John Piper - John Calvin and his passion for the majesty of God

John Calvin and his Passion for the MaJesty of God John Calvin.01821.i03.indd 1 10/22/08 9:23:28 AM Books By John PiPerGods Passion for His GloryDont Waste Your LifeThe Pleasures of GodThe Passion of Jesus ChristDesiring GodLife as a VaporThe Dangerous Duty of DelightA God-Entranced Vision ofAll ThingsFuture Grace (with Justin Taylor) When I Dont Desire GodA Hunger for GodSex and the Supremacy of ChristLet the Nations Be Glad! (with Justin Taylor) A Godward LifeTaste and SeePierced by the WordFifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to DieSeeing and Savoring Jesus ChristGod Is the GospelThe Legacy of Sovereign JoyContending for Our AllThe Hidden Smile of GodWhat Jesus Demands from the WorldThe Roots of EnduranceAmazing Grace in the Life ofThe Misery of Job andWilliam Wilberforcethe Mercy of GodBattling UnbeliefThe InnkeeperSuffering and the Sovereignty of GodThe Prodigals Sister (with Justin Taylor) Recovering Biblical Manhood50 Crucial Questionsand WomanhoodWhen the Darkness Will Not LiftWhats the Difference?The Future of JustificationThe Justification of GodThe Supremacy of Christ in aCounted Righteous in ChristPostmodern World (with Justin Taylor) Brothers, We Are Not ProfessionalsSpectacular SinsThe Supremacy of God in PreachingBeyond the Bounds (with Justin Taylor) C R O S S W AY B O O K S W H E A T O N , I L L I N O I S John Calvin.01821.i03.indd 2 10/22/08 9:23:28 AM John Calvin and His Passion for the Majesty of God John PiPer Foreword by Gerald L. Bray C R O S S W AY B O O K S W H E A T O N , I L L I N O I S John Calvin.01821.i03.indd 3 10/22/08 9:23:28 AM John Calvin and His Passion for the Majesty of God Copyright 2009 by Desiring God Foundation Published by Crossway Books a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers 1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, Illinois 60187 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechan ical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Originally published in The Legacy of Sovereign Joy: Gods Triumphant Gracein the Lives of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin, 2006. Cover design: Josh Dennis Cover illustration: Bridgeman Art Library First printing 2009 Printed in the United States of America Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission.

All rights reserved. PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-0568-8 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-0564-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Piper, John, 1946 John Calvin and his passion for the majesty of God / John Piper; foreword by Gerald L. Bray. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4335-0182-1 (tpb) 1. Calvin, Jean, 15091564. 2. ReformationSwitzerland GenevaBiography. I. Title.

BX9418.P53 2008 284'.2092dc22 2008010514 DP John Calvin.01821.i03.indd 4 10/22/08 9:23:28 AM Contents Foreword 1 God Is Who He Is 2 A Passion for the Glory of God in Christ 3 Mastered by the Majesty and Word of God 4 Ministry Made by the Majesty of the Word 5 Marriage to Idelette 6 Constant Trials 7 Constancy in Expounding the Word of God Appendix Calvins Barbaric World: The Case of Michael Servetus John Calvin.01821.i03.indd 5 10/22/08 9:23:28 AM John Calvin.01821.i03.indd 6 10/22/08 9:23:28 AM foreword The year 2009 marks the five-hundredth anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, by common consent one of the greatest, but also one of the most controversial, Christian leaders who ever lived. Yet for a man who stood at the center of the revolutionary upheavals of sixteenth century Europe and who was personally involved in trying to reform churches from Scotland to Hungary, Calvin is surprisingly little known. People write plays and make films about Martin Luther but not about John Calvin, who seems much harder to pin down. We know very little about his early life and almost nothing about his conversion, which must have happened sometime in 1533 or 1534. His wanderings over the next several years, including his extended stay with Martin Bucer in Strasbourg, are better documented, but despite the adventures his travels entailed, they have never seemed to be the stuff of high drama. The Geneva years are the best known, but even they are widely misunderstood.

Few people realize that Calvin was a foreigner in Geneva who was not granted citizenship there until 1559, and so he could never take part in the John Calvin.01821.i03.indd 7 10/22/08 9:23:28 AM 8 Foreword citys government. Even fewer realize that Calvins Geneva was not a theocracy but a worldly city-state with which he was frequently at odds. Never a well man, there were times when he almost had to be dragged out of his sickbed to preach from the pulpit of the main city church, and it was something of a miracle that he lived as long as he did. Yet today more people read Calvins writings than those of any other Christian outside the New Testament writers. His commentaries remain standard works in and are gener ally regarded as the first great monument of modern biblical scholarship. His Institutes of the Christian Religion are still required reading for any serious theologian.

Even some of his sermons are still in print, though they are unfortunately less well known than his other writings, and many remain in nearly undecipherable manuscript in Geneva, while many more have been lost because the manuscripts were sold for scrap a couple of centuries ago. Calvin was not an original thinker in the sense that Martin Luther or Erasmus of Rotterdam were. He did not discover any new theological principle to set the church on fire, as Luther did. He did not recover any secrets of ancient wisdom as Erasmus was known for doing. His lifelong ambition was to see the conversion of France to Protestantism, but although he was able to gather French Protestants under his wing, they failed to take over France, and Calvin had to be content with England and Scotland insteadHolland did not accept his teachings until after his death. Calvin was great, not for his originality or for John Calvin.01821.i03.indd 8 10/22/08 9:23:28 AM Foreword 9 his achievements, but for his deep grasp of the coherence of the Christian message, which stemmed from his profound relationship with God.

Calvin was a man possessed by the Holy Spirit. He knew that he had been called to meet with God in Christ and to spread Gods Word to a hungry and dying world, and he never flagged in that mission. From the start, he understood that to know God is to step into another world, to be born again into a relationship with the One who made and gov erns all things, and who had called a people, who did not deserve it, to rule that creation at his side. He knew that this relationship had many facets to it, but he also understood its fundamental coherence, and it was this that he brought to his study and exposition of Christian theology. Fundamental to that theology was the Word of God, the Old and New Testaments that together make up the Bible. Here the variety and inner coherence of God and his plan for his creatures was displayed to the full.

Systematic theology was an exposition of that coherence, and in his sermons Calvin applied that understanding to the practi cal needs of the church. Everything hung together because there was only one God and one eternal mind at work, undergirding it all. It is this knowledge that gave Calvins work its strength, and it was this that struck fear into the hearts of his enemies. Men like Luther and Augustine have had devoted followers, but few have had as many equally dedicated enemies as Calvin has attracted over the years. He has never John Calvin.01821.i03.indd 9 10/22/08 9:23:28 AM 10