Peter Witkowski Sermon on the Mount

Why Liars Need Promises & You Don’t

Promises exists because truth does not. We swear by heaven that this time we will do what we say because we did not follow through all those other times.

But when people use oaths, their listeners should not assume that they have entered a no-spin zone. In Jesus’s day, the religious leaders had created a whole system of disingenuous oaths that could be sworn by Al than honorable person. For example, if a dishonest painter wanted to convince his clients that he would keep his contract while having no intention of doing so, he would swear by the temple. If the owners of the home took him to court, they would have no case because his oath based on the temple was meaningless. If however the painter swore by the gold on the temple, he would have to put on his big boy pants and finish the house or face the legal consequences. That was a real oath. Confusing, yes?

Jesus was not amused by this tangled mess of words and condemned the pharisees’ manipulative games saying, “But I say to you,

“Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.  Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil (Matt 5:34-37).”

In other words, Jesus calls us to reject oaths and to embrace the plain, simple, and unnuanced words of truth.

Oaths and Sovereignty

Jesus condemns the practice of swearing oaths because God is omnipresent. He exits outside of time and space, observing all human interactions throughout the globe in the now. King David famously notes in Psalm 139:7-8: “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!” God does not need an invitation to preside over our actions. He and his ethic remain in place regardless of whether we recognize his presence with our words.

Moreover, his ethic is an ethic of unadulterated truth. Psalm 119:160 declares, “The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.” Jesus holds his humanity and his followers to his ethic, making truth-telling one of the ten commandments. Exodus 20:16 states, “You shall not bear false witness.” The apostle Paul concurs writing,

“Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with it practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator (Col 3:9-10).”

Men and women who lie stand in opposition to the loving goodness of God. Even those who seek to excuse their sins through manipulative oaths to God will find themselves the recipients of his heavenly displeasure and eternal judgement. As Jesus notes later in the gospel of Matthew, “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned (12:36-37).” Idle, worthless, deceptive words will be judged by the standard of truth regardless of where or how they are spoken. Jesus is the God of truth today and forever.

The Dangers of Pinky Promises

Many souls understand the danger of swearing by God. Every time they utter a white lie and then swear by god that they are telling the truth, they peak up at the sky to make sure a lightning bolt is not on its way. To side step judgment while creating an oath, they swear on their grandmother’s grave or on their mother’s legacy as a cook that such and such is true. They may even get super series and pull out the pinky promise.

Jesus condemns all these earthly promises as well, noting that men and women, “cannot make one hair white or black.” Despite our boasts, we cannot enforce divine justice. If the boyfriend promises you that you are his one and only girl and then violates that promise the next Friday night when he takes your best friend to dinner, he is powerless to enforce the consequences of his promise “to drop dead.” While God can send floods, plagues, and armies to uphold his covenants, the sleazy boyfriend cannot. Even good promises like a trip to Disney World cannot be accomplished through human effort alone. As James notes in James 4:15, “Instead you ought to say, “if they Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” Those who make promises on their mother’s grave are foolish. And those who look for and accept such promises are equally foolish. Men and women remain powerless to accomplish their will.

Plain Speech

Instead of appealing to oaths to assure our listeners, those who know Jesus should always speak the simple truth. They should state the truth plainly in love. God speaks this way. He told the prophet Isaiah, “I did not speak in secret, in a land of darkness; I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, ‘Seek me in vain.’ I the Lord speak the truth; I declare what is right.” Because the spirit of Christ resides in the believer, she too will plainly speak what is true and right in all settings for God reigns everywhere.

The Dress Dilemma

At this point, some Christians will raise their hand to object, noting that at times lies will do less harm than the truth. For example, if a husband tells his wife that she does indeed look fat in her new dress when asked, his date night might end right there and then. Hello leftover hotdogs! To keep the evening moving along, he lies and tells her that she looks great. Hello Ribeye! But at this moment, he has sinned against his wife, preferring himself above her. In seeking to sidestep a controversial statement, he has opened his wife up to criticism from their waitress, a coworker, and a host of other people who will also notice that her dress is not a winner. When one of them bluntly tells her the plain truth, she will be doubly hurt by her husband. She will have been both publicly shamed and lied to. The trust between the husband-and-wife fractures. The next time he tells her she looks great, he will have to swear a little oath to overcome her doubt. All this proves once again that oaths exists because the truth does not. Lies always destroy.

