Calvin on Preaching Repentance and Forgiveness

Repentance is preached in the name of Christ when, through the teaching of the gospel, men hear that all their thoughts, all their inclinations, all their efforts, are corrupt and vicious. Accordingly, they must be reborn if they would enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Forgiveness of sins is preached when men are taught that for them Christ became redemption, righteousness, salvation, and life [I Cor 1:30], by whose name they are freely accounted righteous and innocent in God’s sight (Institutes, 3.III.19, cited from the Battles ed.).

Calvin’s Preaching

• View Calvin’s recorded sermons on various books of the Bible
• Listen to a Reformed Forum interview on Calvin’s preaching

Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion

Biography and Introduction

Calvin Anticipates Revivalism’s “New Measures”

In reply to those who affirm certainty of faith for this life but deny any certainty of faith in the next life, Calvin says:

Then, how absurd it is that the certainty of faith be limited to some point of time, when by its very nature it looks to a future immortality after this life is over! Since, therefore, belivers ascribe to God’s grace the fact that, illumined by his Spirit, they enjoy through faith the contemplation of heavenly life, such glorying is so far from arrogance that if any man is ashamed to confess it, in that very act he betrays his extreme ungratefulness by wickedly suppressing God’s goodness, more than he testifies to his modesty or submission (Institutes, 3.II.40).

While not referring to revivalism per se, the same principle applies ad re. The incalculable folly of “pledge cards,” “anxious benches,” “saw dust trails,” “every head bowed, every eye closed” invitations, and the like is that by looking to earthly measures for what only comes through heavenly means, a Christian conflates heaven and earth, grace and nature, Christianity and Pelagianism.

For example, why would you want to look at your own fading signature on a paper pledge card for assurance of eternal life when heaven’s eternal Spirit signs your immortal soul with His everlasting seal? Christian pilgrim, it is folly to cast your eyes down to earth when the Gospel calls you to lift your eyes up to heaven. For heavenly life look to heaven, not earth, Second Adam, not First. For assurance of faith look to the Father in his Word by his Spirit, not to the passing work of your own hands. In His light we see light; without heaven’s light, we have nothing but darkness.

Calvin Resources

Review: Recovering Mother Kirk: The case for liturgy in the Reformed tradition, by D. G. Hart

Father God; Mother Church?

Daryl Hart’s provocative and penetrating collection of essays, Recovering Mother Kirk, is a profound read; it invites Christians into a way of life that at first sounds like an oxymoron (21-40) and secondly sounds like an evangelical swear word: high-church Calvinism.

Hart reaches out to evangelicals who, having grown fed up with the shallowness of evangelicalism’s individualistic revivalism and subjective idiosyncrasies, are taking the Canterbury Trail or the Roman Road in search of a more historic, objective, meaningful liturgy and Christian life. Hart’s appeal to such liturgical pilgrims is, “If anything, this book’s aim is to show that Geneva should be another option for Protestants seeking a corporate and liturgical expression of their faith.”

Hart’s call for recovering “churchly piety” is rooted in the riches of the Reformed tradition. The title and purpose of Hart’s book comes from John Calvin’s description of the nature and necessity of the church in Book Four of his Institutes (IV.1.4):

But as it is now our purpose to discourse of the visible Church, let us learn, from her single title of Mother, how useful, nay, how necessary the knowledge of her is, since there is no other means of entering into life unless she conceive us in the womb and give us birth, unless she nourish us at her breasts, and, in short, keep us under her charge and government, until, divested of mortal flesh, we become like the angels (Mt. 22:30). For our weakness does not permit us to leave the school until we have spent our whole lives as scholars. Moreover, beyond the pale of the Church no forgiveness of sins, no salvation, can be hoped for, as Isaiah and Joel testify (Isa. 37:32; Joel 2:32). To their testimony Ezekiel subscribes, when he declares, “They shall not be in the assembly of my people, neither shall they be written in the writing of the house of Israel” (Ezek. 3:9); as, on the other hand, those who turn to the cultivation of true piety are said to inscribe their names among the citizens of Jerusalem. For which reason it is said in the psalm, “Remember me, O Lord, with the favour that thou bearest unto thy people: O visit me with thy salvation; that I may see the good of thy chosen, that I may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation, that I may glory with thine inheritance” (Ps. 106:4, 5). By these words the paternal favour of God and the special evidence of spiritual life are confined to his peculiar people, and hence the abandonment of the Church is always fatal.

Reformed Faith Drives Reformed Praxis

By unfolding Calvin’s implications for today’s evangelical scene, Hart seeks to call atomized, motherless Christians back to their organic “Mother Kirk.” This Geneavan/churchly way of life–and it is indeed an entire life system organized around glorifying and enjoying God according to His Word–demands recovering the connection between a theology of churchly Motherhood and her practicing of the corporate means of grace (i.e. WSC 88).

As a sort of road map to Reformed liturgical recovery, Hart skillfully weaves together key theological underpinnings that drive the praxis of Motherly piety: the spirituality of the church, spirit-filled worship according to the truth, special office, spiritual jurisdiction and discipline, liturgy and forms, Psalter singing, and denominational self-consciousness. Without these robust, scriptural truths, Reformed liturgy as a way of life cannot come into its own.

Master of Irony

Knowing full well that the churchly Christianity of which Calvin speaks is mostly alien in today’s American evangelicalism, Hart carefully uses irony to get behind evangelicalism’s presumptions, exposing the theological barrenness of Motherless Christianity. Time and again Hart points out that evangelicalism’s follies in practice arise from her foibles in theology.

