Calvin Understood | Part 1

For those of you visiting with us this morning,

or if you're newer to Oak Hill in the last year,

let me explain what today is all about.

Every late October, we take time out from our regular

expository preaching schedule to look back at some aspect

of the Protestant Reformation.

Now, why do we do that?

Because the Reformation is a key part of our spiritual heritage.

In fact, most of what you hear taught from this pulpit week

after week can be found among the teachings of the reformers

in the 16th century.

So our goal this morning is to grow in our knowledge of church

history, but also grow in our understanding of the development

of theology over the last five centuries.

And as we do this type of study, we get to do two things.

First, we celebrate God's faithfulness to His church.

We have to say that right out of the gate,

remembering how some 500 years ago,

He brought His church back to its foundations in the Word.

And then second, we get to highlight particular servants

that God sovereignly used to spark critical movements,

which brought about the corrections

that needed to take place.

And so the reason this matters to us here at Oak Hill

is we are the beneficiaries of all of the work

that these faithful servants engaged in.

At great risk to their own lives, they fought against it,

overcame the entire weight and power of the medieval Roman

Catholic system so that we can be here this morning and worship

freely and preach the truth from Scripture.

So we owe them a lot, but most importantly,

we owe the Lord for what He has done.

Now why have we chosen late October?

Well, the original spark that lit the fire of reformation

in Europe took place on what day?

October 31st became known as All Saints Day,

All Hallows Eve, which then turned into the modern day

Halloween.

But first and foremost, it is Reformation Day.

That was the day that Martin Luther,

who lived in Wittenberg, Germany,

went to Castle Church and nailed this very famous document

known as the 95 Theses to the door of the church,

proposing that the local population begin

to debate a number of things that were coming out of Rome

that he deemed were spiritually wrong and abusive.

Now this year, we're taking two Sundays

to celebrate the Reformation by covering the life of the

reformer that we most align with here at Oak Hill.

As much as we admire the courage and the tenacity of Luther

and his life is definitely worth studying,

we are not a Lutheran church.

The reformer we most align with is John Calvin.

And today and next Sunday, we're going to weave our way

through his remarkable life and talk about what he taught,

talk about why it matters and the legacy that he left to us.

And along the way, I think you're

going to be surprised by what you think you know about the man

or what you think you know about his teaching.

You might be surprised to find out that not everything

you read today is true.

So let's begin our time and a historical study

as we should with what?

Not just a map, but several maps.

Okay, now normally I have maps up here of Israel,

and we're somehow breaking that down.

This is a map, a blank map right now,

well not quite blank, but blank as far as I'm concerned,

of what Europe looked like in the year 1500.

Now I'm going to put some dots and squares on the map

so that you can get your boundaries set here.

A couple important cities to note right out of the gate

is left to right you have the blue square there is Paris,

the capital of France at the time.

Moving to the right in the pink there is Geneva.

Then you have of course on the bottom you have Rome,

the center of power of the Roman Catholic system,

and that yellow square up there is Wittenberg,

that is where the original part of the Reformation,

where Luther lived, where that broke out.

Now as we look at this map, let's talk about the centers

of Roman Catholic power at this time.

And these are all the green dots, again moving left to right.

In the bottom you have Spain and Portugal,

absolutely staunch Roman Catholic.

You have up top you have Ireland,

which at the time remained staunchly Catholic.

And France, France was one of the strongest proponents

of Roman Catholicism during the life of Calvin.

Then moving over of course we have Italy, that's a given.

Italy was staunchly Catholic.

Southern Germany, now Germany wasn't a nation yet,

it's part of what's called the Holy Roman Empire,

but southern Germany remained Catholic.

And then moving over there you had Poland.

So that's where most of the power center

of Catholic system was located.

In terms of Reformation, where was that breaking out?

Well, going up to the top we have Scotland with John Knox.

And below Scotland we have England,

where King Henry VIII was doing his own thing,

his own form of Reformation,

establishing the Church of England.

Then you had the Netherlands, the Dutch Reformed Church,

which the Netherlands at this point is not a nation either,

it is under the control of Spain,

and they will soon fight their own war of independence.

Then we have the territory known today as Switzerland.

Zwingli in Zurich, for example, had turned that city Protestant.

The northern territories of Germany,

which is where Luther was at work,

and that spread north into the Scandinavian countries,

Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, that was all Lutheran.

And then finally you have Bohemia.

You have Bohemia, which we call today the Czech Republic,

that's where Jan Hus had done a lot of work

on the Protestant Reformation,

and then further south into Hungary.

The land south of Hungary

is part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire and is all Muslim.

And they were constantly threatening Europe

from that particular launch point,

and the Holy Roman Empire was constantly fighting

against the Turks to hold them back.

The land to the east of Poland and Hungary you see there

was entirely Eastern Orthodox.

So that is the battle lines that were drawn

for the soul of Christianity back in the 16th century.

Now, let's turn our attention to how Calvin fits into this story.

So first of all, as we dive into his life,

we should be reminded of what Calvin looked like,

just so that you can understand.

This is probably the most famous etched portrait of him

in his later years.

