John Calvin: Prophet Of God’s Love

By Thomas D. Hawkes

[Thomas D. Hawkes (PhD London School of Theology) is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church of America, who most recently served as Senior Pastor of Uptown Church in Charlotte, NC.]

Abstract

While many may consider John Calvin to be the prophet of God’s wrath upon human sin, a more comprehensive reading of Calvin leads one to see his overarching proclamation of God’s love for all humanity, and especially for his people. Calvin declares God’s love as Father/Creator toward all humanity, both through his loving creation and kind providence. Calvin also presents God’s love as Father/Redeemer toward his elect in his accommodating Word and, supremely, in the cross of his Son. The theme of God’s love—woven throughout Calvin’s teaching in sermons, commentaries, and Institutes—was highlighted by Calvin largely in order to help God’s people become like Christ in holiness, as they are drawn to the Father by his astonishing love.

I. Introduction

John Calvin is not generally recognized as a prophet of God’s love. On the contrary, much of the public, even pastors and scholars, often think of Calvin as being harsh, emphasizing only God’s wrath and human depravity.

Dave Hunt, for example, decries Calvin as portraying an unloving God. “No rationalization can explain away the bluntness of Calvin’s language, that it is God’s ‘pleasure to doom to destruction’ those whom He ‘by his eternal providence … before their birth doomed to perpetual destruction.’”[1] Calvin is accused by Leith of creating a loveless and legalistic version of Christianity. “The most perfect school of Christ since the Apostles was built at the expense of Christian love.”[2] “His writings and especially his practices reveal an unmistakable legalistic tendency.”[3] Wernle claims that Calvin degrades Christ to the office of a scribe. “In his moral zeal, Calvin … closes his eyes to all the new values which Jesus brought into the world and degrades Him to the position of an interpreter of the ancient lawgiver Moses.”[4]

Certainly Calvin’s critics find it easy to cite examples which, without the proper context, would support their arguments. Calvin clearly and frequently portrayed humanity as heinous in its sin and God as wrathful. “We are completely corrupt, there being nothing but sin in us and consequently it is fitting that God should be as an enemy and that we should flee from his throne as malefactors flee from the seat of their judge as much as they can. In short, we are nothing but poor vermin and putrid flesh.”[5] It is not without reason, then, that many have understood Calvin to be the prophet of God’s wrath on humanity’s sin. In fact, he is—in so far as that goes.

However, when Calvin describes God’s wrath upon human sin he does so toward a particular end: that God’s love and mercy may be more clearly seen in contrast. “For if it had not been clearly stated that the wrath and vengeance of God and eternal death rested upon us, we would scarcely have recognized how miserable we would have been without God’s mercy, and we would have underestimated the benefit of liberation.”[6]

Hence, while many correctly cite Calvin’s attention to God’s wrath, they have failed to properly understand this focus within the broader context of Calvin’s theology, where wrath serves as an aid to apprehending God’s mercy and love in Christ. “In showing us his wrath on one side, he leads us to his mercy on the other.”[7] Calvin’s portrayal of God’s wrath on human depravity was never meant to leave humanity in despair, but rather to lead them to God’s mercy. Therefore, Calvin extolled God’s fatherly love as frequently as he taught on God’s wrath, knowing that God’s love was the primary force for leading one toward Christian piety. “The first step in piety is, to acknowledge that God is a Father, to defend, govern, and cherish us.”[8]

Calvin did not invent the theme of God’s fatherly love but only codified the teaching of many who preceded him. He cites Bernard of Clairvaux favorably. “Man is nought. Yet how can he whom God magnifies be utterly nothing? How can he upon whom God has set his heart be nothing?”[9] Calvin follows Luther when Calvin refers to God’s fatherly benevolence and mercy (paterna benignitas ac clementia) in the first edition of the Institutes.[10] Wallace[11] reveals Calvin’s dependence upon the devotio moderna and theologians such as Thomas à Kempis who wrote: “Ah, Lord God, my holy Lover, when You come into my heart, all that is within me will rejoice. You are my glory and the exultation of my heart.”[12]

Some Calvin scholars have recognized the theme of God’s fatherly love as a dominant motif in Calvin. Battles argues that “God as Father” is a primary theme in Calvin. “God is first and foremost our father, our divine parent exceeding all human parents.”[13] Leith, too, found this theme important in Calvin. “The law expresses the content of the personal response of sonship to the fatherly love of God on the part of his children.”[14] Even Bouwsma will admit the importance of God’s fatherly love in Calvin’s thought. “Calvin would never have denied that God is love, and he sometimes suggested that God’s love is his primary attribute.”[15] Barth recognized this important facet in Calvin’s theology. “God in his fatherly leniency accepts even our imperfect practice, [so] that in Christ we are not household servants but children.”[16]

While some Calvin scholars have seen the importance of God’s love in Calvin’s thought, there still exist many who deny it, or at least hide it behind the dark cloud of God’s wrath.[17] Hence there is the need to explore this theme further. I will do so by explaining in the next part of this article how Calvin emphasized the nature of God as Father/Creator and Father/Redeemer in order to show that God loves his people. In the following section, I will demonstrate that the theme of God’s love was consistently emphasized in Calvin’s preaching, commentaries, Institutes, views of the sacraments, and practice of discipline. In the last part I will show the importance of God’s love to Calvin’s theology of sanctification.

II. God’s Love Is Seen In His Nature As Father/Creator

1. Our Overall Understanding Of God Should Be That He Is A Loving Father

For Calvin, the primary portrait of God offered to us in Scripture is of God as Father. “‘I will be a Father unto you.’ This promise does not occur in one passage merely, but is repeated in various instances.”[18] We should rejoice in God as loving Father,[19] accept from his hand the “infinite goodness he shows us,”[20] flee to him to “unburden” all our feelings in his bosom,[21] be thankful that he is the “kindest of all fathers,”[22] know that he sympathizes with the “tears and groans of his children,”[23] run into his arms “outstretched to welcome us as his children,”[24] and trust him because he calls himself our Father.[25] As Balserak asserts, “Calvin repeatedly paints God as a father who interacts with his children in a very intimate way and who, like a human parent, seems to indulge them.”[26]

2. God’s Love Is Seen In Creation

Calvin sees the very act of creation as emerging from God’s nature as loving Father/Creator. “If the cause is sought by which he was led once to create all these things … we shall find that it is his goodness alone. But this being the sole cause, it ought still to be more than sufficient to draw us to his love.”[27]

