“In Life and in Death We Belong to God”: A Brief Statement of Faith

Cynthia M. Campbell

Introduction 

In the church where I worship, the congregation sings a song as the children come down to the front of the sanctuary for the “time with children.” One of the songs says: “I belong. You belong. We belong to God.” We are encouraged to use the ASL motions as we sing. I wonder what we hear when we say, “I belong. You belong. We belong”? What kind of belonging is this? What do you belong to? 

When the verb is used in the active tense, it generally means that I am a part of something. “I belong to a fitness club. I’m a member of Rotary or an alumni association.” Being a member of something means that, at some point, I signed up and paid my dues. Membership is, in this sense, transactional: I choose to belong; I accept certain obligations, but I also expect and receive rewards and privileges. And because membership is something I have chosen, I can terminate it at any time. 

When belong is used in the passive, however, it can mean something different. “That car belongs to me.” I own it. “That’s my umbrella—not yours.” In this sense, belonging implies possession. The speaker in this case has a particular, and perhaps proprietary, relationship with something or even someone. A sense of fierce independence is pervasive in American culture, which places special value on individual agency. Historically, Americans like to create organizations, associations, clubs, and congregations and have relished the freedom to leave them when they no longer meet their needs. But I wonder if that is what belonging means when we think about it in our relationship with God. 

What does it mean to belong to God? 

An Affirmation of Faith for Today 

In 1991, the General Assembly of the PC(USA) completed the process of adopting A Brief Statement of Faith. The occasion for this newest confession was the reunion of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and the Presbyterian Church U.S., the so-called “northern” and “southern” streams of Presbyterianism that divided in 1861 in the run-up to the Civil War. As part of the plan of reunion, it was decided that the reunited denomination would have a revised Book of Confessions (based on the one created by the UPCUSA when the Confession of 1967 was accepted) and that a new confession would be written. In 1984, the year after reunion, Moderator J. Randolf Taylor appointed a committee of twenty-one persons representing the breadth of the newly formed denomination. 

The committee spent four years drafting the statement, followed by a year of church-wide study. The next draft was presented to the General Assembly in 1989 and then sent to a committee of fifteen for final recommendation. That committee reviewed all the comments received, made a number of revisions, and recommended the final document to the 1990 General Assembly. It was overwhelmingly approved and sent on to the presbyteries for their consideration and approval, after which the Brief Statement was officially added to the Book of Confessions in 1991. 

The drafting committee made a number of foundational decisions that shaped their work. First, they wanted to write a statement that could be used both for teaching and in worship. Second, they wanted a statement that was brief enough to be recited in worship as a statement of faith. Third, since this statement was going to be placed alongside ten other creeds, confessions, and catechisms, the committee determined that they would not try to cover every topic or doctrine expressed in the other statements. Rather, they sought to present what they saw as the core of Reformed Christian faith in light of the challenges of the day. Fourth, they wanted the language of the statement to resonate as much as possible with Scripture and be relatively free of technical theological language. Fifth, when they decided to structure the statement around the persons of the Trinity, the version they used is one many recognize as a benediction: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:13). Placing the story of Jesus at the beginning reminds us that he is our “window onto the Trinity.” 

Finally, they wrote an opening sentence that has its roots both in Scripture and in a previous confession, while also speaking directly into some of the most significant challenges of life today. This sentence has found its way into the life and liturgy of the church, most notably in the liturgies used around the time of death. It is a sentence with deep resonance and speaks as strongly today as it did more than thirty years ago: In life and in death we belong to God.

In Life and in Death 

This is a sentence with a long history and a powerful lineage. Within the Book of Confessions, it harkens back to the first question in the Heidelberg Catechism: 

Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death? A. That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. . . . Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him (Book of Confessions, 4.001). 

