I. THE QUALITY OF THE COMMENTATOR

Calvin’s Commentaries and sermons fill volumes 23–55 of his Works (in Corpus ReformatorumOpera, in Corpus Reformatorum, ed. by G. Baum, E. Cunitz, E. Reuss, vol. 59, pp. 451–482, contains a list of Calvin’s publications during his lifetime.); and the Commentaries by themselves fill forty-five volumes in English: thirty on the Old Testament, fifteen on the New Testament (in the series of the Calvin Translation Society).

The grandeur of this achievement becomes all the more evident when we remember that these Commentaries were the work not of a detached scholar, but of a Reformer whose days were filled largely with pastoral work both in the church and in the state. His multiple activities and preoccupations in the latter capacity, especially in the light of his delicate and sickly physical condition, leave one amazed at the diligence and perseverance which made Calvin’s literary output (fifty-nine volumes in his Works) possible. One must not forget the several versions of the Institutes, his numerous tracts and thousands of letters. Calvin believed not only in the Word of God, but also in human words as means of promoting the gospel and serving the church.

The Commentary on Romans, the first, was published in 1540. The latest, Joshua (1564) and Ezekiel, chs. 1–20 (1565), were published after Calvin’s death. In between came the great Commentaries on Genesis, the four last Books of Moses (Harmony), the Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Lamentations, Ezekiel, and the Minor Prophets (Calvin preached on the other books such as Deuteronomy, Job, and Samuel, but he did not lecture on them). There were also the Commentaries on all the books of the New Testament, except 2 John and 3 John and Revelation. The Harmony of Exodus-Deuteronomy (four volumes in English) and the Harmony of the Gospels (three volumes) deserve special mention as astonishing works of organization, both of narrative and of topics. They are, in fact, convincing evidence of Calvin’s grasp of Scripture as a whole and in detail. It is impossible to single out the greater Commentaries. Each is valuable for the insights it gives into the Word of God contained in it. One has only to consult Calvin on a few given passages of Scripture to recognize that he is indeed a teacher without an equal. Calvin comments with the conviction that any passage of Scripture he may examine contains a Word of God full of God’s wisdom, applicable to the condition of his hearers and readers in one respect or another. This conviction enables him to respond to the Bible with a vitality and intelligence which certainly go into the making of the mass of interesting material contained in the Commentaries from one end to the other. So it is that in spite of the occasional dips, one is aware of walking through on a high road, with solid pleasure and frequent excitement of illumination.

Most of the Old Testament Commentaries were delivered as lectures. Calvin spoke slowly and quietly, so that his words could be recorded fairly accurately by his students and more exactly by his secretaries. Afterward he went over what had been taken down, corrected it, and allowed it to be published with proper dedications to friends and persons of importance in England and elsewhere.

It is important to remember that these lectures were delivered at the Academy, which provided education to the children of Geneva, and attracted students of theology by the hundreds from France, England, Scotland, Holland, and elsewhere. Some of the greatest Protestant theologians of the day were trained in this Academy. But the majority of those who attended his lectures went to their several countries to work, and often to suffer, for the establishment and the progress of the Reformed faith. What these men needed was clear, sure, and strong grasp of Scripture doctrine, available for the new churches or gatherings of Protestants in their own lands, surrounded by hostile forces and in constant peril. Calvin commented for the upbuilding of these people and the churches they came from and went to.

He began his lectures always with the prayer, “May the Lord grant that we study the heavenly mysteries of his wisdom, making true progress in religion to his glory and our upbuilding.” The closing prayer was longer, and in it Calvin laid before the Lord the special needs of the faithful as the Scripture just studied had revealed them.

The Scripture passage was read in the original language, then translated into Latin.There was often a desire to include the Hebrew in the publication, but to keep the cost of the volumes as reasonable as possible, this was not always done. But see the Amsterdam edition of 1667. Calvin’s Latin translation is apparently his own; in the classroom, it was made directly from the text. He was of course as familiar with the Vulgate as most modern English translators are with the Authorized Version, and like the modern translators, he enjoyed making improvements.For strong objections to the Vulgate, see Tracts (Edinburgh edition), vol. 3, pp. 76 f., or Opera, vol. 7, pp. 411 f. His wording is said to be closest, in the Old Testament, to the translation of Leo Jud, printed at Zurich in 1543 (reprinted 1545 and 1557King, John. Preface to Genesis, Edinburgh ed., pp. xv–xvi.); but it does not seem so close as to suggest actual dependence. For example, in Gen. 1:6 Jud’s translation runs, Dixit quoque Deus sit extensio; Calvin’s, Et dixit Deus sit extensio.

What Hebrew text he used is apparently uncertain. Available, besides the Brescia edition used by Luther, were the Soncino (1488), the Bomberg editions, printed at Venice (1518–1526), and three editions of Münster, printed at Basel (1534, 1536, 1546). None of them differed significantly from the Brescia edition. The Complutensian Polyglot, finally published in 1521, was used by Beza (according to Delitzsch) and presumably was available to Calvin.

Calvin’s opponents have minimized his knowledge of Hebrew (Il n’en connoissoit gueres que les caracteresFootnote of an article by Tholuck in the English volume on Joshua, Edinburgh ed., p. 348.), but the Commentaries themselves offer sufficient evidence to the contrary. He deals repeatedly with disputes over the roots from which words were derived, and with various grammatical constructions. Further, he has a real sense of Hebrew style and uses it frequently as a guide to interpretation.See pp. 157, 310, 365, 396. He recognizes fully the importance of “synonymous parallelism.” He takes for granted the relative antiquity and accuracy of the Masoretic Hebrew in comparison with the Septuagint and the Vulgate, and he therefore uses them both along with the Targum, Theodotian, and the church fathers, much as he uses the commentaries of his own contemporaries, as aids to the interpretation of the text, not as independent authorities.

While translating the New Testament, Calvin has both the Vulgate and Erasmus before him. But he does not hesitate to make his own rendition. This statement could be substantiated from almost every other page of the New Testament Commentaries. One or two examples will suffice. He translates εὑρίσκομαι as inveniam (“that I may find”), against Erasmus’ reperior and the Vulgate’s invenior; and he justifies his rendition by saying “as BudaeusSee note 32. (the great Hellenist) shows by various examples” (on Phil. 3:9). Erasmus translates ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον εὐχαριστία, of Eph. 5:4, as sed magis gratiarum actio, “but rather by giving thanks greatly.” Calvin prefers Jerome’s sed magis gratia. He admits that the Greek word usually means “thanksgiving,” but he thinks the present context requires that it be translated as gracious.

As to the New Testament text, Calvin clearly uses that of Erasmus. But references to ancient and more recent “manuscripts” show that he was not satisfied simply to follow even an authority like Erasmus.

Erasmus’ influence on Calvin as critic and exegete was far-reaching. The former’s insistence upon the necessity of knowing the original languages of the BibleOpera Omnia, 10 vols., ed. by J. Clericus, Leyden, 1703–1706, vol. 5, pp. 77–78.; his principle that the more obscure passages of the Bible should be interpreted with the help of those which are clearIbid., p. 131.; his plea for understanding the Bible in its “natural, or historical and grammatical” sense, and spiritually, that is, for moral edificationIbid., vol. 3, pp. 1026, 1029, 1034.; his view of the Bible as having been written under the direction of the Holy Spirit (Ut enim Spiritus ille divinus, mentium apostoliarum moderatur) without a forced uniformity as to contentIbid, vol. 6, p. 13, on Matt. 2:7.; his conviction that various and divergent accounts and teachings in the Bible do not diminish its authority and saving powerBerger, Samuel, La Bible au seizième siècle, Paris, 1879, p. 78.; his critical attitude with regard to the authorship of certain books, and his independence in relation to patristic interpreters, including Jerome; his dictum: In fontibus versetur oportet, qui vellit esse vere theologus — “Every man who would be a true theologian must return to the sources” Ibid. — all this, together with the example of free and competent examination of Scripture he sets in his emendations and annotations, are written large in Calvin’s Commentaries. (How much of this agreement is to be credited to the direct influence of Erasmus on Calvin and how much to the humanistic classical training which Calvin had received is of course debatable.)

Calvin divides his text conveniently, so that he may be able to deal with a story or topic as a whole. After explaining a given passage in general, he then proceeds to discuss specific verses, phrases, and words, which he repeats sometimes in Latin and sometimes in the original. As he proceeds, he uses Latin renditions of the text which are not the same as those first given. His mind is on the original Hebrew or Greek and not on a Latin version, whether his own or another’s.

As the occasion demands, Calvin goes into details in discussing a geographical and historical point. He appeals to classic authorities; to Jewish, pagan, Christian writers of antiquity, like Josephus, Pliny, and Jerome; and he quotes the best authorities of his own day. But he is brief and to the point. He weighs evidence, expresses an opinion, and moves on. It is seldom that he loses himself in detail and turns aside from his main purpose (as he does on Gen. 15:2, where his discussion of mesek, sagah, shuk, and Damascus must have bored all but the hardiest students). After details have been dealt with, he returns to the meaning of the whole passage, often giving a summary of its teaching, or stating the central theme and applying it to the need of the church and of his hearers and readers. He had a habit, which must have brought reassurance to his students, of marking the end of the treatment of a passage by saying, “Now we have [tenemus] the prophet’s meaning.”

He paraphrases frequently, clarifying statements and ideas for the duller students. One can imagine the quick dipping of quill pens in the ink whenever the class heard “as if he were to say” (acsi diceret), followed by the repetition of a text in his own words. Often he projects his mind into those of his hearers, and takes up a line of thought which is of special practical concern to them. It is surprising how often he does the same for a present-day reader. One can hear the soft-spoken lecturer occasionally shaking up the unconcerned with well-aimed and adroit thrusts, and waking them up to the relevance of the Word of God to their own and their churches’ condition. The Word applied, and Calvin was eminently resourceful in pointing this out to the mind of the not too bright student. The occasional belaboring of the obvious must no doubt be attributed to Calvin’s concern with what we would call “average mentality.” He can also make his point clear by an occasional flash of humor: “the uproar made by a fallen leaf,” See. p. 322. the suggestion that he might wear a military uniform to class,See pp. 353. f. the comment on bracelets and nose ringsOn Ezek. 16:12. or the asses’ ears.See p. 80. Calvin was never boisterous, but he certainly had wit and could be witty — a good but rare quality in a commentator!

Characteristically, his worst term of condemnation for any interpretation is “frigid,” by which he means not so much “remote” or “lifeless” as lacking in the power to give living faith to the church; on the other hand, his favorite word of praise is “solid,” a sound and sure foundation for the church’s faith. Eight years separated the printing of the Isaiah Commentary and that on the Minor Prophets. A comparison of Calvin’s treatment of Isa. 2:4 with that of Micah 4:2 (Written eight years later) shows him addressing himself to different specific situations. And yet it also reveals the continuity of his thought in his primary concern with the upbuilding of the church.

With all this practical concern with the “progress” of his students and of the churches, Calvin was a conscientious historical critic. His comments did not degenerate into the undisciplined exhortation which often goes with “practical preaching.” He neither practiced nor encouraged irresponsibility toward “the genuine sense” of Scripture. The students were to know what the author of a given text meant by what he said, and any “spiritual” meaning other than one derived from the author’s intention was at once misleading and unedifying. Calvin said bluntly of Ezek. 17:1–2, “The prophet’s discourse cannot be understood without a knowledge of the history [behind it].” Calvin’s concern with history will be dealt with later.See “Calvin as Historian,” pp. 29–31. Here we point it out as an essential part of his work as a lecturer, contributive rather than irrelevant to the hearing of God’s Word.

Calvin’s refusal to be diverted from his main purpose is clear also in his use of classical and early Christian literature. The list of classical references is a long one. Cicero appears most often (sixteen times in the Pentateuch Harmony alone); but there are quotations from all the better-known Latin authors (Horace, Juvenal, Seneca, Terence, Cato, Quintilian, Virgil, Plautus, Suetonius, Tacitus, Livy, Pliny), and from the Greek authors (Homer, Euripides, Xenophon, Ovid, Aristophanes, Epicurus, Plutarch, and Aesop). He quotes Plato and Aristotle with respect. He admires Plato’s wisdom and piety, but objects to the “angelology” of Platonism (2 Peter 1:4, Col. 2:18, etc.). He quotes Aristotle on the distinction between anger and hatred (from “The Second Book on Rhetoric”), and refers with approval to his saying that the tongue should be an image of the understanding (Gal. 5:19, 1 Cor. 14:11). In the field of law, he speaks of Portius’ law, Flavian law, the laws of Sempronius, and Valerius’ law (Acts 16:35, 22:25, 1 Tim. 1:10). Herodotus, Pliny, Gellius, Homer all contributed a discussion of the giant Og in Deut. 3:4. It is not always possible to tell whether Calvin is depending on his own memory of a quoted passage, or on a collection of quotations such as the Adagies of Erasmus. Calvin was admired by his friends and feared by his enemies as a most learned man. But he never makes a display of his erudition and it seldom interferes with a forthright presentation of the meaning he saw it and with his communication with his hearers and readers.

The same holds for his use of ancient Christian literature. Hundreds of references in the Commentaries, quotations, approving and disapproving discussions make it obvious that Calvin had an extensive and masterly knowledge of Augustine, Jerome, and Chrysostom. He obviously learned a great deal from all three, and depended upon the latter two, as well as on Josephus, for his knowledge of Biblical times and places. But his knowledge is not limited to these giants. He makes apt reference, with frequent quotations, to Tertullian and Cyprian; to Irenaeus and Origen; to Cyril of Jerusalem, Epiphanius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Hilary, Lactantius, and Ambrose of Milan; to Eusebius and Socrates, the historians; to Pope Leo I, Gregory the Great, and Bernard of Clairvaux. But again, the fathers are consulted for the help they may provide for understanding Scripture; they do not interfere with his exposition of it.

Calvin was grateful to contemporary commentators like Melanchthon, Bucer, Bullinger, and others (on RomansSee Epistle to Simon Grynaeus, below.). But the use he makes of their works keeps a consistent pattern. No references are given to exhibit his own learning. However, his comments show that he had read and pondered over the works of his contemporaries. Ecolampadius,1482–1531. He was born in Weinsberg in the Palatinate. He went to Bologna to study law but ended studying theology in Heidelberg. In 1515 he became cathedral preacher in Basel, and after a period in Germany, in 1522 he returned to Basel, after which his name was associated with that of Zwingli and with the Protestant Reformation. He was well versed in “the new learning” and was respected both as exegete and as theologian. he says, interprets rightly and prudently, but one needs leisure to read his work (Dan. 9:25). He quotes approvingly and supports by his own argument Luther’s designation of Ps. 132:14 as “the bloody promise,” but he disagrees with Luther on Dan. 8:22–23; “Luther indulging his own thoughts too freely refers this to the masks of Antichrist.” He gives high praise to Bucer in the Preface to Psalms,See p. 54 (and cf. p. 75). but he says of him elsewhere (Preface to Romans) that he is too prolix for busy men to read, and too profound to be understood by the simple, and that because of the incredible fecundity of his mind, he does not know where to stop.

Calvin declares (and truly) that he does not expend words refuting contrary opinions unless he knows the faithful are troubled by them.See Autobiographical Sketch, p. 57. Most of his arguments therefore are with the “papists” and the Anabaptists. There are uncomplimentary references to “the doctors of the Sorbonne.” Jewish commentators are usually treated as a group and dismissed as blind to the relation between the Old Testament and Christ. He uses their judgment frequently on details, especially the meaning or derivation of words. Kimchi he mentions by name and calls him “the most correct interpreter among the rabbis” (Ps. 112:5).

It is ironical that Calvin in spite of his frequent references to “the blindness of the Jews” was himself attacked, especially by the theological faculty of Wittenberg, as “a Judaizer.” A pamphlet against his method of interpreting Scripture, which was published in 1593, bore the horrendous title “Calvin Judaizing, that is, the Jewish Glosses and Corruptions by which John Calvin did not Fear to Corrupt the most Luminous Passages of Sacred Scriptures and its witness to the Glorious Trinity, the Deity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, including the Predictions of the Prophets on the Coming of the Messiah, His Birth, Passion, Resurrection, and Sitting at the Right Hand of God, in a Detestable Fashion. A Refutation of the Corruptions is Added.” The reason for such attacks was of course Calvin’s insistence on attending to the “genuine sense” of Scripture.Pp. 28f., 107f., 140f., 353, 366f. But see also on Deut. 13:1, John 11:58. He despised the allegorical method of interpreting Scripture which had provided Christians with their favorite means of twisting the Bible into a religious book of their own liking. In insisting upon the original meaning of a text, he deprived the orthodox, even among Protestants, of many of their traditional proof texts. He even undermined the traditional doctrine of Biblical authority. But he taught the Protestant ministry how to read their Bible, and to understand it as the Word of God to the churches — which is the utmost a commentator can do.

Calvin published his Commentaries to give his readers insight into the Word of God and to point out its relevance to their own life and situation. To this end he cultivated accuracy, brevity, and lucidity. He achieved his purpose to a degree that has aroused the admiration and gratitude of generations of readers. And in this day, as Prof. James Everett Frame of Union Theological Seminary of New York used to say, a man who would understand his Bible will do well to have Calvin’s Commentaries within easy reach.

Here we must not fail to point out that every salient point of Calvin’s theology is discussed, and is often more briefly and clearly and persuasively presented, in the direct statements of the Commentaries than in the sustained and usually technical arguments of the Institutes. We hope that our selections on faith, providence, Jesus Christ, and so on, will help the reader to correct many an impression he has received either by dipping into the Institutes or by secondhand acquaintance with Calvin. We ourselves were repeatedly and pleasantly surprised by what we found in these Commentaries: we hope the reader will find the same instruction and pleasure.index1

II. THE PREPARATION OF THE COMMENTARIES

In the main, the Old Testament Commentaries were delivered as lectures, and the New Testament Commentaries were dictated at home. We owe an enormous debt to Calvin’s friends and secretaries who wrote down his lectures and sermons, and took dictation at his home.Doumergue, Emile, Jean Calvin, vol. 3, pp. 592 f. Among these special mention must be made of Jean Budé, the son of the great humanist Guillaume Budé, and his brother-in-law Charles de Jonvillers, both of whom were refugees from France and lived on Calvin’s street. They worked tirelessly with him in the preparation of the Commentaries on Jeremiah and Lamentations, on Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets, which occupy seventeen volumes in English translation. They have left us firsthand accounts of the way Calvin’s Commentaries were composed and made ready for publication.See Papacy

Budé wrote of the beginning of the work: “When some years ago that most learned man, John Calvin, at the advice and request of friends, undertook to explain the Psalms of David in the School, some of us his hearers began to take notes in our own way, for our own private study, according to our own judgment, and at will. But aroused by what we heard, we began to think how unjust it would be to a great many people, and to the whole church, if the benefit of such lectures were to be restricted to a few people. We did our best to take down the lectures word for word. Without wasting time, I joined myself with two zealous brothers for this purpose; and it happened by God’s grace that our effort was not without success. For, when we put our several notes together, and wrote out the lectures, we found that little had escaped us, and that we could fill the gaps without much trouble. Calvin himself is our witness that this is what happened in the first undertaking in which our abilities were put to the test. All the hearers [of the lectures] will readily acknowledge that we followed the same procedure far better in taking down the lectures on Hosea; for by this time we were more skillful at our job through much repetition and long practice.” Opera, vol. 42, pp. 191–192.

And we have the following, from Charles Jonvillers, on the preparation of the Commentary on Ezekiel:

“On February 13, 1563, Calvin began to expound Ezekiel in the Public School; even though he was constantly afflicted by various serious diseases, and had either to be carried to the lecture hall in a wooden chair, or arrive perforce on a horse; for his frail body had become so worn out that there was hardly any strength left in him. And yet, for a whole year after that February, the virulence of his disease did not keep him from discharging his responsibilities of preaching and lecturing.

“Finally, in February of the following year, when he had finished chapter twenty (except for four verses), he was forced to stay at home and almost continuously in bed. Still, even while his mind had to carry the burden of his illness, he was constantly thinking, or dictating; and he often kept writing, so that it is hardly credible how much he accomplished even when he could not leave his house because of bad health. Among other things, he corrected diligently the greater part of these lectures, as is evident from the copy with his notations, which I have saved with care along with the rest.” Ibid., vol. 40, proleg. See Edinburgh edition of Ezekiel, p. xlvii.

A passage from The Life of John Calvin, by Nicolas Colladon, a minister and friend of Calvin, gives us a glimpse of the latter at work:

“About the month of September (1558), he was attacked by a prolonged and dreadful fever; and while it lasted, he was forced, to his great regret, to stop both reading and preaching. But he did not cease to work at home, in spite of the remonstrances of those around him that he spare himself. At this very time he revised and improved his Commentary on Isaiah, which had already been printed in the year 1551. Besides, at this time his lectures on all the Minor Prophets were printed; for previously there had been only a separate printing of his lectures on Hosea. It may be that when he was seized by the fever he had already read all the Minor Prophets, and there were only two or three lectures on Malachi left. However, since the printer was nearby, Calvin, wanting to avoid publishing an imperfect work, worked over his lectures in his own rooms and dictated them to several persons who were able to be present. Thus these lectures, as well as the others, were taken down from his mouth, and printed like the rest. He worked in his room because it was winter and he had the fever; and it was not good for him to go outside.” Ibid., vol. 21, pp. 87–88.

