The God of John Calvin

B. B. Warfield wrote that Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, has given the church a comprehensive description of God in some of the most moving and beautiful passages in Christian literature.  Calvin characterized the believer’s response to God as a two-fold religious emotion of fear and love.  This corresponds to the double aspect in which God is known by His people.  God is our Lord, the almighty creator and sovereign governor of His universe, who has the right to judge us; He is also our loving Father.  Our God, as He is revealed to us in the Scripture, is to be feared and loved.  Calvin wrote that the knowledge of God produces true godliness in the soul, a godliness that combines the most profound reverence with heart-felt love.  He said that true godliness is not born until “we are persuaded that God is the fountain of all that is good and cease to seek for good elsewhere than in Him.”  People will never subject themselves in willing obedience to the Lord until He is apprehended in this double aspect.  The modern world quickly accepts a God who is loving, but balks at the conception of a Lord who is to be our final Judge.  Concerning Calvin’s view of God, J. I. Packer wrote, “If Calvin could come back, he would tell us, I think, that our God was too small; and he would ask us whether we had ever seen the vision of God on His throne.”  In our world of political and cultural chaos, this is the vision we need.  John Calvin’s writings give us assurance that it will be found where Calvin himself found it—in the Bible.