Heidelberg Catechism

Question 12. Since according to the righteous judgment of God, we deserve temporal and eternal punishment, is there no way by which we may escape this punishment, and be received again into favour?

Answer: God will have his justice satisfied. (a) Therefore we must make this full satisfaction, either by ourselves, or through another. (b)

(Click through to see scriptural proofs.)

a. Genesis 2:17

… but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

      Exodus 20:5

You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me … .

      Exodus 23:7

Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and righteous, for I will not acquit the wicked. 

     Ezekiel 18:4

Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.

     Matthew 5:26

Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

      2 Thessalonians 1:6

… since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you,

      Romans 2:1-11

Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. Forin passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jewfirst and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.

b. Romans 8:3-4

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.