This year of 2009ad marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of the Genevan Reformer, John Calvin. So it makes perfect sense to remember with thanksgiving the life and ministry of John Calvin, pastor and theologian of the Reformation, whose work continues to be influential in the church and world today.
The legacy he left behind included hundreds of sermons, commentaries on almost the whole Bible, a theology text book that is still referred to today, and countless tracts and letters. But even more than this he left behind lives which through his teaching have been brought to Christ and built up in Christ through the Word he expounded.
Robert Godfrey notes that ‘The real Calvin was not in the first place a man who lived to influence future generations, Rather he was a spiritual pilgrim finding anew the apostolic Christianity expressed in the Bible and serving as a faithful minister of the Word in the Church of his day.’
Inevitably the question turns to the matter of what made him stand out not only in his day but was used of God to speak even through to our day.
In seeking to answer that question B. B. Warfield wrote: ‘Here we have the secret of Calvin’s greatness and the source of his strength unveiled to us. No man ever had a profounder sense of God than he; no man ever more unreservedly surrendered himself to the Divine direction.’ That is, his greatness lied not in his service to himself but in his surrender to God.
Calvin’s seal, which he designed himself, says much about how he understood his own life and vocation. This seal depicted an open hand holding a flaming heart with the words prompte et sincer—”promptly and sincerely”—written around the image. This is picked up in the motto associated with Calvin: ‘I offer my heart to You, Lord, promptly and sincerely.’
For Calvin the gospel is Jesus Christ Himself. He understood that salvation and all its benefits come to us through Christ but are to be found exclusively in Christ. He saw both his life and his calling as in Christ and because of Christ, and as a result saw this was the only legitimate response.