Reflection 7- Calvin's Institutes

A steady diet of thinking on the Biblical truth concerning God’s infinite and spiritual essence and triune nature would nurture and mature a church that is starving herself on her own imagining of God. As John Calvin says, “The Scriptural teaching concerning God’s infinite and spiritual essence ought to be enough, not only to banish popular delusions, but also to refute the subtleties of secular philosophy…For he [God] so proclaims himself the sole God as to offer himself to be contemplated clearly in three persons. Unless we grasp these, only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains.”

In chapters 11 through 13 Calvin opens the door ever wider to his theocentric thinking. As I have again begun to walk through this door, peering into the biblical realities he unveils my longing for the glory of God grows deeper and my delight in the God of our salvation heightens. As Jesus tore the woman of Samaria away from her narrow view of God and what that means for worship , so Calvin causes us to look into the infinite nature of the triune God that we may be torn away from our own flitting thoughts about God to the true biblical reality of God that will bring us to trust him in worship.

Calvin writes of God’s nature as being immeasurable and spiritual in section 1 of chapter 13. He is here referring to the infinite essence of God revealed to us by the Scripture. God is infinite and spiritual dwelling in the heavens and yet far above the heavens, but also fills the earth with his glory. Calvin says, “Surely, his infinity ought to make us afraid to try to measure him by our own senses. Indeed his spiritual nature forbids our imagining anything earthly or carnal about him.” It is true that God bends toward his creatures to assist us in our thinking about him by assigning anthropomorphisms to himself saying that he hears or sees, has hands and feet. However, this is not to make God like man, but to “accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity.” For Calvin the infinite spiritual nature of God revealed to us by God’s Word is a sure remedy to our idolatry where we seek to make a god after our own imagining. T.F. Torrance reflects on Calvin’s thoughts this way, “God is not imaginable. All the images we invent are idols of the mind, products of our own imagination, for God ever remains like himself and is not a spectre or phantasm to be transformed according to our desires…True knowledge is objectively derived and cuts against speculations and imaginations of the human mind.” But for Calvin the infinite essence of God’s nature revealed in the Bible cannot be properly understood apart from his revealed triune nature.

“But God also designates himself by another special mark to distinguish himself more precisely from idols. For he so proclaims himself the sole God as to offer himself to be contemplated clearly in three persons. Unless we grasp these, only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God.” If God is so infinite in love to condescend to us and make himself known in his eternal Word as one God in three persons, then we should strive with all our mind, soul and strength to know him as he has revealed himself so that our thoughts and affections toward him are true according to his triune nature. Whether we begin in creation and see him making man after his own image, traverse redemptive history in the old covenant seeing the Godhead condescending to his people Israel, or see the Father, Son and Holy Spirit acting for the redemption of Jew and Gentile from all eternity and into the present, our minds are filled with his glory and the flitting thoughts of an unknown God are banished. Calvin’s theocentric thinking opens the door for a believer to shut the door on man centered imaginations of God and walk in worship toward in him in spirit and truth.

Reflection 6 - Calvin's Institutes 11.7-12

One of Calvin’s oft quoted sayings comes to us from Chapter 11 section 8, “From this we may gather that man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.” The context of this statement is in his writing on the origin of the images man worships in seeking to make a tangible deity for himself. He believes that public opinion, of his day, would have it that the “originators of idols were those who conferred this honor on the dead, and thus superstitiously worshiped their memory.” This public opinion was gathered from the Apocryphal writing which reads, “For a father afflicted with untimely mourning, when he hath made an image of his child soon taken away, now honoured him as a god, which was then a dead man, and delivered to those that were under him ceremonies and sacrifices. Thus in process of time an ungodly custom grown strong was kept as a law, and graven images were worshipped by the commandments of kings.” Calvin rightly asserts from his reading of the Old Testament, “that idols were in use before this eagerness to consecrate images of the dead prevailed.” He cites the story of Rachel stealing her father’s idols and the fact that Abraham’s Father and Uncle were idol worshipers in the land of Ur. Therefore Calvin says, “Man’s mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity; as it sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God.” It is the blind mind, blinded from the glory of God that does not wait or seek for God to reveal Himself, so that he knows how to worship Him in Spirit and in truth. And so “the mind begets an idol; the hand gives it birth.” The machinery of the blind mind and the hard heart restlessly grinds on until its gears engage some likeness to itself that seems to produce a harmonious working as an likeness of God. Calvin’s argument is piercing and though we may worship in churches where we have not erected images, pictures or icons that lead us to the worship of God, we carry into those churches our own factories producing idols of the heart. Therefore in the midst of this industrialized muck we need an agrarian cure.