Are Wedding Vows Sinful?

Lastly, some sensitive souls have read Jesus’s words and concluded that military, legal, and marital oaths constitute a violation of God’s law. However, the simple swearing of an oath is not a sin. In Matthew 26:63-64, Jesus testified under oath that he was the Son of Man. Moreover, God made oaths with Noah, Abraham, and Moses.

Oaths exists because the kingdom of earth is saturated with false speech. For a sinful, broken society to function, sinful men and women in the kingdom of man must create ways to differentiate between when they are speaking falsely and when they are speaking truthfully. To create this space, they employ oaths to signify that what follows breaks from their normal pattern of false speech. With this understanding in play, Christians can take legal and formal oaths because they have already committed to the ethic of truth at conversion. An human oath simply codifies in human terms the Christian’s previous spiritual commitment to truth telling. The Christian is free to take oath. But he is not free to talk in a way that necessitates he give his listeners the assurances of promises. In her daily speech, the believer’s words should also be the simple truth. Her yes should always yes and her no should always no. May Hod help us all to speak the truth in love.

Peter Witkowski Sermon on the Mount

Divorce: What Does Jesus Think?

According to some religious people, you can have the sexual ethic of an out-of-control frat boy and still never sleep with anyone other your spouse. In first century Judaism, religious leaders happened upon this arrangement through the practice of no fault divorce. If the leader’s wife gained weight, nagged too much, or simply became a bore, the men of that era would march down to the local town council, file a complaint listing one of the afore mentioned criticisms, and then return home with a divorce certificate. That night, they would push their wife to the curb. The following morning, they would go out and marry their secretary, enjoying ‘marital’ intimacy with their new and improve spouse. The whole thing was legal and condoned by the religious community. These men never officially cheated on anyone and yet, were free to engage new sexual partners as often as they had the inclination. Selfishness masquerading as personal happiness had been both sanctified and institutionalized.

Is Divorce Good?

Jesus, however, was not impressed with this arrangement. Jesus opposed divorce because it stands in violated the ethic of the Kingdom of God. Marriage exists to picture Christ’s love for the church. Though the Church stumbles into error, becomes selfish, Jesus never abandon his bride. He pursues her, cares for her, sanctifies her, and sacrifices for her. When a man and a woman marry, they commit to pursuing, caring, sanctifying, and sacrificing for their spouse even when life is unpleasant. They commit to building a relationship that resembles Jesus’s love for his people.

When a man divorces his wife because he has grown distant from her, he defies the notions of meekness, mercy, and peacemaking that Jesus prioritized. When a woman divorces her husband because he was a bore and then marries her neighbor because he promises more relational excitement and better sexual intimacy, she too defies the commands of God. Instead of pursuing their spouses, sacrificing for them, and humbly overlooking their faults, the people in the above scenarios boast in their abilities, extend merciless condemnation, and lay downs ultimatums that if not fulfilled will free them to pursue a new sexual partner. In short, people divorce because they refuse to love their spouse. Jesus always loves.

The results of divorce evidence that divorce results from an absence of love. A recent Huffington Post article noted that the divorce process produces the following emotions: shock, pain, anger, angst, sadness, anxiety, embarrassment, and shame. Instead of liberating or enriching the soul, divorce destroys the hearts of all involved. The prophet Malachi sums up the brutal nature of divorce writing,

“Let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts.” So guard yourselves in your spirit and do not be faithless.

Divorce produces results at odds with the revealed will of God. With this in mind, we can understand why Jesus says,

“everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery (Matt 5:32b).”

While sex remains an intimate part of marriage it is not the totality of marriage covenant. According to Genesis 2:24, marriage exists to foster spiritual, physical, and emotional connection between one man and one women as long as they both shall live. In Matthew 19:4-5, Jesus affirmed the Genesis creation mandate, stating,

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.

Is Divorce Every Ok?