Again, according to Colladon: “Calvin on his part did not in the least spare himself. He worked much harder than his strength and health could bear. Every other week he preached one sermon a day.According to Doumergue, Calvin “often preached twice a day; he gave lectures; he spoke before the congregation every week. He spoke before the consistory every week. He spoke before the council. How often a week?” (Jean Calvin, 6, p. 73). See also F. W. Kampschulte, Johann Calvin, 2, p. 375. But this writer is dependent to a large extent upon Colladon, whom we have been quoting. Three times a week he lectured on theology. He was present at every meeting of the consistory, and made all the remonstrances. Every Friday, at a discussion on Scripture, which was called the congregation, what he added after the main speaker was like a lesson in itself. He did not fail to visit the sick, to give pastoral advice, and to do an endless number of things that went with the ordinary exercises of his ministry. Aside from the usual activities, he was greatly occupied with the faithful in France. He instructed, exhorted, counseled, and comforted them in the midst of persecution, as well as interceded for them, or had others do it when he thought there was a way.” Opera, vol. 21, p. 66.

After describing Calvin’s excellent memory, Colladon goes on to say: “It is not that he had much time to prepare his lectures, for even though he would have preferred to do so, he had no leisure for it. And for a truth, most of the time he did not have one whole hour for preparation. . . . I will add still another evidence for his [remarkable] memory: If, while he was dictating, someone came in to speak to him and stayed a half hour, or even an hour, most often he would remember where he had left off, and would go on from there as though nothing had happened, whether he was dictating letters, or a commentary, or something else. . . .

“He slept very little. Even though this meant he was less than energetic, it did not keep him from being ready for work and the fulfillment of his duties. On the days when he was not to preach, he would stay in bed and at five or six o’clock would ask for a number of books, so that he might dictate with someone writing down his work. If it was his week, he was always ready to go up into the pulpit. When he returned home, he went to his bed and lay down on it with his clothes still on, and taking some book, continued his labors. . . . So it is that he dictated most of his books in the morning, working continually and in a very happy state of mind.” Ibid., pp. 108–110.

III. CALVIN AS RENAISSANCE HUMANIST

I. Calvin’s “Literalism”

Calvin’s exegetical method and procedure were the product of a century of classical humanism, first in Italy, but later especially in Northern Europe. Humanists, such as Lorenzo VallaLorenzo Valla was a learned, boisterous, and fearless scholar. He is famous for his exposure of “the Donation of Constantine,” which was supposed to have established the supremacy of Rome in the church and over Italy and Western Europe. He was an accomplished Latinist, a rigorous textual and historical critic, and a general nuisance for the tradition. But he escaped the inquisition because of powerful friends including two popes (Nicholas V and Calixtus III). (1407–1457), Guillaume BudéCalvin called Budé “a matchless ornament and crown of literature, by whose contribution today our France lays claim to the palm of erudition” (O. Breen, John Calvin: A Study on French Humanism, p. 114). He refers to Budé often (I Cor. 4:13, II Cor. 1:13, Phil. 2:9, John 2:5, 6:7, etc.) as an authority on the languages and civilization of Greece and Rome. De asse at partibus eius of Budé was held in highest esteem as a source book on the subject. He was critical of the church and defended the primacy of Scripture and the cross for salvation, but he refused to join “the Lutherans.” His family later found their way to Geneva. (See Josef Bohatec, Budé and Calvin, Graz, 1950, for a classic discussion.) (1467–1540) and ErasmusErasmus requires no special discussion here. His relation to the Reformation has inspired a literature that is copious and readily available. See Preserved Smith, Erasmus, 1923; Albert Hyma, The Youth of Erasmus, Ann Arbor, 1931; Margaret M. Phillips, Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance, London, 1949; Louis Bouyer, Autour d’Erasme, Paris, 1955. (1466–1536), had in common a zeal for recovering the literature of Greece and Rome, and for publishing reliable versions of the old classics. They loved the wisdom and style of the ancient writers, and drank up their sayings for new insight into a virtuous and happy life. These men, and many others like them, were fine linguists and critics, with whom it was axiomatic that the establishment of the best possible text of a writing was the first step toward understanding it. They compared manuscripts and authorities, and assumed the responsibility of producing their own editions of the classics. Calvin, who was trained in the humanistic method, and admired Budé and Erasmus greatly, took it for granted that before commenting on any passage in Scripture, he had to ascertain what the author of it actually said.

The so-called literalism of Calvin is directly related to the Renaissance scholars’ desire to get at the original and “genuine” meaning of a text. Reformers, like Luther, Bucer, and Zwingli, as well as Calvin, who were all indebted to Erasmus and the humanistic method, agreed that the natural meaning of a statement was to be preferred to one arrived at by way of allegorizing or supplying a meaning other than the literal. This method was a commonplace among humanists, who applied it to Greek and Roman writings earlier than to the Bible. Allegory was contrary to the humanistic canon of interpretation; and “literalism,” that is, the desire to get at an author’s own mind, was of its essence.

So we find Calvin bent upon establishing what a given author in fact said. He criticized the church fathers, especially Augustine, Chrysostom, and Jerome, for dealing too subtly with the texts, for allegorizing and speculation; even though he obviously takes their understanding of the Bible more seriously than he does that of the humanists.See pp. 107 f., 307 (cf. 327), 311, 334, 370. He complains repeatedly that even while Augustine’s remarks on a given passage are good, they are irrelevant to the purpose of its writer (on Rom. 8:28, John 1:16). Allegorizing was misunderstanding, and misunderstanding was the evil a scholar had to avoid by all means.

Neither the humanists nor Calvin meant by the literal meaning necessarily an unspiritual meaning. The natural interpretation of a passage for them was one that did Justice to the intention of the author. When Calvin protested against allegorizing, he was protesting not against finding a spiritual meaning in a passage, but against finding one that was not there. The Word of God written for the upbuilding of the church was of course spiritual, but in the primary sense of leading to the knowledge of God and obedience to him. Calvin’s “literalism” establishes rather than dissolves the mystery of the Word of God, provided for the Christian’s help and comfort.

2. Calvin as Historian

As a disciplined humanist, Calvin recognized that the Biblical writers, for example the prophets, wrote for their own times and situations. In this sense, Calvin is a confirmed “historicist.” When Isaiah, or Hosea, or Jeremiah, or a psalmist speaks he speaks for the benefit of God’s people or the church in his own day. The Holy Spirit does indeed speak by them prophesying the Messiah, and for the future church. Calvin can say that Isaiah foresaw the glory of Christ (on John 12:45). But he habitually looks at the prophecies quoted in the New Testament, not from the position of the prophet, but from that of the apostles or Evangelists who “applied” them to their own situation. Even while he assumes that the New Testament writers wrote as dictated and directed by the Holy Spirit, as a commentator he is concerned with the way they dealt with the Old Testament; and he speaks of their activity as applying [traho, apto], both in the active and in the passive.See p. 91. His basic conviction in this matter, put in practice throughout his Commentaries, is that the Old Testament applied to the situation of the early church, especially to the mission of Christ, and that the Bible as a whole applies to the situation of the church in his time So, he is interested in the way the New Testament writers applied prophecy to their own history after Christ. In fact, in the Old Testament itself, the exodus from Egypt is more than an incident in the past. It is a parable of the life of Israel, and we might add, of human life in general. The same is true of the mission of Christ, and his cross. Calvin was profoundly impressed with the analogy between Christ’s destiny and that of the church in his time. Thus he saw a profound continuity between the Old Testament and the New, and between both and the events of his day (on Matt. 3:3).

To Calvin, the ultimate end of the Bible is the Kingdom of Christ, his reign over the people of God, and their faithfulness and obedience to him. This end was seen in the Old Testament dimly, or as he likes to say, umbratile, in a shadowy way. It was only right that when Christ came, the Evangelists should have applied the prophecies to him; for the words fitted him and his work far better than they did David, or Cyrus, and their works. Commenting on Matt. 27:35, he says that the statement of Ps. 22:18, They parted my garments among them, and did they cast lots upon my vesture, applies better to Christ than to David who was speaking of himself only by way of metaphor. The same according to Calvin is true of Ps. 118:22, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner (Matt. 21:42). Christ himself applies Jer. 7:11, But you have made it a den of robbers, to his own situation, when he cleanses the Temple (Matt. 21:13).

As a critic Calvin recognized in the Bible a natural working of the human mind which is not always too clear or too apt. Commenting on 1 Peter 3:14, And be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled, he goes so far as to accuse Peter of misconstruing Isaiah (ch. 8). But he excuses Peter on the ground that he was only referring to the prophet for a purpose of his own, and not explaining “every word used by the prophet.” He says that when Paul quoted Ps. 68:19, in Eph. 4:8, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men, he actually changed the wording of the psalm, even though “he can hardly be said to have departed from the substance.” But he believes that Paul did not actually quote the psalm; he “used it as an expression of his own, adapted to the matter on hand.” Paul more than once gets into difficulties by using “the Greek translators” (on Heb. 10:5, 38), and at least once one cannot tell what prophet he is quoting from (on 1 Cor. 15:54). When Stephen says in Acts 7:16 that the patriarchs were taken to Shechem and buried in a sepulcher bought by Abraham, he clearly contradicts Gen. 50:13, Josh. 24:32. Calvin refers to Jerome’s statement that the pilgrim Paula saw the tombs of the twelve patriarchs in Shechem. But he is not convinced. He says that perhaps Moses was using “synecdoche,” that is, Joseph stands for the patriarchs; or that perhaps Luke was following an old tradition. He ends the discussion with, Quare hic locus corrigendus est. Hence this verse must be corrected! (See also on Josh. 24:32, Gen. 46:8, 47:31.) He also admits that when Luke made Paul speak Hebrew in Jerusalem, he may have been mistaken. Calvin thinks Paul spoke the common language of the day — Aramaic (Acts 22:2). He thinks Mark is less accurate than Luke about Easter morning (on Mark 16:1), and that Matthew’s version of Jesus’ denunciation in ch. 23:24 is defective (defecta est oratio apud Matthaeum). Even Christ himself does not quote Isaiah exactly, but applies his words to his own purpose (on Matt. 15:7).

3. The Reliability and Inspiration of the Bible

Calvin studied the Bible as a book composed by human beings, according to the interests of the authors, and he followed the practices familiar to critics of literature. In this his humanism is obvious. But he also was a humanist of the bent of Lefèvre d’Étaples,Lefèvre d’Étaples (1450–1536) visited Italy (in 1492, 1500) and brought to France new zeal for classical learning. In 1512 he published a commentary on Paul’s epistles, and pleaded for the study of Scripture as “the unique means of approaching Him who works all things in all” (A. L Herminjard, Correspondence des Reformateurs, col. I, p. 6). In 1517 he was denounced by the Sorbonne for denying that Mary Magdalene, Mary the sister of Lazarus, and “the sinful woman” were the same. After 1520 he became the center of a lively reform movement including the Bishop of Meaux and the king’s sister, Marguerite d’Angoulême. In 1523 he translated Gospels into French, and continued translating the Bible until 1530. He died a fugitive at Nérac in 1536. Erasmus, or Bucer, when he put his method to a theological use. Calvin was not interested in the Bible as a merely human product. His critical study was inspired by a profound and powerful desire to get back, through texts and versions, to “the oracles of God.” If some humanists went back to the classical authors for new wisdom on man, Calvin, with the other Reformers, went back to the Bible for the wisdom of God.

It is important to remember that the Bible was to him above all the Word of God spoken for the edification of the church. This explains his willingness to admit many unsolved problems of detail, even while he insists that the writers of the Bible were the mouthpieces of God. He sees that the Evangelists differ one from another in many a detail (on Matt. 22:2), but he insists that they agree on the main points of a story or parable. Where there is a question of numbers, as of women and angels at the resurrection, he points to the writers’ unconcern for exact information in such matters and draws the reader’s attention to the gospel or law. In fact, he sets aside a discrepancy of a thousand, between an account of Moses (Num. 25:90) and that of Paul, by remarking that the Biblical writers cared no more than the ancient Romans for numerical minutiae (on 1 Cor. 10:8). Paul was concerned to warn the church at Corinth against idolatry. What mattered was the reliability of the Bible with regard to the word of God and the promises of God, and not factual accuracy on detail.

The humanists believed in the wisdom of the classics, feeding their minds on the sayings (of which they made collections) of the ancient philosophers; but they did so not for mere factual accuracy, but for the edification of their age. There is a suggestive analogy between the humanist attitude toward the classics and Calvin’s toward the Bible. The Word of God spoken by the Spirit was the word of salvation and every blessing that goes with it. One had to believe in it and receive it with gratitude. It was worthy of the most diligent investigation. So one did one’s best to understand the Bible, and to discover its consistency as the Word of God. A man had to attend to the chief business on hand. What we have in the Bible is the wisdom of God, a “Christian philosophy,” a way of life that will enable us to live and die well in a world where the devil rages and perils are always at hand. Indeed the humanistic method required that one deal with questions of time, place, and authorship raised by the texts; but one also had to be prepared to leave them unsettled, and go on to the main point, to what was said of God’s glory and man’s duty.See the Preface to the Commentary on Hebrews.

Calvin knew that there were variant versions of the Bible, but he did not know — nobody knew — in his time, that there were various traditions behind the Biblical literature. Today we recognize that “contradictions” in the Bible are due to “date, authorship, and composition.” But our way was not open to Calvin. Both assuming the inerrancy of the Spirit and knowing the ways of the human mind, Calvin did his best to harmonize contradictory statements. But even where he failed, he was satisfied that the intention of the Spirit in dictating “the oracles of God” was fulfilled; that the Word of God for the guidance of the church had been properly received and set down for the benefit of God’s people.

Calvin indeed insisted that the Spirit “dictated” the oracles of God. But such dictation did not so much establish the authority of the Bible as give us the Word of God for the upbuilding of the church and the benefit of the Christian in particular situations. Since the Holy Spirit spoke by the prophets, God himself spoke; so, when men read the Bible, they attend to their God. But what is their business but to listen to him and to hear him for obedience? So it is that the Christians read the whole of the Bible as the Word of God: not to believe God spoke because the Bible tells us he does, but that as they read the Bible, God himself may speak to their condition. The authority of the Bible is to Calvin the authority of God revealing himself and speaking to a Christian’s specific need; and the inspiration of the writers of the Bible is presupposed in God’s self-revelation to the Christian who reads it.

Calvin’s doctrine of the authority of Scripture is discussed at length by theologians and church historians. Unfortunately, too many of them rely on sections of the Institutes, and fail to test the conclusions they draw by the content of the Commentaries themselves.Cf. Davies, Rupert E., The Problem of Authority in the Continental Reformers, London, 1946. Exceptions are Emil Kraeling, The Old Testament Since the Reformation, Harpers, 1955, and the section in The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 1, pp. 124–126, by John T. McNeill. See also Henri Clavier, Étude sur le Calvinism, Paris, 1936, especially pp. 103 f. Dr. Edward A. Dowey maintains that Calvin assumes the traditional views of the inerrancy of the Bible even while he comments upon it as the work of human beings (The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology, 1952, pp. 90 f.). This position, which seems correct, has been debated, and it does not alter our thesis that the ground of the authority of the Bible for Calvin was not inerrancy, but God who speaks by it. For a fine discussion of the subject, see “The Reformer’s Use of the Bible,” by Paul L. Lehmann, in Theology Today, October, 1946. See also Kemper Fullerton, Prophecy and Authority, ch. 7.

Calvin, of course, accepts the whole Bible as the Word of God and he uses terms like “dictation” and “amanuensis of the Holy Spirit.” In his Commentaries he shifts back and forth between God and the prophet as the speaker in the same way in which the prophets alternate the first and third person in their oracles. But those who see in such phrases a doctrine of inerrant Scripture and exact verbal inspiration forget that Calvin himself had a good deal of experience in dictating to secretaries and to students, and then correcting the results. God, the Holy Spirit, is of course inerrant, and the Word of God given by the Spirit was formulated to serve best the needs of God’s church. But the human instruments, being men, were certainly not perfect. And they did remain men. Isaiah remained a great poet and Ezekiel indulged in wearisome repetitions. Calvin made no assumption of a succession of miracles to eliminate every slip.But see on Jer. 36:4–6, 28, and Dowey, op. cit., pp. 90 f.

Calvin trusted the fidelity of those to whom God had entrusted his Word more than he trusted the care of the Jewish rabbis who supplied the vowel points. More fundamentally, he trusted the providence of God to provide his chosen in all ages with needful instruction. He himself seldom emends (but see Ezek. 16:43); however, when he discusses emendations suggested by others, he dismisses them, not on the ground of impiety, but because of the better sense he can find in the Masoretic text (e.g., Ezek. 14:4). Inerrancy is not for Calvin the basis for the authority of Scripture.

Calvin uses the doctrine of inspiration against the Church of Rome.Institutes, Bk. I, ch 7. The Bible is the Word of God as over against the word of man as found in the papacy. His contention is that the Spirit spoke by the prophets and not by the pope or the Roman Church. The fathers could be wrong and often were; the councils could be wrong and often were; the tradition and the canon law could be and often were wrong. Over against all these, the Bible could not be and was not wrong. So when the fathers, the councils, or the tradition in general oppose the Bible, the Bible is right, and all the rest are wrong.

But the things at issue between Rome and the Reformers were not the incarnation of our Lord, or his resurrection, or any miracle or prophecy. They were not the number of Israelites who came out of Egypt or the genealogies of Matthew and Luke. They did not even have to do with “the date, authorship, or composition” of the books of the Bible. All such questions, which have agitated men from “the age of reason” to our own day, were not the points at issue. Therefore, the question of verbal infallibility and plenary inspiration, with the relevant questions having to do with “science and religion” or “faith and reason,” were not at issue. The issue was a proper exposition of the Christian faith: the grace of God, sin, justification, the ministry, and the sacraments; in short, the gospel. The heart of the Bible to Calvin as to Luther is Christ — the anticipation of Christ and the witness to Christ, Christ’s own work and his relation to the people of God.See pp. 61 f., 93f., 101, 104 f., et al. This is where the inspiration of the writers is crucial. Witness to Christ is the reason for inspiration, as it is also the reason for the work of the Spirit in the church. The Spirit spoke by the prophets about Christ! And as he spoke about Christ and all that is relevant to our salvation by him, he spoke with absolute authority. The Church of Rome had corrupted the gospel. The gospel in its purity was to be found in Scripture. This purity of the gospel was the work of the Spirit, who had dictated the gospel, as found throughout the Bible, to the writers.

At a later time, inspiration meant infallibility with regard to miracles, predictions, and sundry accounts of matters of fact. For the “fundamentalists,” the test of belief in inspiration has been an acceptance of factual statements that seem contrary to natural process, or others that seem to involve contradiction. A grain of historical sense should suggest that Calvin was neither liberal, nor orthodox, nor neo-orthodox; even though all these can claim him in one respect or another. He was liberal in his determination to understand the Biblical writers historically He was orthodox in his belief that the Bible was “dictated” by the Spirit. He was “neo-orthodox” in making Christ who came to save sinners central to the whole Bible.

4. Knowledge of God

The language of the Spirit is the language of human beings, and even while it is dictated, spoken, it is dictated or spoken not in an alien tongue with an alien logic but in the familiar tongue of man with its common logic. However, the speech of the Spirit is a heavenly discourse, concerning God and his benefits, spoken not to satisfy our curiosity as to his “essence,” but that we may know his power.See below, pp. 141, 176. The language of the Bible is intended not to disclose God as he is in himself, but as he is toward us. He is toward us, not as an informant first but as a Savior, with his power. To know God in fact is to know above all his power; and we know his power in the faithfulness, peace, joy, the spiritual gifts, we receive from him. God’s power and Word go together. According to Calvin, God’s power is spiritual and the Spirit of God, who is witness to God’s power above all, speaks a spiritual language which is accommodated to our understanding by the use of our common language.

There is a knowledge that gives a man power over the thing known; the knowledge of the Christian man is the opposite of this. By the knowledge of God the Christian subjects himself to God’s power. The latter knowledge differs from “the speculative,” which Calvin considered incongruous with the Christian’s relation to God. We know God, not to use him, but to worship and obey him. Therefore we know, not God’s essence (as we know the essence of an object), but his grace and will by and for worship and obedience. This knowledge is one adapted to our role as creatures, and one sufficient for this role; not more and not less than we need to believe in God and obey him. It is knowledge first and last of God’s love exercised toward us; a knowledge carrying with it a certainty all its own by the same acting of God; but one in which “facts” as read in the Bible act as “signs” of God’s spiritual power, and establish the sovereignty of God as God by pointing to him whose “being” is hidden from the mind of man.See pp. 59–63, 270 ff., 356, 366 ff.