We need not men who will pound from metals or ship from China images that we can fix our eyes upon so that the gears of our hearts can turn in peace with God. We need not men who can paint us pictures or video technicians who copy and paste for us natural revelation to stir up our hearts to sing Kumbaya, and other heart wrenching melodies before God’s throne. We need agrarian men who will sow the doctrines of God’s Word in the fallow soil of hearts of repentance and faith. We need men who will die like seeds in the earth in order to produce a crop hundred fold through the gospel of Jesus Christ. We need men who die and live having had the light of the glory of Christ shine in their faces, having been washed in the waters of baptism, and who now as branches, abide in the vine, Jesus Christ and his Word. And through this agrarian cure our industrialized hearts that mass produce idols will be made well and find the God of peace for true and spiritual worship. Pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest, laborers who preach and teach sound doctrine.

Reflection 5 - Calvin's Institutes

“God’s glory is corrupted by an impious falsehood whenever any form is attached to him.”

In Section I of Chapter XI of Book I, John Calvin argues against any pictorial representation of God. He is here specifically rejecting any use of images in the worship of God. He says, “God himself is the sole and proper witness of himself.” In his previous sections he had made the point that the Spirit of God through the use of the Word of God makes known to man who God is truly. Therefore the Spirit opens mans mind and heart to know the Scriptures in order that he man know God truly. Calvin says the law explicitly forbids making any image to communicate the likeness of God after making it clear that He is the true God and to be worshiped only. He says, “By these words he restrains our waywardness from trying to represent him by any visible image, and briefly enumerates all those forms by which superstition long ago began to turn truth into falsehood.” Men everywhere in all places have sought to take what is created and compare this to their own idea of who or what God is, but as Calvin goes on to say, “God does not compare these images with one another, as if one were more suitable, another less so; but without exception he repudiates all likenesses, pictures, and other signs by which superstitions have thought he will be near them.”

Calvin devotes a long section to this subject, seventeen pages with fifteen sections, so in today’s reading I have only begun to scratch the surface. However, I do want to give some reflection on what he has said thus far. Calvin is living in the cultural context of the Renaissance period and iconoclastic Roman Catholicism. The Renaissance period contributed much beauty to Western Europe and especially in the church. However some of this beauty was at the expense of violating the second commandment. The Roman Catholic Church had venerated art form and imagery that represented God in the worship of the triune God. Therefore this cultural and church practice needed to be evaluated through the authoritative Word of God. I believe this is what Calvin is doing in this section of the Institutes as he deals with the knowledge of God the Creator.

The key in Calvin’s thought is his holding to the law of God to reveal the will of God for how we are to know Him. Man, because of sin, is wayward in his thoughts about the true God, and the certainty of man falsely representing God with visible imagery is inevitable. But God’s explicit command is not only about protecting man from gross sin, it is about the upholding of the glory of God. Man, as Calvin as already argued, may know something of God from the general revelation of Himself through His creation, and know even more specifically about Him through His special revelation, the Word. However, in both of these cases it is God who is making Himself know as he wills. Therefore when man uses the creation to attempt to image forth the truth about God he is detracting from who God is by using that which comes from God and is not God himself, and this leads to venerating the image made after that which is mortal rather than exalting the immortal invisible God. So Calvin is right, God’s glory gets corrupted by our thoughts and depictions in form. Therefore we are in need of God to reveal Himself to us as He wills, and this He has done in His Son. The Lord Jesus Christ is the radiance of His glory and the exact imprint of His nature, and though no one has ever seen God, the One and Only God, who is at the Father’s side, has made Him known. As Jesus says, “Whoever sees me sees him who sent me.” Therefore we must see and worship God through Jesus Christ but not in earthly images from the imaginations and handiwork of men.