God’s love is seen in creation by the superabundance of good and beautiful gifts lovingly prepared for humanity’s arrival. “In the very order of the creation the paternal solicitude for man is conspicuous, because he furnished the world with all things needful, and even with an immense profusion of wealth, before he formed man.”[28] The harmony of the world prepared for humanity, the order of the sun and stars, and the living things which fill the world prove “God’s fatherly love toward mankind.”[29]

Furthermore, God showed his paternal love, a “remarkable instance of the Divine goodness,” by creating humanity in his own likeness.[30] “The sum is this:

God, in creating man, gave a demonstration of his infinite grace and more than fatherly love towards him.”[31]

Humans, upon seeing the bounty created for them, and their image reflected in the Creator, should be entirely convinced of the loving intentions of their Creator, so that they trust him as Father. “Seeing the good things which come from me, may you learn to entrust yourselves to me and to place your lives in my hands, knowing that I will not fail you in any way since I have given you such good testimony of the love I bear you.”[32] Creation, rightly comprehended, furnishes irrefutable proof that God is a loving Father to all his creation, but especially to humanity, so that they might never “doubt whether this most gracious Father has us in his care.”[33]

3. God’s Love Is Seen In The Law

Even the law given by God, which many might interpret as an indicator of a demanding and wrathful God, Calvin takes as evidence of God’s fatherly love for humanity. In preaching on the Ten Commandments, Calvin notes that they show us God’s love: “God is revealed as liberal toward us, and ought that not attract us toward him even more?”[34] The law of God is a favor of God’s fatherly love, intended to help train us, so that we “may worship him as a Father.”[35] Rightly understood, the law can become a delight, for in the law we find “promises by which the grace of God is offered to us” and the law itself is finally meant to “allure us by its sweetness.”[36] Of the blessings offered to those who obey his wise and fatherly law, Calvin encourages, “He surrenders what is his and instead takes on the office of father, saying, that if we are children to him, then he will be benign and liberal towards us.”[37]

4. God’s Love Is Seen In General To All People

If it should be asked, Does God love all people in general? Calvin answers with a broad yes. “The Heavenly Father loves the human race, and wishes that they should not perish.”[38] This love is seen in the general disposition of the will of God, who “wills not the death of a sinner,” but calling all to repentance promises to receive them, “if they only seriously repent.”[39] Indeed, even providence is evidence of this love, for it reveals “his concern for the whole human race.”[40]

Dekker argues, following Berkhof, that for Calvin, God’s love is not actually two different kinds of loves—one for the elect and another for the reprobate. Rather, God’s love is of one essence, but it has two different effects—in the elect and in the reprobate.[41] “Some of the effects of the one love of God reach all men alike, while other effects get through only to the elect.”[42] While there is a general fatherly love in creation, providence, and the offering of the gospel, the effective embrace of fatherly love is only given to the elect. “God embraces in fatherly love none but his children, whom he has regenerated with the Spirit of adoption.”[43]

Therefore, while God does love all humanity, the fatherly embrace, or the effectiveness of God’s love, is realized only in his chosen. Those who are not predestined to life, while loved in a true sense, reject the offer of salvation, apart from which they cannot naturally deduce that God is a loving Father, even though he has supplied ample evidence of his love. “We cannot by contemplating the universe infer that he is father.”[44]

Just as the knowledge of God available to humanity through the sensus divinitatis cannot lead one to salvation, but serves to render humanity without excuse for its ingratitude, the knowledge of God’s Creator-love serves a similar purpose. “Proofs of the love of God towards the whole human race exist innumerable, all of which demonstrate the ingratitude of those who perish.”[45] Humanity should be able to see God as loving Father, giving his many proofs, but due to their own willful sin, they will not, and so are all the more culpable.

As we further contemplate the question of God’s love for the reprobate, it is helpful to define certain aspects of God’s love more precisely. A failure to do so leads one to concur with McMahon, who argues that Calvin has gone too far in asserting that God has a fatherly love for the reprobate. “This writer disagrees with Calvin in his use of terms. The Bible does not ascribe ‘fatherly kindness’ to anyone but the Christian.”[46]

When we understand that God’s love, while of one essence, has various aspects, we can begin to untangle this particular Gordian knot. D. A. Carson has helpfully distinguished five aspects of God’s love:

(1) God’s intra-Trinitarian love, (2) God’s love displayed in His providential care, (3) God’s yearning warning and invitation to all human beings as He invites and commands them to repent and believe, (4) God’s special love toward the elect, and (5) God’s conditional love toward His covenant people as He speaks in the language of discipline.[47]

If we consider meanings 2 and 3—providential love and yearning love inviting all to repent—we begin to more properly distinguish what Calvin does, and does not, imply when he speaks of God’s love for the reprobate. Commenting on Ezek 18:23, “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” Calvin finds an affirmation of Carson’s third type of love, a yearning for repentance. “God desires nothing more earnestly than that those who were perishing and rushing to destruction should return into the way of safety.”[48] Similarly, Calvin comments that when Jesus looked with love upon the rich young ruler who refused to repent, this was real love.

But God is sometimes said to love those whom he does not approve or justify.… Thus the question is answered, How was it possible that Christ should love a man who was proud and a hypocrite, while nothing is more hateful to God than these two vices? For it is not inconsistent that the good seed, which God has implanted in some natures, shall be loved by Him, and yet that He should reject their persons and their works on account of corruption.[49]

This love of God for even the reprobate, can be asserted because, while God’s wrath is circumstantial—dependent upon the particular sin that God’s justice must rightly condemn—his love is intrinsic to his very nature as he looks upon his creation, even those parts of it which are fallen in rebellion. “Where there is no sin, there is no wrath, but there will always be love in God.”[50] “There is nothing intrinsically impossible about wrath and love being directed toward the same individual or people at once. God in His perfections must be wrathful against His rebel image-bearers, for they have offended Him; God in His perfections must be loving toward His rebel image-bearers, for He is that kind of God.”[51]

While clearly asserting that God does really love the reprobate, Calvin admits that our efforts to understand exactly how God does so may lead us into a confusing labyrinth.[52] Although we cannot precisely understand the mystery of how God loves even the reprobate, we must accept it, for “it is not surprising that our eyes should be blinded by intense light.”[53]

