Calvin: The Pastor
Although
John Calvin is remembered as a writer, theologian, and professor, what many
people fail to remember was that John Calvin, first and foremost, was a pastor.
Calvin spent three years in Strasbourg, which proved to be the most formative
time of his life when it came to the ministry. It was in Strasbourg that
“Calvin was called to pastor the ecclesiola
Gallicana.”[1]
While Calvin was in Starbourg, he carried out the sacraments of the Lord’s
Supper and the different duties of the pastoral ministry. The pastorate caused
him to consider the seriousness of worship in the church, which led him to
translate a large amount of the Psalms into French. Calvin’s heart as a pastor
was to lead the people of God into personal, intimate worship through the
preaching of God’s Word, the Sacraments, and the congregational singing of the
psalms.
As
a pastor, Calvin’s pastoral ministry was largely affected by his belief and
trust in the Scriptures as God’s Word. He believed the only way a person could
know God was through the testimony of His Word. He argued, “God bestows the
actual knowledge of himself upon us only in the Scriptures.”[2]
This strong conviction regarding the Scriptures being God’s Word allowed Calvin
to have the freedom to preach, teach, and counsel the Word of God as the supreme
authority in the life of God’s people.
Calvin
believed without the word of God, man is unable to know God correctly and as He
truly is. Calvin believed man is born spiritually separated from God, thus not
knowing God correctly, and that man needs to be shown correctly. The only way
for man to know God properly was to know Him as He has revealed Himself in Holy
Scriptures. Therefore, Calvin held to a high view of Scriptures as God’s
revelation of Himself to man. This affected affected Calvin’s pastoral ministry
immensely.
Calvin
believed it was the role of the Holy Spirit that testified to the Scriptures
being the Word of God. As a pastor, Calvin understood that he could not
convince others that the Bible was the Word of God, and that only the Spirit of
the living God could do such a work. Some people say that the prophets
testified that the Bible was the inspired word of God; however, Calvin argued,
The testimony of the Spirit is more
excellent than all reason. For as God alone is a fit witness of himself in his
Word, so also the Word will not find acceptance in men’s hearts before it is
sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who
has spoken through the mouths of the prophets must penetrate into our hearts to
persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what had been divinely commanded.[3]
He believed the Spirit is what
convinced individuals that the Bible was God’s Word, rather than human
reasoning. Calvin’s firm belief in the working of the second Person of the
Trinity gave him the assurance in the Word of God as a pastor.
Calvin’s
primary goal as a pastor-teacher was to bring people to the knowledge of God
through the atoning work of Christ and by the preaching of the Scriptures and
trusting the Holy Spirit of God to His Sovereign work. He believed the heart of
a pastor theologian was to “not divert the ears with chatter, but to strengthen
consciences by teaching things true, sure, and profitable.”[4] He
believed the chief end of every person was to know God—this was the only purpose
of an individual’s existence. This is why he argued that “If a person had one
hundred lives, this one aim, to know God, would be sufficient for them all.”[5]
Calvin
believed a person could only come to know God through the hearing of His Word.
This conviction is what drove Calvin to be a brilliant pastor-teacher, not only
in Strasbourg, but also in Geneva. Calvin’s only weapon during the time of the
reformation was his Bible. His deeply rooted conviction that the Bible was the
Word of God set him loose on an adventure in preaching and teaching it everyday.
James Montgomery Boice submits,
“Calvin preached the Bible everyday,
and under the power of that preaching the city (Geneva) began to be
transformed. As the people of Geneva acquired knowledge of God’s Word and were
changed by it, the city became, as John Knox called it later, a New Jerusalem.”[6]
Calvin’s preaching was motivated by the
belief that God’s Word was sufficient. This led him to preach through entire
books of the Bible verse by verse. He would preach the New Testament on Sunday
mornings, Psalms on Sunday afternoons, and from the Old Testament every morning
of the week, every other week. Calvin was a preaching and teaching machine.