Now, I find pictures like that difficult to relate to

because they look so old.

I found this amazing YouTube artist.

There's a guy who has an account who goes in

and looks at facial structures in portraits

of very famous people, and he, using AI tools,

brings their faces to life,

even has them move their mouth and talk,

so that you can better sort of relate

to what older, ancient people looked like.

And so he's done that with Calvin,

so I thought I would put this picture on the screen

just so that you might have a more sort of realistic

understanding of what he might have looked like.

Just not a fan of the beard.

The beard should be longer, but that's okay.

I'm okay with it, but this is perhaps more

of what Calvin looked like as he got older.

Now, let me start with a question.

Don't answer out loud, but just consider

your absolute first gut reaction when I ask this question.

What do you think of when you hear the term Calvinism?

Think about that.

For some of you here today,

it may carry a negative connotation.

It might trigger your heart just a bit

because Calvin's name and Calvinism as a theological system

is mostly vilified in our culture today.

Unless you run in reformed circles,

or at a minimum, you go to a church like ours

where we're constantly preaching about God's sovereignty

and salvation, unless you're in those circles,

Calvinism is often going to create a negative reaction.

So for Roman Catholics, for Eastern Orthodox,

for Methodists, for some Baptists,

even certain evangelicals,

Calvinism has become something of a boogeyman.

In fact, he is the Voldemort of the theological world today.

His name is not to be invoked.

Seriously, if you drop the word Calvin or Calvinism

with your Christian friends,

you've got probably a 75% chance

of triggering them in some way.

So you've got to be careful.

Now, why all this hatred?

Well, it comes from one of two things,

either ignorance,

because so many people today don't actually study books.

They don't look at primary sources.

What they do is they get a soundbite from Twitter

or from some podcast.

So they speak as if they know what they're talking about,

but they're really ignorant about the man

and what he taught, or oftentimes,

and you'll see this a lot with debaters,

it's born out of intentional misrepresentation.

It's people who want to defend their own theological system,

and in order to overcome Calvinism,

they will distort what Calvinism actually stands for.

So today's Calvin's reputation is of a man

who was an ivory tower academic,

a cold-hearted intellectual

whose main focus was one thing,

and that is the doctrine of election

or the doctrine of predestination,

which, by the way, is a subject that is very important,

intensely biblical,

but it's very uncomfortable for some people to even consider.

And so these folks will point to,

and you've heard this term before,

the five points of Calvinism

represented by this famous acronym TULIP,

and by the way, we'll cover all of that next Sunday,

but here's what you need to know before we go any further.

That sort of profile of John Calvin is not true at all.

When you actually study the man's life,

when you read his works,

when you read eyewitness testimony of his life

from colleagues and from biographers,

a whole different picture of Calvin emerges.

He was a very reserved and humble man

whose heart was not just for doctrine

but for pastoral ministry.

He had a heart for proper worship,

and most of all, to see practical Christian living

that brings actual life transformation and change

to both individuals and even nations.

In other words, John Calvin was about far more

than the five points.

In fact, you may or may not know this,

the whole organizing of the five points of Calvinism

did not come from John Calvin.

It came from his followers who systematized it

50 years after his death.

So it's been said the followers of Calvin

were more Calvinistic than Calvin.

They did it after his death,

and he would be horrified today

to think that we took the biblical teaching

on the sovereignty of God and called it Calvinism.

He would hate that.

He was too modest of a man to accept such a thing.

You know what he would call it?

Biblical Christianity.

That's it.

He was also a deep-feeling man

who wrote and spoke constantly about the heart.

Huge focus for him and about human emotions.

He was a man also who suffered personally

all throughout his life.

With a whole bunch of things.

He was persecuted by the Catholic authorities.

He lived with threats against his life all the time.

He was constantly attacked from within Christendom

by his opponents.

He suffered from constant bouts all his life

of debilitating illnesses.

And he lost not only his wife

after just nine years of marriage,

he lost three infant children.

He suffered greatly.

Calvin was a man so devoted to Christ

and to the church and to the scriptures

that he quite literally worked himself to death

at the early age of 54.

But what he left behind in terms of a legacy is so big,

it's almost difficult to comprehend.

Most unbiased historians who look at Western civilization

will tell you that Calvin was one of the most influential men

in the history of Western Civ.

Not only was he a theologian and a pastor,

but he was the founder of both the Reformed

and Presbyterian denominations,

which if you count it up over the past five centuries,

produce hundreds of millions of professing believers

from every corner of the earth.

Not only does he have weight in terms of religion,

he had a huge impact on the way people in the West

view modern education, how we view civil government,

how we view even democracy itself owes a debt of gratitude

to some of what Calvin wrote on that particular subject.

And we'll touch more on legacy next week.

For now, let's go back to the screen

and let's look at what's gonna guide us

through both today and next week,

and that's a timeline of Calvin's life.

You see there the beginning of his life,

born in 1509, died in 1564,

and then you see there some particular years

and particular locations where he lived and ministered.

So this will guide us through today's message and next Sunday.

So born in 1509, and at first glance,

you might read the name John Calvin

and think he must have been English.

It sounds very English.

But Calvin was French through and through.

