Nathan W. Bingham

And now, this is not conservative Protestant scholarship, obviously, but I'm amazed how often they miss the whole point of a passage after they've stood in judgment over it so learnedly. Whereas if you submit yourself to it and say, every part here has its purpose. Every part is speaking to us. The Bible takes on a whole new richness and character. And that's what Calvin understood.

And that's why Calvin was such a powerful teacher of the Bible, because of this profound submission of his mind and his will to the Scriptures. He wrote a catechism for the Church of Geneva. It's not one of the great Reformation catechisms because it's kind of long. He wrote it very quickly.

And in fact, the printer would send a runner over from the press to take the latest pages that he had written and run them back to the press to set them in type. So, you know, Calvin literally had someone breathing down his neck. He had no opportunity to revise this catechism. And in light of that, it's really quite good. But it's several hundred questions long.

although occasionally Calvin is the friend to the catechist because there'll be a long question and the answer required is just so. So, you know, that was a point of sort of resting in the middle of your catechism lesson. But question 303 was, how should the Scripture be used to obtain profit from it? How should we use the scripture to be profited?

And the answer was, if we lay hold on it with complete heartfelt conviction as nothing less than certain truth come down from heaven, if we show ourselves teachable under it, if we subdue our wills and minds to his obedience, if we love it heartily, if

if having it once engraved on our hearts and its roots fixed there so that it bring forth fruit in our lives, if finally we be formed to its rule, then it will turn to our salvation as intended.

Well, that's not a brief answer or a very memorizable answer, but it's a great answer in terms of talking about how complete our submission to the Scripture needs to be and then how complete the blessing to our spirits the Scripture will be. But do you feel something of the vitality of Calvin as a pastor there?

He's concerned that people will accept the Word and the Word will make a difference in their lives. Let me look at one other theological issue for Calvin, and that's the matter of faith. Faith, too, was an area where Calvin wanted to stress the importance of certainty and Calvin wanted to say to his people, faith is knowledge. In order to believe, you have to know something.

Faith is not just an emotion. Faith has content. And for Calvin, the stress of the content was always the promises of God. Some of you will know this is the 450th anniversary of the writing of the Heidelberg Catechism. And if you don't know that, shame on you. And the Heidelberg Catechism was one of the great Reformation catechisms.

It's a catechism that breathes the spirit of Calvin in an amazing way. If you want a really good summary of Calvin's theology, I don't think you can find a short summary much better than the Heidelberg Catechism, even though he didn't write it. But question 65 of the Heidelberg Catechism says, where does true faith come from? Where does true faith come from? It's a great answer.

Question 65 says, true faith is worked in our hearts by the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Holy Gospel and is confirmed unto us by the Holy Sacraments. Holy, holy, holy. The Holy Spirit, the Holy Gospel, the Holy Sacraments. But what I want you to particularly notice there is it's the preaching of the gospel that that works faith. The preaching of the law is necessary.

It's necessary to bring us to repentance. It's necessary to guide us in the Christian life. But the preaching of the law does not bring faith. Faith comes from hearing the promises of the gospel. That's very much the spirit of John Calvin. Faith is knowledge, knowledge particularly of the promises of gospel, knowledge particularly of God's will to save us in Jesus Christ.

Calvin had a passion that people have confidence in Christ as their Savior. And this is, again, so at odds with the sort of general reputation of John Calvin as this gloomy, doubt-invoking preacher. Calvin's reputation was enormous. done great harm by Max Weber. Max Weber was a great German scholar, and he wrote about the origins of capitalism in the spirit of Calvinism.

And he said in there that Calvinists were so uncertain of the possibility of salvation because of this awful doctrine of election that hovered over them that they worked hard to earn money because money would be evidence to them that God loved them. Now, every point there is wrong, but he was profoundly influential. It's the exact opposite of what Calvin teaches over and over again.

God's will for us is that we have life in Jesus Christ. And God's will is that we come and have refuge and confidence in Jesus Christ. We need to know that love of God in Jesus Christ. Calvin's favorite verse, I think, by the way he repeats it and uses it in his writing over and over, is John 17, verse 3.

"'This is eternal life, that they know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.'" I think a lot of people wouldn't think that would be John Calvin's favorite verse. Nothing about election in there, although election is always implicit everywhere. But it's his passion that people will know eternal life by knowing the true God and knowing the true Jesus.

So we have to have knowledge if we are to have faith. And secondly, we have to have trust. Faith is trust. If God has said something to us, do we trust it? Do we rely on it? Jesus said, come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Do we trust him to keep that promise?

Now, there's some people in the history of the Reformed tradition who've said, you know, I'd really like to come, but I don't think Jesus will receive me. I'm such a sinner. Calvin would have said to that person, you're not trusting the promise of Jesus. Jesus said, come and I'll receive you. Come and I'll give you rest. You see, it's not Arminian to say come.

That's biblical and apostolic and reformed. What's Arminian is to say, you can come on your own. That's not biblical. Jesus says, come and I will give you rest. If you say then to Jesus, I'd like to come, but I really can't, your theology, Jesus, is somewhat defective. If you were more reformed, Jesus, you would know I couldn't come. I don't think Jesus is hearing that from you.

I don't think Jesus wants his theology improved by you. And this is not real Calvinism. This is a kind of hyper-Calvinism. Calvin is passionate to say there are promises. promises that you can trust, and everyone who trusts those promises will be saved. There's no doubt about that. There's no uncertainty about that.