OUR GOOD GOD

You don’t have to read very far in John Calvin’s Institutes before you meet some of the distinctive ideas that shape his view of true religion.

One of these is that God is the source of all good, and that as such he is to be worshipped and sought after. We meet this idea as Calvin begins to discuss the relationship (or “bonds”) connecting the knowledge of ourselves and knowledge of God. Last week, remember, we saw that Calvin believed that true wisdom consists in two things – knowing God and knowing ourselves. The two are connected together in many ways, he says, so that you cannot properly have the one without the other.

Taking up this point, Calvin claims that “no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God” (I.i.1). And why is this? Because when we look at ourselves we immediately see amazing abilities that couldn’t possibly have come from us. “Quite clearly,” he says, “the mighty gifts with which we are endowed are hardly from ourselves; indeed, our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God” (Acts 17:28). And this awareness, he argues, naturally moves us to lift our minds to God, the One from whom all good gifts come.

I find this to be the case when I play golf. Often as I face the challenge of hitting a tiny ball with a long club I stop and think about all the processes involved in making such a thing possible – seeing the ball with my eye, nerve and muscle actions that enable me to move my arms, reflexes that influence timing, and so on. As I do, I’m amazed at how wonderfully we human beings have been made. Knowing that all the abilities needed to hit a golf ball come from God leads me to worship him. As Calvin puts it, seeing these blessings as “dew” that has descended from heaven, “we are led as by rivulets to the spring itself” (ibid). The good things we enjoy draw us to consider and seek after the One who has showered them upon us.

This is foundational to Calvin’s understanding of how we are to live. Seeing God for the good and gracious Being that he is, he says, and feeling this deeply in our hearts as a matter of personal reality and not just theory, will affect us in three ways. First, it produces adoration – sincere, heartfelt worship and praise to God for all that he is and does. Second, it produces humility – a deep awareness that there is nothing that we have that we did not receive, and therefore, nothing that we can boast in as of ourselves. And thirdly, it produces devotion – a desire to give ourselves to God and experience more of him as the Source of all that is good.

I experience all three of these effects as I play golf, if I may return to this illustration for a moment. As my mind turns from the game itself to the God who has given it and the ability to play it I am inspired to worship him, humbled, and caused to thirst for him. As already mentioned, when I think about all that goes into a golf swing and realize how amazingly we as people have been designed, I cannot but praise him. Then, when I connect well with the ball and see it soaring true as an arrow toward a distant green, I’m filled not only with pleasure but with humility. “Where did I get the ability to hit the ball so sweetly and truly?” I ask myself. There’s only one answer. Ultimately, it is a gift from God. True, I’ve worked hard to develop the skills involved in hitting a golf ball well. But in the end, the ability to do that – and even the desire to do so – comes from him. So there is no room for boasting. There can be a joyful sense of satisfaction, but there’s no place for standing on a pedestal. Every good gift we might have is precisely that – a gift, something both to delight in and be thankful for.

Seeing that leads me to take a third and final step, that of seeking to experience more of this wonderful, loving, generous God. Is he an inexhaustible fountain of goodness, kindness, wisdom, love, joy and power? Yes he is. That being the case, I want to know him more. Having paddled in the shallows I want to plunge into the deep; having experienced the “mercy drops”, I long for the “showers”.