III. Love Is Seen In The Nature Of God As Father/Redeemer

1. The Love Of God To The Elect In Particular

The effect of God’s love to the elect is clearly distinct in that they alone fully know and appreciate God as Father/Redeemer, and not merely as Father/Creator. This effect of love is not caused by anything in us, but is based upon God’s free election. “Our being in communion with him does not proceed from us.”[54] The elect experience the paternal love of God for they are united to the Son, who is loved entirely. “We are united to the body of his beloved Son,” and thus “the love with which God loves us is no other than that with which he loved his Son from the beginning.”[55]

To be willing to call upon God’s paternal love we must first know him as Father/Redeemer, through the proclamation of the gospel, which shows us God’s “kindness and gentle dealing.”[56] Since he is our Father, when we call he will help us as his children. “He will not desert them, he will powerfully help them should they need his aid.”[57] The beloved elect should learn to rest in this paternal love of God during trials so as to cast all their cares “on [his] paternal providence.”[58] This allows believers to rest assured of God’s goodness as they take “hold of the paternal favor of God as a ground of solid confidence.”[59]

Even when God asks believers as his children to obey his commands, he more allures them with fatherly promises of blessing than threatens them with discipline, for God knows that it is his promise that brings about obedience from a heart of love. When God commanded obedience, therefore, he also, “by annexing a promise, enticed them gently to the pursuit of obedience,” which was “certainly a mark of his fatherly indulgence.”[60]

2. The Love Of God As Father/Redeemer Is Seen Most Clearly In The Cross Of Christ

We see the love of God as our Father most clearly in Christ. “When a real and full certainty of divine love towards us is sought for, we must look nowhere else but to Christ.”[61] It is in Christ we see that God has pardoned our sins and looks on us no longer with wrath but forgiveness and is “pleased with and kindly disposed toward us.”[62] It is supremely the cross of Christ, where the Father gave the Son as our substitute, which allows us to understand more fully and experience more certainly the depth of God’s paternal love. “To be fixed on Christ, in whom [faith] beholds the breast of God filled with love: this is a firm and enduring support.”[63] Through faith in Christ we come to understand that the love of God for us is purely a matter of grace. “The paternal love of God is found in Christ, and … nothing certain is known of Christ, except by those who know themselves to be the children of God by his grace.”[64] Since it is through Christ that God’s love shines especially brightly, only those who know Christ as Savior know God’s love as Redeemer.

3. The Love Of God As Father/Redeemer Is Seen In His Accommodations To Us

God makes his love known to us in a variety of accommodations, where, out of his awareness of and allowance for our very limited capacities, he stoops low to approach us in ways that enable us to experience his love. As Balserak observes, “Calvin’s accommodating God appears not so much as a Grand Orator but as a Grand Shepherd.”[65] “In proportion to the weakness of any one sheep, he shews his carefulness in watching, his gentleness in handling, and his patience in leading it.”[66]

God accommodates himself to us by entering into a covenant with us, humbling himself, that he might entice us: “I come here to present myself to you as your guide and Savior.… If you are satisfied with my word, I will be your king.”[67] Through his covenant God accommodates himself to us by joining his glory to our salvation. “He so accompanies and accommodates himself to us that he wants his glory to be joined to our salvation.”[68]

God accommodates himself to us by dealing with us gently within our very limited capacities. Were he to discipline us with the severity of his power we would be undone. “God knows what we are able to bear, and because of this he knows how to moderate our afflictions.”[69] The created universe, our physical bodies, the function of the state, and the ministry of the church in our lives are all “divinely ordained accommodation to varied human needs.”[70]

Calvin portrays God as a father who bends low and speaks gently, even in baby-talk, in order to help his children receive his instruction without fear, but rather so they can perceive his “beneficent tutelage and pedagogy of his wayward children.”[71] Calvin describes God as almost an indulgent parent. “He not only allows his people to cast their troubles on his breast, but hastens to answer his children quickly when they call.”[72] Balserak correctly notes Calvin’s common tendency to see in God’s handling of his people an accommodation which even borders on the obsequious. “Though God says he requires self-denial and moderation from his creatures, he frequently waives these requirements and allows his people to cry and complain in a very immoderate way.”[73]

God even accommodates himself to us by not holding us to such a rigorous standard of obedience that we are certain to fail. “God here accommodated himself to their infirmity … and did not require obedience according to his authority and sovereign power, as he might have justly done.”[74]

4. God’s Word Is A Loving Accommodation

Scripture is a loving accommodation to our limited capacities.[75] The images God uses of himself within Scripture allow us to understand him. “We know that Christ is often compared to earthly kings … for God accommodates himself to our ignorance.”[76] God’s presentation of himself to us in Scripture as a father is an accommodation. “Not only does the intimate name ‘Father’ engender trust but it is effective also to keep our minds from being drawn away to doubtful and false gods.”[77] The very tone of God’s voice in Scripture is marked by a paternal gentleness that draws us in. “Let us come with a cheerful heart to hear our God, seeing that he speaks to us so humanely and in a paternal language which is not meant to startle children but rather to entice them.”[78] The physical signs offered to God’s people within Scripture were an accommodation to their, and our, weak faith. “He commonly gave … other signs, in accommodation to the weakness of men; as to Adam the tree of life, to Noah the bow in heaven, and next the cloud and pillar of fire.”[79]

God’s willingness to accommodate himself to our extremely limited capacities throughout Scripture becomes for Calvin an important hermeneutical principle. We must read Scripture understanding that God in his kindness to us is speaking in an overly simplified manner. “When he names ‘measures,’ which are used by men in very small matters, he accommodates himself to our ignorance … that our ignorant and limited minds may better understand his greatness and excellence.”[80] Battles understands Calvin correctly when he says that “the starkest inconsistencies in Scripture are harmonized through rhetorical analysis, within the frame of divine accommodation, to human capacity.”[81]

5. God’s Sweetness Is A Loving Accommodation

Somewhat surprisingly, given Calvin’s reputation for sternness, he portrays God as a God of sweetness, as Hesselink has observed.[82] “This delight, this joy in the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ speaks of a heart aflame, captivated by the sweetness of God’s goodness and grace.”[83] This sweetness is also a form of God accommodating himself to humanity to allure them by his kindness. “He sweetly attracts men to the knowledge of himself with many and varied kindnesses.”[84] God intends to attract us by “the sweet fragrance of Christ.”[85] His Word to us in Holy Scripture has the effect of “sweetly alluring men to himself.”[86] Even the law is intended to attract “us to him by its sweetness.”[87] Hesselink concludes of Calvin’s frequent use of God’s sweetness, “The majestic God of Calvin does not overpower us by his sovereign will but gently allures and captivates us by his grace.”[88]