Calvin’s method of preaching through entire books of the Bible and exposing his
people to the different genres of Scripture left no doctrine untaught, no sin
unexposed, and no promise undelivered.
Calvin
wanted, first of all, to be thought of as a pastor bringing God's Word to God's
people in the local church. There was one incident that illustrated his full
commitment to the Word of God. In 1538, Calvin was ejected from the pulpit in
Geneva. In 1541, Calvin was called back. On that first Sunday back in the
pulpit of St. Peter's, on what did Calvin preach? Was it a rebuke to the
citizens of Geneva for their fickleness, or a vindication for his previous
ministry? No, Calvin began again exactly where he had left off three years
before, picking up on the next verses in the text, as if to show that he saw
that there was nothing more important than his task of feeding God's flock from
the Word of the Lord. Calvin sought to not let his personal feelings shape what
texts he chose in preaching, but what edified God's people.
Calvin’s
preaching also affected the way he cared for his flock. Although Calvin was
deep in his theological writings and teaching, he preached where the common man
was able to understand the message. He preached in simple terms. He wanted his
people to know and become familiar with the Bible. He wanted it become personal
to them. Even though Calvin preached from the Greek and Hebrew Bibles in the
pulpit, he would explain the meaning without ever using the Greek or Hebrew
words. He was very intentional in wanting his people to come away with a sense
of God’s glory, rather than the knowledge of Calvin.
Calvin’s
preaching for the common man shows the type of heart he had for his flock and
others. His preaching was very pastoral and personal. He never lost his
understanding of being a shepherd over God’s flock, and he even implemented the
use of the words, “us,” “we,” and “our” during the exhortation to the church. With
a shepherd’s heart, he avoided preaching down to his congregation, but at the
same time, he would call his congregation to honest self-examination according
to the Scriptures. This type of preaching was proof of his loving care as part
of his pastoral duty.
The
theme of Calvin’s pastoral ministry could be summed up in the fact that His theology
affected his mind, heart, and the church. Calvin’s early years of education
prepared him for a lifetime of writing and teaching theology, which was God-centered.
This had an impact on how he ministered to his flock and lived his life. His
faithfulness as a scholar, theologian, and pastor has set a biblical example of
what it means to be a faithful servant of Christ.
Calvin’s
life testimony was to be used in order to bring great glory to His God. He did
this by devoting his life to being a student in God’s school of theology. Not
only was he a student of theology, but he was a teacher of theology, as shown through
his lifetime of pouring into the students of Geneva. However, perhaps Calvin’s
greatest contribution was not in merely reading, writing, and studying
theology, but publicly ministering theology to those who sat in the pews every
single week. The number of souls who have been convicted, drawn, and graced
with salvation through the careful exposition of God’s Word by Calvin will
never be known, but his writings and principles are still highly beneficial for
the Christian today.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Boice, James Montgomery. Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace?:
Rediscovering the Doctrines that Shook the World. Wheaton:Crossway, 2001.
Calvin, John. Commentary on the Book of Psalms. Edinburgh: Calvin Translation
Society, 1845.
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Philadelphia: Westiminster:
John Knox Press, 1975 & 2006).
George, Timothy. Theology of the Reformers. Nashville: B&H Publishers, 2003.
Gordon, Bruce. Calvin. Cornwell: MPG Books, 2009.
Moore, Thomas. Utopia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
Parker, T.H. L. John Calvin: A Biogrpahy. London: Westminister John Knox Press,
1960.
Parsons, Burk. A Heart For Devotion Doctrine & Doxology. Lake City:
Reformation Trust, 2008.
[2] Denis R. Janz, A
Reformation Reader, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1999), 223.
[3] Calvin. Institutes,
1.7.4.
[4] George, 206.
[5] Ibid., 206
[6] James Montgomery Boice, Whatever
Happened to the Gospel of Grace? Rediscovering the Doctrines that Shook the
World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001), 83-84.
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