Morning Service, 25th October 2009
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Throughout this year our attention has been on another of the Reformers, the Genevan Reformer John Calvin, it being the 500th anniversary of his birth. And so it is appropriate we give some highlights to him today being reformation Sunday.
Calvin has been described as ‘the reluctant but willing Reformer’. Though Calvin’s contributions to the Reformation are many, he is perhaps best known as the theologian of the Reformation, for it is Calvin, probably more than anyone else since the Apostles, who articulated in a systematic way biblical truth, and gave the robust undergirding to the faith of God’s people not only in that age but even to today. But don’t be fooled, he was no dry theologian. He was a Pastor and he taught theology with a view to the daily life of God’s people. Above all else Calvin was a passionate and compassionate pastor to the people of God whom he served throughout his life. He was loved for his pastoral work, his sermons and letters, all of which revealed that his intense love of God evoked intense love for of God’s people. It is this reality which permeates his theological writings. He was a theologian of the heart, a theologian of the life that flows from a heart surrendered to God.
So what for Calvin, was at the centre of the Reformation? In the opening of his Institutes of Christian Religion Calvin writes ‘True and sound wisdom consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves’. He is concerned to deal with the issue of how we can know God and enter into a relationship with Him, which he answers in terms of God’s gracious self-revelation not only through the Scriptures but especially in His Son and His death upon the cross , and that it is through His Son that this is made possible. Also much of the Institutes deals with the question of how we enter into that salvation which Jesus Christ offers, dwelling on the work of the Spirit. Indeed B B Warfield writes that the fundamental interest of Calvin as a theologian lay in the question of salvation, and in particular ‘his interest was most intense in the application to the sinful soul of the salvation wrought out by Christ.’
In line with this Robert Godfrey tells us that perhaps the verse most quoted by Calvin was John 17:3. It is here in this prayer, this communion with His Father, just prior to undertaking the crucial act of His death for our redemption that Jesus speaks of eternal life – not for Him but which He will give to those God has given Him – explaining how this gift of eternal life is received. Jesus highlights:
1. Knowledge Required
As we noted, on the opening page of the institutes Calvin wrote ‘True and sound wisdom consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves’. Calvin saw that the knowledge of God was the starting point, and that only from this could we ever find a true knowledge of ourselves, seeing ourselves created in the image of God and fallen from that image through the sin of Adam.
In this he picks up the teaching of Jesus Christ here – that He came to give life, as He says, indicates the terrible condition of man before God, but notice that we will not understand this need nor find it relived apart from this foundational reality: knowing God. This is the knowledge we require to really embrace life and in particular to obtain eternal life.
Eternal life is not merely a declaration of the length of life. Everyone will exist somewhere forever (cf. Matt. 25:46), but the question is, In what condition or in what relationship will they spend eternity?
It is more a description of the quality of that life. Literally ‘the life of the age to come’ it refers to resurrection and heavenly existence in perfect glory and holiness. This life for believers in the Lord Jesus is experienced before heaven is reached, and which yet reaches back into the Christians life now, for in John 5:24 Jesus declares that the one who believes in Him according to His Word “has everlasting life”. In essence it is participation in the eternal life of the Living Word, Jesus Christ. It is the life of God in every believer, yet not fully manifest until the resurrection. This is the life that Jesus came to give; a life enjoyed now by to those who believe in Him, for by the Spirit’s regenerating and indwelling work heaven and eternity has reached back into our daily lives now.
