Calvin On The Promises Of God

By Pieter DeVries

On May 27, 1564, the Reformer Calvin died. He has been of great importance for the church. His Institutes, Bible commentaries, sermons, and letters bear witness to his deep insight in the Scripture. Among the Reformers, Luther is always mentioned as of prime importance, and rightly so. Others were either directly dependent on him or influenced by him in a profound way. This also applies to Calvin, although he never met Luther personally. Luther’s writings, among others, brought him to understand that God justifies us and adopts us as His children out of mere grace, for Christ’s sake alone. In Thesis 26 of Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation we read: “The law says: ‘Do this,’ but therewith the law is not fulfilled. Grace says: ‘Believe in Him,’ and everything is fulfilled already.” The fundamental biblical truth of justification by faith alone united all the Reformers. Calvin has been called Luther’s best pupil and correctly so. But much more than Luther, Calvin was a systematic thinker. Above all, Calvin wanted to be a pupil of the Holy Scripture. Just like Luther and the other Reformers, the promises of God constituted to Calvin a central theme of theology. This article reviews Calvin’s view concerning God’s promises under a few main headings.

Christ Comes To Us In The Garment Of His Promises

Calvin starts his Institutes with the relationship between the knowledge of God and the knowledge of oneself. Only in the light of the spotless holiness of God can man obtain true self-knowledge. If we were to raise ourselves to the judgment seat of God, all those things that seemed agreeable to us before would be manifested as the greatest iniquity. True self-knowledge is to know how excellent our nature would have been if we had not deserted God. Next we have to consider the woeful situation after Adam’s fall in order that we should humble ourselves before God. Anyone who considers himself according to the standard of God gets gradually more dejected; the confidence that we will be saved through our own works disappears. God’s promises declare to us that salvation is simply and solely in Christ. No promise is ever offered us except in Christ.

The preaching of the gospel implies that sinners are justified through the fatherly lovingkindness of God, without their own merits. God’s goodness is manifested in Christ. His promises show us that the help of His grace lies wholly beyond our power; they overthrow our ability to obtain righteousness by ourselves. The blessings that are promised in Christ do not consist of outward advantages, but in forgiveness of sins and eternal life. By means of the promises, we are brought into contact with Christ Himself; we come to know Him exclusively through the promises. For Calvin, living out of Christ is to live out of God’s promises. “For all the promises of God in him [Christ] are yea, and in him Amen” (2 Cor. 1:20).

To Whom Do The Promises Of God Belong?

According to Calvin, everyone is called to faith and conversion by the preaching of the gospel. Communion with Christ is possible through the gospel. The promises are preached to the ungodly as well as to believers. How is it possible that the Bible teaches us on one hand that God wants all to be converted, and on the other hand testifies that the Spirit of re-birth is given to the elect only? Calvin’s answer to the question is as follows: There is one will in God; for us, however, God’s will has both a revealed and a hidden side. The revealed part of God’s will confronts us with the command to faith and repentance. The hidden part is His unsearchable counsel that is always brought to pass. Calvin wanted to maintain both the hidden and revealed part of God’s will. He realized here that God is beyond our understanding and that He adapts Himself to our understanding in speaking to us.

Though salvation is preached to all, it is only certain when a person comes to Christ. Calvin states that the promises are only effective for us if we receive them in faith. Only believers share in the fulfilment of God’s promises, namely, the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. The promises of God, which are in themselves quick and powerful, are made ineffectual by unbelief. Hence Calvin can declare that the promises are meant especially for believers; simply and solely to believers, God testifies that He is their Father, for Christ's sake. Only believers share that communion with Christ and His benefits.

The Nature Of The Promises

Related to the question of to whom the promises belong is the question of the nature of God’s promises. Are they conditional or unconditional? Calvin’s writings reveal his clarity and open-mindedness on this issue. In the centuries after Calvin, many Reformed theologians have written and disputed about this matter, and, in the process, the terms conditional and unconditional have taken on added meaning. We ought not to project these later disputes back on Calvin. Calvin says that the promises of the gospel are free from the conditions of the law. The promises of the law rest upon the condition of works, but those of the gospel rest only upon God’s mercifulness manifested in Christ. However, we have seen how Calvin stresses that God’s promises require faith.