6. God Lovingly Makes Many Other Accommodations To Humanity

God bends low to humanity by inviting them to approach him in prayer through which “their most merciful Father condescends to allow them to enter into familiar converse with him.”[89] God accepts, even invites our prayers, although our words may be no more than the babble of a child to his father. For God is like the earthly father who “babbles with them and adds to what they are unable to bring forth from their mouths, explaining what they would like to say.”[90] God grants with “paternal indulgence” freedom to ask of God boldly, even recklessly, in order to unburden their anxieties.[91] In considering prayer, Calvin shows God at his most lovingly indulgent to human frailty, evidencing an “almost fawning, quality.”[92]

God’s use of angels is an accommodation to human frailty. Were God to speak to humanity directly, without angelic mediation, we might well be overcome. “He sees how small is our comprehension, so he descends to us: hence the faces of the living creatures, the stature of their body.”[93] God accommodates our weakness as well through the ministrations of his angels who protect and help us in times of need.[94] “God uses angels to accommodate to our feeble capacity and show us more intimately His loving protection for us.”[95]

Not unlike the angels, pastors and their ministry in the church are used by God to lovingly accommodate his word to the weaknesses of his people. “He instituted ‘pastors and teachers’ through whose lips he might teach his own.… God, therefore, in his wonderful providence accommodating himself to our capacity, has prescribed a way for us, though still far off, to draw near to him.”[96] Pastors are to love God’s people as a father loves his children, demonstrating before the congregation God’s own fatherly love.[97] “It is a testimony to you of the paternal care which I shew to you, when I send my Prophet to give you a hope of pardon.”[98] The good pastor shows God’s love for the flock by rejoicing when the church flourishes,[99] and mourning when the church fails.[100]

God lovingly provides “faithful and true pastors” to feed his people with God’s truth[101] and to protect them from false teachers, who would devour them.[102] The very ordination of pastors by God through his church demonstrates how eager God is to shepherd his people. “God shows us … that he wants to be our Pastor.”[103] The role of the pastor in a way completes God’s accommodation which begins with creation, proceeds with the special revelation of Scripture, continues in Christ, and then ends, as it were, through the pastor’s ministry of Word and Sacraments by which we know God as Father.[104]

7. God’s Son Is The Ultimate Accommodation To Humanity

However, God’s accommodating love for humanity is seen nowhere more clearly than in Christ, in whom we are presented the image of God in terms that our mind can grasp. “The Father, himself infinite, becomes finite in the Son, for he has accommodated himself to our little measure lest our minds be overwhelmed by the immensity of his glory.”[105] It is not merely the understanding that is aided by this accommodation, but faith itself is given a firm object of focus that is neither a vain imagination nor a human contrivance, such as an idol, but rather is the very image of God. “For, since God is incomprehensible, faith could never reach to him, except it had an immediate regard to Christ.”[106] Were we to look upon God directly we would be undone, hence the gracious provision of a mediator through whom we may approach the unapproachable. “As faith unites us to God, we shun and dread every access to him, except a Mediator comes who can deliver us from fear.”[107]

The essential accommodation provided through Christ is the ladder by which we may ascend to God, finding reconciliation through Christ, and in his gracious justification, wherein we are finally able to inherit from the promises of the covenant, all those blessings which accrue to those who have actually obeyed the law, a goal beyond human capacity but made attainable to all humanity who will come through Christ. “The promises also that are offered us in the law would all be ineffectual and void, had God’s goodness not helped us through the gospel.”[108] It is only by this greatest accommodation in Christ the Redeemer that we are assured that heaven is opened to us, mere mortals, who could never enter by our own merit. “Whenever God offers grace to us by the gospel, and testifies that he will be propitious to us, let us know that heaven is in a manner open to us; and let us not seek any other ground of assurance than his own testimony.”[109]

God the eternal and infinite stoops low to humanity providing a human-sized savior in part to accommodate his immensity to our littleness by making himself, as it were, little. “It is hence evident that we cannot believe in God except through Christ, in whom God in a manner makes himself little, that he might accommodate himself to our comprehension.”[110]

When Calvin’s theology is properly understood, where God’s just wrath is rightly contrasted with his overwhelming love, a very different picture of Calvin’s God emerges. He is a loving Father/Creator and Father/Redeemer, who bends low to all humanity, and to his children in particular, to assure them of his fatherly love, and who, with all his many accommodations, displays a remarkable love and tenderness.

IV. God’s Love For Us Was Woven Through All Of Calvin’s Teaching

Having demonstrated the structures behind Calvin’s theology of God’s love for us, I now wish to show its prevalence in all of his teaching, for it is one thing to find a strain of thought in Calvin, another entirely to prove it is a dominant strain.

1. Sermons

Calvin preached constantly of God’s love. God’s love was exalted in places where we might expect it, such as in preaching on the gospel. “We see here which is the true manner of preaching the Gospel: namely to give knowledge of God’s love towards us.”[111] Yet we hear of God’s love in more surprising places, such as in Calvin’s sermons on the Ten Commandments. In each of the first three sermons in the series we find mention of God’s love and kindness about 18 times, or about 1.5 times per page, an amazing rate given the subject matter. Typically, Calvin shows a causal link between our apprehension of God’s love for us and our subsequent joyful obedience to God.[112] “Do we wish to be reformed by being obedient to him that we might receive all of our pleasure in his service? Then we must realize that he is our Father and Savior.… Thus once we have tasted his mutual love which he reserves for us, then we will be motivated to love him as our Father.”[113] Even when expounding the law of God, Calvin could not avoid speaking of the love of God.