Though Jesus stands against divorce, he does allow his followers to initiate divorce if their spouse has engaged in sexual intimacy with someone else. When a husband walks in on his wife in bed with another man or woman, his marriage covenant has been shattered by his spouse’s unfaithfulness. The apostle Paul notes, “Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” In other words, sexual immorality reorients the marriage pact from the husband to the person having the affair with the wife. The marriage is over the moment she cheats. Jesus understands that the brokenness of the world can profoundly touch our lives through no fault of our own and provides the hurting with a means of gracious deliverance from sin.

At this juncture, the husband may either pursue his wife or he may divorce her. As a pastor, my heart aligns with John Stott who said,

“I have made it a rule never to speak with anyone about divorce, until I have first spoken with them about two other subjects, namely marriage and reconciliation.”

Reconciliation should always be explored. But if the husband says, “no” and wants to move forward with a divorce, he has the freedom in Christ to divorce his unfaithful wife and to marry a new bride. But even in this case, sin still necessitates the divorce. Had the wife been faithful, the husband would never have filed divorce papers.

Moreover, the believing spouse bears no guilt if her spouse chooses to leave the marriage. If a wife finds herself staring at divorce papers even though she has never cheated and has fought to foster a healthy marriage, she is free to allow her unbelieving husband to go. Paul writes, “But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace (1 Cor 7:15).” If a husband leaves his marriage because he finds his wife dull, the wife left behind has not sinned and is free to remarry.

How the Church Helps

Church discipline proves helpful in assessing such abandonment. If a husband threatens to leave his wife for reasons not tied to sexual sin, the local church should intervene, working through the steps of church discipline found in Matthew 18. If the man refuses to listen to the pleas of his wife and then to the pleas of his wife and the leaders of the church, the leaders of the church should take the case to the whole church. If the husband still refuses to reconcile with his wife, the church should excommunicate him. Jesus says, “If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” Once the church labels the man and unbeliever and the divorce is complete, the woman attains the freedom to remarry. The congregation can openly affirm her faith and love for others. They church can provide her with counseling and help her cover the cost of restarting her life. Conversely, they can call the husband to repentance and faith. When properly exercised, church polity proves to be a powerful tool for believers walking through the complexities of divorce.

Because of sin, Jesus allows the believer to divorce his or her spouse after the spouse commits a sexual sin that annuls their marriage vows. Jesus also allows believers to let their unbelieving spouses divorce them.

What About?

Because the human heart struggles to live out the kingdom ethic of Jesus, a host of other divorce scenarios exist. Wives who hold down great jobs and manage the family find themselves married to deadbeat husbands who live and sleep in the garage playing video games. Husbands wake up next to wives who ruthlessly insult and malign them week after week. Other women find their marriage to be a constant source of misery for their husband does nothing but rave angerly at their kids. Others lament their marriage because their wife’s atheistic views prevent them from being in ministry. In all these cases and more, divorce seems preferable to a lifetime of marital pain. Many in such marriages assume that Jesus would sanction their divorce.

But according to Jesus, those who divorce because their marriage has become a profound source of misery commit adultery. Instead of divorcing, the believing spouse should remain in the marriage, extending grace, love, mercy, forgiveness, and peace to the offending spouse. As Paul notes, “For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife (1 Cor 7:16)?” If the unbelieving spouse is willing to stay in the marriage and has not committed sexual sin, the believing spouse must not divorce. By staying he or she brings the hope and blessing of God to bear on the marriage.

If abuse is involved, the legal authorities should be involved and the church should do anything and everything to keep the wife and kids save. Safety is a prerequisite for reconciliation.

Singleness is Pretty Good

Jesus’s understanding of divorce and its implication for less than happy marriages proves hard to stomach for many. Even his disciples thought as much, telling Jesus, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” Indeed, singleness is to be preferred to a bad marriage. Singleness is not a blight on the soul. Rather it is a gift through which spiritual ministry can flow. As noted above, marriage is a profound blessing when entered into by two souls committed to the kingdom ethic through faith. But the glory of Christian marriage does not negate the glory of singleness. Paul notes, “So then he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better (1 Cor 7:38).”

