Calvin’s Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

May 18

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, —Ephesians 1:13

Devotional:
Paul asserts that the Ephesians were “sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.” This shows that there is an eternal teacher, by whose agency the promise of our salvation, which otherwise would only strike the air, penetrates into our minds. Similar also is his remark, that the Thessalonians were “chosen by God through sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of truth.” By this connection he briefly suggests that faith itself proceeds only from the Spirit.

John expresses this in plainer terms: “We know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.” Again, “Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.” Therefore Christ promised to send to his disciples “the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive,” that they might be capable of attaining heavenly wisdom.
He ascribes to him the peculiar office of suggesting to their minds all the oral instructions which he had given them. For in vain would the light present itself to the blind, unless the Spirit of understanding would open their mental eyes; so that he may be justly called the key with which the treasures of the kingdom are unlocked to us; and his illumination constitutes our mental eyes to behold them.

It is therefore that Paul so highly commends the ministry of the Spirit; because the instructions of preachers would produce no benefit, did not Christ himself, the internal teacher, by his Spirit, draw to him those who were given him by the Father. Therefore, as we have stated, that complete salvation is found in the person of Christ, so, to make us partakers of it, he “baptizes us with the Holy Spirit and with fire,” enlightening us unto the faith of his Gospel, regenerating us so that we become new creatures, and purging us from profane impurities, consecrates us as holy temples to God. —Institutes, III, i, iv

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin’s Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

Chrestomathy

Like a Mighty Flood

Not a little confusion exists today over the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament dispensation, contrasted with the New.  Below is B. B. Warfield’s excellent summary of the matter:

The old dispensation was a preparatory one and must be strictly conceived as such.  what spiritual blessings came to it were by was of prelibation.  They were many and various.  The Spirited worked in providence no less universally then than now.  He abode in the Church not less really then than now.  He wrought in the hearts of God’s people not less prevalently than now.

All the good that was in the world was then as now due to him.  All the hope of God’s Church then as now depended on him.  Every grace of the godly life then as now was a fruit of his working.  But the object of the whole dispensation was only to prepare for the outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh.  He kept the remnant safe and pure, but it was in order that the seed might be preserved. This was the end of his activity then.

The dispensation of the Spirit, properly so called, did not dawn, however, until the period of preparation was over and the day of outpouring had come.
  The mustard seed had been preserved through all the ages only by the Spirit’s brooding care.  Now it is planted, and it is by his operation that it is growing up into a great tree which shades the whole earth, and to the branches of which all the fowls of heaven come for shelter.

It is not that the work is more real in the new dispensation than in the old.  It is not merely that it is more universal.  It is that it is directed to a different end–that it is no longer for the mere preserving of the seed unto the day of planting, but for the perfecting of the fruitage and the gathering of the harvest.

The Church, to use a figure of Isaiah’s, was then like a pent-in stream; it is now like that pent-in stream with barriers broken down and the Spirit of the Lord driving it.  It was he who preserved it in being when it was pent-in.  It is he who is now driving on its gathered floods till it shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.  In one word, that was a day in which the Spirit restrained his power.  Not the great day of the Spirit has come.  

B. B. Warfield, “The Spirit of God in the Old Testament,”  Selected Shorter Writings, edited by John E Meeter (Nutley, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1973) 2: 716f.

Reforming Spirituality

Liberation and Subjection

The Reformation was an attempt to reform Christianity, back to its historical doctrinal positions and to the Scriptures itself.  The Reformers taught that contemporary Christianity as they experienced it in Western Europe had departed significantly from the early Church fathers and the Scriptures. 

An evidence of this is how often the Reformers cite the early Church fathers in their writing.  For example, in The Institutes of the Christian Religion Calvin cites and quotes Augustine most often amongst the fathers, but the work contains wide ranging references to ante-Nicene and post-Nicene theologians and church leaders. 

One of the reformulations of the Reformation had to do with how we understand the spiritual.  For many in pre-modern Europe the notion of spirit and spiritual was more informed by neo-platonic pagan conceptions than the Scriptures.
  It was understood as being immaterial, opposed to matter and physical reality.  It was a case of body versus spirit–a dualism which ran right through all reality.  God was a pure Spirit, without corporeal reality.  Man was a dualistic being, having both body and spirit.  The more he departed from the body, as it were, ascetically subduing it, the closer he came to resemble and reflect God Himself. 

Thus, even to this day, many Christians mistakenly think that anything which involves bodily and material activity cannot be rightly thought to be spiritual.  Eating food, for example, may be a necessary activity (one shared with all other sentient creatures) but it cannot be regarded as spiritual.  Spiritual activity is attending worship, praying, reading the Bible and so forth. 

