New.Demonstration

Divine Presence

Calvin’s unwavering belief in biblical inspiration led him to maintain that when the Word is preached, God Himself is actually present. He believed there is a unique manifestation of God’s presence in supernatural power through the public exposition of the written Word. “Wherever the gospel is preached,” Calvin declared, “it is as if God Himself came into the midst of us.”^[i] He added:

It is certain that if we come to church we shall not hear only a mortal man speaking but we shall feel (even by His secret power) that God is speaking to our souls, that He is the teacher. He so touches us that the human voice enters into us and so profits us that we are refreshed and nourished by it. God calls us to Him as if He had His mouth open and we saw Him there in person.^[ii]

The Holy Spirit, Calvin said, is actively at work in the preaching of the Word, and this powerful ministry of the Spirit was the sine qua non of Calvin’s expository ministry. He stated that during public proclamation, “when the minister executes his commission faithfully, by speaking only what God puts into his mouth, the inward power of the Holy Spirit is joined with his outward voice.”^[iii] In fact, in all preaching, he affirmed, there must be an “inward efficacy of the Holy Spirit when He sheds forth His power upon hearers, that they may embrace a discourse by faith.”^[iv] He believed God was not heard if His Spirit was not at work. This truth led him to say:

Let the pastors boldly dare all things by the Word of God, of which they are constituted administrators.

Let them constrain all the power, glory, and excellence of the world to give place to and to obey the divine majesty of this Word.

Let them enjoin everyone by it, from the highest to the lowest.

Let them edify the body of Christ.

Let them devastate Satan’s reign. Let them pasture the sheep, kill the wolves, instruct and exhort the rebellious.

Let them bind and loose, thunder and lightning, if necessary,

but let them do all according to the Word of God.^[v]

On the other hand, Calvin noted that any dead orthodoxy on the preacher’s part invites the judgment of God. The power of the Spirit, he said, is “extinguished as soon as the Doctors blow their flutes . . . to display their eloquence.”^[vi] In other words, the Holy Spirit works through a preacher upon the listener only to the extent that the Word is taught correctly and clearly.

Not surprisingly, this belief in God’s powerful presence in preaching had a profound influence on Calvin’s view of the pulpit. He wrote, “The office of teaching is committed to pastors for no other purpose than that God alone may be heard there.”^[vii] A life-transforming pulpit ministry, for Calvin, required the divine presence in power.

Pulpit Priority

Further, Calvin believed that biblical preaching must occupy the chief place in the worship service. What God has to say to man is infinitely more important than what man has to say to God. If the congregation is to worship properly, if believers are to be edified, if the lost are to be converted, God’s Word must be exposited. Nothing must crowd the Scriptures out of the chief place in the public gathering.

The primacy of biblical preaching in Calvin’s thought was undeniable: “Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists.”^[viii]

On the other hand, “An assembly in which the preaching of heavenly doctrine is not heard does not deserve to be reckoned a church.”^[ix] In short, Calvin held that Bible exposition should occupy the primary place in the worship service, meaning that preaching is the primary role of the minister.

But not just any sort of preaching will do. Calvin wrote, “The truth of God is maintained by the pure preaching of the gospel.”^[x] He added, “God will have His church trained up by the pure preaching of His own Word, not by the contrivances of men [which are wood, hay and stubble].”^[xi] He knew that when sound biblical preaching vanishes from the church, doctrine and piety leave with it: “Piety would soon decay if the living preaching of doctrine should cease.”^[xii] Quite simply, Calvin believed the church can be edified only by “the preaching of the gospel which is inwardly replete with a kind of solid majesty.”^[xiii] Biblical preaching is that necessary and that noble.

According to the Genevan Ordinances of 1542, which Calvin himself penned, the primary duty of pastors, elders, and ministers is to announce the Word of God for instruction, admonition, exhortation, and reproof,^[xiv] and no figure in church history exemplified that statement better than Calvin himself. He declared, “The aim of a good teacher, [is] to turn away the eyes of men from the world, that they may look up to heaven.”^[xv] Likewise, “The theologian’s task is not to divert the ears with clatter, but to strengthen consciences by teaching things true, sure, and profitable.”^[xvi] This is true preaching.

As Reformation theology established a foothold—largely through Calvin’s public exposition—dramatic changes began sweeping across Europe. Bible exposition returned to its central place in the church. James Montgomery Boice noted this realignment when he wrote:

When the Reformation swept over Europe in the sixteenth century, there was an immediate elevation of the Word of God in Protestant services. John Calvin particularly carried this out with thoroughness, ordering that the altars, long the centers of the Latin mass, be removed from the churches and that a pulpit with a Bible on it be placed at the center of the building. This was not to be on one side of the room, but at the very center, where every line of the architecture would carry the gaze of the worshiper to the Book which alone contains the way of salvation and outlines the principles upon which the church of the living God is to be governed.^[xvii]

Calvin’s convictions forced an emphasis on the priority of the pulpit.

As the Bible was opened, reformation was unleashed.

—Steven J. Lawson, Expository Genius of John Calvin (Lake Mary, FL: Reformation Trust, 2007), p28-32.

Pastor Jim McClarty of Grace Christian Assembly talks about this section of the book:

Footnotes

1. Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Vol. 1, 227. [↩]
2. Calvin, Sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians (Carlisle, PA, and Edinburgh, Scotland: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1562, 1577, 1973, 1975, 1979, 1987, 1998), 42. [↩]
3. John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, Vol. 4, trans. James Anderson (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1979 reprint), 199. [↩]
4. Calvin, Commentaries on the First Twenty Chapters of the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, Vol. 1, trans. Thomas Myers (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1979 reprint), 61. [↩]
5. Calvin, as quoted in Pierre Marcel, The Relevance of Preaching (New York, NY, and Seoul, South Korea: Westminster Publishing House, 2000), 59. [↩]
6. Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, trans. William Pringle (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1979 reprint), 174. [↩]
7. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, Vol. 1, trans. William Pringle (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1979 reprint), 95. [↩]
8. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. II, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960), 1,023. [↩]
9. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, Vol. 3, trans. William Pringle (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1979 reprint), 213. [↩]
10. Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, 91. [↩]
11. Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, trans. John Pringle (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1979 reprint), 137. [↩]
12. Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony, trans. Charles William Bingham (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1979 reprint), 230. [↩]
13. Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, 176. [↩]
14. Publisher’s introduction, “John Calvin and his Sermons on Ephesians,” in Calvin, Sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians, vii. [↩]
15. Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, 283. [↩]
16. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. I, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960), 164. [↩]
17. Boice, Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace? Rediscovering the Doctrines that Shook the World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2001), 188–189. [↩]