There is of course a singular congruity between the sign and the thing signified: as between the resurrection and the victory of God over sin and death; or between the ascension and the return of the Son to the right hand of the Father. But prior to the congruity we discern, there is the congruity of God’s own doing, as established by the Holy Spirit. If we recognize the signs as signs, it is because the Spirit gives us light as an aspect of God’s redemptive work. When we put Calvin’s doctrine of inspiration in its proper context, and remember the unique way in which Biblical language is to him a signification of God’s love and power as present in the church, we realize that Calvin used the Bible neither as an authoritarian nor as an anti-authoritarian, neither as a Hodge nor as a Sabatier; the Bible was to him the vehicle of God’s power first, and secondly of our knowledge of Him.

5. Knowledge of Man

Calvin’s belief that the Bible is God’s Word, and his discipline as a humanist, are not sufficient for explaining his greatness as a commentator. What indeed is it that keeps a reader of these volumes of Commentaries interested, as he proceeds chapter after chapter, verse after verse? The variety in the treatment of the texts of course does a great deal to prevent boredom. But the positive interest of the reader is maintained by Calvin’s constant concern with the light that the texts throw upon the life of man in its many aspects and its tantalizing depth. The Institutes begin with the proposition that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man are inseparable one from the other, and that they together constitute the only true and solid wisdom (vera demum ac solida sapientia).The first sentence of the Institutes. Here in the Commentaries Calvin makes full use of this principle. The stories of “holy men” like Abraham, Moses, David, Jeremiah, Peter, Paul, and Jesus himself become occasions for illuminating comments upon humanity and its ways. Calvin does not, any more than the Biblical writers, apologize for God’s elect. Aware of God’s faithfulness and grace, he gives the reader “realistic” insights into the characters he depicts and helps him to understand himself as well as his fellow men. Thus it is that the Commentaries remain endlessly and perennially interesting. And the fact that Calvin sees all things ultimately in the light of the gospel gives his wisdom a special quality which we might well characterize as “Christian understanding.” He knows that the wisdom of the Bible is not the wisdom of the “philosophers.” See pp. 127, 131, 279, 313, 341, 389. But to him it is wisdom, presented to us by the Holy Spirit himself, as wisdom without which we would have only our folly. It is clear that this conviction kept Calvin’s ardor and his thought alive and made him a superb commentator on the Bible.

The Bible contains a definite perspective upon human life. Calvin appropriates it, and uses it freely and variously for an understanding of man. Calvin’s interpretation of this perspective may well appear to some readers as “pessimistic.” In the light of God’s wisdom, men seem to be given to folly which produces in turn the miseries writ large in their history. The failings of patriarch, king, and apostle, not to mention those of God’s people in general, are set down impressively in the Bible, and Calvin does not fail to point them out. He points out the infidelities, rebellions, cowardices, and malefactions of men which have brought contempt for God and misery upon themselves. History is tragic; but it is neither hopeless nor futile. Universal though evil is, men act as responsible beings, under the mercy as well as the judgment of God who is wise and knows what he is doing. Calvin entertains neither Stoic fatalism nor humanistic “faith in man.” He repudiates both fatalism and “free will” because he sees history as the drama of God’s sovereign dealings with sinners, for their salvation and the fulfillment of God’s purpose. Thus history is suffused, as Jonathan Edwards would say, “with a divine and supernatural light” ; in it the Spirit speaks with the might of the living God toward faith and a godly life. So, the miseries of men are seen in the context of God’s mercy and faithfulness, even his judgment and wrath cooperating with his Fatherly benevolence, toward the predestined purpose of his self-disclosure to men as illumined by Jesus Christ who is God manifested in the flesh.

IV. INTERPRETER FOR THE SUFFERING CHURCH

In Calvin’s mind there was a profound and prevailing continuity between Christ and the church: between the experience of Christ and the experience of God’s people, whether in days of the “fathers,” or in the early Christian church, or in his own day. There is hardly a Biblical account of the trials and tribulations of the godly that does not occasion a lively discussion from Calvin’s pen. He never fails to see Christian life sub specie crucis. The prophets were persecuted, and Christ was crucified. Christ’s disciples were persecuted, and so were the Christians in the early church; so also were Christians in England, Scotland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Holland, Eastern Europe, and especially in Calvin’s own country, France. News of the tortures, exiles, executions from these lands came to Calvin both by letter and by word of mouth from the many who sought refuge in Geneva. He spent much time and effort helping the refugees in the city, and writing letters of comfort and encouragement to Christian people in hopeless situations abroad.See Letters of John Calvin, ed. by Jules Bonnet, 4 vols. It has an excellent index. Geneva itself was an object of ecclesiastical hatred and political machination, and in danger of invasion. Within the city there were rebellions, divisions, and all manner of restiveness. The fact is that all through his ministry Calvin’s mind and soul were preoccupied with the sufferings that were the lot of the Protestants among whom he labored and for whom he was called upon to provide instruction, guidance, and encouragement; sufferings for which there often was no human help.

Calvin appropriated the sufferings of God’s people depicted in the Bible for the evangelicals in Europe and for himself. It is hardly possible, as we read his comments on Noah, David, Job, Jeremiah, or on the disciples of Jesus, to escape the truth that they all are vivified by their profound appropriateness to his condition.See especially the Autobiographical Sketch, pp. 51, 55–57. Calvin turns again and again to the inescapable and bewildering fact that in this world the disciples of Christ have suffered far more grievously than the wicked who have abused and oppressed them. So it had been in the past; so it was in his own day; so it was in his own person. He suffered physically as well as mentally all his days. He lived under cares and contentions which gradually killed him at the age of fifty-six. The image of Calvin as a stern and insensitive puritan overlord does not bear examination. He not only felt the afflictions of his fellow evangelicals, but also commented upon them constantly both as an interpreter of the Bible and also as a “theologian.” It is quite possible and even necessary to see Calvin’s work as a whole in the light of the wrongs that were perpetrated against the faithful throughout his ministry. It is no exaggeration to say that if one overlooks the mystery of the world’s animosity to the gospel and to those who adhere to it, one is bound to misunderstand Calvin profoundly and to misconstrue his work both as a thinker and as a man of action. The following discussion of particular doctrines from this point of view is intended to give the reader a helpful clue to Calvin’s mind. It is not meant to be a complete exposition, nor is it meant to obscure Calvin’s primary concerns with the “honor of God,” justification by faith alone, obedience to God in man’s total life, and so on, which are essential for understanding his theology. We have not dwelt upon these latter emphases in Calvin because they are commonplaces of all adequate expositions of his work.

I. The Providence of GodFor the following sections, the reader is referred to the chapter corresponding to the following topics.

The suffering of the righteous confronts us directly with the providence of God; and the doctrine of providence was constantly on Calvin’s mind and to it he made a peculiar contribution. It was traditional in medieval theology to write on “providence and free will.” The providence of God, although welcome as providing for man’s necessities, was a stumbling block in so far as it made man’s own freedom doubtful. So the main interest of the philosophical theologians was to reconcile God’s providence with man’s freedom and responsibility. Now, all this is changed by Calvin. He finishes his comments on Acts 20:32 with the characteristic and blunt statement: “Since Scripture teaches that we have sufficient help in God’s power, let us be mindful that only they are strong in the Lord who renounce their free will and lean upon him who alone, as Paul confesses rightly, is able to build up.” When people suffered dungeon and exile, yea, were at the brink of death in the hands of irresistible foes, it was irrelevant and futile to reconcile providence with the free will of man. These victims of oppression were not free against the combined power of church and state. The only proper question under the circumstances was, “What did God intend by their suffering?” What these people needed to know was that God was “at the helm” and that neither torture nor death came upon them without the providence of God who was their Father. They were comforted, not by the knowledge of their freedom, which they did not have, but by faith in the sovereignty of God the Father which Calvin would not let them forget.

When Calvin took up the other matter of providence in relation to human wickedness, he insisted upon man’s sin (as in the case of Judas), and upon the subtle tyranny of Satan over human beings (Matt. 26:14). But once again he insisted upon the proposition that no evil is perpetrated apart from God’s providence and his use of it for his glory and the good of his people. Even as a sinner, a man could receive hope and courage from the faith that his own wickedness was under God’s providence and would further, in spite of himself, God’s glory.

We are not concerned here with justifying Calvin against his detractors. The point is that his doctrine of providence grew out of his preoccupation with the sufferings of “the elect,” and can be stated and understood properly in that context. “Since Scripture teaches!” In a way, it is quite unwarranted to claim that Scripture in toto denies man’s freedom in so far as he is a responsible being. Calvin himself does not deny, in fact he insists upon, the doctrine of man’s responsibility (on Matt. 11:21). But he is far from wrong in the insight that Scripture is a celebration of God’s peculiar sovereignty as God and Father, and was written above all by men who set themselves to instill courage and hope among God’s troubled people, declaring God’s control over the affairs of men and the hope of the fulfillment of his purpose through all the vicissitudes of human existence. In any case, Calvin’s doctrine of providence, with all the thought he spent upon it, means that whether we are good or evil, whether we live or die, we are God’s.

The subject of providence requires a discussion of miracles. To Calvin, the miracles of the Bible were in a class by themselves. They were the work of God the Father, in praise of Christ and for the sake of the church; and the knowledge of them was the work of the Spirit. They were to Calvin the means with which God revealed himself to his people. They were strictly “signs” in the sense of the Gospel of John. God worked them not to inflame man’s taste for miracles in general, but as vehicles of his grace suitable for human apprehension. What made a miracle a sign was the Word of God. A miracle without the Word was to Calvin a prodigy which even the Pharaoh’s magicians could perform (Ex. 7:12). It proved, not God’s grace, but his judgment which blinded the people and made them deaf to God’s word. Calvin recognized no sure way to discriminate between a sign and an imposture except by the Word of God as illumined by his Spirit (on 1 John 4:1 f.).

Calvin was aware that men are always gaping for miracles (on John 11:18). The more they feel their weakness before the powers of nature, the more they look for a supernatural power that will enable them to overcome the evils caused by nature and the climax of these evils in death. The miraclemongers care, not about the Kingdom of God, but about their convenience and their belly (on John 6:26). They have no taste for the cross, and therefore they debase the power of Christ with their “hope of gain.” Calvin knew all this as a permanent temptation in the church. He insisted, therefore, repeatedly and strongly that miracle and doctrine go together (on Matt. 24:23, Mark 16:20), and refused to identify God’s power with the working of miracles (on 1 Thess. 1:4), holding that the Word of God is superior to miracles (on John 4:48, 20:31). Christians languished and died in prisons without any miracle to enable them to escape. These people lived, not by miracles, but by the Word of God, by their faithfulness to Christ. What they had available was not the hope of physical escape, but the greater miracle of faithfulness and joy. Therefore, Calvin received the Biblical miracles as signs of God’s power; but he knew the same power by the preaching of the gospel, by the miracle of weak men made strong, both as to those who preach and as to those who hear (on Mark 16:20).

2. Predestination

Calvin’s doctrine of predestination is a complex matter, and is above all directed against the Roman Church, in support of “justification by faith.” See pp. 197 f., the Institutes, Bk. III, chs. 21–24. The position of these chapters in the Institutes is itself revealing. But here it is necessary to keep in mind the persecution of the Protestants in his day. As in Scripture, so in Calvin’s mind it was no small comfort that the sufferings of the church were predestined according to the will and the purpose of God.See especially on Rom. 8:28–30, pp. 306 f. Predestination meant to Calvin, as to Paul, that the sufferings of the Christians were no accident in the history of mankind. The unfolding of history was the realization of God’s purpose which went back to the beginning. The doctrine of predestination for Calvin was bound up with the doctrine of history as the continued fulfillment of God’s purpose. There had been, there was, and there was to be nothing fortuitous, nothing apart from God’s intention, nothing that originates from man’s will and caprice. Jesus Christ had been called and predestined by God for his mission, together with his suffering and cross. His gospel, scoffed at and rejected by the world, was no novelty. It had been in God’s purpose and was promised in prophecy through the ages. So as age followed age, fulfillment followed fulfillment, all according to God’s own eternal purpose.

Calvin’s doctrine of predestination was inspired by the need of the Protestant churches for a knowledge of the continuity between the gospel they believed and for which they suffered, and the promises of God made from the beginning and through the ages. Like the early church, like evangelist and apostle, the Reformer took great pains to establish the antiquity of the gospel he preached. A church under persecution was plagued with profound doubts. Excommunicated ex-Romanists, subject to enemy power, deprived of home and goods, in exile and at death’s door, these poor people who lived in anxiety and despair, subject to miseries from which even the dregs and criminals of society were exempt, had nothing to sustain them except the promises of God. They were invited by Calvin to turn their eyes to Abraham and Moses and Noah and David, to the great deliverance of God, to the mysterious workings of his “secret purpose,” to the manifestations of his wisdom and power, rooted in his eternal purpose and his predestined end — all established in Jesus Christ crucified, risen, ascended, and at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. If one abstracts the doctrine of predestination before the ages from the promises of God made by creation and fulfilled through the ages since, one does violence to Calvin’s mind on this matter (see especially on 2 Tim. 1:9–10, Titus 1:2).

This introduction is not the place for a full exposition of such a complex and profound doctrine as predestination. We are interested only in indicating that Calvin’s version of this doctrine cannot be understood properly except in relation to the suffering church. For instance, it is common to think of predestination as deterministic (on Rom. 9:17). Determinism means that one fact arises from one or more others by way of a natural necessity and that one can discover how one situation determines another. But one does not study the condition of the Christians in this world and arrive at an understanding of predestination. There is no open and comprehensible explanation of God’s ways with his people one by one. God’s purpose remains God’s secret, and he alone can justify his deeds among men. So, God’s predestination remained a mystery to Calvin, and was affirmed not as a doctrine of determinism arrived at by observing “the causes and connections of things,” but by fixing the mind and heart upon the Word of God, upon Christ and the history of God’s people. Determinism has nothing to do with the mystery of evil. On the contrary, it explains the mystery away. Predestination as Calvin understands it is inseparable from that same mystery and the very ground of courage for living with it.

3. Faith and Reason

Calvin refused to “explain” to himself or to others the workings of God’s purpose in the fearful destiny of the believers in the world. On the other hand, the triumph of Christ, his ascension and sitting at God’s right hand, were the immovable signs of God’s sovereignty and thus the certainty of the fulfillment of God’s predestined purpose. Predestination therefore meant to Calvin hope in a world where “determinism” could have produced only despair. This hope Calvin received from Scripture, and he was determined to let Scripture rule his mind and keep it within the bounds of sanity.

But the Word and promise of God made no sense to the carnal mind. The Word of God was both a stumbling block and a foolishness, and the flesh recoiled from it. There was no way of verifying it while believers were tortured and murdered all around him. There was no way of justifying the ways of God in His world except by faith.

Faith which is the proper work of the Spirit must rely upon and draw its strength from the promise of God in Christ and Scripture. It has no mandate to supersede the Word of God. And this is so because faith is to believe in God’s love and care for his people in the midst of their humiliations and sufferings. But this love and care we know, not by our cogitations upon “the facts of life,” but by adhering to God’s word in the Bible. “Reason,” which confronts us with the injustices and cruelties of this world, cannot attain to a certain knowledge of God’s beneficence. The usual rational arguments for God’s justice and mercy, based upon the observed workings of God’s providence, even though Calvin himself used them, gave him no “certain knowledge.” There was no use trying to make sense of the suffering of the elect by deep or high thinking. Therefore, the primacy of faith in our knowledge of God became established as a fixed point in Calvin’s theology.

But faith did not solve the problem raised by reason to reason’s satisfaction. The Spirit did not open to him the “secret counsel” of God, because in fact Scripture itself confronted him with this secret counsel, rather than removed its secrecy. Faith, therefore, could not, any more than reason, penetrate to a knowledge of God as he is in himself. Faith was a gift of God whose main function was to create in man a certain knowledge of God’s goodness toward us. The miracle of faith was the miracle of joy in the midst of suffering. The knowledge of God given by the Word and the Spirit was a knowledge which occurred and became established with the joy of partaking in the cross of Christ. If the Christians not only bore their cross, but also rejoiced in bearing it, it was by the doing of God’s own Spirit who regenerated them, made them new creatures. The doctrine of the Spirit comes to life in Calvin’s theology, because he recognized that the comfort and joy of Christians at their cross is the work of the living God who “spoke by the prophets.”

Faith is the knowledge of God’s goodness toward his suffering people, and not a vague and general sense of the divine. Calvin did not deny that the carnal mind has a confused and idolatrous awareness of God. But he knew that a natural knowledge of God, without his self-revelation in Christ crucified and risen, by the inward working of his Spirit, is no match whatsoever against the machinations of the devil and the cruelty of men. He knew that human cogitation, without God’s illumination and power, is helpless before the monstrous evils which proclaim the power of Satan and his reign of darkness and death. Calvin knew this, and felt it adequately. He knew the misery of this body of death, and he knew also that a mind conjoined with this body must inevitably be overwhelmed by a life that is in fact a shadow of death (on 2 Cor. 4:11–12). Sufferings of this life act as portents of death, and before death, says Calvin, “all the powers of men succumb with terror” (on 2 Cor. 1:8). Calvin was deeply impressed, doubtless in himself as in others, with the elemental desire to live and the shrinking of the flesh from its destruction (on 2 Cor. 5:1, Gal. 2:20, 2 Tim. 4:7). He knew how brave men are away from danger, and how they turn into trembling leaves when they meet it (on John 18:17). This was no academic matter with him. He knew it as a common human reality. And he knew that in the jaws of hell, it is only the Lord who gives true courage. “Let us, therefore,” he says, “learn to be strong nowhere but in the Lord” (ibid.).

4. Jesus Christ

The Commentaries contain numerous and weighty statements that we know God in Christ. Commenting on 1 Peter 3:21, Calvin says, “Hence all cogitation on God apart from Christ is an immense abyss which immediately swallows up our whole mind.” In another place, speaking of the knowledge of God among the Athenians, he says that “the Lord allowed the men of Athens to fall into extreme madness” (on Acts 17:16). Abyss, labyrinth, madness: such were words which came to Calvin’s mind when he considered man’s knowledge of God apart from Christ. For those who have taken up their cross for the gospel’s sake, there is no knowledge of God’s goodness except in the knowledge of the crucified and risen Christ.

In the context of the Christian life, Christ’s mediatorship was to Calvin a continuing experience as well as a historical event. That God had revealed himself as Father in a man who was tempted and suffered, who exercised his Sonship by the death of the cross, was at the center of the gospel to multitudes of Christians who suffered and were tempted under their cross. Calvin’s Christ was nothing if he was not the Comforter of the church, the source of the Christian’s courage and hope, and his power of endurance.

This explains two of the characteristic emphases of Calvin: the humanity and the Kingship of Christ, perhaps his Kingship and humanity, as two focuses of his mediatorship. No one after Paul in the history of the church, so far as we know, made so much of the ascension of Christ and his sitting at the right hand of the Father, as did Calvin. There is nothing more joyful for a Christian than to know that Christ crucified is at God’s right hand as the King and comfort of his people, reigning over the church, interceding with the Father for his people, protecting and watching over them in their tribulations. Hence in Calvin’s thought the death, resurrection, ascension of Christ, issue in his sitting at God’s right hand as the climax of his own mission; from it they derive their whole glory as elements of the gospel. The sitting at the right hand is also the source of all the benefits that Christians receive from God the Father. It is not too much to say that if one takes away Christ at God’s right hand, the whole gospel as addressed to the suffering church falls to pieces, because the Christians are left without their Christ, and therefore without their God. Hence, there is no image so alive in Calvin’s mind as that of the Son seated next to the Father. Calvin insisted upon the ascension of the same Christ who lived and died for us. The Christ who sits at God’s right hand is not a spirit who is ignorant of our flesh. He has gone from us to lift our minds up to our God and his heaven. So it is that he gives us his spiritual gifts, by the Spirit, of courage and hope in the midst of our trials. Thus it is that he is at once “the vicar of God” (on Mark 16:19) and our brother.

Calvin was as little concerned with the divine “essence” of Christ as he was with the essence of God in general. It is the divine power and grace of Christ that he finds of decisive importance for the church. He of course never denied, he emphatically affirmed, the union of divine and human natures in Christ. By the standard of the Church fathers, he was orthodox enough. But the words “essence” or “nature” belonged to contexts of thought that were not his own. He had no stomach for the kind of metaphysical reflection that is required by the mind’s desire to penetrate to God’s or Christ’s essence. The main point of Calvin’s insistence on the deity of Christ was that he was the agent of our salvation. Commenting on Col. 1:15, he insists that Christ is “the image of the invisible God,” not only by virtue of his essence, but also as one in whom God makes himself known to us. We know nothing about Christ’s divine nature apart from what he has done and continues to do for us. And he has done and continues to do his work as a human being and our brother. Our brother is our King, and our King is our brother. This situation is stated properly in terms, not of essence, but of God’s saving work; provided we bear in mind with Calvin that the one and the same saving work was at once the Father’s and the Son’s by the Spirit.

