Calvin: Why He Still Matters

W. Robert Godfrey, author of the new biography of John Calvin entitled John Calvin: Pilgrim and Pastor, wrote an inspiring article on Calvin’s significance to ministers today.  Here is an excerpt:

Calvin exemplified in his life and work a determination to seek to bring every thought captive to Christ. That was his passion, such was his confidence in the Word of God. That is also what he wanted to teach others. To quote Calvin, “Whoever, therefore, would desire to persevere in uprightness and in integrity of life, let them learn to exercise themselves daily in the study of the word of God; for, whenever a man despises or neglects instruction, he easily falls into carelessness and stupidity, and all fear of God vanishes from his mind” (Commentary on the Psalms, on Ps. 18:22). Calvin was certain that many people tended very naturally to carelessness and stupidity. That is surely a lesson that does not need to be taught from Scripture; it is a lesson that pastors learn by experience! Calvin recognized, and we should recognize because it is even truer today, that we are surrounded by voices that are blaring lies. The only way to sort that out is to be sure that the Bible is constantly speaking to us, that the Bible is in our hearts and in our ears and in our mind so that that authority of the Word of God is a living and vital authority for us. The Bible must constantly challenge the way we look at the world, the way we look at our fellow men and women, the way we think about God and his world.

The Cardinal Tenants: Luther’s Gospel-Stance

Here I Stand!

After Martin Luther wrestled with Romans 1:16-17, he came to realize that “the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith.”  It was at this divine illumination that he felt himself “to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise.”

This changed Luther’s understanding of Scripture.  “The whole of Scripture took on new meaning,” he said.  Hence, we turn to his lectures at the University at Wittenberg. After this divine illumination of Scripture, he began to lecture on the Psalms and Romans from 1513-1516.  He had not yet posted his Ninety-Five Theses, but he would soon get to that.  Note what Luther biographer, Roland H. Bainton, has to say of these lectures:

“The center about which all the petals clustered was the affirmation of the forgiveness of sins through the utterly unmerited grace of God made possible by the cross of Christ, which reconciled wrath and mercy, routed the hosts of hell, triumphed over sin and death, and by the resurrection manifested that power which enables man to die to sin and rise to newness of life.  This was of course the theology of Paul heightened, intensified, and clarified.  Beyond these cardinal tenants Luther was never to go.”-Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, p. 51.

I find in Martin Luther a man worth imitating in a lot of ways (most definitely not in every way! yikes!), but here, I find his refusal to move on from the gospel the one way I want to imitate him the most.  Luther was transformed by the gospel, and so he could not recant. “I Cannot… I will not recant…Here I Stand!” said he at the Diet of Worms.  The gospel is the centerpiece of our lectures, our sermons, our teachings, and most definitely, our lives.  If it’s not, has it transformed us? Let us examine this in us.  Beyond the cardinal tenants of this message, never go!

Working with you to keep the cardinal tenants at the center,

Vince R.

Pierced by the Word: And We Walked into Paradise Itself

October 31, 1517

491 years ago, we returned to God’s Word, and we saw God’s righteousness.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” Romans 1:16-17

Read the account of Martin Luther’s struggle through verse 17:

“I had . . . been captivated with an extraordinary ardor for understanding Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. But . . . a single word in Chapter 1 [verse 17], ‘In it the righteousness of God is revealed,’ stood in my way. For I hated that word ‘righteousness of God,’ which . . . I had been taught to understand . . . is the righteousness [with which God] punishes the unrighteous sinner.” (John Dillenberger, ed. Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings, [Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1961], p. 11)

“Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, I beat importunately upon Paul at [Romans 1:17], most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted. At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, “In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’” There I began to understand [that] the righteousness of God is . . . righteousness with which [the] merciful God justifies us by faith. . . . Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.”  (Martin Luther: Selections, pp. 11-12)

Working with you to enter paradise itself through open gates because of God’s righteousness,

Vince R.

(Quotes retreived from John Piper’s Sermon on Romans 1:16-17)

The Amazement of Grace and the Life of John Newton

“And you he hath quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein times past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:  Among whom also we all had our conversations in times past in the lusts of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath.  But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye have been saved) And raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.  That in the age to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”  Ephesians 2:1-7

 This passage resounds with “The Amazement of Grace.” 

That is the title of the sermon from my former pastor Robert Malcom.  Taken from this text, it is the most powerful sermon on grace I have ever heard.

I almost wept as he preached because I finally experienced the treasure of Amazing grace.  Never before have I understood (with intense experiential understanding) what God did even before I met him.

 That’s the whole of point of Ephesians 1.  That day, I saw how beautifully it carried over to Ephesians 2.  Many know that Romans is my favorite book in the Bible.  It is hard to understand, but it is a labor of love to try.  Ephesians, however, is the most precious book to me.  It is hard to understand, too, but I always study it in humbled awe because God’s grace abounds in it.

Yes, I believe in the doctrines of grace, but if those doctrines of that grace are more precious to me than that grace of those doctrines, I profane the mighty work of God in me, and I am sounding brass, meaningless and noisy.

In that sermon, it became real:  God is gracious. 

As he preached, I understood finally that apart from grace, I was capable of all manner of evil.  By my nature, I was hardening my heart in deadness.  I should be dead or maybe even in prison. 

