Join us at Ligonier Ministries' 2009 National Conference to study the holiness of God and for a mini-conference on the life and influence of John Calvin, whose 500th birthday we celebrate in 2009.
Burk Parsons on "The Humility of Calvin's Calvinism"
At the foundation of Calvinism according to Calvin is the reality that God is inherently holy and we are not. Calvin’s doctrinal explanation of the depravity of man was not formulated by a cursory comparative examination of the state of mankind in the sixteenth century; rather, his understanding of man’s condition came as a result of his study of all the Bible has to say about the degenerate, humble existence of man after the fall and, in contradistinction, his study of the majestic holiness of God. In a section of his Institutes titled “True humility gives God alone the honor,” Calvin writes of our humility and God’s “loftiness” or “exaltation”: “As our humility is his loftiness, so the confession of our humility has a ready remedy in his mercy.”
These were the kinds of questions Calvin wrestled with throughout his Christian life: What does it mean that God is holy? What are the implications of God’s holiness for our study of doctrine? What are the implications of God’s holiness for our lives? Calvin writes:
From what foundation may righteousness better arise than from the Scriptural warning that we must be made holy because our God is holy? . . . When we hear mention of our union with God, let us remember that holiness must be its bond; not because we come into communion with him by virtue of our holiness! Rather, we ought first to cleave unto him so that, infused with his holiness, we may follow whither he calls.
We do not possess holiness inherently, Calvin explains; rather, it is the very holiness of God that overcomes us and enables us to follow the Lord. In his comments on Exodus 28, Calvin further explains this and describes the impurity of our own “holiness” as he considers Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer, wherein He prayed, “And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth” (John 17:19):
It is undoubtedly a remarkable passage, whereby we are taught that nothing proceeds from us pleasing to God except through the intervention of the grace of the Mediator; for here there is no reference to manifest and gross sins, the pardon of which it is clear that we can only obtain through Christ. . . . This is a harsh saying, and almost a paradox, that our very holinesses are so impure as to need pardon; but it must be borne in mind that nothing is so pure as not to contract some stain from us.
Calvin’s doctrine of God humbled him. He took no pride in his formulation of that doctrine, for he could not boast in a holiness that was not his to boast about. Rather, he boasted only in the majesty and holiness of God. It was that holiness that made him aware of his naturally depraved condition and drove him in his struggle to think, speak, and live as Jesus did. Just as we fail daily in our endeavor to follow our Lord perfectly, so did Calvin; yet he was a man of constant repentance who was more critically aware of himself and his own frailties than anyone else could have been, even admitting toward the end of his life: “I am, and always have been a poor and timid scholar.” Such statements by Calvin were not deceitfully contrived by a mind held captive by false modesty; rather, they overflowed from a mind that had been captivated and a heart that had been humbled by God’s majesty shining through His Word.
Excerpt taken from John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine, & Doxology by Burk Parsons.
Read Celebrating 500 Years of John Calvin, Part 2
Read Celebrating 500 Years of John Calvin, Part 3
Read Celebrating 500 Years of John Calvin, Part 4
Read Celebrating 500 Years of John Calvin, Part 5
Watch The Holiness of God, Part 1
Watch The Holiness of God, Part 2
Watch The Holiness of God, Part 3
Watch The Holiness of God, Part 4
Watch The Holiness of God, Part 5
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