Calvin’s eloquent comments on the events of Christ’s life and death as recorded in the Gospels are clearly intended to show the Christians that they are suffering after their King and participating in his life. Here the deity of Christ in no wise vitiates his authentically human experience of temptation and “Passion.” Calvin pays his tribute to orthodoxy by reminding himself that the Son of God put on humanity and shared our life freely and voluntarily. He even shows a predilection for the notion that he was “God clothed in human flesh” (on Luke 19:41), or “manifested in the flesh” (on John 1:1, 1 Tim. 3:16). “And yet, in Christ we see the infinite glory of God united with our polluted flesh so that they become one” (on 1 Tim. 3:16). Calvin’s concern for the encouragement of the church led him not only to emphasize Christ’s common humanity but also to present it as a state of creaturely weakness. The human nature of Christ was not that of Adam before the Fall! He was no ideal and splendid specimen of humanity such as man is supposed to have been before he sinned (AugustineCity of God, Bk. XII, pars. 9 f., Bk. XXII, pars. 12 f.). He had “our polluted flesh” ; our flesh with all its susceptibilities and pains. When he was slapped, or whipped, or finally nailed to the wood, he did not look down upon the proceedings as a bemused god or hero; he suffered as suffer the believers who are tormented by their persecutors.

It is quite evident that the orthodox understanding of the two natures of Christ, as involving a divine and a human essence and even a divine and a human consciousness, was, to say the least, awkward in relation to Calvin’s concern with Christ’s role as mediator — especially with Christ as the head of a church engaged in mortal combat with evil. It is hardly too much to say that Christ’s divinity meant to Calvin above all that he, with the Father, was the source of the Christian life and its blessings (on 2 Thess. 2:16). He insisted that the Biblical statements concerning Christ’s relation to God are, as it were, not metaphysical but soteriological or “operational.” They refer to his work, to what he is to us and for us. God himself we know by his saving work; and as this saving work is done by Christ, we know him as God.Niesel, Wilhelm, The Theology of Calvin, The Westminster Press, 1956, tr. by Harold Knight.

5. The Christian Life and the Last Things

About the Christian life we need not say much in this place. We have cited Calvin extensively on this subject in our selections. Here we shall consider his so-called otherworldliness.

Calvin’s emphasis on self-denial can be understood and interpreted rightly only if we keep in mind that there is in fact no victory over the power of death without a denial of the self which works by sin and despair. A man has to know the death of Christ by his own death, and know the resurrection of Christ by the miracle of the victory over death within him; and such knowledge is inseparable from the warfare in which he is subject to temptation and harassment under the assaults of Satan. Calvin speaks of an inner and an outer mortification. The first has to do with the struggle against sin or unfaithfulness; the latter with the struggle against the powers of this world (on 2 Cor. 4:10). It is quite evident that these two go together, since the temptation to deny our Lord rises in the midst of fear of the evils to which men expose themselves in the hands of men when they set out to obey God and cleave to Christ.

Calvin knew no antidote to defeat and ruin except to raise our minds to heaven. To him, a Christian walked on earth, but his life was hid in heaven. He spoke with obvious passion against attachment to this world, and exhorted Christians to renounce it in favor of heaven. In a sense, nothing is so essential to his theology as the opposition between heaven and earth, and the insistence that Christians, with their minds and hearts, leave the earth and go up to heaven.

But Calvin wanted Christians to lift their minds to heaven because Christ is there, and it is from there that he reigns over the church in the world. He says explicitly that heaven, where God is, and Christ is, is “above all the heavens.” It is not the heaven we see and in which the stars shine (on Heb. 9:24). Calvin is not concerned with it except as the abode of God and Christ, and the origin of our salvation; so that, to turn the mind to heaven means to turn it to Christ at God’s right hand: to turn to him for strength against tribulation and for victory over evil. We must turn to “heaven” for victory on earth.

On the other hand, to turn away from the earth is to Calvin to mortify the sinful flesh which shrinks before warfare with evil and the suffering it entails. To renounce the world is to renounce Satan and all his evil works. It is hard to be faithful to the gospel while the flesh rebels against the privations and oppressions which it would avoid at the expense of treachery to Christ and his gospel. In short, Calvin’s insistence upon self-denial and world renunciation must be understood in the context of the Christian warfare and in the light of the sheer necessity of dying to sin if one is to live to Christ. It has nothing to do with ascetic contempt for the created world, or with an otherworldliness which seeks a heaven because it despairs of this world in general. Calvin had only love and respect for the world as God’s creation for the use and enjoyment of man.See pp. 124, 347, 349 f., 355, 356.

Calvin turns the attention of the Christian not only upward but also toward the future. Hope, for Calvin, is at the heart of the Christian life. He sets before his readers “the blessed and immortal rest of heaven” as the hope that will enable them to suffer death with patience, and even to desire eagerly what they fear (on Luke 12:50). With Paul, he argues that if there be no resurrection of the dead, Christians, who are sheep meant for slaughter, are the most miserable of men (on 1 Cor. 15:19). He regards the present life of the Christians, with all its travail and groanings, as unfulfilled unless our redemption culminates in the resurrection and “eternal felicity.”

But the new life in Christ is itself by a resurrection from the dead (on John 5:21). When Paul says that the Spirit of God “shall also quicken your mortal bodies,” according to Calvin he means “everything left in us that is subject to death. . . . From this we gather that here he speaks not of the last resurrection which shall be in a moment, but of the continuous working of the Spirit, by which he gradually destroys the remnants of the flesh and restores a heavenly life in us” (on Rom. 8:11). In his comments on Acts 2:19, he identifies the great day of the Lord not with the last things, but with “the whole Kingdom of Christ” and the trials of the church. He does not postpone the destruction of death prophesied by Paul to the end, but speaks of it as having already occurred, as already realized in the deliverance of the Christians from the power of death (on 1 Cor. 15:26). The Day of Judgment is even now anticipated in the present dread and terror deep in the lives of the ungodly, and in the present joy and exultation of the believers (on Rom. 2:5). The coming of Christ itself is anticipated when Christians obey God and “vie one with another in imitating him” (on Heb. 10:7); when Christians, in the extremity of their sufferings, call upon him, and he comes to them with power and help (on Matt. 19:23); when he consummates his present reign with a complete revelation of his authority in all the earth (on Matt. 25:31). Calvin speaks of the last things as a full manifestation of what is now hidden or obscure.

He even, as we say, demythologizes the prophecy “Heaven and earth shall pass away,” by calling upon Christians to raise their faith “above heaven and earth,” to Christ in God’s heaven (on Matt. 24:35). He calls upon them so to meditate upon the last things as to receive patience and perseverance in their trials (on 1 John 3:2). Their life is to be a waiting, without any clairvoyance as to time and seasons. They are to live every day as though it were their last (as it might well have been under the cross), in the hope of Christ’s coming, by which they are to be comforted by Christ (on Heb. 10:25). Calvin was well aware of the absurdity of the Christians’ situation, and knew very well how foolish the Christians’ hope looked from the outside. But he also knew that the hope which grows within the Christian life, from it and into it, has its own peculiar rationale, and flourishes in spite of external circumstances, because it is the work of Christ and his Spirit. In this way, the eschatological statements of the Bible, with their several “metaphors” (on 1 Cor. 15:52, Heb. 10:26–27), illuminate the life of the Christians, as well as point to their ultimate destiny with God. But here one must remember Calvin’s concern with the present responsibilities of Christians and his whole ethical concern to which we have devoted a long chapter.

Whereupon neither the first testament was dedicated without blood. For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves, and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you. Heb. 9:18–20.

The apostle wants us to attend not to words but to the substance of what is being said. He has found the word testament in the Greek language in which he is writing. Since the [Hebrew] word for covenant often becomes testimony in Greek, he takes advantage of this fact, and turns it to his own use. He eulogizes God’s covenant as a testimony, which is one way of speaking of it; and why not, since angels from heaven and so many gifted men on earth, that is, all the holy prophets, apostles, and a multitude of martyrs, have been witness to it, and at the last, the Son of God himself has sponsored it? Hence there is nothing absurd in the apostle’s use of the word testament. It is true that the Hebrew word toude does not in fact mean covenant; but since nothing which the apostle says is inconsistent with it, we must not be tied down to the exact meaning of the word.

The apostle says that the Old Testament was dedicated with blood; this he takes as a warning to the people that it was effective and stable only by the interposition of death. But he denies that the blood of beasts was a valid confirmation of the eternal covenant. This becomes clearer when we consider the rite of sprinkling enjoined by Moses, as described in our text. The apostle tells us, in the first place, that the covenant was sanctified, not because it was in itself profane, but because nothing is so sacred that the people would not profane it by their own impurities, unless it were restored by God himself. Therefore, the dedication was on men’s account, and only because they were unclean.

He then adds that the tabernacle with all its vessels, and also the Book of the Law itself, were sprinkled. By this rite the people were taught that God cannot be sought, or found, for salvation, and neither can he be worshiped truly, unless faith at all times uses the requisite blood. It is only right that we should find the majesty of God dreadful, and the way to it a hopeless labyrinth, unless we know that he turns to us with favor through the blood of Christ, and that through this same blood we have an easy access to him. Therefore, all worship is unclean and wicked unless purified by the sprinkling of the blood of Christ.

Afterwards he adds that I am the Lord doing mercy and judgment and justice. God wishes to be so known. He alone is exalted; yet he comes down, so to speak, within our sight. The words which follow must be carefully considered. If God had said only, that I am the Lord, this would have been a complete doctrine; but it would not have been sufficiently clear. . . for men would think it enough to confess that there is one God. Therefore we must carefully note these words: God does mercy, judgment, and justice. We see today among the papists the name of God rashly flaunted aloft. There is no one of them who will not reiterate again and again that he worships God. But meanwhile they all profane the name of God. They rob God of his honor and distribute the spoil to the dead. This passage shows that the name of God by itself is of no importance when it is emptied of its true content.

The true knowledge of God is not only to know him as the maker of the world, but also to be persuaded that the world is directed by him, and further to know the nature of that direction. He does mercy and judgment and justice.

Moreover, the first thing to know about God is that he is kind and forbearing. For without God’s forbearance, what would become of us? It is true and right that the knowledge of God should begin with the assurance that he is merciful towards us. For what use would it be to us to know that God is just unless we already know his mercy and his free kindness? But we know God by also knowing ourselves, for these two things are bound together; and if anyone scrutinizes himself, what will he find but reason for despair? As often as the thought of God’s justice comes into our minds, we should shudder and despair. Truly all would flee from God unless he attract them by the sweetness of his grace. Therefore it is with good reason that Jeremiah, when he ordered men to glory in the knowledge of God, gave the highest place to God’s compassion, and then added judgment and justice.

The Lord God is truth (Those who translate God of truth do not attend to the syntax of the Hebrew, for that would need to read ’elohe ’emeth); God himself is life and the king of the ages. Jer. 10:10 (Calvin’s wording).

Here the prophet exalts and triumphs in God’s name, and speaks of him as having overthrown and destroyed the falsehoods of the nations. He exposes their gross errors and shows up the wisdom of the world as absolutely worthless, because they stupefy themselves with [the worship of] wood and stone.

He exalts the glory of God magnificently, by saying: For the Lord is God; that is, the nations worship their gods by telling fables about their powers and falsely inventing many miracles. For, when we examine everything honestly, it becomes certain that there is only one God; and all the gods of the nations vanish of themselves. This is what the prophet means: God is sufficient to destroy all the falsehoods of the nations. When his majesty comes forth, its splendor is such that all others which receive the admiration of the world are reduced to nothingness. After this, he speaks of truth; then he opposes truth with vanity. Before he had said that wood is vanity; now he says, Eternal God is truth; which means that He has no need to take on colors. The idols of the nations are painted, dressed up, decorated; but all such images are empty show. Jehovah, on the other hand, is Lord; that is, he does not in any way change; he desires nothing which he does not possess, and his own perfection carries all authority.

God, then, is truth; and God is life. After the prophet has declared that in the essence of the one God there is true and substantial glory, he adds another certitude which he derives from the experience of men: God is life. For although God is in himself incomprehensible to us, he not only sets his glory before our eyes, but even offers himself to our touch, as Paul says (Acts 14:17). For Paul knew that God can be found by touch, even by men who are blind. Although the blind are deprived of sight, yet when they walk around a hall, they find the way out by touch, or they locate by touch the door out of a room, and when they wish to go in again they find the door. And Paul says that we have no need to go outside of ourselves, for whoever searches himself will find God within. For, in him we live, move, and exist (Acts 17:28). Hence if we raise the objection that God is beyond our comprehension, and that we cannot rise to the height of his glory, yet certainly life is in us. If life is in us, then so is evidence for God. Who is foolish enough to say that he lives of himself? Since men do not create their own life but obtain life precariously from another, it follows that God dwells in them.

Now the prophet, after he has spoken of the essence of God, comes down to his activity. And surely this is the true knowledge of God — not to speculate in the air as the philosophers do when they argue, but to know by experience that there is one God. How do we know? Because we exist; not, strictly, exist, but subsist (live in). And if we live in, truly that in which we live must be taken into account. And, to speak accurately, our subsisting will be found to be within the one God. Whence it follows that the life of man is an excellent index to the only God.

God therefore is life and the king of the ages. First the earth was founded, and since then the years follow one another; in this cycle, there is great variation from one year to another yet there is regular and right order in their procession. Who will not recognize the glory of God in this ordering of the world? Therefore the prophet called God king of the ages.

And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have wrought with you for my name’s sake, not according to your wicked ways, nor according to your corrupt doings, O ye house of Israel, saith the Lord God. Ezek. 20:44.

Here God declares that his glory will be especially manifest when, solely for his name’s sake, he has compassion freely upon the desperate and lost. And Paul, in the first chapter of Ephesians, especially praises God’s gracious kindness when he calls the compassion with which God honors his elect, the glory of God κατ᾽ ἐξοχην.The phrase κατ᾽ ἐξοχην; occurs in the New Testament only once, Acts 25:23, but the sense agrees with the emphasis in Eph., ch. 1. This is one example among many to prove that Calvin relied largely on his prodigious memory to provide him with the material needed for his Commentaries. The mistake here illustrates both the extraordinary range of his memory and its occasional fallibility.

Now the glory of God includes more than his compassion. As thy name, so is thy praise through all the countries of the earth (Ps. 48:10). God deserves no less to be glorified when he destroys the wicked than when he takes pity on his people. But Paul calls God’s especial glory the undeserved kindness with which he embraces his chosen whom he has adopted. So God says here, You will know that I am the Lord when I deal with you for my name’s sake, and not according to your crimes.

Moreover, since God wishes his glory to shine pre-eminently in his free mercy, we must conclude that those who obscure his compassion or minimize it, or attempt to reduce its greatness to nothing, are the most hardened and open enemies of his glory.

And we know that the teaching of the papacy aims in that direction. For in it, God’s free kindness lies buried, or is hidden in a fog, or has wholly vanished. For they set forth merits of various sorts which they oppose to God’s grace. And they divide merits into preparations, good works by which they gain God’s favor; and satisfactions, by which they escape the penalties they would otherwise pay; and finally they add the interposition of the saints (as they call them). They invent for themselves a host of patrons and then devise countless other things for no other purpose than to keep the glory of God from being seen by men, or at most to allow only a few sparks to glow dimly. When we see the whole papal organization moving in this direction, we know that they are openly opposing God’s glory, and that all who defend those abominations are worse than sworn enemies of God’s glory.

As for ourselves, let us learn that God cannot be known as Savior unless we accept from him what is essential to our salvation. For if we wish to keep accounts of what we give and what we receive, or to make any claim whatever, we reduce his glory. And so far as in us lies, we throw away the inestimable privilege which the prophet here extols.

Therefore let us strive to know God through this Word. He deals with us according to his great mercy and compassion, that is, for his name’s sake, and not according to our wrongdoing. But if these words were spoken to the ancient people because they had returned to the Land of Canaan, how much more today, when the Kingdom of Heaven lies open, God’s free kindness deserves to be praised! Today, when he openly calls us to himself, to heaven, to the hope of the blessed immortality which is given us through Christ!

[This was Calvin’s last lecture. His closing prayer was:]

Grant, Almighty God, since we have already entered in hope upon the threshold of our eternal inheritance, and know that there is a mansion for us in heaven since Christ, our head and the first fruits of our salvation, has been received there, grant that we may proceed more and more in the way of thy holy calling until at length we reach the goal, and so enjoy that eternal glory of which thou givest us a taste in this world by the same Christ, our Lord. Amen.

And he built there an altar, and he called the place El Beth-el. . . . And God went up from him in the place where he talked with him. Gen. 35:7, 13.

Now we know why the holy fathers had to have their own altar, distinct from those of other nations. It was to bear witness that they worshiped not the various gods who were recognized everywhere in the world, but a God of their own.

In order to counteract the offense which people might take, the prophet repeats the reason for Christ’s great suffering. The sight of the cross of Christ offends many so long as they consider only what their eyes see, and pay no attention to the purpose. But all offense is certainly taken away when we understand that by this death our sins are atoned for, and salvation is won for us.

Chastisement of our peace. Some think this is called chastisement of our peace because men feel so secure and remain so stupefied in their evil ways that Christ’s suffering was required to move them. Others apply peace to conscience. Christ suffered that we might have a quiet conscience; as Paul said (Rom. 5:1), We, justified through Christ by faith, have peace with God.

But I take it simply as reconciliation. Christ paid the price of our chastisement, that is, the chastisement due to us. By him, God’s anger, which was inflamed against us, was appeased. The peace in which we are reconciled came from him who is the Mediator. Thus we have the general doctrine that we are freely reconciled to God because Christ paid the price of our peace.

This doctrine, indeed, the papists confess, but then they restrict it to original sin; as if after baptism there were no more place for free reconciliation, and satisfaction were to be made by our merits and works. But the prophet here is not treating of a single aspect of forgiveness; he extends God’s forgiving kindness through the whole course of our lives. Therefore the doctrine cannot be attenuated or restricted to any specific time without great sacrilege. . . . Our prophet teaches plainly that the penalty for our sins was transferred to Christ. What then are the papists claiming for themselves but equality with Christ and a share in his authority as his partners?

With his stripes. Again we are recalled to Christ, called to flee to his wounds if we wish to regain life. Here he is set in contrast to us. In us are only destruction and death; in Christ alone is life and safety. He alone brings us a remedy. He provides health for us by his weakness, and wins our life by his death. He alone satisfies the Father; he alone reconciles us to him.

We could say many things here about the fruit of Christ’s suffering, but our task is to interpret, not to preach; and we must be content to state the plain meaning [of the verse]. Let each one of you take comfort for himself from this passage and fit its use to his own need. For these words were spoken not only publicly to all, but to each man individually.

Yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Ps. 44:22.

The faithful here plead for God’s mercy, not because they are punished for their own evil deeds, but because they are hated by unbelievers for the name of God.

At first sight, this seems a foolish complaint, and Socrates’ answer seems the more admirable when, in answer to his wife’s reproach, he said that it was better to die innocent than for his own wrongdoing. Furthermore, the consolation which Christ offered (Happy are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, Matt. 5:10) appears very different from the words of the psalm. Peter also said the same thing: Anyone who suffers for Christ’s name has all the more reason for joy and thankfulness (1 Peter 4:14).

But I answer that although the best comfort for our sorrow is that its cause is connected with Christ, yet the faithful do not complain to God in vain or wrongly when they say that they are suffering unjustly for his sake. For in this way, they want him to come forward with more vigor as their defender, since it is right that he himself take care of his own glory, when the impious insult and deal cruelly with his worshipers. . . .

It is also right to remind ourselves that the faithful have not been so pure of all stain that God would be unjust in exacting punishment for their sins. But, by his incomparable indulgence, he does bury our sins and subject us to unjust persecution, so that we may glory in bearing the cross of Christ and may therefore be sharers and companions of his blessed resurrection.

This doctrine we must take for our own use. First, we must be ready, after the example of the fathers, to bear calmly any suffering by which our loyalty to the confession of our faith is validated. Secondly, in the deepest shadows of death we must constantly call on the name of God, and we must stand fast in fear of him.

Paul (Rom. 8:23) goes further and asserts that this passage does not merely offer us an example, but describes the perpetual situation of the church. Therefore we are assigned, by God’s decree, the perpetual warfare of bearing the cross. At times God spares our weakness by allowing a truce, or a relaxation [of the warfare]. But although swords are not always drawn against us we must, because we are members of Christ, be always ready to share his cross. Let us not then be terrified by the bitterness of the cross, and let us keep this picture of the persecuted church always before us. So long as we are adopted by God in Christ, we are destined for slaughter. If we are to prevent the wearisome weight of the cross or our fear of it from turning us away from our faith, we must keep this thought continually in our hearts. The cup which God pours for us we must drink; no man can be a Christian who does not offer himself in sacrifice to God.

Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. . . . For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. Heb. 12:4, 6.

The apostle goes further and reminds us once again that, even while the wicked persecute us in Christ’s name, our warfare is with sin. Christ himself was free from this struggle, because he was clean and unspotted by any sin. In this respect we are unlike him, for sin dwells in us at all times; and our afflictions serve to overcome and rout it.

In the first place, we know that all the evils in the world come from sin; and so came in the beginning death itself. But this is not what concerns the apostle. His point is that the persecutions we suffer are useful to us, because they are medicine for destroying sin. For in this way, God keeps us under the yoke of his discipline, so that our flesh may not play loose with sin. At times he checks our hot blood; at other times he punishes our misdeeds in order that we may afterwards become more careful. Therefore, whether he sets out to heal our vices, or to prevent us from doing evil, as the apostle says, he is training us for the struggle against sin. And when we suffer for his gospel, the Son of God himself honors us with his favor, and does not count our sufferings as punishment of sin. Still we must acknowledge the validity of what the apostle says: When we act against the ungodly in defense of the cause of Christ, we at the same time battle against sin which is the enemy within us. Thus the grace of God is double; he converts the remedy he uses for curing us from our vices into a means of defending his gospel.

Let us remember that the apostle is speaking to people who had thrown away their possessions and suffered many indignities; and had done all that willingly and with joy. And yet, he charges them with indolence because, exhausted while the battle was still in progress, they had not kept up the strenuous march to the end. It is not for us to ask the Lord to discharge us from his army, no matter what fighting we have done. For Christ will have no discharged soldiers, except those who have overcome death itself. . . .

For whom the Lord loveth. The reasoning of this verse seems rather shaky. The Lord afflicts the elect and the reprobate without distinction, and his scourges are evidence of his wrath more often than of his love. So says Scripture, and experience confirms it. And yet, with regard to the believers, it is not surprising that the apostle refers only to the benefit they derive from the troubles they experience. When God punishes the reprobate he shows himself as a severe and wrathful judge; with his elect, he has no other purpose except to promote their salvation; and this is a demonstration of his Fatherly love. Moreover, since the ungodly do not know that they are governed by God’s hand, they think that most of their troubles happen by chance. The ungodly are like a wrongheaded young man, who leaves his father’s house and wanders far away; when he all but perishes from hunger and cold and other evils, he admits that he has met the just punishment of his stupidity; by his sufferings he sees the value of being docile and obedient, but he does not understand that his troubles are the chastisement of his father. So also the ungodly, having alienated themselves from God and his household, do not understand that they are still within the reach of God’s hand. Therefore, let us keep in mind that we cannot taste the love of God in our afflictions, unless we are persuaded that they are rods with which our Father chastises us for our sins. Nothing like this occurs to the reprobate, who have the mentality of fugitives from God. This is why it is proper that judgment should begin at the house of God.

Wherefore, even though God’s hand falls upon those in his house and those outside, it falls upon the former to show his peculiar care for them. The true solution of our problem is as follows: anyone who knows and is persuaded that he is castigated by God must promptly go on to consider that God afflicts him because he loves him. Since the godly know that God intervenes in their punishment, they have a sure pledge of his good will towards them; for if he did not love them, he would not care about their salvation. Hence the apostle concludes that God offers himself as a Father to all those who endure correction. Those who would rather kick like wild horses, or harden themselves and fight back, are a different sort. In short then, the apostle teaches us that, when God corrects us, he does so only as our Father, provided we yield and obey.

3. THE CROSS AND PERSECUTION

And when forty years were expired, there appeared unto him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai an angel of the Lord in aflame of fire in a bush. Acts 7:30.

It remains to say something of the burning bush. God frequently makes use of a certain similarity among things for giving us signs; and this is the common reason for the sacraments. Besides, nothing could have been more appropriate for confirming the faith of Moses in God’s present business with him. Moses knew in what state he had left his people. Although they were a great multitude, they were not unlike a bush. For the denser a bush and the more twigs it has, compactly put together, the more likely it is to burst into flame and the fire spreads most easily to all its parts. Similarly, the band of Israelites was weak and exposed to every kind of harm. This unwarlike multitude, kept down by its own dead weight, inflamed the fury of the Pharaoh until it could burst out with success. A people oppressed by a cursed tyranny is like a pile of wood which has caught fire on all sides. Nothing keeps it from being quickly reduced to ashes, unless the Lord himself sit in the midst of it. Although this story refers to the unusual persecution which was aflame at that time, it nevertheless in a way depicts the perpetual state of the church which is never, in this world, safe and free from affliction. For what are we but food for fire? Countless burning torches of Satan fly around constantly, and set souls as well as bodies on fire; but the Lord himself, by his wonderful and matchless grace, guards and defends us. The fire, therefore, must needs so burn that in this life it reduce us to nothing. But since God dwells in our midst, he keeps us from harm in the midst of our tribulation, as we read also in Ps. 46:5.

And the multitude rose up together against them; and the magistrates rent off their [the apostles’] clothes, and commanded to beat them. Acts 6:22.

When Luke tells us how a crowd gathered together, how some nobodies — in fact jugglers and those who put their bodies on sale, whose sordid ways everybody knows — raised a hue and cry, he reminds us of the world’s fury against Christ. Although folly and levity are ever present among the whole population, the amazing power of Satan appears when those who are otherwise reserved and stable suddenly get excited over nothing and join the company of worthless people in resisting the truth of God. Nor did the magistrates themselves show any more restraint. By their gravity, they should have appeased the fury of the populace. They should have opposed violence with energy, and, with their resources, taken the side of the innocent. Instead, they make a disorderly and noisy arrest; and before hearing the truth of the matter, they have the apostles stripped of their clothes and whipped with green rods. Such is the deplorable depravity of mankind that almost all the tribunals of this world, which should be sanctuaries of justice, have been polluted by an impious and unholy assault upon the gospel.

One might also ask, Why were the apostles thrown in prison, when they had already received their punishment? For prisons were established for keeping people in custody, partly for punishment and partly that more might be learned about their case. But it is evident that the servants of Christ are treated with less humanity than adulterers, robbers, and other malefactors of their kind. This gives us a clearer insight into the power of Satan, who incites the spirits of men so that they observe no kind of justice when they persecute the gospel. Still, though the lot of the godly in defense of the gospel is harder than that of the godless in their wickedness, yet theirs is the brighter, because in all the evils which they undergo, they triumph gloriously before God and his angels. They indeed suffer insult and ignominy, but because they know that the wounds of Christ are more precious and carry more dignity in heaven than all the vain and smoky pomps of the earth the more they are wronged and slandered by the world, the more abundant reason they have for glorying. For, if ThemistoclesThemistocles (ca. 514–449 B.C.), the Athenian leader in the naval battle of Salamis against Xerxes, was a forceful and imaginative statesman. His checkered career ended in ostracism, and he went to Asia Minor where he was received by the Persians and lived in Magnesia until his death. He was a strong man, but he does not appear to have been a model of virtue. (See Plutarch’s Lives.) used to be so honored by profane writers that they preferred his prison to the seats and courts of magistrates, how much more we should honor the Son of God in whose cause the faithful at all times suffer persecution for the gospel’s sake. Besides, even though the Lord allowed Paul and Silas to be inflicted with scourging at the hands of godless magistrates, yet he did not let them suffer shame without turning it into a greater glory. Since the persecutions which go with bearing witness to the gospel are left over for us from the passion of Christ, as our Prince himself converted the curse of the cross to a chariot of triumph, so also he shall adorn the prisons and gibbets of his servants, and there they shall triumph over Satan and all the sons of wickedness.

Rending their garments. Since the ancient interpreterJerome. had translated this phrase rightly, it was wrong of Erasmus to change it to mean that the magistrates tore their own garments. Luke simply meant to say that when the holy men were beaten, the order of lawful judgment was neglected and that those who laid hands upon them were so violent that their clothes were torn. For it was most alien to Roman custom for magistrates to tear their clothes to pieces publicly in the market place, especially when the matter on hand had to do with an unknown religion, whose protection was no great concern of theirs. But I will not dispute at length about such an obvious matter.

Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations, that the trial of your faith, being more precious than of gold that perisheth though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1:6–7.

Even though the ending of the Greek verb is unclear, the sense of the passage requires that we read you exult rather than exult! The phrase in which refers to the manifold hope of salvation set down in heaven. But Peter does not so much praise as exhort them. His purpose is to teach the benefit we receive when we hope that we shall be saved; namely, the spiritual joy which not only mitigates the bitterness in all evil, but also conquers all melancholy. So, there is more to exult than to rejoice.

But it appears rather contradictory that the faithful who exult with joy should at the same time be sorrowful, for these are opposite feelings. But they know by experience what words can hardly express: that joy and sorrow go together. However, to settle the matter with few words, the faithful are not blocks of wood that they should be bereft of human sensibility when they meet sorrow, or that they should not be afraid when in peril, or be troubled by poverty, or by the hardships they have to endure under persecution. Therefore, evil does indeed make them unhappy. But faith sweetens their sorrow, so that there is no lack of joy in them because of it. Their sorrow yields to their rejoicing, rather than preventing it. Again, even though joy overcomes sorrow, still it does not abolish it, because it does not deprive us of our humanity. Thus we learn true patience; for its beginning and, as it were, its very root is the knowledge of God’s favor, especially the awareness of the honor he has done us by his free adoption. Anybody who keeps this grace of God in mind has little trouble in absorbing the evils which he endures. For, why is it that we are oppressed by a melancholy spirit if not because we have no taste for the good which is spiritual? Anybody who realizes that the troubles he undergoes have their proper use as trials expedient for his salvation, not only rises above them, but also turns them into occasions of joy.

Ye are in heaviness. Since the reprobate in their turn are not immune to evil, do they not also experience sorrow? Yes, they do. But Peter recognizes that the faithful suffer sorrow willingly, whereas the godless murmur and are perverse enough to battle against God. The godly man suffers as a tame ox bears his yoke or as a horse that is broken submits to the bridle even when put on by a child. God visits the wicked with trouble, even as people bridle a fierce and ornery horse with violent hands: the horse kicks and fights back; but it is no use. Hence, Peter praises the believers because they bear their troubles willingly, and not under compulsion.

He says now for a season by way of consoling his readers. For the shortness of time is a mitigation of the evils we suffer no matter how hard they hit us. And we must remember that this present life lasts only a moment.

If need be. The reason for our sufferings is here taken for their cause. The apostle wants to make it clear that God does not make a trial of his people without reason. If God afflicted us without a reason, our burden would be too heavy to bear. Therefore, Peter argues for our comfort on the ground of God’s purpose, not that we can always see the reason for our afflictions, but that they occur rightly (so we ought to be persuaded), since they occur at God’s pleasure. . . .

More precious than gold. He argues from the lesser to the greater. For, if we prize a corruptible metal like gold so much that, to prove its value, we test it with fire, is it any wonder that God should want to prove our faith, which he prizes much more highly, in the same way? Even though the words of the apostle suggest another interpretation (in that he seems to set no value on gold), he nevertheless compares faith to gold so as to present it as the more precious of the two, and to imply that it is worth the trial to which God subjects it. Besides, the full extent of the meanings of δοκιμάζεσθαι (tried) and δοκίμιον (trial) is not certain. One cannot be sure whether he is speaking of a double testing of gold with fire: once when it is purified of its dross; and then, when it is tested for judging its quality. Both of these tests apply to faith very well. Much of the impurity of unbelief remains in us. When we are, as it were, purified in God’s furnace by various afflictions, the dross in our faith is purged, and the faith becomes pure and clean before God. At the same time it is tested to show whether it be a true or false faith. I accept willingly both these views of the matter, which seem to be justified by what follows immediately in our text. For, since silver is worthless before it is purified, so also our faith receives the honor of a crown before God when it is proved in the proper way.

At the appearing of Jesus Christ. This is added to teach the faithful to keep their spirits high until the end. For now our life is hidden in Christ; and it will remain hidden, and as it were buried, until Christ appears from heaven. The whole course of our lives moves toward the destruction of the outer man; and all the things we suffer are so many anticipations of death. Therefore, if we want to see glory and praise in the midst of our afflictions, we had better fix our eyes on Christ. For the trials, which are so full of reproach and shame for us, are in Christ full of glory. But such glory in Christ is not as yet seen clearly because the day of our consolation has not as yet arrived.

Searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. 1 Peter 1:11.

Peter tells his readers that their sufferings had been foretold long before by the Spirit, so that they may endure them with a calm spirit. But there is much more to this statement. He means that from the very beginning God has so ordained and governed the Christian church that the cross has been the preparation for victory, and death the way to life. Such is the clear testimony of Scripture. Therefore, there is no reason why we should be unduly depressed by our troubles, as though they meant our misery, when the Spirit of God himself calls us blessed.

But notice the order. He puts sufferings first, and the glories which are to follow second; and he makes it clear that this order can be neither changed nor reversed. The afflictions come first; and then comes glory. There are two striking thoughts expressed in this sentence: Christians must first suffer many tribulations that they may know the joy of glory; secondly, their sufferings are not evil, because they are bound closely with the glory to come. Since God himself has ordained this conjunction, it is not for us to tear one part away from the other. But it is a rare comfort to us that this situation of ours has been predicted so many ages ago, from which we gather that our coming deliverance from it is no empty promise. Hence we also know that we suffer not by chance but by the solid providence of God. And furthermore, we acknowledge that the prophecies are as mirrors, which in our very tribulations present us with an image of heavenly glory.

Of course, Peter says that it is Christ’s own sufferings that were foretold by the Spirit; but he does not separate Christ from his body. Therefore, we must not limit the sufferings in question to Christ’s own person. We must rather begin with the Head, that the members may follow him in their order. As Paul says, we must conform to him who is the first-born among his brethren (Rom. 8:29). Hence, Peter is speaking not of something peculiar to Christ, but of the universal situation of the church. We have a better confirmation of our faith in that he invites us to consider our own sufferings in relation to Christ: because in this way, in our relationship to him, we discern better the connection between death and life. It certainly is right and fitting that in this sacred union, the Head should suffer daily in his members. For in this way his sufferings are completed in us, and his glory in turn is fulfilled in his members. More is said about this in Col. 3 and 1 Tim. 4.

Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you; but rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. 1 Peter 4:12–13.

There is a great deal said about afflictions in this epistle. We have explained the reason for this elsewhere. However, we must notice that sometimes when he calls the believers to patience, he speaks in general of the common ills which infest human life; here, on the other hand, he speaks of the evils which the faithful suffer for Christ’s name. In the first place, he reminds them that they must not be surprised [by affliction], as by something sudden and unexpected; that they must meditate upon the cross for a long time, in order to be prepared to bear it when the occasion arises. Anyone who has chosen to go to war under Christ will not become panicky when he meets persecution; he will rather bear it with patience as one who knows all about it. Therefore, if we would have presence of mind when persecutions rush upon us and overtake us, we need to be accustomed in good time to diligent meditation upon the cross. Moreover, he makes two statements to show that the trial of the cross serves a useful end: by it God proves our faith, and we thus become companions of Christ. In the first place, let us keep in mind that the trial which proves our faith is most necessary. We should therefore be only too glad to obey God when he provides for our own salvation. But our chief comfort should be sought in the society of Christ. Therefore, Peter not only forbids us to be surprised when he puts the cross before us, but also bids us to be joyful. It is indeed a matter for joy that by means of persecution God makes proof of our faith. But it is a far surpassing joy that the Son of God puts us in a class with himself, to lead us with himself to a blessed participation in the glory of heaven. We must take it as axiomatic that if we bear the dying of Christ in our flesh, his own life shall appear in us. The wicked also have their many troubles; but because they are separated from Christ, they get nothing in return except the wrath and execration of God. So it is that they are soon swallowed up by melancholy and terror.

This then is the whole comfort of the men of faith: they are Christ’s associates, that they may in time come to have a share in his glory. So, we must always consider that the way is from the cross to the resurrection. But since this world is a labyrinth where no escape from evil is in sight, Peter turns our eyes to the future when the glory of Christ shall be revealed. What he means is that we must not spurn the day of his revelation because it is now hidden, but we must live in expectation of it. He sets before us a double joy: one which we now have in hope, and another which shall be complete at the coming of Christ. Because the first is mixed with sorrow and sadness, it is the latter which he connects with exultation. It is not good sense to be dreaming in the midst of tribulation of a joy which shall rid us of all trouble. But the consolations of God do temper our experience of evil so that, while we suffer, we have joy.

For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers; but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil. And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good? But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are ye, and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled. 1 Peter 3:12–14.

It ought to be enough to take the sting out of whatever evil we suffer that we are under the eyes of the Lord and that in his own good time he will come to our help. The sum of the matter, therefore, is that the well-being which he speaks of depends upon God’s protection. For, if the Lord did not keep watch upon his own, they would be like sheep exposed in advance to wolves for destruction. And if the slightest trouble makes us cry out, or if we are kindled so quickly to fury and burn with a desire for vengeance, it is doubtless because we neither take to heart that we are under God’s care, nor acquiesce in his help. We are taught patience in vain, unless our spirits be first imbued with the teaching that God cares for us and will come to our aid in his good time. If we are persuaded that God wills to defend the cause of the righteous as a Father, our first and single-minded concern becomes to be innocent of evil; and then, when we become beset and troubled by the unjust, we flee to God’s protection. The apostle’s purpose in telling us that the ears of the Lord are open to our petitions is to move us to persevere in prayer.

But the face of the Lord. With this phrase Peter points out that since the Lord is our vindicator, the godless shall not be permitted to flourish forever in their insolence. At the same time, he threatens that if we take it upon ourselves to defend our lives against the wicked, we shall have God himself against us. But, it may be objected, experience teaches us far otherwise; for the more just a man is, and the more he loves peace, the more he is vexed by the wicked. To this I answer, No one follows justice and peace so far that he does not sometimes, some way, sin in this matter. But we must observe above all that in this life we are promised nothing beyond what we need for doing our duty. Hence, our peace with the world is often turned into trouble, in order that our flesh may be subdued for obedience to God; hence, whatever causes us trouble, nothing should be a loss to us [but it should contribute to the same end of obedience].

And who is he, etc. He again confirms the above with an argument derived from common experience. It happens often that the wicked pick a quarrel with us, or that they are cut to the quick by us. We may fail to put ourselves out to win their favor; for the truth is that anyone who keeps being kind is able to soften hearts which are otherwise like iron. This same truth is set forth by Plato in the First Book of The Republic: στάσεις γάρ που ἤ γε ἀδικία καὶ μάχας ἐν ἀλλέλοις παρέχει. η δὲ δικαιοσύ [ομεγαηατ]η ὁυόνοιαν καὶ φιλίαν . . “Injustice provokes seditions and hatreds and quarrels; but justice, concord and friendship.” However, even though this happens commonly, it is not always so. No matter how much the children of God try to pacify the wicked with goodness, and to show kindness toward all, they are nevertheless often attacked without any just cause. Therefore, Peter adds: If ye suffer for righteousness’ sake. . . . His point in short is that the believers try to obtain in this life a state of tranquillity, more by being good than by being violent and quick to avenge. And then, if having left nothing undone toward peace, they still suffer, even in this they are happy, for they suffer for righteousness’ sake. This last phrase is a far cry from the judgment of the flesh. But it is not a rash statement of Christ; and Peter himself does not repeat it rashly when he takes it from the mouth of the Master. For God will ultimately come forth as our liberator; and he will establish openly what at present seems unbelievable: that the miseries which the godly bear with patience are in truth rich with happiness. To suffer for righteousness’ sake means not only to be subject to some privation or discomfort in espousing a good cause, but also to suffer injustice, as happens when a man who fears God and does no evil finds that those around have turned against him.

For it is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well-doing, than for evil-doing. For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. . . . 1 Peter 3:17–18.

For it is better. This phrase qualifies not only the next sentence, but also the whole passage. Peter has spoken of the confession of faith, which at that time was a perilous affair. He now adds that it is much better for them to bear privation in defense of a good cause, and so to suffer unjustly, than to be chastised for their own infamy. But this encouragement is understood when we ponder it inwardly, rather than by much talk around it. We read often in profane writers that, when we suffer evil and must needs go through with it, a good conscience is help enough. This sounds very courageous. But it still is true that the spirit is strong only when it looks to God. Therefore he adds the conditional phrase if it be God’s will. By these words he tells us that when we suffer any evil unjustly it comes about not by accident, but rather, and surely, by the will of God. And he assumes and confesses that God neither wills nor appoints anything except for the best of reasons. Hence, the believers have this comfort in their miseries, that God knows all about it; they know that it is God who leads them to the scene of contest, in order that under his auspices they may show forth their faith.

