Joyeux anniversaire!!
In honor of our good friend Mr. John Calvin let’s all sing Happy Birthday in French…No? Ok then. Today is John Calvin’s 500th birthday! Because this year is his 500th, there is a lot of focus on him in major ministries such as Desiring God. Whole conferences centered on his life and his teachings and how they exalt Christ. I have heard silly person (Monica Dennington) after silly person (Tony Campolo) say that we’re heretics because we “follow” a man. And the people who follow them say the same things!…That’s pretty ironic I find. What I love about Calvin is that he truly exalts Christ. Everything the man taught was aimed at, as Spurgeon says, “the placing of the eternal God at the head of all things”. Calvin really believed that “salvation is of the Lord.” (Jonah 2:9) and taught it. He wrote, spoke, and taught with Christ at the center of everything. His commentaries on the Bible are some of the most insightful and useful commentaries around, and his Institutes of the Christian Religion is by far one of the best books you can buy. He was not perfect and had flaws like the rest of us, but his influence on not only Western theology, but the whole of Western society is unmistakable. So read Calvin and study him, not for his own sake, but instead to see Christ in him and to see how he exalts Christ in everything he does. I don’t follow Calvin. I follow Christ. Calvin was a sinful man who was used greatly by God to expound and teach the Scriptures in a marvelous way.
May God give us more men like John Calvin. May God raise up those who truly seek to put God at the head of everything.
Happy Birthday Calvin!
“He now ascends into the highest strain of glorying; for when we glory that God is ours, whatever blessings can be imagined or wished, ensue and flow from this fountain; for God is not only the chief of all good things, but also possesses in himself the sum and substance of all blessings; and he becomes ours through Christ. We then attain this by faith, — that nothing is wanting to us as to happiness. Nor is it in vain that he so often mentions reconciliation: it is, first, that we may be taught to fix our eyes on the death of Christ, whenever we speak of our salvation; and, secondly, that we may know that our trust must be fixed on nothing else, but on the expiation made for our sins.”
John Calvin’s Commentary Notes on Romans 5:11