“The same grace that saves you from the sins you committed also keeps you from committing the ones you never did.” –Brother Robert Malcom

That statement will stay with me for a long time.  God was gracious when he kept me in certain circumstances and kept me away from others.  What makes me different from that pedophile or that gang banger who shot that liquor store clerk?  The grace of God is what makes the difference.  In those days, I spat in his face daily, worshiping myself and profaning the blood of Christ.  Why didn’t I become like the “worse” sinners? That humiliates me to think about… 

 

This thought should compel me to pray for the lost even more fervently:  “God keep them alive another day! Grant them another chance to repent and believe! Fall on their hearts with such a mighty rush of grace that their knees begin to bend even now!”

 I should be like John Newton, for instance.  He raged with ungodliness, hate toward his fellow man, and intense demand upon his slaves. 

As I look back, I was on a similar path of ungodly hate and anger.  I was ill-tempered, selfish, grumpy, moody, and just one plain sawed-off jerk.

   

But the same God that saved John Newton saved me, too.  On his epitaph, John Newton’s self scribed text shines with the grace of God: 

  JOHN NEWTON,

Clerk,
Once an Infidel and Libertine,
A Servant of Slaves in Africa,
Was,
by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior
JESUS CHRIST,
Preserved, restored, pardoned,
And appointed to preach the Faith
He had long laboured to destroy,
Near 16 years at Olney in Bucks;
And [28] years in this church.

Like him, I was saved “by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior.” 

 

Once angry, lost, raging and blinded with hate, the Spirit of God so transformed his heart that he became known for meek compassion and humbling tenderness.  One of the main reasons for this is that he could never get past the fact that God saved him.  He was so amazed by grace, he couldn’t help but be gracious to others.  Note his amazement in his last will and testament:

I commit my soul to my gracious God and Savior, who mercifully spared and preserved me, when I was an apostate, a blasphemer, and an infidel, and delivered me from the state of misery on the coast of Africa into which my obstinate wickedness had plunged me; and who has been pleased to admit me (though most unworthy) to preach his glorious gospel.

Thusly, he stood in awe and produced such humiliating maxims such as this one about correcting falsely led believers and/or blinded unbelievers: 

 

As to your opponent, I wish, that, before you set pen to paper against him, and during the whole time you are preparing your answer, you may commend him by earnest prayer to the Lord’s teaching and blessing. This practice will have a direct tendency to conciliate your heart to love and pity him; and such a disposition will have a good influence upon every page you write. . . . [If he is a believer,] in a little while you will meet in heaven; he will then be dearer to you than the nearest friend you have upon earth is to you now. Anticipate that period in your thoughts. . . . [If he is an unconverted person,] he is a more proper object of your compassion than your anger. Alas! “He knows not what he does.” But you know who has made you to differ. 

What grace!  The very grace that changed him manifested itself in his new life, lovingly admonishing and compassionately rebuking.  Note also his tenderness when speaking of the doctrines of grace:

 

Of all people who engage in controversy, we, who are called Calvinists, are most expressly bound by our own principles to the exercise of gentleness and moderation. . . . The Scriptural maximum, that “The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God,” is verified by daily observation. If our zeal is embittered by expressions of anger, invective, or scorn, we may think we are doing service to the cause of truth, when in reality we shall only bring it into discredit.

 

I pray that I could be so tender and gracious.  God grant it, please!

 

John Piper, for instance, in his study of John Newton from where I retreived these quotations, mentions his longing for pastors with such tender compassion to people and intense devotion to truth:

 

I dream of such pastors. I would like to be one someday. A pastor whose might in the truth is matched by his meekness. Whose theological acumen is matched by his manifest contrition. Whose heights of intellect are matched by his depths of humility. Yes, and the other way around! A pastor whose relational warmth is matched by his rigor of study, whose bent toward mercy is matched by the vigilance of his biblical discernment, and whose sense of humor is exceeded by the seriousness of his calling.

 

Now, I think of me in particular:  a quiet, timid, ill-tempered young fool who finds the Spirit manifesting his glory in his life through the preaching and teaching of that ancient sword of truth.  The Spirit bears witness with his spirit that he is a child of God, a fellow heir with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Romans 8:16-17), and with this mighty sonship, comes the privilege to work for the Lord of all creation.  That’s grace!

 

Therefore, he who cherishes such grace must consequently pour it out on others.  It not only logical, it’s compelling.  When people talk with me, see me interact with others, listen to me preach and teach the word before groups, they must know that the God of all grace dwells richly in me.  Those who knew me when I was a child of wrath, must see the grace of God shining through all the more brightly and intensely.  If they don’t, I have preached, taught or spoken in unholiness, profaning the grace God poured out so uncompromisingly upon me.

 

Friends, God has chosen not many wise, not many noble, not many mighty, to serve him (1 Corinthians 1:26-30).  Why?  So that when they see his people doing his work, they must think, “That must be God doing it through them because that person just isn’t like that.”

 

“That, according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”  1 Corinthians 1:31

I can’t think of a better verse to sum up the doctrines of grace.  GOD DID IT!

 

Amazing Grace!  Recently, I haven’t been able to sing that hymn in worship without having to hold my composure.  It’s suddenly so sweet.

 

Working with you to treasure the Amazement of Grace,

 

Vince R.

 

Works Cited:

 

Piper, John.  John Newton:  The Tough Roots of His Habitual Tenderness.  Accessed on April 25, 2008.  http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Biographies/1485_John_Newton_The_Tough_Roots_of_His_Habitual_Tenderness/