, a filial fear that believers are brought to share. So our fear of God, yes, we fear God as a transcendent and awesome creator, but it is more than that. The right fear of God also shares the Son's fearful delight in His Father.

Filial fear is the attitude of a child marvelling at all the perfection of our Father. And let's see it in Jesus. If you turn to Isaiah 11, you see we have the promise of the Spirit anointed Christ who will come from the stump of Jesse. And Isaiah, sorry, that's how you say it. Isaiah 11 says, and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord and His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. Do you see? The Spirit anointed Christ, it's not that He loves God and has joy in God, but finds, oh, unfortunately, to fulfil all righteousness I must also fear God.

Oh, okay. No, quite the opposite. The Spirit who rests on Him is the Spirit of the fear of the Lord and His delight is in the fear of the Lord. This filial fear is part of the Son's pleasurable adoration of His Father.

It is, in fact, the emotional extremity of that wonder. It is why singing is such an appropriate expression of a right filial fear. Psalm 47 says, clap your hands all you peoples, shout to God with loud shouts of joy, for the Lord, the Most High, is to be feared. Isn't that interesting how those go together? Shout for joy, for He is to be feared.

They go right together. Because the fear of God defines true joy in God and love for God. It is love for God as God. It shows that to encounter the living God truly means we cannot contain ourselves because He is not a truth to be known unaffectedly.

My love for God must be different to my love for other things because He is so different. The dazzling beauty and splendor of God must cause our hearts to quake, to rejoice and tremble. To fear the Lord is to be more alive. It is for our love, joy, wonder, worship of God to be more acute, more affecting. And when we rejoice in God so intensely that we quake and tremble, that's when we're being like the angels in heaven who fall on their faces in wonder. That's when we're being most heavenly.

So let me bring this back full circle. How do we grow in this fear of the Lord? How do we perfect holiness?

It's exactly what we've seen the Westminster Confession teach. And it's probably summed up best in Psalm 130 verse 4. Another verse with a jolt. Psalm 130 verse 4, but with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared.

Isn't that interesting? It's not with you there is forgiveness that you may be loved or with you there is judgment that you may be feared. With you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. Clearly, forgiveness is the best, most fertile soil for growing the fear of God. For without God's forgiveness, we could never approach God or want to. Without the cross, God would remain just a dreadful judge of whom we would be afraid. It is divine forgiveness, our justification by faith alone that turns our natural dread of God into a fearful, trembling adoration. At the cross we see the kindness, the mercy of God to us and that causes our knees to go weak with wonder. John Bunyan wrote, Oh, that a great God should be a good God, a good God to an unworthy and undeserving, to a people that continually do what they can to provoke the eyes of His glory. This should make us tremble.

Bunyan is so helpful here. And he once explained how when you go to the cross, two things happen. And I wonder if you recognize this. When you go to the cross, your guilt is forgiven and wiped away at the cross. But when you go to the cross, the sight of Jesus crucified actually increases your sense of the vileness of sin. And so in the very moment that your sin is wiped away, you understand the depth of that sin like you'd never seen it before. And Bunyan said this, If God shall come to you and visit you with forgiveness of sins, that visit will remove the guilt.

But it will increase your sense, your appreciation of your filth. And the sense of this, that God has forgiven a filthy sinner, will make you both rejoice and tremble. And he said, Oh, the blessed confusion that will cover your face.

Do you know that blessed confusion? It's made of sweet tears in which God's kindness and grace shown to you at the cross makes you weep at your wickedness. And you simultaneously repent and rejoice because his mercy just shows up your wickedness and the depth of your wickedness shows up the height of his grace. And you are left overwhelmed in this fearful, happy adoration of such a saviour, of such a sinner. Therefore, dear friends, stay close to the cross.

Live in its shadow. For until we see him lifted high on his throne in heaven, it is the sight of him lifted high on his cross that is the clearest window into who he is. It is the hour of his glorification. And then, with that sight, you will taste most clearly what it is like to be in heaven. In heaven, they have nothing of which to be afraid. But the saints and angels there are overwhelmed by exultation in the glory of God, rejoicing, trembling. And this is the fear of the Lord that is the heart of true holiness. It is the aroma of heaven.

It is the affection that expels our spiritual lethargy. And it is brought about by the Spirit opening our eyes to Christ's redemption on the cross. And that is the Spirit's glorious work of sanctification in our hearts to make us, through seeing him, more and more heavenly. And so, to his name be all the glory. Amen. The work of sanctification is a glorious work by the Spirit.

What amazing grace it is that we're not left dead in our sin. This is the Thursday edition of Renewing Your Mind, and you just heard Michael Reeves speaking at last month's winter conference. The theme of the conference was titled, We Believe, and we use this time to shine a spotlight on the glorious truths summarized so helpfully for us in the creeds and confessions of the church. And to help our attendees and to help you become more familiar with these Scripture-rich documents, we compiled 20 of them together in a new hardcover single volume also titled, We Believe. We'll rush a copy to you when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org or by calling us at 800 435 4343. Have easy and quick access to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Apostles' Creed, Luther's Shorter Catechism, and more. Simply make your gift online at renewingyourmind.org. The Q&A sessions are always a highlight of our conferences, and our teachers will return tomorrow to answer questions from the attendees here on Renewing Your Mind. .