Pay careful attention when you see the words “irony” or “ironically” in Harts essays, for he usually unfolds his theses close to these words.

Sacra Scriptura

While the book is a work of historical theology, not exegesis, Hart will challenge you to examine your own presumptions on key ecclesial texts such as:

• Jesus’ worship discourse with the woman of Samaria (John 4)
• Jesus’ institution of the Keys of the Kingdom (Matt. 16:13-20)
• Jesus’ statement, “where two or three are gathered…” (Mat. 18:20)
• Jesus’ Great Commission (Matt. 28:16-20)

Humble Suggestions for Improvement

For a book so strongly advocating churchly piety as an entire way of life–and rightly so–the case for Reformed liturgy could have been strengthened even further by making more connections between Sunday life and the rest of the week. While this topic is dealt with briefly under the discussion on transformationalism (i.e. 172-175), the two cities/two-kingdoms concept is so foreign today that perhaps a couple of essays with titles such as, “What does it mean to be a ‘churchly Christian’ Monday through Saturday?,” and, “The other 6 days of the week,” could facilitate more consistent thinking about liturgical Christianity as a way of life. Along the same lines, common grace is a theological topic directly related to Hart’s two-kingdoms-type thinking, yet this topic is strangely absent in the essays.

In my mind Hart’s essays raise some good questions which they do not answer:

• How does family or individual worship relate to corporate worship?
• Are the corporate means of grace related at all to “private” means of grace?
• What does it look like to be a faithful Christian at my job?
• How do I evangelize and confess Christ before men without being a licensed minister?
• How does my purpose in life as a redeemed image of God relate to my vocation in life?
• What is the difference between “dead orthodoxy” and “churchly piety”?

Furthermore, the book does not address enough of the difficult realities of trying to live an organic/churchly/familial Christianity within a post-agrarian, industrialized, highly-mobile society. More essays need to be written both for ministers and laity on how to connect liturgical theology to life in the third millennium in concrete, rubber-meets-the-road terms (no urban or suburban puns intended!).

Two Thumbs Up

All in all Recovering Mother Kirk is an excellent, provoking, and intriguing read. Even if you don’t agree with all his points, Hart will stimulate your thinking about the the role of the church in your Christian life. I commend the book heartily, especially to Reformed church ministers and elders seeking to guide their parishioners deeper into the Reformed way of life.

Related Elsewhere

• “Reviving the Liturgy,” a Relevant Magazine article by LisaMarie Goetz. While written from a broad perspective, Goetz explains that as more and more Christians become fed up with “seeker-sensitive” worship, they look to liturgy as a way to deepen their Christian experience.
• “Worship in the Church: Pastors’ Roundtable,” a Modern Reformation article: “Michael Horton talks with pastors from three denominations – Lutheran, Reformed, and Presbyterian – about what it means to give glory to God through worship in the church, and in turn receive God’s gifts of peace, righteousness, and satisfaction.”
• “Transforming Culture with a Messiah Complex,” a 9Marks article by Michael Horton: “Evangelicals have been talking lately about transforming the culture, doing kingdom work in all of life, and incarnating the church in the world. Sound good? The trouble is, these movements can conceive of the church as a substitute for Christ, shifting the focus of Christians from his promised return to your best life now.”

Good Preaching Rouses Satan; Bad Preaching Puts Him To Sleep

We Christians get into trouble when we forget the context in which we still live–we are not yet in heaven. Until then, we sojourn in this present evil age. Accordingly, we must constantly tear down false expectations of perfect completeness, the absence of sin, brokenness, and pain, etc., even in the relationships and activities of the church.

Christianity, being antithetical by definition to human autonomy, is offensive to the nature man. Jesus is not a lucky rabbit’s foot which man rubs to gain his every pleasure; rather, Jesus is a “stone of stumbling” and a “rock of offense”:

[A]s it is written, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” (Romans 9:33 ESV).

Christians ought to expect great opposition from the world and from Satan himself, especially (perhaps most especially) when Christians engage in worship. Proclaiming the light of truth in a dark world of lies does not make friends, but enemies. Accordingly, Satan has a role, so to speak, in Christian worship. Perhaps his role can be called “the other side” of preaching the Word. Calvin, in his Prefatory Address to King Francis, makes clear Satan’s role in preaching:

It is one of the characteristics of the divine word, that whenever it appears, Satan ceases to slumber and sleep. This is the surest and most unerring test for distinguishing it from false doctrines which readily betray themselves, while they are received by all with willing ears, and welcomed by an applauding world.

In other words, if one’s preaching is not strong enough to stir Satan from his slumber (hence bringing on problems, persecutions, temptations, and trials), one is probably not preaching the Word in truth. Perhaps the church at large could be helped if her preachers would ask themselves before preaching: Is this message strong enough to get Satan off his duff? And as a correlary: If one is not willing to ask such a question, perhaps one ought to seek another day job.

An Emerging Less-”Calvinless” Evangelicalism

Perhaps we (trying not to be) “Calvinless Calvinists” are among an emerging throng of “Young and Restless” Calvinists.

Good news indeed; although, it would have been nice to read that these newbies are reading Calvin himself instead of relying on second- and third-hand interpretations, Edwards and Piper respectively. But such a wish might be asking for a cake with extra whipped cream, and then eating it too…. Let us first count our blessings before asking for whipped topping.