For Christ also. It is another comfort that, if in our afflictions we have a good conscience, we suffer after the example of Christ: and in so doing, we are blessed. And at the same time the apostle proves, from the purpose for which Christ died, that it is not fitting for us to be chastised for doing evil. He reminds us that Christ suffered to lead us to God: and what does he mean except that by the death of Christ we have been so consecrated to God that we are to live and die to him! There are then two parts to this statement. The first is that we are to bear persecution with equanimity, since the son of God himself shows us the way; the other is that, since by the death of Christ we have been set aside for obedience to God, we are to suffer not because of our misdoings, but for righteousness’ sake.

But now someone may bring up the question, is it not true God chastises believers when he allows them in some way to be afflicted? I answer that God often inflicts upon believers the punishment they deserve. And this Peter himself does not deny. But he reminds us what a great comfort it is to have our cause bound up with God! We shall see in the next chapter that those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake are not being punished by God for their sins. We shall also consider in what sense they are called innocent.

Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed: but let him glorify God on this behalf. 1 Peter 4:16.

After having forbidden Christians to hurt or do any harm so that they may not, like the unbelievers, arouse the world’s hatred by their evil-doing, he now bids them to thank God when they suffer persecution in the name of Christ. Certainly, it is no ordinary kindness on God’s part that he not only has freed us and exempted us from the common punishment of sins, but also calls us to an honorable warfare, in which we may suffer exile or privation, or insults, or even death itself. It is therefore plain ingratitude to God that, when persecutions come upon us, we murmur or cry out, as though some grave injustice were being done to us; we ought rather to count it gain and favor from God.

It is our singular consolation that, as members of his body, in all our sufferings we are associated in the cross of Christ; that, as he says elsewhere, through afflictions we are shown a way to eternal blessedness. If we die, we shall live. If we suffer, we shall reign (2 Tim. 2:11–12). We must, therefore, be ready to let our whole life be in the image of death, until it issues in death itself, just as the life of Christ was nothing else than an anticipation of death. In the meantime, we have joy in the consolation that the end is eternal blessedness. The death of Christ, therefore, is joined with his resurrection. This is why Paul says that he was conformed to Christ’s death, that he might attain a glorious resurrection. The phrase by any means, indicates not doubt but difficulty. It is meant to arouse our zeal, because ours is no light skirmish, but a battle against many and great obstacles.

For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. John 16:27.

These words remind us that the only bond which unites us with God is union with Christ. But the faith which unites us with Christ is not something contrived; it grows out of a genuine feeling which is here called love. Such faith does not merely believe about Christ; it embraces him with the soul. Therefore, love expresses well the power and the nature of faith. Truly, if God begins to love us only when we already love Christ, it follows that our love comes before God’s grace, and that the beginning of our salvation is in us. But many passages in Scripture cry out against such a statement. The promise of God is, “I shall make them to love me,” and John says, “It is not that we first loved him” (1 John 4:10). It is unnecessary to cite many passages. There is nothing more certain than the teaching that the Lord calls a people who are not; that he revives the dead, unites to himself those who are strangers, turns hearts of stone into flesh, and appears to those who do not even seek after him. I reply that the elect, before they are called, are secretly loved by God who loves his own before they exist. But before they are reconciled to God, they are rightly regarded as his enemies, as we read in Paul and elsewhere (Rom. 5:10). We are here said to be loved of God when we love Christ; because when we love Christ, we receive a pledge that God loves us as Father; whereas, before we love Christ, he terrifies us as a hostile judge.

Moreover, we must not forget that our greatest happiness is to have God’s guiding hand stretched out to us, and to live under its shadow, so that his providence may watch over our safety.

He leadeth me beside the still waters. By still waters David meant waters that flow gently, because swift torrents are not suitable for sheep to drink from, and often they are even dangerous. . . . David here says once again that the Heavenly Shepherd overlooks nothing which might take away from the happiness of those under his care. . . . God in no way fails his faithful ones; he sustains them with his own power, feeds and strengthens them, and keeps them from all harm, so that they journey in comfort on smooth roads.

He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness. This means easy and plain paths. Since he continues with his metaphor, it would be out of place to understand this as referring to the direction of the Holy Spirit. David has said that God supplies him liberally with all he needs for this life; and he now adds that God protects him from all trouble.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. The faithful who dwell safely under God’s hand are nevertheless exposed to many perils. Keeping the same metaphor, David compares God’s care in guiding the faithful to the shepherd’s rod and staff. When a sheep is walking in a dark valley, only the shepherd’s presence keeps it safe from the attacks of wild beasts or from other accidents. David was not boasting of his own fearlessness; but was rather saying that he would walk boldly wherever his shepherd led him. And now that God reveals himself to us in the person of his only-begotten Son, as our Shepherd, more brightly than he did of old to the fathers under the law, we do not honor his protection properly unless we keep our eyes fixed upon it and by so doing trample upon all our trepidations.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Whence was this confidence that God’s kindness and mercy would be with him forever, if not from the promise by which God confines his benefits to those who believe, lest they be devoured by those whose palates have no taste for such benefits? For when David said earlier that in the shadow of death itself his eyes would be intently fixed on the providence of God, he showed well enough that he did not depend on things external; nor did he judge God’s favor by his bodily senses. When all earthly aids failed, his faith remained, because it rested solely on the Word of God.

The last words of the psalm show clearly that David did not confine himself to the pleasures or comforts of this earth, but kept his gaze on heaven as the ultimate end of everything else. He says plainly that for him the culmination of all the good [gifts] from God is to dwell in the house of the Lord.

Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord, and the people whom he hath chosen for his inheritance.

The Lord looketh from heaven, and he seeth all the sons of Adam.

A king is not kept safe by the size of his army, nor will a giant be saved by his great strength.

A horse is a vain thing for safety; neither shall he deliver by his great strength.

Let thy compassion be upon us, O Lord, according as we hope in thee. Ps. 33:12, 13, 16, 17, 22. (Calvin’s wording.)

. . . It is of little use to talk of the stability of God’s purpose if we do not relate it to ourselves. Therefore the prophet declares that those whom God takes under his guardianship are blessed because God’s purpose is not hidden from them, for it is seen in action in the safety of the church. And so we understand that it is not those who consider God’s power coldly and with indifference, but those who apply it to their own immediate need, that have a right knowledge of God as the Pilot of the world.

Indeed, when the psalmist says, “If the Lord is our God,” he points to the Lord as the fountain of divine love toward us, and tells us that we have no happiness except in him. In this way, he includes in one phrase everything we could ask for if we are to live a happy life. God’s care for our safety, keeping us warm under his wings, providing for our needs, counting us worthy of his help in time of peril — all this is grounded in his adoption of us. And in order to keep anyone from thinking that so much good comes from our own prowess and industry, the psalmist specifies that it flows from the fountain of free election which makes us God’s people.

Men corrupt this verse senselessly when they transfer to men what the prophet ascribes to God. As if men chose God for their inheritance! I admit that it is by faith that the true God is distinguished from idols; but we must hold fast to the following principle: There would be no communion between him and us if he did not first come to us with his grace.

The Lord looketh from heaven. The psalmist continues the same theme. The conditions of men do not come about by chance. God directs in hidden ways all that takes place. Therefore, the psalmist praises the watchfulness of God so that we may learn to see God’s invisible providence with the eyes of faith. For although the evidences of his care are continually before our eyes, the greater part of mankind is blind, and invent a blind chance to match their blindness. The more bountifully and richly God pours out his kindness upon us, the less we turn our minds to him; we keep them instead fixed on what happens to us from the outside.

The prophet castigates the indignity which men offer to God; for no greater wrong can be done to him than to shut him up to stay idly in his heaven. That is like burying him in a grave! For how would God be living if he saw nothing and cared for nothing? Further, by the term royal throne, the prophet shows how absurd and stupid it would be to divest God of mind and intelligence. For he means that heaven is not a palace for idle pleasures, as the Epicureans imagine, but a king’s seat of government from which God exercises his empire in all the realms of the world. But if God has set his seat in the sanctuary of the heavens in order to rule the universe, it follows that he by no means ignores earthly affairs, but controls them with the highest reason and wisdom.

A king is not kept safe, etc. A man’s life is safe not by his own power, but by the grace of God. Kings and giants are mentioned because they think they are exempt from the common lot of men and believe themselves beyond the reach of javelin or arrow. If some misfortune occurs, they expect to find an easy escape. Intoxicated with confidence in their own ability, they are hardly able to remember that they are mortal; and their pride is strengthened by the foolish admiration of the crowd who are astounded at their might. But if the resources of a king do not give him security, and a giant does not escape by his strength when danger comes, it is futile for any ordinary man to depend on earthly riches and forget God’s providence. For nothing can be more miserably precarious than the position of both the strong and the weak unless they rely on God’s protection.

In the next verse, by the use of synecdoche (a part for the whole), the word horse means every kind of earthly assistance. Of course, kings are not armed with swords for nothing; and horses are not useless; nor are any of the wealth and resources, which God supplies to men to guard their lives, without value when they are rightly used. But the more the majority of men are surrounded with fortifications, the farther they go from God and falsely imagine that their wall is impregnable. God rightly confounds such insanity. So it is that the flood of God’s gifts is often without effect; because the world, separating them from their Author, deprives itself of his blessing.

Let thy compassion be upon us.

The psalm closes with a prayer, which the prophet offers in the name of all the faithful, asking that they may know they have not relied on God’s goodness in vain. In prescribing this rule of prayer by the mouth of the prophet, the Spirit teaches us that the door of God’s favor is opened when we do not seek and hope for safety elsewhere. Meanwhile we draw our sweetest comfort from the certainty that our hope will never crack up while we are still on our way; nor do we need to fear that God will not extend his compassion toward us until the end.

And fear not those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. And yea, I say to you, fear him. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And not one of them shall fall to the ground without your Father. Matt. 10:28, Luke 12:5, Matt. 10:29. (Calvin’s wording.)

Christ is perfectly right when he urges his disciples to despise death, because human beings created for heavenly immortality should treat this mutable and perishing life as so much smoke. The heart of the matter is this: if the believers consider to what end they were born, and what their condition now is, they will have no reason for clinging anxiously to this earthly life. However, these words have a still fuller and richer meaning; for Christ teaches us that the fear of God is dead in people who fear tyrants so much that they fail in their confession, that a brutish stupidity reigns in the hearts of those who fear death so much that they will not even hesitate to give up altogether confessing their faith. . . .

For this reason, Luke repeats emphatically: Yea, I say to you, fear him. We must understand Christ to say that, when we succumb to the fear of man, we show no respect for God; that when, on the contrary, we show proper reverence to God, victory is easy and in our hands, and no human power can pull us away from our duty. Besides, the experience of every age teaches how necessary it is for ministers and for believers in general to be warned about this danger, because there never was a time when men did not rise up in fury against God, and did not set themselves to crush the gospel. Not all men have equal power to put the fear of death into the believers; still, the majority of men are possessed with the ferocity of a Cyclops, which springs forth when opportunity arises. Besides, the devil often gets hold of giants, whose very looks would throw the servants of Christ down lifeless, were they not taught to be hard and immovable by this teaching.

Moreover, since fearing God and not fearing men go together, it is stupid and wrong to pay attention only to the latter point. On the contrary, as we have said before, Christ set a devout and holy fear of God in opposition to a perverse fear of men, which takes us away from the right way, as the only remedy for it. Otherwise, there would have been no point in his saying that, if we fear God who is Lord over soul and body, we ought not to fear men who have power only over the body. When Christ admits that men have the power to kill, he does so only by way of concession. God holds the bridle of the wicked loose; and they, puffed up by confidence in their own power, will dare anything. They strike at shaky souls, and act as though nothing could stop them. But futile is the insolence of the wicked which makes them fancy that they can do as they please with the life of believers. For, all the while, God holds the reins; and when it pleases him, he checks their attack, however fierce and violent. And yet they may be said to have the power to kill by God’s permission, because often they are able to go strong and give vent to their fury. . . .

Are not two sparrows, etc. Now Christ goes on to declare, as I have already hinted, that no matter how mad the tyrants may be, they have no power even over the body. Therefore, those who fear the cruelty of men, as though they were without God’s protection, are fools. In the midst of perils, we have this second comfort that, since God is the keeper of our lives, we may safely rely upon his providence. It is really an insult to God, not to place our lives at the disposal of him who has honored us with his protection. Christ extends the providence of God to all creatures in common, and so argues by way of synecdoche (from the whole to the part), that God exercises a particular care over us. There is nothing cheaper than a sparrow (two were sold for a penny; or as Luke has it, five for two pennies), and yet God’s eye is upon it, and nothing happens to it by chance. Will he then who looks after sparrows neglect to watch over the lives of men?

Moreover, we must notice two things. Christ defines the providence of God very differently from those who, not unlike the philosophers, admit that somehow the world is under divine government, and yet imagine the workings of providence in a confused way, as though God paid no attention to individual creatures. Christ, on the other hand, declares that every single one of God’s creatures is under his hand and care, and that nothing happens by chance. In this way, he firmly opposes the will of God to chance, without however affirming the fatalism of the Stoics. It is one thing to find necessity in a context of a chain of many causes; it is quite another to see the world, as a whole and in its individual parts, as subject to the will of God. I confess there is a certain operation of chance in the nature of things considered in themselves; but I say that nothing occurs merely by the wheels of blind fortune, because the will of God reigns over all that happens.

In the second place, we must not look at God’s providence after the manner of curious and silly people. It must be to us the ground of our strength, and an invitation to call upon God. When Christ tells us that even the hairs of our heads are numbered, he does it not to arouse us to empty speculation, but to teach us to rest in God’s Fatherly care, which he exercises in behalf of these frail bodies of ours.

Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands crucified and slain. Acts 2:23.

The chief purpose of Peter in mentioning the death of Christ is to establish faith in the resurrection all the more fully. It was well known among the Jews that Jesus had been nailed to a cross. Therefore, that he rose again would have been a token and evidence of the wonderful power of God. Meanwhile, in order to prick their consciences with a sense of sin, he says that it was they who killed Jesus, not that they had crucified him with their own hands, but that his death had been requested by the people with one voice. Although many of those who heard Peter had had no direct part in that godless and cruel wickedness, he was right in blaming them for it, because all of them had defiled themselves either by silence or by unconcern. There was no place for any pretense of ignorance, because God had already set Jesus before them. Peter thus prepares them for repentance by convicting them of sin.

By the determinate counsel. Here he meets a scandal which arises because it seems absurd at first sight, that this man whom God had adorned with such powers should have afterwards been subjected to every kind of insult and allowed to suffer an ignominious death. Because the cross of Christ is at first so disturbing to us, Peter declares that it did not occur by chance, or because Jesus had no power to set himself free, but because it had been ordained by God. For, only the knowledge that the death of Christ was ordained by the eternal purpose of God cut off in advance all occasion for foolish and depraved cogitations, and prevented people’s minds from taking offense at it. One thing is certain: that God makes no rash or vain decision. Whence it follows that he had a just reason for willing that Christ should have suffered. Such knowledge of God’s providence enables us to take the right step toward understanding the purpose and benefit of Christ’s death. For, the counsel of God confronts us with the truth that the Righteous One was delivered to death for our sins, and his blood was our ransom from death.

This then is a notable statement of the providence of God, teaching us that our life as well as our death is governed by it. Luke is indeed speaking about Christ; but in him we have a mirror of the universal providence of God which extends to the whole world, and shines especially upon us who are members of Christ.

In this place, Luke sets forth two things: God’s foreknowledge and his sure decree. Although first in order comes foreknowledge (since God contemplates what he will ordain before he ordains it), Luke puts it after God’s counsel or decree, to teach us that God neither wills nor decrees anything without having long before directed it to its proper end. People often make rash decisions because they decide quickly. Therefore, when Peter wants to point out that God’s counsel is not without reason, he couples it with his foreknowledge. Now, we need to distinguish between these two with some discernment, because many have fallen down at this point. Passing by the counsel of God with which he directs the whole world, these people grab at his mere foreknowledge. Hence arises the common distinction according to which, even while God foresees everything, he lays no constraint upon his creatures. Of course, it is true that God foresees this or that which is in the future. But Peter teaches us that what befell Jesus was not only foreseen by God, but also decreed by him. From this we learn a general truth about God’s providence, one that appears in the government of the world as a whole, no less than in the death of Jesus: it belongs to God, not only to know the future, but also to ordain by his will whatever he wants to be done. Peter made this second point when he said that Jesus was delivered by the sure and determinate counsel of God. Wherefore, the foreknowledge of God is other than the will of God by which he rules and regulates all things.

Some whose discernment is sharper admit that God not only foresees but also regulates with a nod everything that is done in this world. At the same time, however, they imagine a vague direction, as though God lets go of the bridle and allows his creatures to follow the rule of their own natures. They say that the sun rules by God’s will, because in giving us light it does the duty enjoined on it by God in the beginning. They think that a free will of this kind is left to men, because their nature is capable of a free choice between good and evil. But those who think in this manner imagine that God is sitting idly in heaven. The Scriptures speak very differently, and defend God’s control over particular events and over the several actions of men. But we must consider the purpose of Scripture in teaching us this doctrine; and we must at the same time shun all the mad speculations with which we see people carried away. The intention of Scripture is to exercise our faith, that we may know we are protected by God’s hand, and that we may not be subject to harm from Satan and wicked men. . . .

By the hands of the wicked. Peter seems to suggest that the wicked did God’s will. From this follows one or the other of two absurdities: either that God does evil, or that whatever wickedness men may perpetrate, they do not sin. As to the second statement, I answer that even though the wicked carry out what God himself has ordained, obeying God is the last thing they do. For obedience comes from a willing disposition, and we know that the purpose of the wicked is inspired by something far different. Besides, nobody but one who knows God’s will obeys him. Obedience depends upon a knowledge of the will of God. But God has revealed his will to us in the law. Therefore, they only obey God whose deeds fulfill the demands of the rule of the law, who, therefore, submit themselves willingly to its authority. But we see none of this in the wicked, whom God drives hither and thither without their knowing it. Therefore, let no man say that they are to be excused because they obey God. We must seek the will of God in his law; but the wicked seek to resist God with everything in them.

I deny the other statement, that God does evil, because it suggests that God is disposed to wickedness. We must judge wickedness in the light of the purpose which governs a man’s action. People who perpetrate theft or murder sin in that they are thieves and murderers; for they do these things with a wicked purpose. God, who makes use of men’s wickedness, must not be put in the same class with them; he must be seen in a far different light; because when he sets out to punish one man, and to exercise another in patience, he never deviates from his nature, which is perfect rectitude. Thus, when Christ was delivered by the hands of wicked men, and crucified, it was done by the consent and decree of God. But the treachery in the matter, which as such is evil, and the murder in it which was a great wickedness, must not be attributed to God.

And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? Gen. 18:17–18.

When God proposes something as though it were doubtful, he does so out of kindness to men; for he had already decided what he would do. Here he intended to make Abraham pay close attention to the reasons he gives for the destruction of Sodom.

God gives two reasons for wanting to reveal his purpose before it was fulfilled: first, because Abraham was worthy of the privilege of the superior honor; second, because it would be useful and fruitful in the education of posterity. This in brief is the scope and value of this revelation.

One reason, as I said, why God wished his servant to know beforehand of his terrible vengeance upon Sodom was to honor him with special gifts. God has always shown this same kindness to the faithful; and he even increases it, heaping new and fresh blessings upon the earlier ones; and so it is that he deals daily with us. What ground is there for the innumerable favors he constantly bestows upon us except that he cannot refrain from expressing his Fatherly love with which he has enfolded us; and in doing this, he honors himself and his own gifts in us? For what except his own free gifts does he reward with his kindness? The origin of his kindness was in himself, not in Abraham’s merits; nor does the blessing of Abraham flow from any other fountain except God.

Moreover, we learn from this passage, what experience also teaches, that it is the special privilege of the church to know the meaning of the judgments of God and their direction and purpose. God does indeed prove himself a just judge of the world by inflicting punishment on evil men. But because all things seem to happen by accident, God enlightens his sons by his Word, so that they may not walk blindly like unbelievers. So, in the past, when he stretched out his hand to smite all the world, he confined his holy oracle to Judea; that is, when he was ready to bring distresses and misfortunes upon the nations, he declared himself as their author by his prophets and to his chosen people alone. . . . Let us then be mindful that God, having begun to be good toward us, continues unwearied until, having blessed us in every way, he completes our salvation. Having once adopted us and enlightened our minds by his Word, he keeps the torch of the Word blazing before our eyes, that we may in faith keep our minds upon the judgment and punishment of evil which the impious confidently ignore.

Therefore the faithful ought to be well informed on the known history of all times, to be able to judge according to the Scripture the various calamities which befall the wicked, privately and in public. While Sodom was unharmed and enjoying its pleasant luxuries, the Lord announced to his servant Abraham that it would soon perish. There was then no doubt that it perished not by chance but by the act of God. . . . We must accept the same conclusion in other cases; for although God does not foretell the future to us, he wishes us to be eyewitnesses of his acts and to propound their causes wisely. We are not to be deceived by false vision like the unbelievers, who “seeing, see not” and turn their backs to their true goal.