In his sermons on creation, Calvin repeatedly emphasizes that God intended to prove his love for us by the generosity of his creation. For God having “filled the earth with good things” “wanted to make us sense his paternal care for humankind,” so that we will “entrust ourselves to him.”[114] Through all of creation we are to apprehend God’s paternal care for us, designed to attract us to him. “In that, do we not recognize the fatherly kindness of our God?”[115]

Calvin preached that in all of God’s communication to us God’s chief concern was not first to demand from us, but first to demonstrate that he loves us: “God’s only concern is to reveal the depth of his love and affection for us.”[116]

In all of his Word to us God extends his promises to us, that he might win us by his tenderness rather than frighten us with his precepts.[117] All these many promises of Scripture assure us that God will lovingly bless us in Christ with all the fruitfulness needed “for our salvation and for the whole Church.”[118]

Most of all, Calvin tirelessly held forth that God’s love for us is seen in the gift of his Son. “God says: ‘This is my beloved Son, hear him,’ in order that we may find his love.”[119] Knowing that God loves us and has elected us in Christ we have all we need for our salvation, “precisely because he has loved us before the foundation of the world.”[120] This divine love of God through his Son is communicated to us directly by the Holy Spirit. “God’s love is shed into our hearts … that we be fully settled and contented because we know ourselves to be in God’s favor.”[121]

Calvin was concerned not only that the content of preaching, but that the very manner of preaching should communicate God’s love. As Selderhuis notes, for Calvin, “A pastor’s warmth must be sensed in his preaching.”[122] The pastor’s love must be seen such that he declares himself to be a father “to the entire body.”[123] A loveless man should not be a pastor, “for one that is cold will never be qualified for this office.”[124] Even when pastors call their congregations to repentance they must add to this call a note of tenderness so that “they connect with it the promise of God’s mercy.”[125] A pastor cannot be effective in his ministry to his congregation “unless the love of Christ shall reign in his heart.”[126] Calvin not only taught that pastors should show warmth in their preaching, he modeled it, as Lawson notes: “As a preacher, Calvin sought warmly to encourage his listeners with his expositions” such that “loving admonition often distinguished Calvin’s preaching.”[127] In both content and manner, Calvin’s preaching consistently taught of God’s love for his people.

2. Commentaries

In a similar way, we find in Calvin’s commentaries a clear focus on the kindness and love of God for his people. For example, in his commentary on Hebrews we find 85 mentions of God’s love, kindness, mercy, goodness, fatherliness, and so forth. “For when we hear that so much good has been obtained for us, there is no place left for contempt, for admiration of the divine goodness fills the whole mind.”[128] Throughout his commentaries we are invited to look to the promises of God, that we might know his love. “Through the promises alone it is that we can have a taste of God’s paternal goodness.”[129]

The attractive force of God’s loving promises draws us nearer to the heart of God where we more readily obey him. “He seeks by promises to attach people to himself, so that they may willingly obey him.”[130] These promises serve to give us hope that God is for us even when our circumstances are dark.[131] In his commentaries we hear with comforting regularity that God is sweetly inviting us to himself,[132] and shows us that he really loves us,[133] proving his love in the gift of his Son.[134] Calvin’s commentaries proclaim consistently this truth, that the greatest proof of God’s love for us is seen in Christ. “Christ, then, is so illustrious and singular a proof of divine love towards us, that whenever we look upon him, he fully confirms to us the truth that God is love.”[135] For it is in Christ that we best discover that God deals “mercifully with his people and in his paternal kindness forgave them.”[136] Wherever we turn in Calvin’s commentaries we find an emphasis on God’s love.[137]

3. Institutes

When we turn to Calvin’s Institutes we find God’s kindness and love yet again. For example, in Book 1 we find about 45 mentions of God’s love, mercy, kindness, fatherliness, and so forth. Typical of Book 1: “But because the Lord, out of his immeasurable kindness and gentleness, wishes to remedy this fault of ours, we have no reason to disregard his great benefit.”[138] Given that the subject of Book 1 is The Knowledge of God the Creator, we are not surprised to find in Book 2, The Knowledge of God the Redeemer, a greater emphasis on God’s love. Indeed, we discover here over 170 mentions of God’s love, mercy, kindness, fatherliness, and so forth. Typical of these: “Men indeed ought to be taught that God’s loving-kindness is set forth to all who seek it, without exception.”[139] Book 3, The Way in Which We Receive the Grace of Christ, abounds with God’s love, with over 200 references to God’s mercy alone, over 80 to God’s goodness, and more than 40 mentions of God’s kindness. For example, we find: “The Heavenly Father, pitying us out of his infinite goodness and mercy, willed to help us.”[140] Book 4, The External Means or Aims by Which God Invites Us Into the Society of Christ, does not contain as many mentions of God’s love as Book 3, but, given the more horizontal nature of the subject it still proves the point, with over 80 references to the benevolence of God. We are told, “God’s fatherly kindness and the graces of the Holy Spirit are offered us in Christ.”[141] The Institutes are indeed filled with God’s love.

4. God’s Love Was Shown In Calvin’s Understanding Of The Sacraments And Church Discipline

The Lord’s Supper tangibly presents to our senses the love of God in Christ as a comfort for the godly that they may take hold of the life of Christ. “Let them but open the bosom of their heart to embrace its presence, and they will obtain it.”[142] The Supper is itself a loving accommodation which uses “signs adapted to our small capacity.”[143] Baptism, like circumcision, serves as a sign of God’s fatherly love for his children. “The promise … is the same in both, namely, that of God’s fatherly favor, of forgiveness of sins, and of eternal life.”[144] Baptism demonstrates to us that we are God’s beloved children. “Paul proves that we are children of God from the fact that we put on Christ in baptism.”[145]

Calvin taught that even church discipline is an opportunity to show God’s love for his people. Discipline holds forth the love of God inasmuch as one of its central purposes is the very “reconciliation and restoration to communion” with the Lord and his church.[146] Indeed, when we heed church discipline we will find God to be “the best and the kindest Father to obedient children.”[147] Love is also to be the primary motivation for engaging in church discipline. “Let us learn to love one another in such a way that we remember that God has joined us together” so that we will “admonish one another to withdraw from [sin] and follow the good.”[148]

The purpose and the manner of discipline are to show God’s love; therefore, discipline should be done lovingly and mildly, like a gentle father who wants to win his child back. “Discipline is like … a father’s rod to chastise mildly and with the gentleness of Christ’s Spirit.”[149] The elders are to be gentle, to “admonish amicably” and to “enjoin paternal corrections.”[150] The entire congregation is to be gentle in its exercise of mutual discipline. “This gentleness is required in the whole body of the church, that it should deal mildly with the lapsed and should not punish with extreme rigor, but rather, according to Paul’s injunction, confirm its love toward them.”[151] The entire experience of church discipline is to show to the erring the corrective love of God in order to gently bring them back into fellowship and obedience.

V. God’s Love Is A Key To Sanctification For Calvin

Why does Calvin teach so often and so profoundly about God’s love for his people? Certainly he thought it was biblically accurate to do so. However, there lay in Calvin’s theology of sanctification another rationale for so frequently proclaiming the love of God: Calvin saw God’s love as vitally instrumental in the sanctification process. God’s love for us is effectively the engine that moves sanctification along in the active will of the believer, attracting us to God, convincing us that we can trust God, moving us to repentance and obedience. Calvin taught of God’s love so often partly in order to help others grow in holiness.

