So I'm reading Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion this year. One month in to this project, I can say decisively that this stuff is an absolute treasure. His writing is warmly devotional and not too difficult (I do have days or portions that I need to read a couple of times). Each week I read a chapter, take some notes, and respond with a short prayer. I'll post a month's worth of my notes at a time.
1. To know God, I must know myself & to know myself, I must know God –
- Wisdom (knowledge + practice) is rooted in knowing God and ourselves. This connection is established in creation– we are made in his image- to rightly know ourselves, we’ve always needed to know him
- This knowledge is complicated by the fall – our image is marred and we can’t come to wisdom apart from his revelation
- The two parts of this knowledge go hand-in-hand. I need to know that I am sinful, needy, foolish so that I might seek him. AND I need to know him in his splendour, majesty and holiness that I might not measure myself by merely a horizontal comparison and fail to come to an accurate assessment of myself and my need of him.
- Heavenly Father, my wisdom is so little. I confess that I don’t know you as I should, so I also don’t know myself. I confess that I measure my righteousness by that of my neighbours, leading me consistently to pride and self-righteousness. I think myself wise and strong, independent of you, my Creator. Because I fail to acknowledge your true nature, I am deceived about my own. Sadly, too often I prefer my ignorant darkness to your humbling, fear-inducing beauty. I am one who knows the truth and yet suppresses it. Forgive me because of Christ’s work on my behalf and shine the light of truth into my darkness.
2. Piety (reverence + love) and trust are requisite in knowing God (as Creator)
- It’s not possible to truly know God without loving, revering, and trusting him.
- apart from Christ there is no favourable knowledge of God – therefore Scripture is the only way to rightly know the Creator
- Through Creation (with Scripture) we come to know that God founded and sustains the universe by his might, regulates it by his wisdom, preserves it by his goodness, and rules it (including us) by his righteousness and judgment, bears with it in his mercy, watches over it by his protection, and no wisdom; power; or truth exists apart from him THEREFORE humanity owes everything to Him. Until we acknowledge this we won’t give ourselves truly to him.
- Knowing God isn’t a philosophical exercise, it is a personal one. As part of his creation, knowing him should generate both reverence and trust as we recognize him as the source of every good.
- Knowing God isn’t dreaming up any god we please, but contemplating the one and only true God and responding with reverence and trust - it submits to his authority, seeks his help, rests in his goodness, advances his glory, and restrains its sin. *** “Even if there were no hell, it would still shudder at offending him alone.”
- Oh Lord, how little my mind conceives of your majesty. The stunning beauty of your revelation in creation alone is enough to cause me to bow down in worship. You are a God who wants to reveal yourself to your creatures and I praise you for all that you’ve shown me. Your goodness, wisdom, righteousness, justice, truth, and power are all evident through the world around me. Forgive me for not seeing, for my feeble responses, for shallow and half-hearted reverence, love, and trust. Help me to know you more that I might worship you rightly.
3. All men know God.
- All men know God enough to be condemned, so all hide from him just as our first parent’s did.
- Every isolated civilization knows there is a god, even if in ignorance they worship a false one. Every impious person knows there is a god, even if in fear they try to hide it from themselves. Humanity tries by every means possible to destroy their knowledge of God and corrupt their worship of him.
- We were made with the purpose of knowing God.
- Heavenly Father, apart from your intervention I would stand condemned. Thank you for opening my eyes. I confess that even now, even though I know you to be the Only True and Living God, I worship false gods – reputation, comfort, pleasure- and all too often hide from you in fear when I’ve done wrong. Forgive me and renew my delight in you. Help me to pursue knowing you with everything I am and all that I have.
4. The knowledge is either corrupted or smothered – partly by ignorance, partly by malice.
- Humanity does not receive God as he offers himself but imagines him as they’ve invent/dream him to be – it is a vain curiosity that drives them not an ordinate desire to know him.
- Humanity, hardened by habitual sin, repels any and all remembrance of God and his true character. They blind themselves from any knowledge of him.
- There is no true religion without a commitment to truth – it must conform what God says about himself and how he is to be worshiped.
- Fear-driven motions of religion without repentance is a corruption of the knowledge of God.
- Father even though I know you my sinful flesh still wants to suppress that knowledge. I confess to you that my ignorance of your character is rooted in nothing less that my laziness and my vain religious motions are desires to manipulate you into giving me your gifts or impress others with my displays. Your word says that you desire worshipers who will worship in spirit and in truth. Purify my heart, oh God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Thank you for mercy, so undeserved and so free.
5. Knowledge of God is evident in both his creating and governing the universe.
- Humans are the highest evidence of a wise creator.
- God reveals himself through creation but few see his glory revealed in it.
- We ought to seek God, not in our own minds, but instead by contemplating him in his works.
- This knowledge must affect us – bringing us to worship and awakening and encouraging us to the hope of the future life. The works of his providence and judgement in creation are pointing to even greater things. We need to study his work and then contemplate how his characteristics of power, mercy, goodness and wisdom are shown to us.
- Yet how infrequently when we gaze upon creation do we remember our creator?
- Each man decides for himself what god is and always comes out wrong. We need God to reveal himself.
- Nature speaks to us in vain, and we are left with no excuse. Although creation displays his glory, it cannot lead us in the right path. The problem is not in the one who reveals himself through creation, but in us, the creatures who ignore and corrupt the knowledge of our Creator.
- In the rain that falls, I see your abundant provision O God. In the fact that it falls on the righteous and the unrighteous, I see your justice for therein is the promise of a day that judgement will be divide but I also perceive the wideness of your mercy in withholding punishment. In the timing of the shower and the grand design of the hydrological cycle, I see your wisdom. In the droplets running together to form rivers, streams, lakes, and oceans, I see your majestic power. You, O Lord, are worthy of all worship. How small and inconsistently I see the glory you reveal in the world you made. Forgive my blindness, my deafness, my feebleness of mind through Jesus and in your grace transform my faculties that I may behold you with greater clarity.
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