"The Four and Twenty Elders Casting their Crowns before the Throne" c 1803-1805 by William Blake.
This post is part of my year long study of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. To facilitate this course of study, I am following along with Princeton University's "A Year with the Institutes", which also includes an audio reading of the text. Also blogging yearlong on this text is the reformation21 site.
Calvin's Institutes - 1.5.6-9
Sovereignty is a foreign concept to the post-modern mind. It is also foreign to American's who long ago threw off kings who would seek to impose their wills on loyal subjects.
There are no loyal subjects in America, this is the land of the free.
That is all well and good when it comes to the relationship of one man to another. It is an entirely different matter all together, however, when you are considering God, who created you and everything that is.
John Calvin: " It is indeed true, that the brightest manifestation of divine glory finds not one genuine spectator among a hundred." I suspect in today's world, it is more like one in 10,000.
Here are more quotes from Calvin's Institutes in this reading:
"Let each of us, therefore, in contemplating his own nature, remember that there is one God who governs all natures, and, in governing, wishes us to have respect to himself, to make him the object of our faith, worship, and adoration. Nothing, indeed, can be more preposterous than to enjoy those noble endowments which bespeak the divine presence within us, and to neglect him who, of his own good pleasure, bestows them upon us."
"In the second class of God’s works, namely those which are above the ordinary course of nature, the evidence of his perfections are in every respect equally clear. For in conducting the affairs of men, he so arranges the course of his providence, as daily to declare, by the clearest manifestations, that though all are in innumerable ways the partakers of his bounty, the righteous are the special objects of his favour, the wicked and profane the special objects of his severity."
"To this purpose the Psalmist (Ps. 107) mentioning how God, in a wondrous manner, often brings sudden and unexpected succor to the miserable when almost on the brink of despair, whether in protecting them when they stray in deserts, and at length leading them back into the right path, or supplying them with food when famishing for want, or delivering them when captive from iron fetters and foul dungeons, or conducting them safe into harbor after shipwreck, or bringing them back from the gates of death by curing their diseases, or, after burning up the fields with heat and drought, fertilizing them with the river of his grace, or exalting the meanest of the people, and casting down the mighty from their lofty seats:—the Psalmist, after bringing forward examples of this description, infers that those things which men call fortuitous events, are so many proofs of divine providence, and more especially of paternal clemency, furnishing ground of joy to the righteous, and at the same time stopping the mouths of the ungodly. But as the greater part of mankind, enslaved by error, walk blindfold in this glorious theater, he exclaims that it is a rare and singular wisdom to meditate carefully on these works of God, which many, who seem most sharp-sighted in other respects, behold without profit."
Calvin continues to make it clear: God is, and God reigns!
Lately, in my journey of sanctification, this is where the great bastard (as Jonathan Edwards called Satan) seems to enjoy poking at me. It is as if he whispers, "Alright David, if you are going to believe in God, so be it, but your trying to understand God's sovereignty is foolishness. You do well to think of God more like Santa Claus. He was a great guy, who loved everyone, peace on earth and all that. But all powerful? All Knowing? Holy? Sovereign? No...afraid not."
It seems that many have created a new god, that suits their own desires. But certainly it would behoove us to not disrespect the Creator in this way. It is certainly better to read God's word and let him teach us who he is, then to dream up our own god, and potentially face the wrath of the one, true, holy God.