In fact, his name was actually Jean.

Is Sam here today, by the way?

Sam Jean?

Okay, all right.

His name was Jean, not John,

but we tend to anglicize everything.

But he was French through and through,

born in a very small town called Noyan

about an hour's drive north of the city of Paris.

He was the second of three children

born into a very middle-class family,

a very middle-class family that had strong ties

to the local Catholic diocese.

It's amazing to think about how all the reformers

started as Roman Catholics.

Many of them were actual priests

before they came into Reformation theology.

In fact, Calvin's father was the financial administrator

at the Catholic cathedral in their town,

and he desired and hoped that John would eventually

go into the priesthood.

So at the age of 14,

John was sent away to Paris for schooling,

and it was there in Paris,

big cosmopolitan city at that time,

where he began to meet other young men

who were being swept up by the excitement

of Reformation ideas.

And most of that was coming from German

and Swiss territories,

but was making its way into France.

So at the time Calvin went away to school,

the Lutheran movement in Germany

had been chugging along for about a decade.

Calvin was seven years old when Luther

pounded the 95 theses onto the door of Castle Church.

So at the age of 17 now at school,

Calvin was able to get a hold of Luther's ideas.

Because of the printing press,

Luther's ideas were being disseminated

all over Europe in the form of pamphlets,

and Calvin and his friends were reading them voraciously.

So by that time at the age of 17,

he decided to turn away from the idea

of going into the priesthood,

and he chose instead to relocate to the city of Orleans,

where he would study the law,

and his father approved of that.

And while he was at Orleans in those years,

Calvin began to involve himself in what today

we would judge as a radical student movement.

It was called humanism.

Now don't think about humanism as we view that today.

This is something entirely different.

Medieval humanism had one of its goals

to reform the church and to reform European society

based on the model of classical Christian antiquity.

And one of the ways that humanists of the day

were seeking change was, get this now,

a return to the holy scriptures,

which had been fallen away during the Catholic years,

a return to the scriptures

and a return in the original languages.

So Calvin began to read the works of men

like Erasmus and Lefebvre,

and then he got a hold of the works of Augustine

and began to read the early church fathers,

and he dove into a passion to learn biblical Hebrew

and Greek and also Latin.

The humanism of that day was vocal in its opposition

to many of the things that were coming out of Rome at the time.

Things like the unquestionable authority of the papacy

didn't work for humanists.

The church's tiered organizational structure

that shouted elitism and corruption

in every particular corner.

Many of the rituals of the church

were being condemned by humanists as superstition,

and that's the way Calvin viewed it,

as superstition, not as reality or truth.

Humanism also was opposed to the asceticism

of the Catholic monks.

In the mind of the humanists,

it was better to enlighten the mind and the heart

than to deny the flesh in that ascetic way.

And at the bottom of all of it,

humanism was critical of the Catholic Church

because what they saw was the dogmas

and the teachings of Rome were not helping in any way

to solve the practical problems

in European society at that day.

In other words, it might have been up here

in terms of you've got a Catholic church

doing masses in Latin,

the people aren't understanding,

there's no life transformation,

and society was not being impacted.

So the humanist movement was very, very important

in Calvin's life.

On the positive side, when he read Men Like Erasmus,

what he saw was a focus on spiritual conversion,

spiritual renewal,

practical Christian living and holiness,

and of course, actual Bible study and meditation.

Guys, we take that for granted,

but those were new concepts

at the time of Luther and Calvin.

Now, while he was finishing his schooling in France,

Calvin's life got very interesting very fast.

While he was at university studying law,

he made certain associations which made him dangerous,

and he actually worked on some Reformation statements

that put him on the radar of the French government

and not in a good way.

So at the age of 22,

Calvin's life in his home country completely ended.

He felt it prudent to flee

because of his own safety was at risk,

to flee France and to head across the border

into what we call today Switzerland.

Now, Switzerland at this time was, again, not a nation.

It was a loose confederation of what they call cantons.

We would call them counties,

and they were territories that some were Catholic,

some were Protestant,

but it was Calvin's idea to make his way

to the city of Basel,

which is where he wanted to study.

So let's go back to our map here real quick.

We'll look at a couple things.

So notice, first of all, you got France.

So we've zoomed in here.

France to the left, Paris in the blue square.

That blue squiggly line there is the border

between France and the Holy Roman Empire,

and then you have some areas in here,

the Swiss Confederation at the bottom.

The pink dot is Basel, where he ended up,

and I've given you the purple dot as well.

That's Zurich, and again, just as a point of reference

because that's where Zwingli had done so much incredible work

in establishing the Protestant faith

in that particular canton.

And so what does Basel look like?

This is the travel brochure.

By the time we're done with this series,

you're all gonna want to move to Europe.

Basel is a beautiful...

I've been there twice.

It's one of the most beautiful spots in all of Europe,

and so I don't blame Calvin for going there.

So Basel becomes the place

where for the first time in Calvin's life,

he can settle on Protestant soil.

And while he's studying in Basel,

two important things take place.

First and most importantly,

as he was continuing to study the classics

and study biblical language,

but most of all study God's Word,

this is the point in his life

where Calvin's eyes were opened by the Holy Spirit,

and he gave his life to Christ and was saved.