Catechisms are ancient teaching tools revived during the Reformation as a way to spread new theological insights. This catechism is named for the ancient university town of Heidelberg, where it was written. In the mid-sixteenth century, religious conflict was not simply between Catholics and Protestants. Fierce debates went on between Lutheran and Calvinist (or what came to be “Reformed”) Christians. In an attempt to end (or at least calm) the conflict, Frederick the Elector, ruler of the region, commissioned two scholars from Heidelberg to write a catechism. It was completed in 1562. While it did not solve the controversies, the Heidelberg Catechism has remained a significant tool for teaching and preaching in many of the Reformed churches in Europe, as well as the Reformed Church in America and the Christian Reformed Church. 

In the midst of fundamental theological disputes, this document does not lead with doctrine. It leads with a very personal, existential question: When all is said and done, what do you hang onto? When faced with all that living and dying brings, what do you have to stand on? And who, if anyone, stands with you? It’s an ancient but also a very modern question, one to which we can all relate. Perhaps not every day, but sooner or later, every one of us comes to the point where this is the question. In the face of life and death, my own, the deaths of those dearest to me, the deaths of people far away but whose stories stream across the news: in the face of all that, what do I have to hold on to? What gives me comfort, confidence, and hope? 

The larger answer is, of course, Jesus Christ. But what is striking is the way the answer is expressed as a relationship of belonging. It is not an abstract theological affirmation; it is a confession of personal identity. Christ is the Savior of all, and he has made me his own: I belong to God in Jesus Christ. 

Heidelberg does not stand on its own, of course. Behind it are the words of the apostle Paul: 

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living (Rom. 14:7–9). 

As is often the case, these deeply theological words seem almost inserted into an argument Paul is making about something else entirely. The final chapters of Romans (12–15, specifically) are the “so what” following the chapters in which Paul lays out his theological vision. Now, he turns to how redeemed people are to live, specifically how they are to live in community with one another. 

The community of Christians in Rome was, like so many others, made up of people from both Jewish and Gentile backgrounds. As in Corinth and Galatia, this made for conflicts around the question of what laws or practices from Jewish tradition were to be observed in Christian communities. In Romans 14, Paul addresses the issue of whether to eat meat that has not been slaughtered appropriately (or has been first part of an offering in a pagan temple and then sold). Paul clearly feels that the old rules (what today would be called “kosher” preparation) no longer apply. But he warns those who share his view not to judge those who think otherwise:

Those who eat must not judge those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat, for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgement on servants of another? (Rom. 14:3–4). 

The theme of this chapter of Romans is how Christians are to deal with differences of conscience (and differences of opinion) in Christian community. We are not to judge, and we are not to insist on our practice in any way that would put the conscience of another believer in jeopardy: “If your brother or sister is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love” (14:15). Why? For Paul, the theological principle that underlies what looks like an ethical argument is that “we do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.” Because we each individually and all of us collectively belong to God, we belong to one another and thus have obligations of compassion and care for one another. Christian community is envisioned as the place where we learn how to treat ourselves and others with compassion and respect. Then it is our task to carry those practices into our daily lives, our communities, our culture, fulfilling Christ’s commission to be salt of the earth and light of the world. 

This idea that our fundamental identity is as people who belong to God did not originate with Paul. It is deeply rooted in the faith of Israel, going all the way back to the Exodus story and the covenant God makes with Israel: “I will take you as my people, and I will be your God” (Ex. 6:7). Prophets used this vision to urge Israel to return to God and to provide reassurance in the midst when things were at their worst: “But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine” (Isa. 43:1). It finds frequent expression in the psalms, nowhere more eloquently than in Psalm 100: “Know that the LORD is God, who made us, to whom we belong. We are God’s people, the sheep of God’s flock” (Ps. 100:3, The Ecumenical Grail Psalter). 

The theme continues in the Gospels: “You did not choose me but I chose you,” Jesus says (John 15:16). Unlike other religious teachers of the time whom students sought out, Jesus chooses disciples, saying, “Come, follow me.” We commemorate this in baptism when we say: “Child of the covenant, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” 

Because God is eternal, so is God’s relationship with us. This belonging, which is at the heart of our identity as those claimed by God in baptism, does not end with the end of our life in this world. “Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” In life and in death, in all our living and in our dying, we belong to God. What lies beyond death we cannot describe exactly or explain completely. But the promises of God sealed in the resurrection of Jesus give us confidence to affirm that “neither death, nor life, . . . nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39). This is the hope we proclaim in the face of death and in the presence of loss of any kind. It is this alone that gives us courage to live fully. 