Final Thoughts

If men and women exchange marriage partners like a sex-crazed college student, they have not discovered morality. They have simply rebranded and institutionalized adultery, employing divorce as a social mechanism of dignified violence. May God give us the grace needed to value singleness and to uphold the kingdom ethic of love and marriage.

Peter Witkowski Church History, Heros of the Faith Biographies

A Brief Introduction to the life and Legacy of John Calvin

On November 1, 1533, theological controversy erupted once again in connection with All Saints Day. But instead of Germany, this drama occurred in Paris, France.

Sixteen years and a day earlier, the well-intentioned and at the time somewhat naïve monk, Martin Luther, had nailed his 95 Theses or questions to the door of the Wittenberg chapel. With that document, Luther had hoped to combat the idea that men and women could earn salvation through good works or even through the purchase of a piece of paper called an indulgence. Sadly for him and Christendom, the Pope rejected Luther’s calls for reform. After a meandering series of accusations, book burnings, and councils, the Catholic Church excommunicated Luther, forcing the monk to retreat into Germany for the purpose of creating a church that would once again champion the historic faith of Jesus and the apostles which declared salvation to be by grace alone through faith alone.

A Quick Biography

By 1533, Luther’s reformation had taken hold of Germany and parts of Switzerland. But little of Luther’s light had penetrated the spiritual darkness that had enveloped the nation of France. John Calvin would later note, he  grew up, “obstinately devoted to the superstitions of Popery.” He began college intent on becoming an officer of the Catholic Church. But as he progressed in his studies, Calvin’s father directed the young scholar away from the church and into law for to quote Calvin the profession “commonly raised those who followed it to wealth.” After turning his back on theology, Calvin somewhat ironically came into contact with the writings of Luther and other reformer’s books which had just begun to eke across the French boarder. While reading, Calvin experienced a sudden conversion which would reshape his life. Calvin wrote, “Having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness I was immediately inflamed with so intense a desire to make progress therein.” Though he finished his legal studies and excelled at that profession, the doctrines of grace had captured his heart.

Because he maintained a stringent academic regime which began around 6AM and ended about midnight, Calvin quickly earned the reputation of being an expert in both reformed and biblical theology. When his friend Nicolas Chop decided to educate academics in Paris on the errors of works salvation in the middle of an All-Saints Day speech, he asked Calvin for help. While the extent of Calvin’s involvement in the speech remains debated by scholars, its poor reception could not be questioned. Much like Luther’s 95 Theses in 1517, Calvin’s and Chop’s calls for reform in 1533 were forcefully opposed by the Catholic Church. A few days after the speech’s conclusion, officers were sent to arrest Calvin. But he got wind of the plot and a using a blanket rope escaped out of high window. He scurried off to southern France.

A few months later on October 18, 1534, posters appeared all over France including outside the door of king Francis the 1st’s bedroom, denouncing “the horrible, great, and unbearable abuse of the papal mass.” The king was not amused and responded to the documents with swift persecution, burning 32 protestants at the stake. Grasping that France had no stomach for the Reformed faith, Calvin fled his homeland and headed to Italy, seeking to begin a private life of study and reflection. After some time, he decided to relocate to the city of Basle.

But before he could get to his destination, international politics interrupted his travels and forced him to spend an unexpected night in Geneva. What appeared to be simply another mundane night in Calvin’s life was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of the loud, headstrong, and somewhat flamboyant protestant preacher, William Farel. For the next hour or so, Farel begged the young reformer of 26 years to lead the Genevan church. Calvin politely declined, saying, “My heart was set upon devoting myself to private studies.” Farel was not to be put off. Calvin reports what happened next. “Upon this, Farel, immediately strained every nerve to detain me.” Before all was said and done, Farel would call down a curse on the young Calvin, proclaiming, “You are following only your own wishes, and I declare, in the name of God Almighty, that if you do not assist us in this work of the Lord, the Lord will punish you for seeking your own interest rather than his.” The threat struck home. Calvin said, “I was so stricken with terror, that I desisted from the journey which I had undertaken.”

