Sermon for October 26th, 2025
2 Timothy 3:10-17 (GNV)
10 But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of living, purpose, faith, longsuffering, love, patience, 11 persecutions, and afflictions which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra, which persecutions I suffered: but from them all the Lord delivered me. 12 Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus, shall suffer persecution. 13 But the evil men and deceivers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.
14 But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned, and which are committed unto thee, knowing of whom thou hast learned them: 15 And that thou hast known the holy Scriptures of a child, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through the faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16 For the whole Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable to teach, to convince, to correct, and to instruct in righteousness, 17 That the man of God may be absolute, being made perfect unto all good works.
John Calvin: Doctrine & Discipline
John Calvin is known for many things—he was the intellectual force behind the 16th century Reformation, the inventor of a little thing we call the “Protestant work ethic” and he was the author of the first comprehensive work of systematic theology in the modern era. But John Calvin isn’t exactly known for his sense of humor, and that’s a shame—because if you read his sermons, his commentaries, his theology, there’s plenty of humor there. Here’s just one example:
Calvin was lecturing one day on the book of Genesis, the creation story, and how God created the entire universe out of nothing. A rather impious student interjected, and in a mocking tone, said, “I’m really curious…what exactly do you think God did in all that time before he created the world?” Calvin looked back down at his notes, and without skipping a beat, said, “He created hell for overly-curious students.”
If you’ve been part of this congregation for any length of time, you probably already know that John Calvin is hands-down, my favorite theologian, my inspiration, and my historic role-model for what it means to be a pastor. I have quoted him in many sermons, referred to his life and his legacy, I have translated his prayers and songs, and (hopefully) channeled some of his key ideas. But I’ve never actually preached a sermon with Calvin as the central subject, until today. And there’s probably good reason for that—Calvin believed that Jesus Christ (the other J.C.) and the scriptures should be the central focus of every good sermon. He had no desire to be honored, lifted up, or even remembered. On his deathbed, he famously made the elders of Geneva promise that they would not mark his grave with even so much as a stone. To this day, his burial place remains unknown.
But his words—his words long outlived the man, and most of them are still in print today. Calvin wrote extensive commentaries on almost every book of the Bible, he wrote thousands of letters, instructions for worship, prayers, and almost 4,000 sermons, including 149 sermons on the Book of Job alone. For comparison’s sake, I have preached a total of 557 sermons, and (believe it or not) only 56 on the Book of Job. But by far, Calvin’s most famous and influential work was this one—the Institutes of the Christian Religion—which was assigned reading in my first year of seminary at Princeton. Calvin wrote the first edition of this book when he was 26 years old, and a recent convert to the Protestant faith. It was a lot shorter then, but he kept on revising and expanding it until shortly before his death.
It may surprise you to hear that when I first read Calvin’s Institutes in seminary, I absolutely hated it. I thought he was a rigid, dogmatic lunatic, and my first seminary paper on Calvin was (in my rather juvenile opinion) a brutal and thorough refutation of his entire theology. God has a sense of humor.
Sometime in my second year of seminary, I was attending a lecture on Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species. I was a big fan of Darwin, and his theory of evolutionary biology. At some point in the lecture, the professor made the offhand comment that Charles Darwin and John Calvin were basically saying the exact same thing in their respective eras—Darwin was using the language of biology while Calvin had been using the language of theology—but their approach, their methodology, and their conclusions were essentially the same. I thought about it for a moment, realized he was right, picked my jaw up from off the floor, and started reading Calvin in an entirely different light. I have never stopped.
But even then, reading the Institutes of the Christian Religion, I only knew Calvin as a theologian. I didn’t know “Calvin the pastor” until right before I came back to El Paso in 2012. In my last year of seminary, the Presbytery had appointed the Rev. Gordon Bowie to be my mentor and liaison—something I was excited about. Gordon was the former pastor at University Presbyterian Church here in El Paso, a Scotsman, and a legend in his own right. The first time we met, he handed me a book and said (in his Scottish accent), “Read this. Then we’ll talk.”
The book was titled “John Calvin: the Constructive Revolutionary” and it talked about how every sentence Calvin added to his Institutes over his lifetime was because someone in his congregation had said, “I’m struggling with something in my faith—can you explain it to me?” And Calvin always answered, thoughtfully, compassionately, and comprehensively. The book also talked about Calvin’s ministry in Geneva—how he persuaded the city leaders to take in thousands of refugees, to build houses for them, to provide meaningful work for them, to build hospitals, food centers, churches and schools. Calvin’s efforts effected a revolution in Geneva, which eventually spread to most of Europe and to the New World. But it wasn’t a revolution of destruction. It was, as the book’s title suggests, a “constructive revolution.” Calvin was a thinker AND a builder. His theology and his understanding of scripture always compelled him—and his community—not just to talk about change, but to roll up their sleeves and get to work.
I never got to discuss the book—or Calvin the pastor—with Gordon Bowie. He passed away just a few months after I came back to El Paso to be the pastor of this church. I took the book to his funeral, where another pastor, Bill Schlesinger (the co-founder of Project Vida) stood up to remember Gordon. He said that Gordon had been his mentor when he first came to El Paso 30 years ago, and had given him a book to read about John Calvin. I was sitting in the front row, and I held up the book, saying, “you mean this one?” After the service, Bill came up to me and said, “let’s have lunch sometime and talk about that book.” We did. And we kept meeting every other week for the better part of a decade, often talking about John Calvin, and working together to bring some measure of “constructive revolution” in our own city, just as Calvin had done so effectively in his.
The outline of Calvin’s life is fairly simple: He was born in France in 1509, was educated first as a lawyer at his father’s insistence, but when his father died he turned to study his true passion—the biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew. While at college, he read the writings of Martin Luther, who (507 years ago this week) famously broke with the Roman Catholic Church and began the Protestant Reformation. When the King of France started rounding up and executing Protestants, Calvin fled the country.
I told you a few weeks ago the story of how he stopped in Geneva for the night, and how William Farel convinced him against his will to stay and pastor a church in Geneva. What I didn’t tell you was that just two years later, the city leaders kicked Calvin and Farel out of the city, and for three years, Calvin was the pastor of a French speaking congregation in Strausbourg. While there, he married, and his wife gave birth to a their only son, who died in infancy. Eventually, the city of Geneva pleaded with Calvin to come back, which he did (reluctantly), and there he remained until his death at the age of 54. He died on May 27th, 1564. I used to think it was just an interesting coincidence that John Calvin died on my birthday. But now I think it’s one of those little providential messages that God sometimes sends us to say, “See? I know the plans I have for you, even when you don’t.”
