Freedom in Our Souls

 "There will be no freedom in our souls until we are persuaded of God's mercy, that, despite our unworthiness, He will receive us lovingly and graciously ... Though there is much that He could criticise, and many weaknesses, though we come limping to Him ... nevertheless, He accepts all of this. Why? Because He bears with us like a father with a son. This is the liberty in which we are to stand fast (Gal. 5: 1) ... When I approach Him, therefore, I can come with my head held high, having been acquitted and absolved through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ ... I cannot bring Him the perfection that He requires, nor even the hundredth part of it! Well, God bears with me, and still accepts that which is imperfect and weak, and even that which is mixed with sin."

≈ John Calvin's Sermons on Galatians.

Faith is Spirit-Given

 Faith is not self-generated but Spirit-given. Faith does not arise from fallen human nature (1 Cor. 2:14) but from the life-giving work of the Holy Spirit (John 6:63). The Spirit opens the heart, grants understanding, and creates faith through the gospel. As Calvin states elsewhere, "Faith itself is a singular gift of God." — Institutes 3.2.34

Remaining Sin

 The problem of continuing sin in the believer

God's grace is sometimes spoken of as deliverance, when we are freed from the bondage of sin, and sometimes as restitution, when we renounce the old nature and are restored to the image of God. Sometimes it is described as regeneration, when we become new creatures, and sometimes as resurrection, when God causes us to die to self and by his power raises us to life. However, we must understand that deliverance is never so complete that no part of us remains under sin's yoke; that restitution is never such as to efface all traces of the earthly man, or to do wholly away with the old nature. As long as we are confined to this bodily prison, we always carry with us the remnants of our flesh which thus limit our freedom. That is why the believing soul, from regeneration onward, is divided into two continually warring parts. For insofar as it is ruled and governed by God's Spirit, it has a love and yearning for immortality which leads and provokes it to righteousness, purity and holiness. Hence its sole thought is for the blessedness of the heavenly kingdom, and it wholly longs for fellowship with God. But insofar as it retains its natural inclination, it is mired in the earth's slime, entangled in evil desires, and does not know what to aim for or where true happiness lies. It is held captive by sin and is turned away from God and his righteousness.

This produces a conflict which sorely tries the believer throughout his life, because he is raised high by the Spirit but brought low by the flesh.

In the Spirit he yearns fervently for immortality; in the flesh he turns aside into the path of death. In the Spirit he purposes to live uprightly; in the flesh he is goaded to do evil. In the Spirit he is led to God; in the flesh he is beaten back. In the Spirit he despises the world; in the flesh he longs for worldly pleasures. This is no idle speculation divorced from our experience of life; it is a practical doctrine whose truth we experience for ourselves if we are God's children.

So we see that flesh and Spirit are like two combatants laying separate claim to the believing soul, and turning it into a battle-ground. Yet it is the Spirit who wins out in the end. For when it is said that the flesh turns the soul away from God, distances it from immortality, stops it following holiness and righteousness and alienates it from the kingdom of God, we must not think that its temptations are strong enough to overthrow and destroy the Spirit's work and to extinguish his power. God forbid! The truth is that when the flesh strives to pull man down, it burdens the Spirit's work; when it seeks to divert him from his path, it slows and impedes it; when it tries to suppress in him all love of righteousness, it weakens it somewhat; when it contrives to blot it out entirely, it makes it flag a little. In the midst of such difficulties, God's servant must be so roused that his heart's chief wish and inclination is to yearn for God, to endeavour to seek him out and continually to sigh and lament because his flesh does not allow him to press on as he should.

This is the point Paul makes when he says: If we are God's sons, let us not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit (Rom. 8:12-14). When he speaks of conflict he affirms that the Spirit of God is the stronger and that he will win. It is easy, then, to see the difterence between the natural man and the regenerate. The natural man is pricked and goaded by his conscience so that he does not completely slumber in his sins. Nevertheless he is disposed with all his heart to enjoy them, to revel in them and to give them free rein, fearing nothing except the penalty which he knows awaits all sinners. The regenerate man, on the other hand, clings with the chief part of his heart to the righteousness of the law, detesting and loathing the sin which he commits through his weakness. It pains him, he cannot condone it, but instead takes pleasure and delight in God's law and finds it sweeter than all the world's enticements. Moreover he never sins knowingly unless it be against his own inclination, for not only his conscience but part of his feelings are opposed to evil.

–John Calvin

“Institutes of the Christian Religion”

Humility in Controversy.

 May we also follow his humility in controversy

“Often have I been wont to declare, that even although he[Luther] were to call me a devil, I should still not the less hold him in such honour that I must acknowledge him to be an illustrious servant of God” -Calvin, Letters, 4:433

Looks at Himself

 “when the Christian looks at himself he can only have grounds for anxiety, indeed despair, but [in] fellowship with Christ, he can think of himself in no other way than as a member of Christ, thus making all the blessings of Christ his own.”

-John Calvin

Divisions and Disagreements

 Divisions in a church: exposes hypocrites, sanctifies sincere believers, reveals the fickleness of those not rooted in the Lord’s Word - - and the wickedness of those who assume the appearance of good men, and they manifest the constancy and sincerity of the good.