Though Farel undoubtedly overstated his case and would continue to make brash decisions such as marrying a sixteen-year-old girl in his fifties, God had ordained this expression of Farel’s audacity for the benefit of the Genevan church and for all of Christendom.

God would use Calvin’s presence in Geneva to stabilize and preserve the faith once delivered for all. While Luther deserves credit for rediscovering and popularizing the gospel, Calvin’s should be celebrated for preserving the faith that Luther unearthed from the destructive rays of societal chaos, political egotism, and doctrinal confusion. Calvin proves important to the church today because his books, sermons, and tracts have provided Christians with a great understanding of theology, preaching, and pastoral ministry.

Calvin the Theologian

Calvin wrote and wrote. Through his hundreds of books, he gifted the church a library of accessible volumes that have helped Christians understand the important doctrines of the faith.  By hand and sometimes by dictation, Calvin created commentaries on most of the New Testament. He died before he could get to 2 and 3 John and Revelation. He also published a catechism, sermons, and most famously his Institutes of Christian Religion. Though few have read this book that rivals the size of the Old Testament in its entirety, the volume continues to inform Christian thought for Calvin methodically discussed a host of Christian doctrines. He touched upon everything from the Lord’s Supper to Guardian Angels, to natural revelation to prayer. Perhaps most famously, he solidified the protestant church’s understanding of the fallenness of man, the saving power of Grace, and the providence of God.

After reading the Scriptures, Calvin concluded that men and women entered the world broken by original sin. When Adam sinned both he and all his descendants became sinners. Calvin writes, “the whole man is overwhelmed – as by a deluge – from head to foot, so that no part is immune from sin and all that proceeds from him is to be imputed as sin (ICR, 2.1.9).” Because men and women were chained to sin, they could not choose anything good. By necessity, evil people with corrupt wills would want and would choose evil. Calvin writes, “The mind of man has been so completely estranged from God’s righteousness that it conceives, desires, and undertakes, only that which is impious, perverted, foul, impure, and infamous.” As Augustine and Luther, Calvin denied that men and women had the willful freedom to choose good. Sin served like a weighted anchor upon the soul directing people towards evil. According to Calvin, people legitimately choose to do evil apart from coercion as it was all they would ever want to choose.

When God saved a sinner, he accomplished the feat through the gracious opening of the sinner’s eyes to the realities of sin and to the glories of Christ. Once aware of the truth of the gospel, men and women can do nothing but believe. It is the necessary response to the saving power of God. Just as a woman with a foreclosure notice on her front door will undoubtedly cash a check for a billion dollars, the enlighten soul willingly repents and believes when exposed to the saving grace of Jesus. In other words, people do not so much choose God as God chooses them. Calvin writes, “For no man makes himself a sheep but is made one by heavenly grace.” In other words, men and women repent and believe according to God’s grace, his irresistible grace. Calvin concludes, “To sum up: by free adoption God makes those whom he wills to be his sons; the intrinsic cause of this is himself, for he is content with his own secret good pleasure.”

This doctrine has left Calvin open to the charge of hyper-Calvinism or fatalism, a type of let go and let God mentality. Proponents of this thinking say that since God has already determined the future, they do not have to evangelize, love others, or do anything to advance the gospel. God is going to save whom he is going to save. Though some churches have taught hyper-Calvinism, Calvin did not teach this doctrine.

He believed God’s providential plans occurred through our willing hearts. In other words, God does all that he desires and so do we. When God ordains events, he does so in ways consistent with our wills. While God ordained that Joseph would be sold into slavery so that he could ultimately save his family, God did not make Joseph’s brothers go against their natural desires to toss Joseph into a pit. God worked through their evil wills to accomplish his divine plan which was good.

The doctrine of providence should not lead people to fatalistic despair or laziness. Human actions were and are still meaningful. Providence does not erase human responsibility. Rather it should fill our hearts with hope. After noting that you or I could die from a host of causes ranging from a snakebite, to a fall, to an animal attack,  to a hail storm, to a falling shingle, or to a mugging, Calvin writes of the Christian, “it comforts him to know that he has been received into God’s safekeeping and entrusted to the care of his angels, and that neither water, nor fire, nor iron can harm him except in so far as it pleases God as governor to give them occasion.” If God reigns, we have no reason to fear for God does good for us.  

