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A Teaching Guide to the Westminster Standards

Read the doctrine in plain teaching, then study the texts for yourself.

The Westminster Standards — the Confession of Faith, the Larger Catechism, and the Shorter Catechism — set out one system of Reformed doctrine at three levels of depth. Read on their own, the questions and sections can feel like a list of answers to memorize without a thread running through them.

This guide supplies the thread. Each lesson is a short piece of teaching that explains a doctrine, shows where it sits in the wider corpus, and then points you to the exact questions and sections — with their Scripture proofs and historical commentary — so you can dig as deep as you like.

Foundations
1.The Chief End of Man
Understand why the Standards begin with the purpose of human life, and how that one answer frames everything they go on to teach.
Theology Proper
2.God and the Holy Trinity
Understand how the Standards describe who and what God is — one simple, infinite Being subsisting in three coequal persons — and why this knowledge stands at the head of all Christian doctrine.
3.God's Eternal Decree
Understand the Standards' teaching that God has, from all eternity, freely and wisely ordained whatsoever comes to pass, and how this decree — including election — secures his glory without making him the author of sin.
Creation and Providence
4.Creation
Understand the Standards' account of creation as God's free work of making all things of nothing for his own glory, and the special dignity given to man as the bearer of God's image.
5.Providence
Understand how the Standards teach that God preserves and governs every creature and every action toward his own glory, ordering even sin without being its author, and caring in a special way for his church.
Hamartiology
6.The Fall, Sin, and Misery
Trace how the Standards account for the entrance of sin: a covenant broken in Adam, a nature corrupted in his posterity, and an estate of guilt and misery from which we cannot deliver ourselves.
Christology and Covenant
7.The Covenant of Grace
Understand how the Standards present salvation as God's free, covenantal initiative: a second covenant, made in eternity and administered through history, in which life is offered to sinners through Jesus Christ.
8.Christ the Mediator
Set out who the one Mediator is, the two natures united in his one person, the three offices by which he saves, and the two states through which he passed in accomplishing redemption.
Soteriology
9.Effectual Calling
Understand how the redemption purchased by Christ comes to be ours: by the Spirit's effectual calling, which frees the bound will, works faith, and unites us to Christ himself.
10.Justification
Grasp justification as a judicial act in which God declares the believing sinner righteous on the ground of Christ's imputed righteousness, received by faith alone.
11.Adoption
See adoption as the gracious act by which the justified are received into God's family and granted the standing, name, and privileges of his sons.
12.Sanctification
Understand sanctification as the ongoing work of God's grace renewing the whole person after his image, enabling believers to die more to sin and live more to righteousness.
13.Saving Faith, Repentance, and Good Works
Understand the nature of saving faith as resting on Christ, of evangelical repentance as turning from sin to God, and of good works as the fruit and not the root of salvation.
14.Perseverance and Assurance
Understand why true believers cannot finally fall from grace, and on what grounds and by what means they may attain assurance of their salvation.
The Law of God
15.The Moral Law
Grasp what the Standards mean by the moral law, how it remains the rule of life under grace, and how its summary in the Ten Commandments is to be rightly read.
16.The Ten Commandments Expounded
See how the Catechisms unfold each commandment into duties required and sins forbidden, ordered under the two great tables of love to God and love to neighbour.
Christian Life and Liberty
17.Christian Liberty
Understand the freedom Christ purchases for believers and the liberty of conscience the Confession guards, without confusing either with license.
18.Religious Worship and the Sabbath
Learn the Confession's teaching that God appoints how He is to be worshipped, and how the Lord's Day is to be kept holy.
19.Oaths, the Civil Magistrate, and Marriage
Survey the Confession's teaching on lawful oaths and vows, the office of the civil magistrate, and the ordinance of marriage as parts of an ordered Christian life in the world.
Ecclesiology
20.The Church and the Communion of Saints
Grasp how the Confession distinguishes the invisible and visible church, names Christ as its only Head, and describes the fellowship believers share with him and one another.
21.The Sacraments and Means of Grace
Understand the outward and ordinary means by which Christ communicates redemption — the Word, sacraments, and prayer — and the nature, subjects, and right use of Baptism and the Lord's Supper.
22.Church Government and Discipline
See why Christ has given his church officers, censures, and councils, and what ends these serve in guarding the gospel and the good of souls.
23.Prayer and the Lord's Prayer
Understand prayer as a duty and gift, the rule Christ gave for it, and the shape of the Lord's Prayer in its preface and several petitions.
Eschatology
24.Death, Resurrection, and Last Judgment
Trace what the Standards teach about the soul after death, the resurrection of the body, and the great judgment at the last day.
How this guide works

Each lesson is a short piece of teaching that:

  • Explains the doctrine in plain prose you can read straight through.
  • Sets it in the context of the wider Standards and Reformed corpus.
  • Links to the exact questions and sections — with their proofs and commentary — to study further.
  • Points you to compare the doctrine across the wider Reformed standards.
24 lessons Confession & Catechisms Self-paced