1. God’s Love Helps To Change Our Hearts

Although from the divine perspective, it is election, union with Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit that change the human heart as primary causes, our perception of God’s love for us serves also as an immediate cause of heart change. While fear has a right place in the Christian heart, it is our apprehension of God’s love which serves as the primary attractive force that moves our heart toward God. “This then is the true logic of religion, that is, when we are persuaded that God is reconcilable and easily pacified, because he is by nature inclined to mercy, and also, when we thus apply this doctrine to ourselves.… As God is by nature merciful, I shall therefore know and find him to be so.”[152]

In displaying his love to us God intends to soften and win our distant hearts. “God loves us and in this way tries to win us over and soften the hardness and rebellion of our hearts.”[153] Showing himself loving, God arrests our movement away from him and draws us near. “For if we feel him liberal, as he shows himself toward us, it is certain that it will draw us to him fully.”[154] Knowing that he loves us and takes us to himself, “not in the capacity of servants but as his children,”[155] moves us to thankfulness and to trust his love as our kind Father.[156] Touched by his love for us, we desire to know him, to move toward him, to “be joined to him,”[157] to be more like him, and are “much more motivated to serve him.”[158]

Warmed to God by his display of love toward us, we are “by that means [to] be all the more moved to love Him.”[159]

But how can the mind be aroused to taste the divine goodness without at the same time being wholly kindled to love God in return? For truly, that abundant sweetness which God has stored up for those who fear him cannot be known without at the same time powerfully moving us. And once anyone has been moved by it, it utterly ravishes him and draws him to itself.[160]

Here we find the immediate cause of our love toward God: his love for us poured out freely upon us as his children. “The true fountain of all love is, when the faithful are convinced that they are loved by God.”[161] We first know God’s love, and then, transformed by it, we love him in return.

2. God’s Love Moves Us To Repentance

Calvin taught that repentance arises in the heart, not primarily from threats of God’s judgment—although such threats do have a place in repentance—but primarily from the apprehension of God’s mercy, as God stands ready to receive the penitent. “All exhortations would be in vain without a hope of pardon … our hearts would never be touched … had we no hope that he would be reconciled to us.”[162] Who would ever repent thinking that their confession would be met with either stony silence or wrath? It was only after David saw the evidence of God’s love that “he returned to pray to God.”[163] Knowing that we can be—will be—forgiven and received as we repent, not only encourages our repentance but makes it possible. “Though God has been in various ways wantonly offended by you … yet return, and he will meet you.”[164]

Calvin calls us to return to God, in the certain hope that “he will turn away his anger and fury from us in order to embrace us as his children.”[165] As an unfaithful wife might be persuaded to return to her husband in repentance—not when she sees his severity, but his “conjugal affection”—so too we return in repentance to God when we see that he invites us from his love. “Return to me, you harlot … and I am ready to pardon you.”[166] Indeed, Calvin argues, although many men may not take back an unfaithful wife, God is kinder to us for he receives back the worst of repentant sinners. “I will surpass whatever kindness there may be among men, for I am ready to receive you.”[167] Calvin draws another familial analogy: God is like a father with a rebellious child who is wooed back, not with threats of punishment, but with promises of reconciliation upon their repentance. “I will in return prove myself to be a father.”[168]

It is this confident view of God’s readiness to accept the repentant that invites us again and again to confess before God and find restoration with him. “Grant, Almighty God, that as you kindly invite us every day to repentance, and show yourself ready to be reconciled, O grant that we may not through our perverseness reject so inestimable a favor, but submit ourselves to you.”[169] God’s love, expressed in his chastisement, draws us to God and away from sin in repentance. “When God chastises the godly, he has ‘no other end in view as to the elect, but to promote their salvation: it is a demonstration of his paternal love.’”[170]

Since it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance, Calvin therefore repeatedly proclaimed the love of God for his people whenever he called them to “learn seasonably to repent.”[171] “For the Lord by his kindness shows to us, that it is he to whom we ought turn.”[172]

3. God’s Love Leads Us To Pursue Holiness And Obedience

When we find our hearts unconcerned about our advance in holiness it helps us “to recall the remembrance of the divine promises,” to “rouse us from our sloth.”[173] Seeing God’s fatherly love for us stirs us up to want to be more holy like him. “I will be a Father unto you … a recognition of the great honor to which God has exalted us, might be a motive to stir us up to a more ardent desire for holiness.”[174] It is only as we are allured by the sweetness of his grace that we desire to be holy just as he his holy, consecrating “ourselves wholly” to and for him.[175]

Our hearts are stirred to obedience by the realization of the gracious love God has already lavished upon us. “When we are slow to obey God it is helpful to remember His gracious favors. For what could better stimulate our zeal for following what God commands?”[176] It is not the fear of punishment that serves as our primary motive for obedience, but rather his mercy that makes us want to “devote ourselves obediently” to God.[177] “It cannot be, that men will obey God with true and sincere heart, except a taste of his goodness allures them.”[178] Our obedience to his graceful directives comes not as the obedience of slave to master but as child to father, eager to serve him by our holiness of conduct. “God reconciles us to himself in such a manner, that we serve him as a Father in holiness and righteousness.”[179] Allured by his love we render a prompt and sincere obedience to our Father. “No one can with alacrity render service to God except he be allured by his paternal kindness.”[180]

God’s love leads us to many facets of obedience. God’s love leads us to obediently worship and reverently fear God. “Until men really apprehend how much they owe to the mercy of God, they will never with a right feeling worship him, nor be effectually stimulated to fear and obey him.”[181] The love of God also leads us to obey the second table of the law, that we might love our neighbor, remembering that “we have been loved freely.”[182] God’s loving care for us becomes the ground for resisting evil, since when we are tempted to seek some unlawful remedy for our troubles, we are reminded: “Has not God taken care of us up till now?”[183]

We serve him with our obedience even though we know it is imperfect, because we are confident that his grace accepts our imperfect obedience, which moves us then to even greater heights of obedience. “Such children ought we to be, firmly trusting that our services will be approved by our most merciful Father, however small, rude, and imperfect these may be.”[184]

This is the obedience that God desires from his children, one that comes from a heart filled with love for God, a heart “round and pure,”[185] and that delights to joyfully follow his ways. “God would not be dreaded by them, but that he would sweetly allure them to himself, that they might obey him spontaneously and freely, and even joyfully.”[186] This is the obedience of faith, not a legalistic obedience that could never please God, but obedience that comes from faith in the gracious love of the Father.

