John Calvin's Expository Genius

I recently finished reading Steve Lawson's first book in his new series, "A Long Line of Godly Men:" The Expository Genius of John Calvin. It is more than a biography; it is an examination of his sermon style that has as its aim "to raise the bar for a new generation of expositors."

Several things impressed me about Calvin as I read the book:

• the singleness of his devotion to Christ and the ministry. After his wife died after nine years of marriage, Calvin never remarried, but instead devoted himself to the work of ministry.
• how quickly after conversion he entered the ministry and began to have a significant ministry. Within one year he was preaching and within three years he had assumed the pastorate in Geneva, and two years later was banished from there. He quickly immersed himself in Scripture and so worked to demonstrate his giftedness that he was able to carry out significant ministries.
• the commonness of sin. He battled in Geneva many of the same kinds of sins that are prevalent today: gossip, adultery, licentiousness. Because of his influence in the Reformation, there is a tendency to think that the church in those days was more sanctified today. Yet the church battled with sin in its midst in its infancy and in the same kinds of ways today.
  
• his resolute commitment to the authority of the Word of God. One member of his church had been excommunicated for sexual sin and come back with friends and supporters bearing swords and demanding to be given communion. Calvin descended from the pulpit with these words: "These hands you may crush, these arms you may lop off, my life you may take, my blood is yours, you may shed it; but you shall never force me to give holy things to the profaned and dishonor the table of my God."
  

One more quote about Calvin:

"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 exosited. Nothing must crowd the Scriptures out of the chief place in the public gathering."

One more quote by Calvin:

"We owe to the Scripture the same reverence which we owe to God because it has proceeded from Him alone, and has nothing of man mixed with it."