He not only was saved, but he wrote about it later on.

In fact, he only wrote about his conversion one time,

and of all the places to write it,

Calvin wrote a brilliant commentary on the Psalms.

In the preface to his commentary on the Psalms,

he made a short statement about his own conversion,

and I'll give you a quote on what he wrote.

And it's interesting, he describes his former life

in Roman Catholicism under the term popery,

not popery, popery.

That just came to me.

Literally, as I was saying that out loud,

I'm like, that sounds like popery.

No, popery as in the pope.

Okay, here's what he said.

He said, and first, since I was too obstinately devoted

to the superstitions of popery,

to be easily extricated from so profound an abyss of mire,

by the way, these guys wrote beautifully.

They really did.

God, by a sudden conversion, subdued and brought my mind

to a teachable frame, which was more hardened

in such matters than might have been expected

from one of my early period of life.

Having thus received some taste and knowledge

of true godliness, I was immediately inflamed

with so intense a desire to make progress.

So basically, God got ahold of John Calvin in this moment.

The spirit drew his mind and brought him

to this place of teachability,

and he lit up Calvin's heart with a passion for truth.

And once he was converted, he took all of his energy

and all of his brilliance and skill,

and he applied it towards Reformation theology.

So that's the first thing that happened in Basel.

He got saved.

Second thing was, he began to work on a little book

he called The Institutes of the Christian Religion.

And I say that sarcastically because some of you

who know that work or have it on your shelf in your library,

know it's anything but a little book.

But it started out that way.

So you may have this book at home.

It is worth it to have it on your shelf and to read it.

It is absolutely amazing.

But what seemed to have motivated him

in writing this work, at least at the beginning,

was news that he was getting from back home.

He was hearing that Christians in his beloved country of France

were being arrested for opposing Catholic theology,

for speaking openly about Reformed ideas,

and some of them were even being burned at the stake,

which still shocks our conscience, doesn't it?

That professing Christians can actually execute people

based on a difference of opinion

in terms of theological systems.

There was a reason for it.

We'll get to that.

Calvin knew that he couldn't stay silent

about the persecution,

that he had to do everything within his power

to oppose religious tyranny.

Otherwise, and he says this very clearly,

he says, I would be a coward and a traitor

to the cause of Christ.

So he sat down to write this work.

And the original edition of it was brief compared

to how it would eventually end up.

The first edition was just six chapters long.

And it's interesting, Calvin's original intent,

today people look at the Institute

as this high-level seminary work,

but he originally wrote it for the common people of Europe

to inform them of the basics of the Christian faith.

You have to remember, going back centuries in Europe

in what we call the Dark Ages,

very few people could read or write.

And so how did they work out their faith?

They couldn't read the Scriptures.

So they had to trust in the priest,

the only one in the whole town who could actually read Latin.

And they had to put all their trust in him.

Well, Calvin looked at that and said,

that is unacceptable.

That is unacceptable.

And he wanted to rectify it.

Now, the subject he chose for that first edition

of the Institute is very revealing.

First of all, he wrote the address

in the preface to the book.

He addressed it to the King of France,

which is pretty cool.

Francis I, very powerful King of France.

And he hoped that he could demonstrate to the King

that all this reform theology that was going all over Europe

was actually not a radical thing,

that it really was a return to the apostolic teaching,

and that it was Rome that it strayed from the true faith.

And he hoped by writing it to him and addressing it to him

that maybe the King would be persuaded

to at least stop persecuting

and executing reformed Christians.

So here are the topics in that first edition.

Chapter one was, interestingly, an exposition of the law

of the Ten Commandments in particular.

Chapter two was an exposition on the Apostles' Creed,

what the Church taught.

Chapter three focused on prayer,

and in particular, a focus on the Lord's Prayer.

Chapter four put forth the true sacraments of the Church,

baptism and communion.

And then in chapter five, he went on the attack,

talking about the false sacraments

that were being promoted by Roman Catholicism

without Biblical support.

And then finally, in the last chapter,

he discussed Christian freedom,

ecclesiastical power, and civil government.

And it is an absolutely brilliant read,

but that was only the beginning.

His second edition, which he published

just three years later, added 17 more chapters to it.

Four years after that, four more chapters.

By the time the final edition was done,

just five years before Calvin passed away,

the whole size of the work had grown

by more than five times.

So, all in all, the Institutes became Calvin's life work.

23 years of blood, sweat, and tears,

and still today, the Institutes are considered

the single most important comprehensive statement

of Protestant belief.

And it's the Institutes that solidified Calvin

as the preeminent theologian of the Reformation.

Oh, and by the way, he wrote it down in two languages.

I mean, he started in Latin,

but then decided to write it in French for his own people.

Man.

Oh, and by the way, he was only 26 years old.

That's what really blows your mind right now.

Think about how old you are.

Okay, 26 years old.

He'd only been saved for three or four years.

And he'd already mastered Biblical Greek and Hebrew.

This is a brilliant man, a remarkable man.

Now, the first edition of the Institutes

was immediately popular, just like Luther's writing.