Calvin, who was very concerned that his hearers grow in holiness, understood that it was this very knowledge of God’s love that would help transform them more and more into the image of Christ. Apprehending God’s love changes the hard and rebellious heart, melting it into a warm, thankful, dependent heart that looks to the Father’s hand for help. Knowing God’s mercy leads the sin-sick person to repent, assured of forgiveness and transformation from the hand of the Father. Basking in the Father’s love and grace does not lead to license, but rather to the desire to be more like the Father in holiness and to run in the path of joyful obedience. Because God’s love unlocks so many aspects of the needed experiential changes of sanctification for the Christian, Calvin wrote, preached, and taught about it constantly.

VI. Conclusion

While many may not see it, Calvin taught profoundly and profusely about the love of God for his people. Calvin proclaimed that the love of God as Father/Creator should be evident to all. The love of God as Father/Redeemer, seen through his Son, experienced through the Spirit, known in our election, tasted in God’s sweetness, serves to woo us to our heavenly Father. Calvin preached of God’s love in sermon after sermon, he wrote in his commentaries of God’s love, and explained it in his Institutes. In sacraments and church discipline he saw God’s love manifested. Calvin, knowing that it was God’s love which served as the magnetic force attracting us to God and moving us forward in holiness, never failed to emphasize God’s love, even as he often contrasted it with the wrath humanity rightly deserves. From this study we may draw a single simple conclusion: Calvin may well be called the prophet of God’s love.