Therefore, Calvin can state that forgiveness of sins comes when the sinner trusts that God is merciful to him. He is called to sincerely seek reconciliation through Christ’s sacrifice and to rest on the grace that is offered to him. In this sense, Calvin can consider faith as a condition. This condition, however, is completely different from that demanded by the law. Calvin speaks about a condition offering an open admission. Faith is the opposite of our works, and God calls all to faith. True faith is never without repentance. In this sense, Calvin can write that we are adopted to become God’s children on condition that we are united to Christ by faith. God offers His promises to us provided that we come to Him in repentance and become bearers of Christ’s image. In his explanation of Psalm 50:16, Calvin notes that it is a sacrilegious and ungodly abuse of God’s name to give the appearance—by outward show—of serving God without having true faith and repentance.

Calvin also held strongly to the view that our heart cannot be opened to receive God’s mercy unless our heart is affected by a sense of guilt. Consider Calvin’s remarks that Christ does not invite the satisfied, but the thirsty—not the full, but the hungry—to eat and drink. Those who do not despair about themselves shut themselves off from the grace of God in Christ. Christ manifests Himself exclusively to miserable, dejected people. Summarizing this, we can describe Calvin’s view as follows: Considering the ground of salvation, God’s promises are unconditional. They are based on the merits of Christ. Only those who come to God in true faith and repentance share in the promises that are offered to all. If you consider how spiritual blessings can be experienced, then God’s promises might be called conditional; we can never have a share in the spiritual blessings conveyed in the promises of God apart from a living faith and true repentance.

Faith In The Promises: The Gift Of God

How does faith in God’s promises come into existence? Not everyone embraces Christ and enjoys the communion with Him offered to us in the gospel. How can we explain this difference? This is not a question to be dismissed lightly. Calvin reacted very sharply against a teaching of the time that propagated the idea that this difference should be ascribed to powers in man himself. It is not in our own hands to accept the offered grace. We can only came to Christ and accept His promises through living faith when we are drawn by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the tie with which Christ binds us to Himself. He is the root and the seed of the heavenly life within us. All hearers of the gospel have in the promises offered to them the command to believe, but no one can do so in his own strength. In that light we must consider Calvin’s following statement: “The thought is wrong that the gospel is so generally offered, that it is in everybody’s freedom to accept it by faith to salvation.” The preaching is free, but man is not. Calvin taught that faith is a supernatural gift of God, which He grants to the elect only. The doctrine of election is primarily a source of assurance and consolation for the true believer; secondarily, it also humbles the pride of the natural man.

Calvin did not agree with the objection that too much is taken away from man by emphasizing his total inability to believe. However, he does say that we must not abuse our inability to embrace Christ by our own power and use the truth of God’s election to reduce our guilt. “There is no danger that man deprives himself of too much, when he only learns that he must regain in God what he is missing,” writes Calvin in his Institutes. He stresses that the doctrine of election makes clear that we must humble ourselves before God. Salvation comes entirely from God. He, according to His will, bestows upon depraved sinners re-birth and faith. In this context, we must understand Calvin’s idea that the promises of salvation are especially meant for the elect.

Calvin does not want to diminish in any way the reality of the call to faith and repentance; rather, his point is that we must be convinced that the application of the promise is altogether God’s work. That is why it is possible to have complete assurance of our eternal salvation. We do not confirm the covenant that God has made with us, but God’s covenant with us is established by His effectual calling based on His particular election. Christ has been ordained to be our Savior in such a way that all those given to Him by the Father will inherit eternal life. Thus Christ is the Head of all the elect. Their eternal salvation—and theirs only—is secure in Him.

What Is Faith?