O Assyrian, the rod of my anger, and the staff in their hand is my indignation. Isa. 10:5.

What follows is intended so to announce the coming punishment as to mitigate the sorrow of the faithful with some word of comfort. Therefore greater emphasis is given to the doctrine that whatever the evils perpetrated by the Assyrians, they will be a temporary discipline from God, and that when the unbelievers overdo their insolence, they will finally be put in their places.

Hoi is sometimes an exclamation of pain, sometimes a call for attention; and sometimes it has the sense “woe to,” as the ancient interpreters translated it here. But in this passage it can only mean either that the Lord is calling the Assyrians, or that he is assuming the role of a mourner because he has to punish his people at the hand of the Assyrians. But when I look more closely at the whole passage, I prefer the interpretation that God is calling the Assyrians as though they were armed for battle by his own command. The prophet had already proclaimed that the Assyrians would be upon them; but hypocrites feel so secure that the fear of God never troubles them, before they can see his scourge or until they actually feel its blows. This is why God now summons the Assyrians with “Come,” just as a judge calls an officer and orders him to bind a criminal, or commands the executioner to put him to death. So the Lord calls the Assyrians to inflict punishment by their hand.

And the staff. This can refer to the Assyrians, and the clause can be understood as a repetition of the preceding in slightly different words. But I find here a difference in meaning. First, the Assyrians are called “the rod of God’s wrath” ; second, the swords and weapons with which they are equipped are equated with the anger of God, as though the prophet had said, “God according to his will is using the Assyrian instead of ax or sword as executor of his wrath,” and then had added, “Although they may wear swords, what you should fear is [not their weapons but] God’s anger against his people.” The point is that whatever strength the enemy may have comes from God’s anger, and that the enemy would not move a finger unless God roused him by a hidden prodding against the nation He intended to destroy. God calls the staff which they hold in their hand his “anger” to make it clear to the Jews that the apparently blind attacks of their enemies are directed by heavenly providence.

I disagree with some interpreters who would turn beyadam (in their hand) to “in their place” or “in their land.” That is too forced. The point is that God calls the Assyrians as the servants of his wrath, for by their hand he will exact due penalty for the crimes of his people. Therefore, he declares that his anger is all the might they possess.

This teaching has two purposes: first, to terrify the wicked by letting them know that God’s threats to destroy them are not empty words, and to show them the reason they are to be punished. These words, therefore, had much more force to rouse from their indifference the wicked who had laughed at all the former threatenings of the prophets.

Secondly, this teaching had also no small value when the Assyrians began to harass the people. For then, in the midst of the disaster, the Jews could see that it was not purposeless, nor happening by accident, for it had been predicted by the prophets.

Someone will object, Why did God when He had first said that the Assyrians were the rod of his anger, afterwards call their staff his indignation? But we must put it, “The Assyrian is my anger, and the staff which he carries is the staff of my indignation.” But so long as we understand what the prophet means, we should not stop anxiously over words. He calls men “the rod of God’s anger” because God uses them like a rod; he calls the weapons of men God’s “indignation,” because they are not directed by men’s own will but are the evidence of God’s anger.

These words of the prophet are most pertinent today, because they forbid us to think that the wicked burst forth unrestrained wherever their lust drives them; for they are guided and checked by a bridle, so that they will accomplish nothing against God’s will. Hence we must conclude that God acts by the hand of the wicked. But here we must think and speak soberly, for there is need to distinguish wisely and carefully between the work of God and the work of men.

There are three ways in which God acts through men. First, all are moved and exist through him; from which it follows that all human actions proceed from his goodness. Second, he acts in a special way when he moves the wicked as seems good to him. Although nothing is further from their thoughts, he uses their work so that they mutually destroy one another and perish, or so that he may discipline his own people by their hand. This last is the prophet’s point in this place. Third, God guides men by his sanctifying Spirit; but this way belongs only to the elect.

So whether tyrants, or robbers, or any others injure us; or when foreign nations rise up against us, always, among turbulent and confused commotions, the hand of God sheds his light upon us, to keep us from imagining that anything happens by chance.

Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart. . . . Joel 2:12.

After announcing the terrible judgment, the prophet shows that his purpose was not simply to inspire terror, but rather to bring the people back to their right minds. But this he could not do unless he gave them the hope of forgiveness. I have said many times — and indeed the whole Bible proves it — that men cannot be brought back to the right way unless they receive the hope of God’s compassion. For despair makes men more obstinate and doubles their wickedness, rather multiplies it a hundredfold.

For when a man who has done wrong despairs, he hurls himself wholly into the gulf of wickedness without any restraint whatever. Therefore the prophet now describes the kindness and compassion of God in order gently to lead the people to apply themselves to repentance.

So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God. . . . Gen. 45:8.

This is an especially significant passage, for it teaches us that the true course of events is never disturbed by the wickedness and malice of men; that, on the contrary, God directs men’s confused and turbulent movements to a good end. Also it shows us how we ought to think of God’s providence and how we are to profit from it. When curious men debate over it, they not only muddle and pervert everything by ignoring its purpose, but also concoct whatever absurdities they can to insult God’s justice. Their effrontery even makes some pious and modest men wish they could bury this part of our doctrine. For as soon as it is proclaimed that God holds the government of the whole world and that nothing is done without his assent and command, those who feel too little reverence for the mysteries of God burst out with various questions which are not only frivolous, but also pernicious.

However, in our desire to stop such profane intemperance, we should be very careful not to be satisfied with a crass ignorance of truths which are not only revealed by the Word of God but are also very useful for us to know. Good men are ashamed to confess that nothing which men undertake is accomplished unless God wills it, for fear unbridled tongues will clamor either that God is the author of sin, or that no blame is incurred by impious men since they are only following God’s purpose. Although there is no way of refuting this sacrilegious madness, we should be content to detest it, and meanwhile hold firmly to the clear witness of Scripture, whatever men may invent. Amid all the shoutings of men, God directs men’s plans and efforts from heaven, and finally accomplishes by their hands what he himself has decreed.

Good men who fear to expose the justice of God to the slanders of the impious take refuge in the distinction that God wills some things to be done and only permits others. As if, without his will, any freedom of action would be possible for men! If he had merely permitted Joseph to be carried to Egypt, he would not have ordained him as the instrument for saving the lives of his father Jacob and his sons; and this is what is said here explicitly. A statement like our text would be meaningless if evil things which God afterwards turns to a good end were done only by his permission, and not by his intention and will.

I know that on men’s side there are evil deeds which are done out of sheer perversity. Moreover, since the doers are inherently sinful, they must be accounted wholly guilty. But God works through them in a wonderful way, so that he produces pure justice out of impure corruption. How he acts is hidden and too high for us. And it is not strange that lusting flesh rebels against it. But for this very reason we ought to avoid attempting to restrict heaven’s great height to our narrow vision. Therefore let it be a fixed point that even while men’s passion runs high and rushes uncontrollably hither and thither, God remains supreme over all and by his hidden bridle directs their motions wherever it seems to him good.

At the same time we must also hold that God’s action is distinct from man’s, so that his providence is free from all iniquity, and his decrees have no affinity with the wrongdoings of men. A most beautiful illustration of this truth is presented to our eyes in this story. Joseph was sold by his brothers for no other reason than that they wanted him somehow destroyed and out of the way. The same act is ascribed to God, but with the very different purpose of providing the house of Jacob with food in time of famine and beyond their every hope. . . . Hence it is clear that, although God at first seems to act as do wicked men, in the end their crime is a far cry from his wonderful justice. . . .

But we also see that men are no less criminal because God, contrary to their expectations, transforms the end they seek in their wickedness to a good and happy outcome. . . . Certainly we must hold that men’s deeds must be valued not by their issue, but by whether they failed to do their duty, or acted contrary to God’s command, or went beyond the limits of their vocation. When a man neglects his wife and children, and does not labor to provide for their necessities, even though they do not die unless God so wills, this in no way excuses the brutality of the husband and father who deserts them when he ought to be their helper. Therefore people with a bad conscience gain nothing by pushing forward the providence of God as a screen for their misdeeds.

But I ask you to note again, How often God resists the malice of those who desire to harm us, not only resists but also turns their evil efforts to our good! Thus he mitigates the afflictions of our flesh and gives us a calm spirit and greater peace.

God could have said to them: “I created you and I am your father who feeds you. The sun shines daily upon you and the earth bears its fruits. In fact I hold you bound to me by the innumerable benefits I confer upon you by my kindness.” God could have dealt with them in that way; but as I have already pointed out, he preferred to bring before them the free adoption of Abraham’s seed. The disloyalty of the Jews was all the more intolerable because they were rejecting an incomparable favor. For God had raised them above all nations not because of any merit or worth of their own, but because he was pleased to do so.

The prophet begins by saying that God loved the Jews in order to make them realize that their scorn for God’s teaching was the worst possible response to his love. This is the first point.

Next, it is obvious that he is indirectly reproaching their ingratitude when he makes them say, How didst thou love us? With this God implies, “If you should say, or rather, should ask, In what way have I loved you? my answer is, Truly in that I set aside Esau and chose your father Jacob, although they were brothers. . . .” We see, as I mentioned above, that the prophet reminds the Jews of the free covenant to leave them no excuse for their wickedness in repaying God so badly for his special grace toward them.

He does not accuse them because they were created like the rest of mankind, or because God has given them the light of his sun, and provided them with food out of the ground. He says that if they have been set above other peoples, it is not by their own merit but because God had seen fit to choose their father, Jacob. The prophet could have named Abraham; but since Jacob and Esau were both descended from Abraham, with whom God had made his covenant, God’s gracious favor was the more conspicuous in Jacob. First, God chose Abraham alone, and put the other families of mankind aside. Then, out of this one family whom God had adopted, one man was chosen and the other rejected.

The point is not merely that Esau and Jacob were brothers. We must notice other facts which the prophet does not state because everybody knew them. . . . All the Jews knew that Esau was the first-born, and that it was contrary to nature for Jacob to obtain the first-born’s right. . . . But Jacob was divinely chosen and his brother, the first-born, was rejected.

If we seek the reason for this, we shall not find it in a difference of root or origin. The two men were brothers; and even before they came out of their mother’s womb, God had already declared by oracle that Jacob would be the greater of the two. So we see that the primary source of every good we find in the descendants of Abraham was derived solely from the free love of God. Indeed Moses says often, Not because you excelled other nations, or were more numerous, did God honor you with so many kindnesses, but because he loved your fathers (Deut. 7:7). The Jews were continually warned not to look for the reason for their adoption elsewhere than in God’s free favor. He had seen fit to choose them; this alone was the source of their security.

After having briefly recalled the benefits which should have filled the Jews with shame, the prophet comes to his main point, which is, as I said above, that God declares himself defrauded of his right in two ways: the Jews neither revere him as Father nor fear him as Lord. He could indeed, by right of creation, call himself both Father and Lord, but I have already explained that he refers rather to their adoption because God’s grace is the more striking when he out of all mankind chooses some few to be his own people. . . . Those whom he honors with such an election he binds to himself with a most holy chain; and if they desert him, there is no excuse whatever for their treachery.

Since we now understand the prophet’s purpose and the aim of the whole reproof, it remains to adapt his teaching to our own use. We are not descendants of Abraham or of Jacob, according to the flesh; but God has given us sure evidence of his adoption, which singles us out from other peoples whom we in no way excel. Clearly, then, if we do not respond to God’s call, we are found no less guilty than the Jews. I am touching on this briefly now, to point out that this teaching has no less importance for us today than it did for the Jews at that time.

Although the method of our adoption differs from that which affected one seed or one family, it is true of us as it was of them that we are raised above others not by our own worth but because God has freely chosen us for his people. Since he has so chosen us, we belong to him, more especially because he has bought us by the blood of his Son. By granting us participation in his inestimable grace through the gospel, he has made us both sons and servants. Therefore, unless we honor him as Father and fear him as Lord, the same (and no less) ingratitude will be found in us as was found in that ancient people.

There is no doubt that the name of God is more precious than the whole world, and therefore the worship of him ought to be counted of more value than all the duties by which we exercise our love for our fellow men. But the prophet, as I said, was not scrupulous about keeping this order and preferred to show by what actions men can prove that they really fear God and keep his law.

Then he speaks of the worship of God; and it is worth noting that he says, to walk with God, men must be humble. Here he condemns all pride, all confidence in the flesh. For whoever claims anything at all for himself walks with God, turning his back to Him. The true way to walk with God is to surrender ourselves wholly, making ourselves as nothing. The beginning of worshiping God and glorifying him is to think humbly and modestly of ourselves.

For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living. Rom. 14:7–9.

He now confirms the previous verse by arguing from the whole to the parts; since our whole life must be devoted to the glory of God, it is no surprise that our particular acts throughout our life should be done before him. So then, a Christian’s life is ordered rightly only when he keeps his eyes upon the will of God. Since you should relate everything you do to his will, it is wrong to undertake anything at all which you know will displease him, or anything which you are not convinced will please him.

To live to the Lord, here, does not mean, as it does in chapter 6, verse 8, to come to life by the working of the Spirit. It means rather to be ready for his will and the nod of his head, and to place all things at the disposal of his glory. We are not only to live but also to die in the Lord; that is, we are to die as well as live by his will; and for this he gives the best of reasons: whether we live or we die, we are his; from which it follows that in life and in death we are under his authority. This teaching is open to a wide application; for in this way God asserts his power over life and death, so that everyone may accept his condition as under his yoke; for it is only just that God should assign to every man his own place, and how he is to spend his life. In this way, we are not only forbidden to undertake anything without God’s authority, but we are also enjoined to endurance under all trouble and privation. When our flesh shrinks before adversity, let us keep in mind that if a man, who is neither free nor a law to himself, refuses to depend upon the good pleasure of his Lord, he subverts justice and right order alike. So then, this is the rule for living and dying which has been given us: when God prolongs for us a life which is continually full of bitterness and exhaustion, we must not yearn to get away from it before our time; on the other hand, if he calls us away suddenly in the flower of our youth, we should always be ready to go.

For to this end Christ died. This confirms the above argument. It proves that we ought to live and die to the Lord, by adding that whether we live or we die, we are in Christ’s power. He now shows how rightly Christ asserts his power over us, since he acquired it at a great price; for, by his death for our salvation, he obtained a power which he exercises beyond our death; by his death and resurrection, he is worthy that we should, in our dying as well as in our living, serve the glory of his name. Rose and lived again, furthermore, means that by the resurrection he partakes of a new mode of life, and that since this life of his, which he now has, is unchangeable, his dominion over us is to be eternal.

He who loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hated his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. John 12:25.

He that loveth his life. Christ adds exhortation to teaching. If it is by death that we bear fruit, when God mortifies us we should bear it with patience. Since he opposes the love of life to the hatred of it, we should understand what it is to love and hate life. Anyone who desires the present life so much that he will not let go of it except by force is said to love life. Anyone who despises life so much as to be willing with courage to go to his death is said to hate life. Life should not be hated as such, because it is regarded rightly as among God’s chief blessings. Still, believers should be willing to lay it down when it keeps them from Christ, just as a man who is in a hurry to go somewhere will throw a troublesome and unwieldy burden off his shoulder. In short, it is not in itself wrong to love this life, provided we walk its course with our eyes upon our ultimate end. We love life rightly when we remain in it according to God’s intention for us, and are ready to leave it according to his will: in a word, when as it were we carry it in our hands and offer it to God as a sacrifice. Anyone who is unduly attached to this world loses his life; that is, he hurls it to everlasting ruin. . . .

Whoever is attached to this world deprives himself of heavenly life, to which we cannot be heirs unless we live as strangers and sojourners in this world. Hence it is that anyone who is too anxious for his security in this world is an alien to the Kingdom of God, or the true life.

He that hateth his life. I have already pointed out that this is said relatively; we ought to spurn life, in so far as it keeps us from living to God. If meditation on the heavenly life came first in our hearts, the world would not be able to keep us back. . . . Anyone who does not turn his eyes to heaven has not learned how to take care of this life.

And be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God. Rom. 12:2.

World has many meanings; here it refers to men’s attitudes and moral behavior. Paul forbids us, with good reason, to conform to them. Since the whole world lies in wickedness, if we would put on Christ, we must put off everything that is of man [or the world]; and to remove all doubt, he asks us on the contrary to be transformed into a newness of mind. We find such contrasts often in Scripture; there is no room left for doubt on this point.

Now, consider seriously what kind of newness it is that is required of us. We are not to be renewed merely in our flesh, or, as the Doctors of the SorbonneSorbonne the original name of the University of Paris, founded by Robert de Sorbon in 1256. The university, where Thomas Aquinas had taught, was in the sixteenth century a citadel of Catholic orthodoxy, and its theologians defended it zealously against the Lutheran heresy. interpret “flesh,” in the lower part of the soul, but rather in our minds, which is the best part of us, and according to the philosophers, the ruling element in us; for they call reason ἡγεμονικόν and fancy it as a queen of wisdom. But Paul shames it off its godly throne, and bidding us to put on a new mind, reduces it to nothing. However much we flatter ourselves, the word of Christ is still true, that every man who would enter the Kingdom of God must be born again; for, in mind and heart, we are altogether alienated from the righteousness of God.

That ye may prove what is the will. Here we have the purpose for which we are to put on a new mind; we are to say good-bye to all our own counsels and considerations, and to those of all men, so that we may attend only to the will of God, who alone possesses true understanding and wisdom. But if we can prove what is the will of God only by the renewing of our mind, we can see how far gone we are in our enmity to God.

The additional adjectives in this verse are meant to commend the will of God to us, and to turn us to it with greater eagerness. If our perversity is to be kept within bounds, it is necessary to realize that righteousness and perfection which truly deserve praise belong to the will of God alone. The world invents its own good works and persuades itself that they are good. But Paul declares that good and right according to the world are to be judged by the commandments of God. The world praises and finds pleasure in its own devices; Paul on the other hand affirms that nothing is pleasing to God except what he himself has commanded. In seeking perfection, the world backslides from the Word of God and goes after new inventions; Paul fixes perfection in the will of God, and shows that anyone who goes beyond it imagines falsehood and falls into delusion.

But he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. 2 Cor. 10:17.

This statement is made to avoid the impression that Paul’s glorying was an empty boast. So, he brings himself and others before the judgment of God, and says that only those of whom God approves have the right to glory. Besides to glory in the Lord does not mean the same thing as it does in the former epistle (1 Cor. 1:31) and in Jer. 9:24. In these latter passages, it means to know God as the Author of all good, and to ascribe every good to his grace, so that men will not exalt themselves, but glorify God alone. Here, on the other hand, it means to let God alone be the judge in our glorying, and to consider all other judgment as worthless. Some people rely upon human opinion and weigh themselves in the balance of popular judgment; others are deceived by their own arrogance. Paul commands us to seek only the glory which comes from pleasing the Lord, by whose judgment we all stand or fall.

Even the pagans say that true glory consists in an upright conscience. Now, this is true, but it is not the whole truth. Since all men are blinded by too much self-love, we are not to be satisfied with our own judgment of our deeds. We must keep in mind what Paul says elsewhere: that even though he is not aware of anything [wrong] in him, he is not therefore justified (1 Cor. 4:4). What then? Let us remember that judgment is reserved to God, who [alone] declares it concerning us; therefore, we are in no position to plead our own cause. This is confirmed by what follows. For, it is not the man who commends himself that is approved. It is easy for men to be deceived by a false conviction; and it happens every day. Therefore, putting all else aside, let us aspire to be approved by God: let us be satisfied by his approval alone, which should mean more to us than the plaudits of the whole world. Someone (Cicero106–43 B.C. Roman statesman and philosopher who was regarded very highly during the Renaissance. He belonged to the New Academy and was deeply imbued with Stoic ethics. His more famous writings are “On the Supreme Good,” the “Tusculan Disputations,” “On the Nature of the Gods,” “On Duties” (de Officiis). He was also a great stylist and was eagerly emulated during the Revival of Learning.) has said that one good word from Plato was equal to a thousand. But we are not concerned with the judgment of men, as to who is worth more than another; we have to do with the judgment of God, whose it is to turn all human pronouncements upside down.

Now Peter sat without in the palace; and a damsel came unto him saying, Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee. But he denied before them all. . . . And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man. . . . Then he began to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the cock crew. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus. . . . And he went out, and wept bitterly. Matt. 26:69–75.

This story of Peter’s fall is a clear image of our own weakness, and his repentance is given us as an unforgettable example of the goodness and mercy of God. This one man’s story contains a teaching which is extremely useful for the whole church. It instructs those who stand faithful to watch and fear that they may not fall; and it lifts up those who have fallen with the hope of forgiveness.