In particular Jesus focus on 3 essential elements of that knowledge that forms the gateway to eternal life, to life renewed in the image of God and to communion with God as Jesus Himself was expressing in this prayer.
a. a right knowledge of God the Father
Not just any god will do, not even one masquerading as the God of the Bible. Here the idea is that He alone is the true and living God, this is supported by the phrase “only true God”. Now Jesus is not saying, as the Arian heresy wrongly interprets Him, that neither He nor the Holy Spirit are God. In fact identifying Himself in v.1 as “Son” is clear a declaration of His deity. The point which Jesus is making is that there is no other God; that the gods worshipped across the world are false and spurious, and can never bring their adherents into eternal life. God alone has life in Himself, and there is therefore no life apart from Him. The sole personal living God stands in glorious contrast heathen polytheism, philosophic naturalism, and mystic pantheism
The further point Jesus is making is that God is only known through His Son who reveals Him to His people.
b. a right knowledge of God the Son
In so identifying Himself as the “Christ”, the only time He applies that title to Himself, Jesus is openly declaring Himself to be the promised Messiah sent by God, telling us that He is the only Mediator between God and man (1 Tim 2:5). As Calvin helpfully points out that by referring to Himself second Jesus indicates that ‘it is by the intervention of a Mediator that God is known’.
This rebukes those who say they believe in God but who relegate or even reject the Son, Jesus Christ. With this we ought to also note the conjunction of God and Jesus Christ here. The fact that His Name is mentioned together with God the Father’s as being the joint source of eternal life means that They are equal. Therefore, as Calvin writes, ‘he who separates Christ from the Divinity of the Father, does not yet acknowledge Him who is the only true God, but rather invents for himself a strange god.’
c. a right knowledge of the work of the Son. At the heart of the Gospel is the truth that Jesus is sent by God, but what does this refer to? In v.1 & 4 we see that it is a clear reference to His death upon the cross that was just hours away, and by which He merits the salvation of His people, a people which He declares in v.2 were “given to Me” (cf v.6b). This is a clear reference to the biblical doctrine of election or predestination – a teaching which Calvin is perhaps most frequently remembered for articulately as a cohesive doctrine from the various references throughout the Bible. This truth Jesus is unequivocally teaching here.
But especially we see that the knowledge necessary for eternal life includes that He delivers sinners from sin once and for all by His death upon the cross. It is no enough to understand that Jesus is the Son of God. Any ‘gospel’ that minimises or dismisses the cross is defective and impotent to give eternal life.
2. Knowledge Revealed
Where do we get this knowledge? It comes from heaven not the human mind, by Divine revelation not human discovery. In v.6 Jesus says “I have manifested Your Name”, and in v.8 He testifies that they believed that God has sent Him. The “name” stands for God Himself (eg Psa 20:1), and so Jesus is saying, ‘I revealed Yourself to them, Your character, Your attributes’. Jesus indicates that He made known this knowledge to His disciples, and that it was knowledge that the Father had given Him with that purpose in mind.
So Peter in John 6:68 responding to the question whether they like so many will also turn away from following Jesus observes to Him “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
Here, to quote J C Ryle, ‘Jesus dwells on a right knowledge of the Father as the great truth which He came to reveal.’
Where do we find this today? In the Scriptures. This knowledge then comes through teaching the Gospel, through studying God’s Word. Paul declares the gospel to be “the power of God unto salvation to all who believe” (Rom 1:16). And in Rom 10:10 that “Faith comes through hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” – which faith he defines in the previous verse as “obeying the gospel”. So Paul reminds Timothy that it is the Word that is “able to make you wise unto salvation”.
This speaks of the priority, authority and sufficiency of the Word, and that it must ever hold priority of place in our lives and churches. Even today we need to turn to the Bible, for here the revelation of God through Jesus Christ is given.
And only to the Bible. Notice Jesus does not give space for any other source. It is not the teaching of Jesus and Buddha or Mohammed, Joseph Smith or anyone else – not even Calvin! It is to the Scriptures alone that we must turn, and to which we must draw people for it is here alone that eternal life is found.
Calvin was a man who preached not himself but the Word of God. According to THL Parker, Calvin ‘had a horror of those how preached their own ideas in place of the gospel of the Bible: “When we enter the pulpit, it is not so that we may bring our own dreams and fancies with us”.’ Calvin’s aim in the pulpit, study or homes of the people was not to impress the people with his own brilliance but to impact them with the awe-inspiring presence of God; was not that the people would see something of his heart in its every changing passions but to proclaim the heart of God in His never-changing Word; was that they would see not him but the Lord and enter into that knowledge of Him that leads unto salvation.
