Calvin writes very observingly: “For words cannot express how much God is vexed by our lack of trust when we ask him for a favor which we do expect to receive.”
(Institutes, 1541, p. 524)
Calvin on Providence
Providence is God’s ever-present hand. Beautiful!
(Institutes 1.16.2)
Calvin on Piety
Piety is that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces. For until we recognize that we owe everything to God, that we are nourished by his fatherly care, that he is the Author of our every good, that we should seek nothing beyond him-we will never yield him willing service. Nay, unless we establish our complete happiness in him, we will never give ourselves truly and sincerely to him. (Institutes 1.2.1)
Only Jesus
Calvin points out in his work on justification in the Institutes that, Scripture affirms that “Christ is both righteousness and life, and that the blessing of justification is possessed by faith alone.”
(Inst. 3.14.17)
Evidence of God’s Love
Calvin has some beautiful comments on God’s discipline of his people in his Institutes (Inst. 3.4.32).
“the chastening of God carries his blessing with it, and is an evidence of love, as Scripture teaches.” (see Job 5:17; Prov. 3:11; Heb. 12:5)
“All the calamities which the wicked suffer in the present life are depicted to us as a kind of anticipation of the punishment of hell. In these they already see, as from a distance, their eternal condemnation…the Lord chastens his servants sore, but does not give them over to death (Ps. 118:18).”
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