Calvin The Preacher

Though Calvin loved theology, he did not think it the discipline of scholars. He wanted it to reside in the hearts of everyday people. To accomplish this goal, Calvin preached, a lot. During his life, John Calvin preached more than 2000 sermons, devoting 65 sermons to the gospels, 159 sermons to Job, and 200 sermons to Deuteronomy. When Calvin returned to Geneva after having been exiled because he got mad at the City Council and locked them out of the church on Easter Sunday, Calvin returned to the Psalm that he was preaching when he had left the city, picking up at the very verse he had left off years before. Geneva contained three churches and the pastoral staff consisting of four additional preachers and three associates that worked along-side of Calvin. The men would preach at least twenty sermons a week in the various churches. Calvin preached twice on Sunday and then every weekday on alternating weeks. His Sunday sermons featured expositions from the New Testament or the Psalms. On weekdays, he would preach through the Old Testament.

Calvin valued expository preaching because he believed it to be the method by which God saved and sanctified the lost. He said, “Faith needs the Word as much as fruit needs the living root of the tree.” The preaching of the Word also sustained Christians after conversion. Calvin wrote, “The…Word is the basis whereby faith is supported and sustained…take away the Word and no faith will remain.” Calvin firmly believed the success of the church and the success of all the Reformation reforms would rise and fall with the preaching of the word. If a local church lost the citadel of biblical preaching every other ministry would fall in short order. To remain, a church must preach the word.

Understanding the importance of preaching, Calvin reserved the pulpit for qualified men. To get a church in Geneva or one of its country parishes, a man had to possess a godly character, knowledge of the Scriptures, and be a competent speaker. Calvin concluded, “There are two things required [of us preachers], first that we provide a good explanation to the faithful of that which is required of salvation, and then we add as much vehemence as appropriate, so that the doctrine touches and enlivens the hearts.” The sermon was supposed to be the means whereby the fallen heart connected with the Holy Spirit. This experience in-turn would result in spiritual transformation. It was the means by which pastors moved people to obey Christ through the power of the Spirit.  

Calvin passed on the core tenants of the Reformation through expository preaching. He taught scores of succeeding generations of Christians the means and methods of faithful, gospel exposition.

Calvin the Counselor

Lastly, Calvin gave the church a legacy of pastoral care that demanded that those who studied theology and preached the sermons regularly step out of the pulpit and into the lives of their congregation. To help the people of Geneva live out what they heard preached, Calvin ordered his fellow pastors to join him in spending time in the homes of their congregation. He wrote, “It is not enough for a pastor in God’s church to preach and to cast his words into the air, he must practice private admonitions.” Calvin and his fellow pastors visited every church member at least four times during the year to discuss theology, to pray for them, and to verify their church attendance.

If the visits revealed sin’s in the church members life, the pastors would call their counselee to repentance. For example when Calvin discovered through the visitation process that the sailor Jacque Verna was soliciting his daughter-in-law for unwholesome favors, he ordered him to stop and when he learned a mother was beating and burning her step-daughter he reported her to the local magistrates. Calvin and his fellow pastor also provided for the poor, counseled with those in jail, and care for the sick. If someone was bedridden for three days, a pastor would visit them to, “console them according to the Word of God.” When the plague hit Geneva in between 1542-44, the pastor’s struggled in assessing the situation. But before the plague left, two of Geneva’s pastors would die from the plague after catching germs from the sick people they had visited. According to Calvin, the faithful pastor was to know the scriptures well, was to love the pulpit, and was to invest in the lives of his congregation.

Conclusion

Calvin’s theological legacy is both complex and rich. Regardless of whether you agree with his conclusions, modern church members should appreciate Calvin’s faithfulness. Through his theological writings, his preaching, and his pastoral counsel, he provided future generations of Christians with the tools they needed to both understand and pass on the fundamentals of the Christian faith to future generations. The Faith once delivered for all that Luther discovered and popularized, Calvin institutionalized. When he died on May 27, 1564, he left behind a legacy of faithfulness worthy of our remembrance.