Every Pastor is to make known God’s self-revelation in Christ and the Word, ever responding to the cry “Sirs, we wish to see Jesus” (Jn 12:21). And that must be the need of all for without this knowledge we will not know eternal life.
3. Knowledge Received
In the brief account where Calvin reveals a little about his conversion, found in the introduction to his commentary on the Psalms, he writes how his mind was as result softened and brought ‘to a teachable frame.’ From this he says he was ‘inflamed [with] intense…desire’ to make progress in ‘true godliness’. For Calvin conversion to Christ meant not only transition from condemnation to justification but from ignorance to knowledge.
As Jesus stresses here, the knowledge God revealed through His teaching must be “received” and “kept” or obeyed. This revealed not only their attitude to the Word but their response to it – they embraced it in faith, turning to God for eternal life in light of what it taught, demonstrating this reality in transformed lives.
The disciples had grasped two fundamental realities: (1) that everything Jesus said and did had been given to Him by God, and (2) Jesus Himself had been sent by God. There were still many things they didn’t understand and accept, but they believed in Him, and did so in relation to all that the Name of God revealed – His holiness, grace, love and mercy. They saw God in everything about him. ‘And indeed,’ notes Calvin, ‘if we do not perceive God in Christ, we must certainly remain in a state of hesitation.’
Without this knowledge there is no salvation, but equally there is no salvation unless this knowledge is “received” by which Jesus understands here in the lives of the disciples.
Clearly it is not mere intellectual knowledge that is being talked about. Paul speaking of people in general said “though they knew God they did not glorify Him as God” with the result of coming under His wrath (Rom 1:21ff).
The Jewish religious leaders knew about God from the OT, and yet they clearly did not know God in the sense meant here for Jesus earlier said to them that “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God… Yet you have not known Him, but I know Him” (John 8:42 & 55). Clearly this is the model for our understanding here. It is relationship knowledge.
This knowledge, in other words, is not some detached acknowledgment or theoretical acceptance of facts; rather it is a personal, confiding faith in Him as the Son of God sent by the Father to die in the place of the believing sinner.
Further, do we not find comfort here also as we consider our reception of that knowledge? Jesus is speaking in the first instance of disciples who were limited, often confused in their knowledge of God, the Christ and His work. Yet Jesus says they received and kept the Word. What loving tenderness do we see here – and by grace welcome and embrace as we cry “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.’
Yet lastly, do we not also see that this knowledge is a test of reality. How do we know if we have eternal life or that we are of the elect to whom alone this knowledge is given? Like the disciples, when we receive and keep the Word. It is the knowledge ‘that dwells in the heart and influences the life’ (JC Ryle).The Christian faith is based on objective truth, on factual events and what they reveal about God, but it is one that is embraced, rested on, rejoiced in by the Christian in faith, and finds expression in the life.
“This is eternal life…” – it is God’s gift merited and given by Christ according to the Father’s will to those who believe.
At the heart of the Reformation was this essential question which sought peace with God in life and hope before God in death: How may I possess eternal life? What is the secret to obtaining eternal life? Is it by the works of the church or the works of individuals, or is it by something else altogether? They found the answer in the Bible to be ‘through faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone according to the Scripture alone and to the glory of God alone’. Eternal life is God’s gift merited and given by Christ according to the Father’s will to those who believe.
This is still the question facing thoughtful people today, and this is still the answer – it is found in Jesus Christ.
In one of his letters Calvin wrote that he desired above all else to be taught daily ‘in the school of Christ’, and in the Institutes (1.14.22) he expresses the desire that he might rightly know the Lord in order to ‘trust, invoke, praise, and love Him.’ And this is how to remember with thanksgiving the life and ministry of John Calvin: by looking away from Calvin to Christ, and to respond daily to Christ by listening to, receiving and keeping the Word of Christ.