It began to be distributed, hit the printing press,

was distributed all over Europe,

and it met with rave reviews everywhere it went

in Reformed regions.

But the funny thing is,

Calvin was completely embarrassed by all the attention.

In fact, he's on record in Basel of several times denying

that he was the author of the work,

because Calvin's mindset by the time he was in Basel

at that age was, I don't want to be in the limelight.

He fancied himself a scholar and a writer

and wanted to keep it that way.

But God had another plan.

So, let's take a pause on the history of Calvin's life.

What I want to do now is just stop and consider

some of the theological principles

that caused Calvin to turn away

from his Roman Catholic upbringing

and caused him to move towards Reformation theology.

As we do this, guys, this is that part

where I want you to pay attention to the arguments.

And I want you to, as we go through it,

to understand, well, I believe that too,

but know why you believe it, especially contra Rome.

Why you believe what you believe.

It's so important that we don't just memorize things

that we believe, but we know why.

We know the logic behind it.

We know where it's rooted in Scripture.

So, first of all, Calvin was clear in his writings

that Luther had begun a noble task

in calling for Reformation of the church.

But in doing so, he said this.

He said, Luther was met by Rome with an effort

to suppress the truth with violence and cruelty.

But it's interesting, Calvin said,

we should expect that.

He understood the spiritual warfare

that was being engaged with Rome.

So it's not a surprise, he said.

He said, for the uniformed fate of the Gospel,

from its first commencement has been,

and always will be, even until the end,

to be preached in the world amid great contention.

And we should learn from that.

And he goes on to say, because he understood the stakes.

He understood, it's funny, sometimes people ask,

well, do the reformers really know what they were doing?

Calvin understood what was at stake.

Here's what he said.

He said, the whole substance of the Christian religion

hangs in the balance.

Oh, that's all.

That's a lot.

Calvin was well aware that the work that men like Luther

and Zwingli and himself were doing

to bring the necessary changes to Christ's church.

So three issues in particular I want to touch on

that really caused Calvin to move away

from Catholic theology and towards reformed ideas.

And the first one is, in my mind,

even today, if you have Roman Catholic friends,

this is the singular most important issue

that you need to talk about.

And that is the issue of justification.

Justification.

The core tenet of Christianity that asks

and answers the question, how can a sinner be forgiven?

How does a sinner receive eternal life?

What is God's role in that?

What is man's role in that?

Well, for centuries, Rome's answer on this was very clear.

Yes, they would say faith is essential to be saved,

but it's not sufficient for salvation.

It's a starting point, is the way Rome would say.

Make sure you understand that.

It's only a starting point.

Faith is essential, but it is not sufficient to save,

which then begs the question, what else is needed?

Well, Rome is clear on this too.

Justification starts with faith,

but it is accomplished by participation

in the Roman Catholic sacraments.

Very, very important.

So through baptism, through the Mass,

through the Eucharist, through confession and penance

and more, Rome said the sinner receives justifying grace

from those works.

So first of all, because the church controls the sacraments,

guess what?

Salvation is then mediated by, not by Christ,

but by the church itself.

You have to recognize that.

It's a very controlling thing.

But more importantly, in practical terms,

by Rome's own theology and logic,

God cannot justify anyone unless he or she

has earned their righteous standing.

Did you catch that?

God cannot justify unless you've earned a righteous standing

by participating in those sacraments,

by doing those things.

And there's no telling how many of those things

you have to do in order to be justified.

There is no assurance of salvation

in Roman Catholic theology.

And at the end of the day, they'll say,

well, it's OK, because if you end up falling short

in the number of good things you do,

you can work those off in a made-up place called purgatory.

That's how the system goes.

And all of this, in spite of what God explicitly declared

in the book of Romans through Paul,

for all ascend and fall short of the glory of God,

being justified as a gift by his grace.

Pretty clear, right?

And again in 328, for we maintain that a man is

justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

And one more time in Romans 5-1,

therefore having been justified by faith,

we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

It's very, very clear.

So Calvin came to see that the biblical description

of justification could not be reconciled

with what Rome was both teaching and controlling.

And therefore, Rome was indeed preaching

a different gospel.

And we have to know that today.

We love our Roman Catholic friends.

We know many of them are well-intentioned.

But it's a different gospel.

It's a gospel that cannot save.

And so we need to know that.

And he believes, Calvin believed that this issue rises

above all the rest.

Here's what he said.

There is no point which is more keenly contested,

none in which our adversaries are more inveterate

in their opposition than that of justification.

Namely, as to whether we obtain it by faith or by works.

On this doctrine depends the safety of the church.

And because of errors on this doctrine,

the church has incurred a deadly wound

and been brought to the very brink of destruction.

By the way, the Reformers did not hold back

on their language.

Because they wanted to be clear with the people.

And we need to be clear as well.

With love, but clear.

So the second issue which caused Calvin to reject Rome

was its view of the sacraments themselves.

Now next Sunday, I'm going to go into more detail

on what Calvin taught about the Lord's table.

But for today, let me give you some overall thoughts.

First of all, the definition for the word sacrament

is important.

How many of you guys have heard that term?