Death to Self, Life for the Unborn

I asked my students today, “What would a nation full of Christians unafraid of death look like? How would it change our country?” There responses were varied but one conclusion they came to was that we would not have had only 40 people gathered at the City Hall steps to pray together for life on this anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. They decided the city streets would have been full of those who belong to God’s church in Jesus Christ for prayer.

I think they are right. Today as we look back on the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision we have aborted over 50 million babies in our nation. That is 1.3 million babies a year, over 3,200 babies a day, and 1 baby every 25 seconds. And today about 40 people from our community gathered from 12:00 – 1:00 PM to pray in a culture of death for life. But I do not think that the church is afraid of death itself, but afraid of the death of self. Jesus Christ says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” To take up one’s cross to follow Jesus is to lose life for the sake of the name of Christ. Therefore to save one’s life, to be afraid of the death of self, is to live for the sake of one’s own name. This is the fear of the American church, the fear of the death of self.

However, I believe that if the streets were filled with 4,000 people or 40,000 people it would not prove that the church is dying and taking up their crosses to follow Jesus for the sake of the glory of his name. It could mean that there is a really charismatic leader in town, or it has become popular to stand in the public square for civil rights, or people do not want to go to work. Numbers of church people gathered in the public square or church does not indicate that Christians are dying to the fame of their own names. But when those numbers are gathered because they are dying realizing they are nothing and can do nothing, and that God promises his church mercy, deliverance, restoration, growth and the advancement of God’s glory and kingdom of grace in the world, and they pray like their life and the lives of every other person relied upon those promises, then we know the church is dying to self unafraid.

But if the church and culture continues to desire and seek after their satisfaction in the creation and the creature and not the Creator and Redeemer, then we will continue to murder to preserve our own lives for fear of losing self. The hope of the unborn as well as those born is not the activity of the churches faith or the cultures actions. The hope of the unborn and those born is the mercy of God. Therefore the church must take up her cross, die to self for the sake of the name of Christ by pleading in prayer for God to give what he promises in his Word. The church must pray as though the lives of the unborn and the born depend upon the activity of God Almighty and Merciful and not upon the churches or the civil realms actions. If he can raise up stones to cry out in faith to him as children of Abraham, then he can certainly turn the stony, hard, impenitent hearts of men into hearts of flesh that will fear him and live for his own glory in worship and work. Therefore the church and culture must find themselves satisfied in all that God is for them in Jesus Christ, and so die to self in order to live for the lives of others and not the murder of others.

Reflection 4 - Institutes of the Christian Religion

“For as God alone is a fit witness of himself in his Word, so also the Word will not find acceptance in men’s hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit.”


As a pastor I am often asked by Christians what they can do or use to convince a friend or a family member to accept the Bible as God’s Word. And often I am tempted to turn them to reason. I will refer them to different books or chapters in particular books that assist us to reason apologetically with the unbeliever. But as John Calvin says, “the testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason.” Therefore it stands to reason that unless the Spirit of God is working in the hearts of men to accept his Word as the truth the hard and impenitent heart will continue to reject God’s authority.

The Spirit who spoke through the mouths of the prophets and apostles is the same Spirit that must “penetrate into the hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what has been divinely commanded.” The apostle Paul and Peter were convinced of this about all that God had spoken by the prophets and now was speaking through them. They were speaking and writing from God’s authority and they believed that man must rely upon God’s Spirit to give them understanding, and that they must rely on God’s Spirit to seal what they were speaking and writing on the hearts of all those whom he loves. So every man must be convinced not by man’s reason but by the Spirit that Scripture derives from God so that God himself speaks in it.

