Happy Birthday!

497 years ago today in Nyon, France, a little boy named Jean Cauvin was born. He grew up, was converted to Christ and the gospel of grace--abandoned what was surely to have been a profitable career in law and became a minister. His teachings--merely a recovery of Biblical truth--shaped religious, cultural, and political life in countless nations since that time (even giving birth to that little War for Independence we celebrated last week). His impact was probably heightened by the way we changed his name into something less French sounding, John Calvin. Cauvinist just doesn't have the same ring.

It's quite the understatement to say that this man has been used by God to radically alter my own life. More and more it's not his doctrine--well, at least not the stuff he's famous for--that impacts me. It's his piety, it's his love for God, his heart aflame (think there's a book called that by somebody) because of his fame-making doctrine--that's what draws me. I've been telling people in my church (not sure they believe me yet) if you want answers to your theological questions, read Turretin, or Hodge, or Reymond--Berkhoff, too. But if you want your heart moved, then you read Calvin.

You can see a hint of that in these quotations (I could've killed blogger's disk space by posting everything I wanted to):

. . . I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.

For Scripture is the school of the Holy Spirit, in which, as nothing is omitted that is both necessary and useful to know, so nothing is taught but what is expedient to know. Therefore we must guard against depriving believers of anything disclosed about predestination in Scripture, lest we seem either wickedly to defraud them of the blessing of their God or to accuse and scoff at the Holy Spirit for having published what it is in any way profitable to suppress.

For until men recognize that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by His fatherly care, that He is the Author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond Him - they will never yield Him willing service. Nay, unless they establish their complete happiness in Him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to Him.

If the Lord himself teaches that the Church will struggle with the burden of countless sinners until the day of judgment, it is obviously futile to look for a Church totally free from faults.

Without Christ, sciences in every department are vain....The man who knows not God is vain, though he should be conversant with every branch of learning. Nay more, we may affirm this too with truth, that these choice gifts of God -- expertness of mind, acuteness of judgment, liberal sciences, and acquaintance with languages, are in a manner profaned in every instance in which they fall to the lot of wicked men.

Doctrine has no power, unless efficacy is imparted to it from above. Christ holds out an example to teachers, not to employ themselves only in sowing the Word, but by mingling prayers with it, to implore the assistance of God, that His blessing may render their labor fruitful.

If we seek salvation, we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is 'of him' [1 Corinthians 1:30]. If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in his anointing. If we seek strength, it lies in his dominion; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth. For by his birth he was made like us in all respects [Hebrews 2:17] that he might learn to feel our pain [cf. Hebrews 5:2]. If we seek redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross [Galatians 3:13]; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment, in the power given to him to judge. In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other.

Lord, thank you for your gift of this man, and the work you gave him to do. Soli Deo Gloria.

(picture taken from Reformation Art--great products, btw!)