We sometimes hear the word ordinance used as well.

The term sacrament for the Roman Catholic Church

refers to something different

than the way we would use that term.

For the Catholics, sacraments were rites or ceremonies

which actually conveyed divine grace to the participant.

By the way, regardless of whether their faith

is real or not, just by going through the rite or ritual,

they are given divine grace.

Meaning it adds merit to the salvation

of the person participating.

The Reformers rejected that completely.

For Calvin, a sacrament is an experience of something sacred

that communicates God's promises to his people

through signs or symbols.

And therefore, they are practically able to nourish

and strengthen our faith.

But in no way do they add to the grace necessary to be saved.

That was earned by Christ on the cross, right?

That only comes through the righteousness of Christ

applied to us when we put our trust in him.

So for Calvin, Rome had made a whole laundry list

of errors in this area.

First, he complains that Scripture only gives us

two sacraments.

The word only mentions two instituted by Christ,

and that is baptism and communion.

But what had Rome done?

Added five more, seven sacraments of the church.

More ways to receive divine grace and control it, right?

You've got to come to the church.

You've got to participate here.

Seven sacraments.

No biblical support for those five.

And that was the second complaint,

that Rome had completely divorced the sacraments

from God's Word.

Which is a huge problem for Calvin.

In fact, he writes this,

there is no use in the sacraments

unless the thing which the sign visibly represents

is explained in accordance with the Word of God.

There's no use to it if it's not in Scripture.

To him, the Lord's Supper is so simply described

in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

but in Rome, he says,

they turned it into a theatrical exhibition.

You think about that upper room scene.

So simple what Jesus did with his apostles.

What had Rome done with it?

Made it into this giant ritual.

Sacrificing Jesus every time.

Sacrificing him over again.

Praying the elements into the literal body

and blood of Christ.

Worshipping the consecrated bread and wine.

And Calvin said,

all serves to destroy the true meaning of the cross.

Here's what he said,

while the sacrament ought to have been a means

of raising pious minds to heaven,

the sacred symbols of the supper were abused

to an entirely different purpose.

And men content with gazing upon them

and worshiping them never once thought of Christ.

The work of Christ is destroyed

in the Eucharistic sacrifice

where Christ is sacrificed a thousand times a day

as if he had not done enough in once dying for us.

Beautifully put.

The way Calvin saw it,

Rome had destroyed the glory of Christ

in so many ways

by calling upon the saints to intercede for them.

When 1 Timothy 2, 5 says explicitly,

Christ Jesus is the only mediator between God and man.

It destroyed the glory of Christ

by venerating the Virgin Mary,

by appealing to her in prayer

when Christ alone should be worshiped

and he alone is our great high priest.

By offering a continual sacrifice in the mass

when this one sacrifice that Christ made on the cross

was complete, he said it,

it is finished and sufficient for the forgiveness of sins.

And by elevating tradition and church teaching

to the level of Scripture

and sometimes making Scripture dependent upon the tradition.

At the root of Calvin's passion for the sacraments

was his conviction that God gave them to the church

because we need them.

We need them as worshipers.

Why?

Because we're weak and we're forgetful.

And so the sacraments are regular reminders to us

about the most basic truth of Scripture

that there is no cleansing of sin

without the body and blood of Christ.

And we need to be reminded regularly.

So for Calvin, the sacraments are always designed

to draw us back to Christ, to nourish our faith,

and then to strengthen our resolve to walk with him daily.

The final thing I'll mention this morning

about Calvin's break with Rome

had to do with the governance of the church.

And that started with the pastoral office.

One of the great accomplishments of the Reformation

was the restoration of preaching

to its proper place in the church.

What had happened in the Roman Catholic churches was

preaching was relegated to this like short homily

done by the priest with or without the Bible

for what purpose?

So they could get to the Eucharist.

And that's why if you go into Roman Catholic churches,

what is front and center?

The altar.

When you go into a Protestant church,

what's front and center?

The pulpit.

And the Reformation did that,

and it brought preaching back to the centerpiece

of church order.

Calvin complains that instead of preaching the truth

of Scripture to the glory of God,

the leaders of the Catholic church do this.

The church exercises a most cruel tyranny

over the souls of the people of God,

claiming powers and authority not given to them by God.

Calvin was an absolute trailblazer

in advocating for a democratic model of church governance

that was completely countered to this hierarchical structure

that Rome had developed over the centuries.

What Calvin wanted to see happen was very simple,

and this is something that we hold in high regard here

at Oak Hill today.

An emphasis, first of all, on an educated clergy

who not only know the Scripture,

but can teach the Scripture, and this is important,

active participation by the congregation.

Guys, that was unheard of back then.

A clergy that could teach the Scriptures,

that could preach the Word,

putting that at the center of church order,

and a congregation that could actively participate in that.

In his mind, Rome was emphasizing the exact opposite.

It was nothing but rituals and rites and ceremonies

and traditions and superstition.

And so the congregation was said,

just sit there and observe,

and somehow God is giving you divine grace

by the fact that you're sitting in the building today.