The believer then must not rest upon his reason or any man’s reason to convince his unbelieving friend or relative of the authority or truthfulness of God’s Word in order to bring them to a knowledge of God their Creator and only Redeemer. The believer must rest upon the mercies of God to seal it into the heart of the unbeliever by the Spirit. The unbeliever must come into a true and lively faith that is accomplished by the work of the Spirit before they will desire and receive God’s Word as more precious than gold or sweeter than honey. The believer also must not rest upon his economy regarding the small number of believers we see. As Calvin says, “Whenever, then, the fewness of believers disturbs us, let the converse come to mind, that only those to whom it is given can comprehend the mysteries of God.” God will cause unbelievers to become believers by his working power through his powerful Word.

Therefore believers must treasure the Word that has been sealed upon your hearts. And they should speak the Word to unbelievers, study the Word with unbelievers, and bring unbelievers under the preached Word, so that the Spirit may work to change their hearts sealing his Word unto them for life.

Reflection 3 - Institutes of the Christian Religion

Are you a pupil of words from heaven? In today’s inaugural address President Barak Obama spoke “in the words of Scripture” saying, “We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.” It is here I reflected upon the words I read from John Calvin today, “Now, in order that true religion may shine upon us, we ought to hold that it must take its beginning from heavenly doctrine and that no one can get even the slightest taste of right and sound doctrine unless he be a pupil of Scripture.” (I.VI.2 p.72). Now a pupil of Scripture is one who sits under the authority of his teacher and speaks his words as one who truly represents him. As Calvin says, “The Scriptures obtain full authority among believers only when men regard them as having sprung from heaven, as if there the living words of God were heard.” (I.VII.1 p.74). Believers hold to the words of God as having sprung from heaven into their ears so that they have heard clearly from God himself. But for those who speak his words to exalt self or to prop up their own contrived doctrines are they pupils of words from heaven? The words from heaven are not meant to be twisted for when they are they allow the pupil to careen off his teacher’s path into a slippery fall of the human mind that forgets God. When the pupil thus walks he treads into a labyrinth of the revelation of God exchanging the glory of God for the glory of that which God creates and sustains. Therefore the pupil twists the truth and lusts after new fanciful religions. Religions that say God has promised all are equal, and all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. However in this same form of religion a child in the womb is not as equal as the mother, nor as free as the mother, nor as able as the mother to pursue their full measure of happiness. But for this pupil this is the noble idea, that precious gift, a better history and an enduring spirit we must reaffirm while we abort another 1.3 million babies this year in America.

John Calvin is right when he says, “For errors can never be uprooted from human hearts until true knowledge of God is planted therein.” (I.VI.3 p.73). The church must become pupils of the words from heaven to uproot the evil that lurks in our hearts and to see the true knowledge of God planted that will grow a church that is for his glory. The church must listen as those who long to hear God speak as from heaven to her that she may think rightly about him and his will. The church must be a pupil who hears not for our own ends but to know what is right and to be conformed by sound doctrine. I am assuming that President Obama was speaking from 1 Corinthians 13:11 in his speech. In that verse the apostle Paul is speaking in a illustrative manner of the time when the perfection of God’s church will be reached in the glory of God’s love and we will no longer be in need of those things that have helped us up to that time of perfection. We have needed prophecies, tongues and knowledge and God has given us those things from heaven. However, that time is not yet reached and we are still very much in need of instruction from a Wonderful Counselor and Mighty God. We are still seeing in the mirror dimly, we still know in part (1Cor.13:12). Therefore, we need God to direct us as pupils of the words of heaven so that when that day dawns on us we will not have followed cleverly devised myths and false religions that have a form of godliness but deny its power. I am praying for our President just as I am the church that we will receive the words from heaven as pupils who love and worship the one true, living and triune God who is our Creator and Redeemer.