One of the reformulations of the Reformation was to recover spirit and spiritual to mean “of the Holy Spirit”, and being subject to God’s Word and to acting out of faith and trust in God Himself. In this way, one’s eating and drinking could and ought to be spiritual acts.  Here, for example, is Luther’s re-formulation:

Everything that our bodies do, the external and the carnal, is an is called spiritual behaviour, if God’s Word is added to it and it is done in faith.  There is therefore nothing which is so bodily, carnal, and external that it does not become spiritual when it is done in the Word of God and faith. [Taken from Luther’s exposition of I Corinthians 7, cited by Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2004 {1957}), p.70]

There are many Christians today who would find such truth radically liberating.  They would also find it to be profoundly challenging.  Every thought, word and deed must needs be sanctified and holy, and it must also be thoroughly engaged with the created world in which we live.  If there is no spiritual realm to escape to then the demands of spirituality encompass everything one is responsible to be and do in this world.  One cannot be spiritual without being engaged thoroughly in the material and the fleshly, the carnal and the bodily.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Silver on Top, and Black on the Bottom 

Theology – Life in the Regeneration
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, 27 May 2012

It is bad when a blogger gets in over his head, or when a theologian does, or when a pamphlateer does, or when a connector-of-the-dots does. But, with all necessary qualifications made, it not bad when a preacher does. It is a preacher’s calling to get in over his head (2 Cor. 2:16). But he needs to be careful to do it the right way — there is a way to be in over your head in the pulpit which is just ordinary confusion, and there is a way that is the work of the Spirit of God.

I wrote earlier about the reunion of Christendom, and how it was going to be glorious. But precisely because it is going to be glorious, it will not the result of careful negotiations hammered out by the canon lawyers. As Lloyd-Jones once memorably put it, getting all the ecclesiastical corpses into one graveyard will not bring about a resurrection.

As a pamphleteer, as a blogger, I do find it necessary to argue for the absolute necessity of the new birth, as I am doing here. But for a preacher, much more than this is involved. The preacher declares words calculated to raise the dead, which is quite different than flattering the living. When the Spirit is pleased to move, He will do so. But the Spirit, when He moves, will not be like a little zephyr, stirring the gauzy curtains of our theological library. It will be more like a massive thunderhead, silver on the top and utterly black on the bottom, coming in from the west, and looking to soak absolutely everybody.

I am an evangelical, the son of evangelicals, and so I do insist on the absolute necessity of the new birth. That’s our wineskin. There is nothing wrong with wineskins, because wine always has to go into something. But there is something wrong with empty wineskins, and there is something wrong with the idea that trafficking in the idea of wine is the same thing as wine, which it isn’t.

The glories that are coming will be the result of what we are talking about, and not the result of our talking about it. Elegant formulations are necessary in their way, but they are also as dead as an idiom about doornails. Reformation and revival consists of the reality of the Spirit moving, and we cannot whistle Him up — we can’t do it with sacraments, we can’t do it with church music, and we can’t do by rolling up our shirt sleeves in order to preach a hot gospel. Here, hold your mouth this way, and maybe that will make the Spirit fall.

But the Spirit will fall. The thunderhead will roll in. And when it happens, the work of regeneration will be a gully washer and lots of ecclesiastics will be pretty upset. But many more of them will be soaked through, and it will become increasingly harder to preach little floating dust cloud sermons.

And it will not be preaching that ushers this in, but rather the folly of preaching. But mark it well — the Spirit never moves in such a way as to leave things right where He found them. The detritus of religiosity — whether prohibited by Scripture or required by it — will be either washed away or washed clean. I speak of icons, candles, sermon manuscripts, choral anthems, lectionaries, processionals, and white eucharistic table cloths. If you want it all to be washed clean, and not washed away, then fasten it to the plain teaching of Scriptures with the nails of evangelical faith, and use as many as you have.

When God pleases, and He showers us with kindness, we will be given the wisdom found in the old song, God Don’t Never Change . . .

God in the pulpit,
God way back at the door,
God in the amen corner,
God all over the floor.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

He Will Come

Liturgy and Worship – Exhortation
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, July 18, 2011

Because we present arguments in the presentation of the gospel, we sometimes come to think that the outcome of matter rests upon those arguments. But God uses arguments — He doesn’t depend upon them. He doesn’t lean on them.

The reason people resist and reject the gospel is because of wilfulness, not because we have not yet assembled the perfect, knock-down argument. I am not arguing against arguments here — Paul reasoned in the synagogues, and so should we. But it is the same with all the external things we may do — pray, preach, send, ordain, plant, or reason. Unless God anoints it, you are praying to the ceiling, preaching to the air, sending a schlub, ordaining his brother, planting a religious club, and reasoning with a two-year-old. You are sweeping water uphill.

You are, in short, entirely dependent upon the Holy Spirit, who is a sovereign wind who blows where He pleases. And this means that when the reformation arrives, it will not be because we whistled Him up. That’s the first thing to be settled in our minds. The second thing is that He will come. He promised.