Finally, Calvin cited the moral corruption

that was so obvious in the Roman Catholic Church in that day,

and he says it had eroded the faith of so many people

who wanted to believe.

In fact, he said it eroded my faith as a teenager,

seeing the corruption that was woven throughout the system.

And of course, those moral failures always start at the top.

Calvin was clear in his rejection

of the authority of the pope.

He said there are no biblical grounds for that position,

no biblical grounds for that office.

Listen to how fierce he is on this.

We all know how Luther felt about the pope,

but Calvin believed the same thing.

Here's what he said.

I deny that Rome is apostolic,

oof, wherein nothing is seen but a shocking apostasy.

I deny him to be the vicar of Christ.

I deny him to be the successor of Peter,

who is doing his utmost to demolish every edifice

that Peter built.

And I deny him to be the head of the church,

who by his tyranny lacerates and dismembers the church

after separating her from Christ,

her true and only head.

Wow.

Okay.

So that's how Calvin felt about the situation.

Let's go back to our timeline real fast.

I want to make one more stop in Calvin's life

before we finish today.

You see there, Geneva won in the year 1536.

So let's go back to our story and we'll wrap up.

Soon after publishing the first edition of his Institutes

in 1536, Calvin's life took another interesting turn.

This is one of the most famous parts

of the story of his life.

He went back over the border into France

to pull his brothers out of the country

because he was concerned for their safety.

And then he went back east, crossed the border again

with the intent of going to the city of Strasbourg.

Because there, there was a particular man,

a pastor and theologian named Martin Buser,

who was leading a strong Protestant movement.

And what Calvin wanted to do at that point in his life,

he's still in his 20s, so he wants to get there

and to sit under the mentorship of this older man,

Martin Buser.

Now, let's go back to our map real fast.

So again, you see the border between France

and the Holy Roman Empire.

The yellow dot is Strasbourg,

technically outside of the Swiss Cantons,

part of southern Germany,

but a strong movement for Protestantism

taking place there.

That red dot is Geneva.

That's where he's gonna end up.

Now, here's how this happened.

The Institutes had garnered a certain reputation for Calvin.

He was becoming well known by other Protestant leaders.

And so when a reformed preacher in Geneva,

a man by the name of William Pharrell,

heard that Calvin was in town

because he stopped in Geneva on his way to Strasbourg.

By the way, Calvin said,

my intent was to stay in Geneva overnight

and leave the next morning

because I wanted to get to Strasbourg.

But Pharrell hoodwinked him, hijacked him.

There's our guy, which by the way, looks like Calvin.

I mean, all the guys look like this, right?

Great beards.

So Pharrell hears that this guy, Calvin,

is in his town,

and he is trying to establish reformed ideas in his town,

in Geneva, and he, in the middle of the night,

goes to the inn where Calvin is staying

and pleads with him not to go on to Strasbourg,

but to stay in Geneva

and help him establish the Protestant faith there.

And after saying, you crazy man, what are you doing here?

Calvin said, no, not interested.

He basically said, look, bro,

I don't know if you said that.

Bro, I am a scholar.

I am a writer. I am not a pastor.

This is not within my job description.

As much as I sympathize with your need

to establish reformed ideas here,

you need to find somebody else.

And as the story goes,

and there's multiple people who witnessed this,

Pharrell grew so frustrated at Calvin's refusal to stay

that he pronounced a curse upon him.

Imagine this, saying that if you continue down this path

of staying out of the limelight,

that God is going to curse your studies.

Basically, you're too brilliant to sit in the shadows.

You got to come out.

Now, Calvin always had a sensitive conscience.

He would later admit that this godly man

who was sitting in front of him, obviously passionate,

that that curse really shook him up,

and he decided, I guess that's what God wants me to do.

And he stayed in Geneva.

Here's what he later wrote about this incident.

He said, Pharrell, who burned with an extraordinary zeal

to advance the gospel,

immediately learned that my heart was set upon

devoting myself to private studies

for which I wished to keep myself free from other pursuits.

And finding that he was gaining nothing by his appeals,

he proceeded to utter imprecations

that God would curse my retirement

and the tranquility of my studies

if I should withdraw and refuse to give assistance

when the necessity was so urgent.

He says, by this imprecation,

I was so stricken with terror

that I desisted from my journey.

And from this, I learned that we cannot see very far before us

when I promised myself an easy, tranquil life

what I least expected was at hand.

Mark that last sentence in your life, too.

Just when you think, I've got life figured out,

and I'm gonna seek this tranquil place,

God says, uh-uh, uh-uh.

Not gonna go that way.

So that simple overnight stay

turned into two challenging years in Geneva.

But it was an absolute turning point in Protestant history.

Because in God's providence,

John Calvin could no longer just hide in his office and write.

He was gonna have to get out there

and be more than just a scholar

and develop some new skills.

So in Geneva, in that first day, just two years,

first of all, he took on the responsibility

of becoming the professor of sacred Scripture

at the local university.

But more importantly,

Pharrell put him, appointed him as pastor and preacher

at St. Peter's Church,

one of three churches in Geneva,

with a membership of 10,000 people.

Talk about your ministry challenges.

Again, he's only 28 years old at this point,

and now he's a professor and he's a pastor.