-John Calvin Can we also extend this to "Disagreements in a church" also: provides the expression of sincere mercy, patience, love, grace, humility, sanctifying believers, reveals those rooted in the Lord, manifesting the constancy and sincerity of the saints. (Todd Lambert)

ENJOY GOD'S GENEROSITY

Let’s get rid of the inhuman philosophy which only allows necessities. Not only does it wrongly deprive us of legitimate enjoyment of God’s generosity, but it cannot be effected without depriving man of all his senses, reducing him to a block. --John Calvin. We should therefore learn that the only good we have is what the Lord has given us gratuitously; that the only good we do is what He does in us; that it is not that we do nothing ourselves, but that we act only when we have been acted upon, in other words under the direction and influence of the Holy Spirit. Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1960, p. 317-318, www.eerdmans.com.

Series of Quotes by Calvin

 Now, since the arrangement of all things is in the hand of God, since to him belongs the disposal of life and death, he arranges all things by his sovereign counsel, in such a way that individuals are born, who are doomed from the womb to certain death, and are to glorify him by their destruction. If any one alleges that no necessity is laid upon them by the providence of God, but rather that they are created by him in that condition, because he foresaw their future depravity, he says something, but does not say enough. Ancient writers, indeed, occasionally employ this solution, though with some degree of hesitation. The Schoolmen, again, rest in it as if it could not be gainsaid. I, for my part, am willing to admit, that mere prescience lays no necessity on the creatures; though some do not assent to this, but hold that it is itself the cause of things. But Valla, though otherwise not greatly skilled in sacred matters, seems to me to have taken a shrewder and more acute view, when he shows that the dispute is superfluous since life and death are acts of the divine will rather than of prescience. If God merely foresaw human events, and did not also arrange and dispose of them at his pleasure, there might be room for agitating the question, how far his foreknowledge amounts to necessity; but since he foresees the things which are to happen, simply because he has decreed that they are so to happen, it is vain to debate about prescience, while it is clear that all events take place by his sovereign appointment.

— John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, Paragraph 6

...how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be, not by His will but by His permission... It is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing, but the author of them...

— John Calvin, The Eternal Predestination of God, 10:11

(Definition of Otiosely: serving no practical purpose or result.)

The devil, and the whole train of the ungodly, are in all directions, held in by the hand of God as with a bridle, so that they can neither conceive any mischief, nor plan what they have conceived, nor how muchsoever they may have planned, move a single finger to perpetrate, unless in so far as he permits, nay unless in so far as he commands, that they are not only bound by his fetters but are even forced to do him service (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 17, Paragraph 11)

...thieves and murderers, and other evildoers, are instruments of divine providence, being employed by the Lord himself to execute judgments which he has resolved to inflict.

— John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 17, Paragraph 5)

For God's will is so much the highest rule of righteousness that whatever he wills, by the very fact that he wills it, must be considered righteous. When, therefore, one asks why God has so done, we must reply: because he has willed it. But if you proceed further to ask why he so willed, you are seeking something greater and higher than God's will, which cannot be found. Let men's rashness, then, restrain itself, and not seek what does not exist, lest perhaps it fail to find what does exist.

— John Calvin

Here they recur to the distinction between will and permission, and insist that God permits the destruction of the impious, but does not will it. But what reason shall we assign for his permitting it, but because it is his will? It is not probable, however, that man procured his own destruction by the mere permission, without any appointment, of God; as though God had not determined what he would choose to be the condition of the principal of his creatures. I shall not hesitate therefore to confess plainly with Augustine, "that the will of God is the necessity of things, and that what he has willed will necessarily come to pass." God is very frequently said to blind and harden the reprobate, and to turn, incline, and influence their hearts, as I have elsewhere more fully stated. But it affords no explication of the nature of this influence to resort to prescience or permission.... For the execution of his judgements, he, by means of Satan, the minister of his wrath, directs their counsels to what he pleases and excites their wills and strengthens their efforts. Thus when Moses relates that Sihon the king would not grant a free passage to the people, because God had "hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate" he immediately subjoins the end of Gods design: "That he might deliver him into thy hand" Since God willed his destruction, the obduration of his heart therefore was the divine preparation for his ruin.”

— John Calvin, Institutes, III, xxili, 8; and II, iv, 3

And it ought not to seem absurd for me to say that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his descendants, but also meted it out in accordance with his own decision...

— John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, Paragraph 7

A distinction has been invented between doing and permitting, because to many it seemed altogether inexplicable how Satan and all the wicked are so under the hand and authority of God, that He directs their malice to whatever end He pleases, and employs their iniquities to execute His judgements… How foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be, not by His will but by His permission… It is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing, but the author of them…Who does not tremble at these judgments with which God works in the hearts of even the wicked whatever He will, rewarding them nonetheless according to desert? Again it is quite clear from the evidence of Scripture that God works in the hearts of men to incline their wills just as he will, whether to good for His mercy’s sake, or to evil according to their merits.

— John Calvin, The Eternal Predestination of God, 10:11

We hold that God is the disposer and ruler of all things, –that from the remotest eternity, according to his own wisdom, He decreed what he was to do, and now by his power executes what he decreed. Hence we maintain, that by His providence, not heaven and earth and inanimate creatures only, but also the counsels and wills of men are so governed as to move exactly in the course which he has destined.

— John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 16, Paragraph 8

Creatures are so governed by the secret counsel of God, that nothing happens but what he has knowingly and willingly decreed.

— John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 16, Paragraph 3

God causes everything and of necessity, that is, in accordance with his providence.

— John Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 1996, pg. 253

Everything that happens, happens of necessity, as God has ordained.

— John Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 1996, pg. 258

We define predestination as the eternal design of God, whereby he determined what he wanted to do with each man. For he did not create them all in the same condition, but foreordains some to everlasting life and others to eternal damnation.

— John Calvin