Living a Life of Belonging 

Two members of the drafting committee, William Placher and David Willis-Watkins, write this in their commentary on the Brief Statement: 

The opening words of the introduction signal one of the important themes of the whole statement: “In life and in death. . . .” A faith offering hope that stops short at death isn’t good enough. It would not only fail to respond to our fears about what lies beyond death, it would distort what needs to be confessed about life here and now.¹ 

Each of us, sooner or later, comes face to face with our own mortality and with the deaths of those closest to us. Christian faith proclaims that death is not the end. This is a “comfort,” that is, an affirmation of God’s great mercy and providential care for all of us. 

Death confronts us in other ways, however. We see it in wars that rage around the world and mass shootings closer to home; in the faces of children condemned to die because they lack access to food and clean water; in the persistence of poverty compounded by racism and political oppression; and, in the words of the Brief Statement, the death we threaten “to the planet entrusted to our care.” Only a God who is capable of giving us hope in the face of these kinds of death is worthy of our worship, service, and devotion. 

This idea of God’s providential care is a hallmark of Reformed Christianity and has enabled countless people to live with confidence, courage, and incredible freedom. Building on Romans 14:7, John Calvin wrote this: 

We are not our own: let us therefore not set it as our goal to seek what is expedient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own: in so far as we can, let us therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours. Conversely, we are God’s: let us therefore live for [God] and die for [God]. We are God’s: let [God’s] wisdom and will therefore rule all our actions. We are God’s: let all the parts of our life accordingly strive toward [God] as our only lawful goal (Institutes, 3.7.1).

It has been my experience that those who are grounded in this conviction have a certain shape to their lives. When you trust that God is utterly trustworthy, then you approach life, and all that it brings of joy and sorrow, adventure and tragedy, with confidence. This is not the “self-confidence” of a self-made individual, but a deep sense that all will be well. Trusting that God is trustworthy, that God makes promises and keeps them, that God’s name is love: that is what makes it possible to endure anything.

God is not only stronger than death; God is stronger than the forces of violence, injustice, oppression, and exploitation. Being convinced of that is a source of incredible freedom. This is what we see, I think, when we look at those who resisted Hitler, who worked and marched for voting rights in the United States, and who toppled the apartheid regime in South Africa. Some were Christians; some were not. But all of these, and so many others in so many other struggles for justice, did so because their confidence in something (Someone) larger had replaced their fear. 

We Trust 

One of the other foundational decisions made by the drafting committee was that they would not use the word believe. In our contemporary context, that word generally means something intellectual: I think that’s right, so I believe it. As such, it has the potential to make us think that being a Christian means “believing” certain propositions to be true. This can then lead to the idea that if I believe the right things, regardless of anything else, I will
be “saved.” 

In light of this confusion, the drafters returned to the root meaning of believe which is “trust,” as in “I believe in you. I trust you.” Trust is about relationship, and that is really what faith is about. “We trust in the one, triune God, the Holy One of Israel, whom alone we worship and serve.” Trust is not abstract assent; it is a way of life. Trust is how we walk forward even if the journey is hard and the road dangerous. Trust is willingness to welcome strangers and meet God in everyone we encounter. Trust is looking back on life and seeing the hand of God when we couldn’t see it at the time. Trust is coming to the end and entrusting ourselves to the One whose love for us endures all things.

“I belong, you belong, we belong to God.” The song we sing is so important for children to learn and internalize. But it is just as important for the adults who are singing along. Especially when the world seems fragile or dangerous, when trust in social institutions is declining, when the planet we call home is threatened by the way we treat it, when fear and anger seem to be just beneath the surface in many conversations—in the face, of all of these things we need to know that they are not the only things that are true. There is more: in life and in death, in the bookends of our lives, we are not alone. We are called by name. We belong to God. 

Note

1. William C. Placher and David Willis-Walker, Belonging to God: A Commentary on A Brief Statement of Faith (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 15.