Notes

1. Dave Hunt, What Love Is This? (Sisters, OR: Loyal Publishing, 2002), 43.
2. John Leith, John Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1989), 221.
3. Ibid., 54.
4. Paul Wernle, Der evangelische Glaube nach den Hauptschriften der Reformatoren (Tübingen: Mohr, 1919), 13; quoted in Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, trans. Harold Knight (London: Lutterworth, 1956), 104–5.
5. John Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, ed. and trans. B. W. Farley (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), 257. Cf. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 2.1.9, 3.3.12, 3.20.1, 4.1.5. Hereafter, Inst.
6. Inst. 2.16.2.
7. John Calvin, Sermons on 2 Samuel, Chapters 1–13, trans. D. Kelly (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1992), 563.
8. Inst. 2.6.4. Cf. Inst. 1.2.1, 1.14.22, 3.2.41.
9. Inst. 3.2.25.
10. William van’t Spijker, “The Influence of Luther on Calvin According to the Institutes,” in John Calvin’s Institutes: His Opus Magnum (Potchefstroom, South Africa: Institute for Reformational Studies, 1986), 83–105, 89.
11. Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin, Geneva and the Reformation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1998), 191.
12. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, trans. A. Croft and H. F. Bolton (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1962), 3.5.
13. Ford L. Battles, Interpreting John Calvin, ed. R. Benedetto (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 118–19.
14. Leith, John Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life, 47.
15. William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 163.
16. Karl Barth, The Theology of John Calvin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 196.
17. For example, the index to Bouwsma, Calvin: Sixteenth-Century Portrait, 306, contains under the entry “God” these citations among others: judge, an abyss, incomprehensible, immutable, without passions, to be glorified, severity of, as power. What it does not mention is either the love of God or his Fatherhood.
18. John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, Calvin Translation Society, 22 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 2 Cor 6:18. Hereafter, Com.
19. Com. Dan 11:1.
20. John Calvin, Songs of the Nativity: Selected Sermons on Luke 1 and 2, trans. R. White (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2008), 20.
21. Com. Jer 14:22.
22. Inst. 3.20.37.
23. Inst. 3.20.37.
24. Calvin, Songs of the Nativity, 20.
25. Inst. 3.20.40.
26. Jon Balserak, “The God of Love and Weakness: Calvin’s Understanding of God’s Accommodating Relationship with His People,” WTJ 62 (2000): 177–95, 194.
27. Inst. 1.5.6.
28. Com. Gen 1:26.
29. Inst. 1.14.2.
30. Com. Gen 1:27.
31. Com. Ps 8:7.
32. John Calvin, Sermons on Genesis, Chapters 1–11, trans. R. R. McGregor (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2009), 112.
33. Inst. 1.14.22.
34. Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 41.
35. Com. Ezek 3:18.
36. Com. Ps 19:10.
37. Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 284.
38. Com. John 3:16.
39. Com. Ezek 18:23.
40. Inst. 1.17.1.
41. Harold Dekker, “God’s Love to Sinners: One or Two?,” Reformed Journal 13 (1963): 12–16, esp. 15.
42. Ibid., 12.
43. Com. Mark 10:21.
44. Inst. 2.6.1.
45. John Calvin, Defense of the Secret Providence of God, in Calvin’s Calvinism, ed. and trans. H. Cole (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 268.
46. C. Matthew McMahon, John Calvin’s View of God’s Love and the Doctrine of Reprobation (Crossville, TN: Puritan, 2015), Kindle edition, location 721.
47. D. A. Carson, “God’s Love and God’s Wrath,” BibSac 156 (1999): 387–98, esp. 393.
48. Com. Ezek 18:23.
49. Com. Mark 10:21.
50. Carson, “God’s Love and God’s Wrath,” 388.
51. Ibid., 389.
52. Com. John 15:9.
53. Com. Ezek 18:23.
54. Calvin, Sermons on 2 Samuel, 602.
55. Com. John 17:26.
56. Inst. 3.20.11.
57. Calvin, Songs of the Nativity, 11.
58. Com. Dan 11:5.
59. Com. Lam 3:24.
60. Com. Ezek 20:11.
61. Com. 1 John 4:10.
62. Inst. 2.16.3.
63. Com. John 3:16.
64. Com. 1 John 4:16.
65. Balserak, “God of Love and Weakness,” 195. While Balserak has greatly added to our understanding of accommodation in Calvin I would disagree with one minor implication that he appears to make, namely, that Calvin teaches that God must accommodate himself to humanity. Balserak writes: “For, though God rules the heavens and earth he is simultaneously one who must adjust himself to his children’s capacity to achieve his desired ends” (p. 191). “Thus, it appears that he must accommodate himself to his children” (p. 195). While I do not wish to revive the debate between God’s ordinate and absolute power regarding his plan of redemption, it may be noted that Calvin presents God as one who freely condescends to accommodate himself to us, moved by love, not necessity. “He voluntarily condescends to these terms, to yield to our desires” (Com. Ps 145:19). Battles cautions against losing sight of God’s eternality as we read the language of accommodation. “We are here, cautioned by Calvin’s own self-warning, to seek after a definition of divine accommodation which neither repudiates the anthropomorphisms of Scripture in our quest of pure Spirit, nor so clings to the anthropomorphic mode of thought and worship as ourselves, veiled by flesh, to lose sight of our God” (Ford L. Battles, “God Was Accommodating Himself to Human Capacity,” Int 31 [1977]: 19–38, quote from 37).
66. Com. Isa 40:11.
67. Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 45–46.
68. Calvin, Sermons on 2 Samuel, 382.
69. Balserak, “God of Love and Weakness,” 189.
70. Battles, “God Was Accommodating Himself,” 33.
71. Ibid., 20, 23.
72. Balserak, “God of Love and Weakness,” 194.
73. Ibid., 182.
74. Com. Jer 24:7–10.
75. Battles, “God Was Accommodating Himself,” 34.
76. Com. Jer 23:5–6.
77. Inst. 3.20.40.
78. Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 258.
79. Com. Isa 38:7.
80. Com. Isa 40:12.
81. Battles, “God Was Accommodating Himself,” 20.
82. John Hesselink, “Calvin, Theologian of Sweetness,” CTJ 37 (2002): 318–32.
83. Ibid., 332.
84. Inst. 1.5.14.
85. Com. 2 Cor 2:14.
86. Com. Ps 119:149.
87. Com. Ps 119:15.
88. Hesselink, “Theologian of Sweetness,” 332.
89. Com. Ps 116:14.
90. Calvin, Sermons on 2 Samuel, 363.
91. Com. Ps 26:9.
92. Balserak, “God of Love and Weakness,” 183.
93. Com. Ezek 1:13.
94. Inst. 1.14.11.
95. Battles, “God Was Accommodating Himself,” 24.
96. Inst. 4.4.1.
97. Com. 1 Thess 4:11.
98. Com. Jer 2:1.
99. Com. 1 Thess 3:8
100. Com. 2 Cor 12:21.
101. Com. Jer 23:4.
102. Calvin, Sermons on 2 Samuel, 177.
103. John Calvin, Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. G. Baum, E. Cunitz, and E. Reuss, 59 vols. (Brunswick: C. A. Schwetschke & Son, 1863–1900), 46:759. Hereafter, CO.
104. Laurel Carrington, “Calvin and Erasmus on Pastoral Formation,” in Calvin and the Company of Pastors, ed. David Foxgrover, Calvin Studies Society Papers 2003 (Grand Rapids: CRC Product Services, 2004), 129–47, esp. 143.
105. Inst. 2.6.4.
106. Com. 1 Pet 1:21.
107. Ibid.
108. Inst. 3.17.2.
109. Com. Jer 15:1.
110. Com. 1 Pet 1:21.
111. Calvin, Sermons on Galatians, 313.
112. Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 41.
113. Ibid., 76.
114. Calvin, Sermons on Genesis, 90.
115. Ibid., 120–21.
116. Calvin, Sermons on Micah, 130.
117. Calvin, Sermons on 2 Samuel, 386.
118. Ibid., 61.
119. Ibid., 400.
120. Ibid., 605.
121. Calvin, Sermons on Galatians, 533.
122. Herman J. Selderhuis, John Calvin: A Pilgrim’s Life (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 114.
123. Com. 1 Thess 2:11.
124. Com. 2 Cor 11:2.
125. Com. Jer 26:6.
126. Com. John 21:15.
127. Steven J. Lawson, “The Biblical Preaching of John Calvin,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 13 (2009): 18–32, quote on 28.
128. Com. Heb 2:9.
129. Com. Lam 1:9.
130. Com. Jer 11:4.
131. Com. Lam 2:9.
132. Com. Ps 110:7.
133. Com. Jer 12:14.
134. Com. John 15:13.
135. Com. 1 John 4:9.
136. Com. Jer 14:22.
137. For other examples, see Com. Jer 2:1, 3:1, 6:8, 10:24, 11:4, 11:12, 12:10, 12:14, 14:22, 26:6; Lam 1:9, 2:9, 3:24, 3:25, 3:32; Ezek 1:13, 7:26, 20:11.
138. Inst. 1.14.11.
139. Inst. 2.3.10.
140. Inst. 3.2.1.
141. Inst. 4.14.26.
142. Inst. 4.17.8.
143. Battles, “God Was Accommodating Himself,” 36.
144. Inst. 4.16.4.
145. Inst. 4.15.6.
146. Inst. 4.12.10.
147. Com. Jer 36:32.
148. Calvin, Sermons on 2 Samuel, 621.
149. Inst. 4.12.1.
150. John Calvin, Calvin: Theological Treatises, ed. J. K. S. Reid (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 63.
151. Inst. 4.12.9.
152. Com. Mic 7:19.
153. Calvin, Sermons on Genesis, 547.
154. CO 26:439.
155. Calvin, Sermons on 2 Samuel, 535.
156. Ibid., 198.
157. Ibid., 603.
158. Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 42.
159. CO 26:439.
160. Inst. 3.2.41.
161. Com. Rom 5:5.
162. Com. Mal 3:7–8.
163. Calvin, Sermons on 2 Samuel, 386.
164. Com. Mal 3:7–8.
165. Calvin, Sermons on 2 Samuel, 489.
166. Com. Jer 6:8.
167. Com. Jer 3:1.
168. Com. Jer 6:8.
169. Com. Jer 17:4.
170. Joseph Hill, John Calvin: Suffering, Understanding the Love of God (Webster, NY: Evangelical, 2005), 94.
171. Com. Jer 14:14.
172. Com. Rom 2:4.
173. Com. Josh 11:6.
174. Com. 2 Cor 6:18.
175. Com. Jer 16:10–13.
176. Calvin, Sermons on the Ten Commandments, 117.
177. Com. Ezek 7:26.
178. Com. Hos 6:1.
179. Com. Mark 1:14.
180. Com. Jonah 4:2.
181. Com. Rom 12:1.
182. Com. 1 John 4:11.
183. Calvin, Sermons on 2 Samuel, 162.
184. Inst. 3.19.5.
185. CO 28:284: “Il veut le cœur soit rond et pur.”
186. Com. Hos 3:3–5.