Reflection 2 - Institutes of the Christian Religion

“Besides, this mind [pious mind] restrains itself from sinning, not out of dread of punishment alone; but because it loves and reveres God as Father, it worships and adores him as Lord.”
- Book I. Chapt.3.2

Christian piety is a gracious gift from God that swells out of a heart of love. It must be of grace for there is no love for God in the fallen man’s heart. If he wills to restrain himself from sinning it is out of fear of what he may loose for himself, but not out of honor he may give to God in love. God is not a Father to those who have not been given grace to honor and love God the Son as Lord. Therefore to restrain oneself from sin out of fear and dread of God as an illegitimate son is to expose a heart of prideful shame. But God is not mocked by a “vague general veneration” as though He is hungering for praise out of pride as the prideful man who needs the approval of others for His glory. Therefore there is needed grace for a pious mind that restrains itself from sin for love, honor, worship and adoration to God. An impious mind restrains itself from sin because of being afraid of being found out or caught, or fearing the consequences it may face or cause others to face, or fearing what this may do to a name, family, church or company it represents. And this impious mind is moral, good and upright in a world of immorality, depravity and decline. But it is impious because it does not have love for God but only self. When the pious mind is loved by God and filled with grace then it loves God by hating sin, it reveres God by shunning immorality, it worships him by running the incline to heaven out of the pit of mire, and it adores him in a passionate flight from the dung pit toward his glorious kingdom of righteousness, peace and joy in the Spirit.

Reflection 1 on Institutes of the Christian Religion

In the course of the 2009 year many will be remembering John Calvin as it has been 500 years since his birth, July 10, 1509. One way I am remembering this year is by reading the Institutes once again. I have made it a practice over the past several years to spend 30 minutes each day reading a work of systematic or biblical theology. During this time of reading I have read the Institutes but I am choosing to read them through again with the help of a reading plan put together by the Foundation for Reformed Theology. In each of my readings I am writing down something that Calvin said that greatly impacts and then reflecting on that in writing. I will seek to put forth some of these reflections through our churches blog.

“Unless they establish their complete happiness in Him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to Him.” Institutes, Book I. Chapter 2.1

Seeking happiness in a fallen world is a barren pursuit for the one seeking and a barren life for those who live in the wake of his pursuit. A fallen creature who seeks for happiness is not wrong. But when a fallen creature pursues happiness not in his Creator he is misguided by his desires, and it is this erroneous pursuit that leaves all whom he affects with the waves of his ill-directed pursuit.

Man is commanded to delight himself in the LORD (Ps.37:4). Therefore for the creature to delight himself in a primary way in anything but his Creator and Redeemer would be to pursue that which contrary to true joy for himself and others. Can a man seek for his joy in his wife or a vocational achievement? Yes, he can and he does. However, when his wife or the achievement he sought does not satisfy then he seeks another object or direction in life. Why does this occur? Because he sought his happiness in a wrong manner and the result is that he does not love his wife with endurance and sacrifice or work at his vocation for the good of those he has been given to serve.

God has made man so that he will know and enjoy Him through God’s revealing and giving Himself to man. The creature is made by and for the Creator and will not establish happiness, lasting, for he or others until he establishes happiness in God who has made Himself know. Therefore, God gives good gifts like family and vocations, but man must seek joy in God who the family is from and through and to (Rom.11:36). In this pursuit the waves that effect the family and those impacted by our callings can receive what is good, God. God has made and sustains family and vocations not primarily for a man’s joy, but for a man to have the opportunity to serve others joy in God. So a man is to establish his joy in God and as he gives himself fully to God as his joy he will be pursuing others joy in God. This is why Jesus can say, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Mt.5:16). A persons light shinning is the works he does, by grace, for others good. The reason it is called light is because it shines in a Godward direction. When a person establishes his joy in God then the light of God shines through him in the works of God, and others enjoy the results of God’s goodness and wisdom and they are able to look past the man to God whom that man knows, enjoys and refracts.