By faith, we share in God’s promises. So how does Calvin define faith? Faith, he says, is an endorsement of the entire truth of God. However, faith is especially directed to the promises of grace. Faith is the opposite of the terrors with which the law vexes the conscience. In opposition to the teaching of Roman Catholicism, which declares that believers must accept what the church believes, Calvin stresses the element of knowledge in faith. He defines faith as a certain and sure knowledge of God’s benevolence towards us. It is based on the truth of His merciful promises in Christ, manifested to our minds by the Holy Spirit and sealed by Him upon our hearts. Calvin was very conscious of the fact that it is easier to equip the mind with knowledge than the heart with peace. Calvin reckoned that assurance comes by faith, but he does not mean by this that assurance will be an indisputable possession. Especially in the context of partaking of the Lord’s Supper he stressed that afflicted believers are invited to come. Indeed, even the strongest believer always remains in a sense an afflicted believer in this life. The Lord’s Supper is designed to strengthen our faith because it is so weak in itself.

Believers, thought Calvin, have a continual struggle against their own lack of confidence. However, that does not alter the fact that we already begin to behold the friendly countenance of God as soon as the least faith has entered our hearts. Calvin taught that the knowledge of faith is more a matter of the heart than of the understanding. Faith and experience are inseparable. We have already seen that, according to Calvin’s opinion, faith originates when a man is under conviction of sin and guilt; no one can assume he has it without feeling God’s wrath and without deeming it necessary to find a way in which he may obtain peace with God. The alarmed conscience is brought by the Holy Spirit to the apprehension that God’s mercy revealed in Christ is its only refuge.

Calvin views faith as an “enjoyment of God’s promises.” Faith gives us the experience of God’s goodness and mercy. It enables us to taste and not doubt God’s lovingkindness and goodness. Calvin fully combines faith and experience, but he knows that faith and experience can be opposite to each other. Our conscience alleges that we have no salvation with God, but in this affliction the believer puts his trust in God’s promises. A third line which Calvin develops is that experience confirms faith. The experience of God’s grace is a means to confirm the truth of God’s promises. We find this emphasis most often in Calvin’s commentary on the Psalms.

Calvin found, to his sorrow, that there were many people in the church who were not of the church. He wrote: “Hardly one in ten of those who confess their faith, persevere till the end.” Sometimes he even speaks of “hardly one in a hundred.” Connected to this, Calvin speaks about the faith of the reprobate and the hypocrite. Experience teaches us that the reprobate can have many of the same feelings as the elect. The difference is, according to Calvin, that the reprobate never finds a real sense of forgiveness of sins. Hypocrites lack the childlike fear of God. Lip service is not sufficient; the doctrine must be brought into the heart and must be made manifest in our conduct. This is what hypocrites lack. A living faith brings forth hope: hope to depart and to be with Christ, hope for a perfect fulfillment of God’s promises on the day of judgment. Calvin found that many of those who claim they are Christians are not longing for death, but rather tremble with fear when people talk about it. However, only those who are waiting for the day of death and final judgment with joy have made good progress in the school of Christ. He that does not live with this hope also lacks a living faith.

Present Interpretation Of Calvin

We can learn from Calvin that the truth of election should not hamper the unprejudiced preaching of God’s promises. Furthermore, only those can share in Christ and in the spiritual blessings obtained by Him who are brought to realize that they are guilty before the heavenly Judge and who have laid aside all sense of their own worthiness. To say it in Calvin’s own words: “For as admittance to God is open to us by faith, likewise humility and fear open doors for Him” (Commentary on Acts 2:2-3). In modern interpretations of Calvin’s thought, the first part is usually emphasized at the expense of the second.

Finally, Calvin shows us that the element of examination should not be missing in preaching and pastoral care. Faith in God’s promises, wrought by the Holy Spirit, is recognized in the exercises we feel. “Christ can only be known by the sanctification of the Spirit. Hence it follows that faith must in no way be detached from the pious conviction” (Institutes III.2.8). We need not follow Calvin blindly, but he should indeed be called an excellent teacher of the church. Together with the other Reformers, he holds a special place in the cloud of witnesses from church history: he is one of the witnesses who points us to the Author and Finisher of our faith, Jesus Christ.