Now, I'm gonna end the historical details there.

We're gonna go back to just a wee bit more of his theology,

but let me give you a hint to where this is headed.

That every person who's ever been in ministry

knows this truth.

It's really hard.

It's really hard.

That first day in Geneva,

the very first pastoral job that Calvin landed

did not end well.

Two years after taking that position,

both he and Pharrell would be run out of town,

thrown out of Geneva by the city council.

But that's a story for next week.

Okay, as we wrap up,

let me just summarize a few more things

about Calvin's theology.

Listen, we have so much more to talk about next week.

We've got to talk about Calvin's view of worship.

It's surprisingly voluminous

how much he talked about worship,

about church order, about his view on preaching.

We're gonna talk about his very controversial views

on civil government,

and we will definitely talk about how his followers

engaged with a whole other wing of the reform movement,

the Dutch Reformed Church of Arminianism.

This is my teaser to come back next week.

Okay, as a summary, just a few more things.

You should know that on many points of theology,

Calvin was right in line with other reformers

like Luther and like Zwingli,

whether it was original sin, the authority of Scripture,

justification, sanctification,

salvation by faith alone, and more.

And contrary to what most people think,

even many Lutherans today,

Calvin's view of predestination

was virtually identical with Luther's view.

That will surprise most Lutherans today.

They were almost identical.

Calvin simply stated it more emphatically than Luther did,

which makes sense because these two great reformers

were really fighting two different battles

on different fronts.

And it was Luther who had to do the trailblazing,

and then Calvin was able to come in and be an assist.

But they were fighting, and Calvin was always,

listen, we love Luther.

I've always looked up to him because I love his passion,

his zeal, and his righteous anger.

But Calvin was always the more skilled theologian.

Luther in his day had to lean on Melanchthon,

his friend, for a lot of the theology

that came out of Germany.

But Calvin was just brilliant.

But election and predestination, listen now,

were not of central importance to Calvin.

Important, yes, but not central to everything else.

And definitely not as important as his followers

would later claim.

In fact, when Calvin writes about election,

he talks about it as a mystery,

as something to be approached with fear and trembling

and always in the context of faith.

And he viewed election not as something controversial

or something to be upset about.

He said, it's the greatest of all comforts

because you're entrusting all things

to this utterly reliable God in heaven,

this utterly reliable Father.

And although Calvin was firmly in Luther's camp

regarding sola fide, or faith alone,

in all of Calvin's writings,

he doesn't just leave it there,

he goes on to the necessity of progressing

towards holiness in the Christian life.

In fact, Calvin writes that it's the moving towards holiness,

which is a sign of true election.

So Calvin's aim in all of his theology

was not just about the mind.

It wasn't just intellectual.

It was to form the heart through the mind,

which then brings about life transformation.

In fact, here's how he described it in his own words.

He says, the gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue,

but of life.

That's a good quote.

It is not grasped merely by the intellect and memory,

like other disciplines,

but it is taken in only when it possesses the entire soul

and when it finds a seat and a place of refuge

in the most intimate affection of the heart

where it must have an effect on the whole human being.

So again, Calvin is often thought of as just this intellectual,

but look how holistic his view of the gospel is.

It's a life-changing experience.

For Calvin, knowledge of the scriptures

was never just about the mind.

It has to find its way into daily life,

or else we can conclude that spiritual life

is not present in that person.

Again, here's how he put it.

He said, our life is like a journey,

yet it is not God's will that we should march along casually

as we please.

He sets the goal before us

and also directs us on the right way to it.

And although he acknowledges that this process

will never be completed in this life,

here is his assurance to his readers.

He says, each day, in some degree,

our purity will increase and our corruption be cleansed

as long as we live in the world,

and the more we increase in knowledge,

the more we should increase in what?

In love.

Can you get an amen to that?

So what a unique and brilliant man Calvin was,

and what an example.

Guys, an example not just to pastors and preachers like me,

but to every single Christian who values God's Word,

to see the principles of Scripture lived out,

both in individual lives and in the life of the church,

without exception and without apology.

May the Lord continue to raise up more Calvins

in our generation.

Until next week, when we talk more about this,

let's pray together.

Father, more than anything else this morning,

we want to magnify Your name,

not the name of this man.

As wonderful as He is, as a spiritual Father for us,

we want to magnify Your name above all,

because Lord, You are sovereign over all things.

You are sovereign over this reformation process

that began 500 years ago and is still necessary today.

We affirm the fact that we are sovereign

over the reformation process that began 500 years ago and is

still necessary today.

We affirm the fact that we need to always be reforming,

always coming back to the truth of Your Word as our anchor

in our lives and in the life of the church.

So Father, thank You.

Thank You for the great work that You have done

through men like Luther and Zwingli and Calvin

as examples for us.

And may it light a fire in our hearts

to grow more in our knowledge of Your Word,

and may it light a fire in our hearts

that might cause us, Lord, to go out into this world

that we live in today and to preach the gospel

and to show people who Christ is

and to make a difference in this world.

Lord, light our hearts on fire to keep reforming.

We thank You again for this morning and for Your Word.

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