In the first place, let us notice that Peter showed poor judgment in entering the high priest’s court. It was, of course, an act of devotion; it was his duty to follow the Master. But since he had already been warned of his coming defection, he should rather have hidden himself in a corner, so as to avoid an occasion for sin. So, it happens often to believers that, while seeming to do something virtuous, they throw themselves in the way of temptation. Therefore, we ought to pray to the Lord that he hold us back with the rein of his Spirit, so that we may not charge ahead on our own, and be punished right off. Besides, we should pray that, when we propose to do something, we may not fail before we have started, or at a later time; that he may supply us from heaven with the fortitude to finish what we have begun. The knowledge of our own weakness ought not so to unnerve us that we will not go when God calls us. Still, it ought to restrain our rashness, and prevent us from attempting what is beyond our calling. Also, it ought to move us to pray that God, who has led us to begin well, may give us the grace to persevere.

A damsel came unto him. We see here that it takes less than a great struggle, or a big army and many guns, to overpower a man. Any man who is not upheld by the hand of God is soon knocked down by a slight wind or the uproar made by a falling leaf. Peter certainly had as much courage as the rest of us. He had already given evidence of an uncommonly high spirit, even though combined with a preposterous audacity. Still, he denied the Master; not because he was being dragged before the tribunal of the high priest, or because his enemies were upon him to kill him with violent hands, but because he was terrified by the voice of a woman. But he had a little while before fancied himself a soldier fighting to the death! Let us remember therefore that our strength, far from being equal to standing up under powerful attacks, fails in the mere shadow of a battle. But in this way, God works the just reward of our own unfaithfulness; he disarms us and strips us of all power. Thus it is that, when we set aside the fear of God, a mere nothing fills us with trepidation. If Peter had had a living and solid fear of God, he would have been an invincible fortress. As it was, being naked and unarmed, he was frightened while he was still a long way from peril.

He denied before them all. Peter’s crime is all the greater because he did not shrink from denying his Master before a whole crowd of witnesses. The Spirit states this fact purposely, so that, when faced with a crowd of people, we may hold on to the confession of our faith. For, if we deny Christ in the presence of the weak, and they are struck by our example, and give way, we become destroyers of human souls, so far as it lies within our power. When we cheat Christ of the witness we owe him in the presence of the godless who have contempt for God, and are enemies of the gospel, we expose his sacred name to ridicule by everybody. Finally, as bold and free confession builds up all the believers, and puts the unbelievers to shame, so equally public defection in the church brings with it ruination of faith and disgrace upon sound doctrine.

It is worth noting that Peter, when he was unable to slip out with a simple denial, doubled his crime by adding an oath; and a little later, under harder pressure, he even stooped to cursing. From this we gather that once a sinner falls, he is immediately forced to go from bad to worse. Thus, those who begin with a mediocre offense thereafter hurl themselves headlong into the most frightful wickedness, which would at first have filled them with horror. And this is the just vindication of God that, after we deprive ourselves of the aid of the Spirit, he permits Satan to exercise his violent dominion over us; and Satan, having first subdued and held us in bondage, throws us around, now in one direction, now in another. But this happens chiefly when we deny our faith; because, when a man through the fear of the cross turns aside from confessing the gospel in its purity, and finds that he still cannot satisfy his enemies, he goes further and denies openly with an oath what he did not have the courage to confess.

Moreover, it is to be observed that in one moment Peter defaulted three times: which shows how unstable we are and how disposed to fall when pushed by Satan. Certainly, a mere nothing will make us fall unless God holds us up with his outstretched hand. When the energy of the Spirit of grace became dead in Peter, he was ready to deny Christ a hundred or a thousand times, no matter who came by and questioned him about his Lord. But, though he was vile enough to fall three times, the Lord spared him; He stopped the tongues of his enemies, so that they did not bury him under their attacks. Thus, it is necessary that Satan be bridled every day; otherwise, he would overwhelm us with endless temptations. For, he never stops attacking us with his numerous weapons. If God were not on our side, knowing our weakness, and breaking the force of his [Satan’s] fury, we would have to battle with a whole array of overwhelming temptations. Hence, we ought to celebrate the mercy of God in this matter, because he allows our enemy only a hundredth of the force he would like to use in his assault upon us.

Then he began to curse. By this third denial, Peter’s unfaithfulness towards the Master reached the limit. Not satisfied with an oath, he went on to curse, consigning his body and soul to destruction. He calls on God himself to curse him, if he knows Christ; which is as much as saying, “May I perish to hell if I have anything to do with the salvation of God.” Therefore, we ought to admire the goodness of Christ all the more, because he raised his disciple up from such a deadly ruin and healed him. Besides, this passage shows us that when a man falls through the weakness of the flesh, and denies knowing the truth, he does not necessarily blaspheme against the Spirit. Of course, Peter had heard from the mouth of the Lord himself what a treachery it is to deny him before men, and what horrible judgment before God and the angels awaited those who in cowardly fear of the cross abandon the confession of faith. Moreover, it is not for nothing that a little while before Peter himself had preferred death as well as torment to denial of Christ. Now, knowing all this and in spite of previous warning, he rushes headlong to deny his Lord! And still, and after all this, he is forgiven. It follows that he sinned not by any incurable malice but through weakness. He would have been more than willing to pay Christ the debt of godly duty, had not fear put out even the sparks of right feeling.

And Peter remembered. Luke is our witness that when the voice [of the cock] had sounded, Christ looked at Peter. Mark says that before this Peter paid no attention to the crowing of the cock. Therefore, he needed the look of Christ to bring him to his senses. Every one of us has the same experience. Which one of us does not ignore calmly with heavy ears, not merely the many and different songs of the birds who call us to glorify God, but also God’s own voice which sounds clearly and distinctly in the law and the gospel? And such beastly stupidity takes hold of our minds, not only for a day but at all times, unless Christ bless us with his look, which alone converts the heart of man. It is important to note, however, that it was no ordinary look that accomplished this; for Christ had before looked also at Judas, without making him any the better. When Christ looked at Peter, he added the secret power of the Spirit to his eyes, so that, by the rays of his grace, his look penetrated into Peter’s very heart. From this let us know that when a man falls he will not even begin to repent, unless the Lord look at him.

2. FREEDOM, LOVE, EQUALITY

Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Gal. 5:1.

Here Paul is concerned with freedom from the ceremonies of the law, which the false apostles prescribed as necessary. But let readers remember that such liberty is but a part of what Christ has acquired for us. How little it would have been had he freed us only from the ceremonies — but a trickle from the fountain! Christ was made a curse: to save us from the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13); to break the power of the law, in so far as under it we were subject to the judgment of God and to the penalty of eternal death; finally, to snatch us from the tyranny of sin, Satan, and death. Thus, when Paul speaks of the ceremonies, he includes under it the law as a whole. But we shall speak of this more fully under the epistle to the Colossians.

Furthermore, upon the cross, Christ obtained our liberty; and, through the gospel, he gives us its fruit for a possession. Paul therefore does well to warn the Galatians not to be entangled with the yoke of bondage: that is, not to let a trap be laid for their consciences. For, when men put an unjust burden on our shoulders, we might be able to bear it; but when they try to enslave our conscience, we ought to resist strongly and to the death. If we let men bind our consciences, we shall be deprived of a priceless good; what is more, we shall have insulted Christ who is the author of our liberty. But what does again mean, since the Galatians never did live under the law? It means simply that they are not to act as though they had not been redeemed by the grace of Christ. Even though the law was given to the Jews and not to the Gentiles, apart from Christ both alike were in bondage, and not free.

For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Gal. 5:13–14.

Now Paul warns them against the wrong use of their liberty. In writing on the epistle to the Corinthians, we pointed out that having liberty is one thing, practicing it quite another; liberty belongs to the conscience, and has to do with God; the practice of liberty is an outward matter and concerns not only God but also our fellow men. After having exhorted the Galatians not to let anyone touch their liberty, he now asks them to exercise it properly. He prescribes a rule for its legitimate use, so that they may not turn it into a pretext of, or an occasion for, license. Liberty is not given to the flesh, which ought rather to be held captive under the yoke; it is a spiritual good which godly minds alone are able to exercise.

Some locate the Valley of Jehoshaphat between the Mount of Olives and the city; but I do not know how probable that conjecture is. In my judgment, the important point is that the text reminds the people of God’s past goodness so as to inspire the faithful in all ages to hope for their own salvation.

Others indeed prefer to interpret Jehoshaphat from the meaning of the root from which it is derived. (And certainly Jeho-shaphat means “the judgment of God.”) They translate it as “the valley of God’s judgment.” If you prefer this meaning, I do not object. Certainly the name is appropriate, and even if the prophet is here speaking of the holy king in order to encourage the Jews to follow his example, there is no doubt that he is also referring to the judgment of God or to the verdict he will deliver in favor of his people. For the next words are I will decide upon them there; and the verb, like the name, is from the root shaphat. Clearly, if the name belongs to the place and was also the name of the king, the prophet wished to enlarge its meaning; it is as if he had said, “When God dwells in the midst of his people, he will call all nations to judgment; and this is what he now wills to declare and establish.”

Some twist the passage into a reference to the Last Judgment — but that is violently forced. From that misinterpretation arose the idea that the whole world will gather in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. But we know such mad dreams filled the world when the light of sane teaching was quenched. It is not strange, after the world had so profaned the worship of God, that all men became fascinated with crude absurdities. But when we consider the prophet’s purpose, there is no doubt that he names the Valley of Jehoshaphat to give hope to the Jews that God himself will guard their safety. He says frequently that God will live among them; later in this very chapter we read, And God will live in the midst of you.

And I fed the flock of slaughter, truly (or therefore) the poor of the flock; and I took for myself two staffs, the one I called Elegance (or Beauty) and the other I called Cords (or as some translate, Destroyers. This we shall discuss); and I fed the flock. Zech. 11:7. (Calvin’s wording.)

Here the prophet continues an earlier theme and clarifies what had not been sufficiently explained: namely, that the ingratitude of the people, especially since it was combined with obstinacy, was worthy of death and left no room for pardon. God’s Fatherly care had been basely and dishonorably rejected, as well as the gracious kindness which he had shown to the people.

God declares that he has fed the flock. Others take Zechariah as the subject; but as I said, God is enumerating the favors which in time of peace he had conferred on the people until he saw that they were unworthy of any kindness. We should remember that the prophet is speaking to the remnant. He is not here recounting God’s ancient favors to Israel, but describing the state of the people after their return from the exile in Babylon. In an earlier passage, God seemed to entrust this fraction of the people to Zechariah to feed. But as I have said, this whole address is intended to make it obvious that all guilt belonged to the people who had rejected God’s kindness and stubbornly fought against him, leaving no room or entryway for his mercy. This remonstrance is therefore in the name of God himself.

Truly the poor. Some translate because of. The word lakhen may introduce an explanation, or we may take the phrase to mean especially the poor. In any case, what the prophet means is that God had looked after the whole people because he hoped there were some sheep left who deserved mercy. God says that because he hoped there were some poor little sheep among the corrupt flock, he did not deem it hard or troublesome to lead his people as their shepherd. I fed the flock of slaughter, truly, he says, because there were in the flock some poor sheep whom I was unwilling to desert. I preferred to try everything rather than abandon one small sheep if there was one in the whole flock.

He says he took two staffs, one called no’am, the other hobelim. Those who translate the second “destroyers” do indeed interpret the Hebrew word literally if we stick to the vowel points. But since hebel and the plural habalim means “ropes” or cords,” I have no doubt that the prophet means here “small cords” or “binding twine.” You say, “But the grammar does not permit that!” As if Zechariah had written the vowel points, which were not then in use! I know, of course, the great care with which the ancient scribes worked out the points, when the language was no longer in ordinary and familiar use. And those who neglect the points or reject them entirely are certainly lacking in sense and good judgment. But some right of choice must be allowed. If we read destroyers here, the words make no sense; and if we read cords we alter only the two vowel points, and not a single letter. Since the context itself requires “cords,” I am astonished that interpreters have slavishly allowed themselves to be coerced [by two vowel points] and have not seen what the prophet was talking about.

Now the prophet says He took two staffs, but obviously not to do the ordinary work of a shepherd. Any shepherd is content with one crook. (Staff here means a shepherd’s crook.) And each shepherd works with his own crook. But here the prophet says that two crooks or shepherd’s staffs were needed, because when God leads his people his care of them surpasses that of any human shepherd.

But I leave the rest for tomorrow.

Yesterday we said that the name habalim, by which Zechariah called the second staff, ought not to be translated “destroyers,” as do all the Hebrews. God here teaches that he has done everything which can be done by a good and faithful shepherd, and that his people were perishing by their own fault. Now since God himself was discharging the duties of a shepherd, he could not have been carrying a staff for destruction. Besides, it is obvious that the prophet has put this word (habalim) together with the other, no’am. And finally, he says that the staff called habalim was broken to annul the brotherhood between Israel and Judah. What connection is there between “destroy” and “unite” ? It is correct therefore to take the name hobelim or habalim as “cords.”

Now we must see why the prophet names one staff Elegance or Beauty and the other Cords. Some think the no’am stands for natural law and habalim for the law of Moses. And those who translate “cords” (as Jerome rightly does here) think that since the law bound the ancient people to a hard yoke, it was called a rope because it constrained them. Others, like Jerome himself, refer to the words of Moses, When the Lord cast his cord, he chose a place in Israel, etc. (Deut. 32:8). And therefore they think that the cord stands for “inheritance.” But the first interpretation is too farfetched and forced. And at variance with the second is the prophet’s use of the word in the plural which is not consistent with inheritance. From the context it can be assumed, as we said yesterday, that cords are to be understood as union. Therefore, the text means that God had fulfilled the office of shepherd towards his chosen people and had prescribed for them the best possible order. This I understand from no’am. For nothing could more perfectly exemplify the beauty of order than the rule of life which God used for Israel. With good reason, therefore, he compares his shepherd’s crook to Beauty; as if he said that the rule had been so perfectly fashioned that nothing better could be imagined.

For the second staff he takes Unity or Concord, and this marked the height of his favor; for he had gathered together the scattered Israelites that they might once again be one people. It is true that few from the Kingdom of Israel had returned to their homeland; but it is clear that not all of the remnant was only from Judah, Benjamin, and the Levites; there were others mixed in with them. Therefore, the appropriate interpretation of this verse is that God had not only established a most beautiful order [of government], but had also added brotherly unity so that the sons of Abraham were joined together in one spirit and one soul.

Therefore, since theirs was so good a shepherd, their ingratitude was the more shameful and unendurable when they threw off his yoke and refused to be guided by his staff. Now we see why the prophet used these words Beauty and Union, when he described God as carrying two staffs.

Its waters will roar and toss tumultuously, and the mountains will be shaken with its swelling. Selah.

The streamlets of her river will make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.

God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved. Ps. 46:3–5. (Calvin’s wording.)

To understand the full meaning of this [third] verse, we should read it with what follows. Although the waters of the sea roar and roll wildly, and the mountains themselves shake at the violent impact, the City of God in the midst of such dreadful turmoil lies happy and calm, content with its narrow streams. The prophet means that the narrow channel of a small river is enough to give complete joy to the Holy City, even if the whole world should quake. I have mentioned before how useful a teaching this passage contains. Our faith is truly tested when in a time of great conflict hell seems ready to engulf us. And here we have pictured for us the victory of our faith over the whole world, whenever faith rises to conquer all fears amid confusion and threats of complete destruction. The sons of God do not find danger laughable, nor do they jest at death; but in danger they rejoice because they know that God’s promised aid outweighs all the evils which inspire terror. The sentiment of Horace appears very noble when he says of the righteous man, conscious of his own innocence:

Si fractus illabitur orbis

Impavidum ferient ruinae.

(When all the bulwarks of the earth crash suddenly to pieces he will face without fear the falling fragments.) But since no one has ever found a man such as Horace imagines, the words are empty. True courage is founded altogether in God’s protection; and those who rely upon God can boast not only that they are unafraid, but that they will be safe and secure when ruin overtakes the whole world. The prophet says explicitly that the City of God will be happy, although it does not possess a tumultuous sea which can throw its ever-surging waves against the assaults [of its enemies]. All it has is a little river. The prophet is referring to the brook which flowed from Siloah and went past Jerusalem. I have no doubt that he here blames obliquely the false confidence of those who are fortified with earthly resources and dream that they are beyond the reach of hostile weapons. Those who anxiously gather invincible garrisons appear indeed to be able to prevent invasion by foreign enemies, as though they were protected on all sides by the sea; but it often happens that they are overwhelmed by their own weapons as a tempest devastates and submerges an island in a flood. But those who trust themselves to God, although in the eyes of the world they are exposed to all kinds of injuries and have no defense to ward off attacks, nonetheless rest in security. For this reason, Isaiah (8:6) blames the Jews for despising the gently flowing waters of Siloah and seeking for deep and rapid rivers. . . .

In the same way today also, the Spirit encourages and inspires us to the same constancy: to despise the forces of those who march against us in splendor and confidence, to stand tranquil among all commotions and disturbances. Nor need we be ashamed of our nakedness if God’s hand is outstretched to preserve us. Therefore, although God’s help drips in a small stream like a rivulet, it brings us more of tranquillity than if all the powers of the world were all heaped up together at one time for helping us.

God in the midst of her. Now he shows how great the security of the church is, because God dwells in the midst of it. The verb will be moved is feminine in Hebrew and cannot refer to God as if he were going to remain stationary in the future. The statement means simply that the Holy City shall not be moved from its place because God dwells in it and is always ready to bring it help.

But ye shall be named the priests of the Lord. Isa. 61:6.

With these words the prophet shows the people how much more glorious their condition would be than it had been before; he means, “Up to now the Lord has chosen you for his own, but in the future he will honor you with much more splendid gifts, for he will elevate you all to priestly honor.” As we know although the whole people was called a priestly Kingdom, only the tribe of Levi performed the priestly office. The prophet here announces that in the future all will be priests. But this did not become manifest until the reign of Christ, although the restoration of the church began when the people returned from Babylon. At the coming of Christ, all the faithful were honored and exalted with priestly dignity.

We should consider the nature of this priesthood carefully. Animals are no longer to be slain as sacrifices to God; it is human beings that are to be brought as sacrifice — that is brought to obedience to Christ — as Paul said he did when by the sword of the gospel, he made an offering of the Gentiles that they might obey God (Rom. 15:16).

See then how childishly the papists misinterpret this passage when they use it to prove their own priesthood. Priests are set up by the pope and his followers to sacrifice Christ, not to teach the people. But Christ offered himself as a sacrifice for men’s eternal redemption and he alone officiated in that priestly act. He simply orders the fruit of his sacrifice to be brought to us in the teaching of the gospel. Those who usurp his office and wish to repeat the offering which he completed are sacrilegious.

But every one of us ought to offer himself and all his possessions to God in sacrifice, and so to perform his rightful priestly office. Secondly, ministers who are especially called to the office of teaching should use the sword of the Word to make men a sacrifice and to consecrate them to God. True ministers, certainly, are those who try or undertake nothing of themselves, but carry out faithfully and resolutely the commands which they have received from God.

And thou shalt be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God. Isa. 62:3.

A royal diadem. He calls the church God’s crown because God wishes his glory to shine in us. When we read this, we must see and wonder at the inconceivable goodness of God. For although we are by nature filthy and corrupt and more foul than the mire of the streets, he adorns us bounteously and desires to have us as the diadem of his Kingdom.

2. THE MINISTRY

From the Introduction to the Commentary on Isaiah.

It is usual to cover many subjects in discussing the office of the prophet. But no summary (or explanation) of it pleases me better than one which relates the prophets to the law from which they drew their teaching as brooks flow from their source. Since the prophets set the law as the rule for themselves and copied it, they may properly be called and counted its interpreters. There is no separation between the two.

The law contains three most important divisions: first, the teaching of the way of life; second, threats and promises; third, the covenant of grace, founded in Christ and including in itself all special promises. The sections dealing with ceremonies were exercises by which the people were kept to the worship of God and religion, and were appendixes to the first table.

The prophets explained the teaching of the law more extensively than was done in the law itself and interpreted more fully what the two tables covered in few words; and they made clear what the Lord particularly required at the moment. The threats and promises which Moses stated in general, they fitted to their own time and made specific. Finally, what related to Christ and his Kingdom, expressed rather obscurely by Moses, the prophets announced more plainly, bearing fuller and richer witness to the covenant of grace.

If we are to understand the relationship between the prophets and the law, we must discuss the matter in more detail. God established the law itself as the perpetual rule of his church, to be always in the hands of men, and to be followed by all posterity. But he saw the danger that the teaching transmitted by Moses would not be enough for a rude and unruly people. And further, he saw that the people themselves could scarcely be restrained except by a tighter rein. Therefore, since, he had forbidden them to consult either magi or soothsayers, either astrologers or observers of animals’ entrails, and had required them to be satisfied with his teaching alone, he added the promise that a prophet would never be wanting in Israel (Deut. 18:15).