Instead of the family of God requiring “an agreed-upon fiction to sustain itself,” it will act out an agreed-upon principle which is heaven given.  Reconciliation may be the most redemptive act we are at liberty to perform.  God has not been created for our needs, but Christians have been recreated for His pleasure.  Reconciliation pleases God.

A reviewer of a French movie wrote, “The family, like any other institution, requires agreed-upon fictions to sustain itself.”  I was struck by the fact that there might be more truth than fiction to that statement vis-à-vis the family of God.  We might wish that the world could view Christians as one big happy, loving family.  But if we are honest, we must recognize and acknowledge that we hardly imitate our heavenly father or His Son, Jesus Christ, in the area of reconciliation.
It is sad, but true, there are believers who won’t speak to other believers and are unwilling to resolve the problems between them in either a biblical or healthy manner.  Such cases exist in the same church or fellowship as well as in the same Christian circles.  Lest anyone not get the point, this is, unfortunately, true of evangelical Christians and organizations, including some who exercise spiritual leadership.  Besides appearing hypocritical to the world, such situations most certainly bring tears to our redeemer’s eyes and anger to our heavenly Father who has forgiven many more grievous sins and offenses than we could imagine possible.  As to reconciliation, Matthew, the Evangelist, aims his words well and hits the mark squarely.  He writes: “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and then remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar.  First go and be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift.”  (Matthew 5:24) Reconciliation is a prerequisite for worship.  A few verses earlier, Matthew warns: “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.”  (Matthew 5: 22) What greater proof of anger can there be than a total shut down of communication?  It is obvious that Matthew is speaking of believers because he calls them “brothers” rather than neighbors.
Jerry Alpert of the Central Christian Counseling Center contributed an article to the April Centralian entitled: “Verbal Terminosis.”  In it he succinctly defines what can be termed the extreme opposite of reconciliation.  He defines “Verbal Terminosis” as “Termination of open and honest communication between spouses, parents and children, and friends.”  He also notes that “it is highly contagious and should be treated at first sign of infection.”  Perhaps the definition can be expanded to include Christians of any degree of affinity.
Some consider forgiveness to mean, “I won’t hold it against you or bring it up again, but I don’t want to see you again, or I won’t talk with you anymore.”  This is neither forgiveness nor reconciliation.  Forgiveness includes restoration of fellowship as existed previous to the breakdown in communication.  Isn’t that true of God’s forgiveness toward us?  Can it be any different in our relationships with one another?
When Matthew carefully chose the word “reconciled,” he picked a word that means “to renew friendship with one” in the original language.  When Christians obey God’s Word and become reconciled with one another, they prove to the world, as well as to one another, the power of the Gospel in their lives and model transparently God’s love to an incredulous, mocking world.  Reconciliation is what redemption is all about, and our willingness to be reconciled with others may well be one of the most trustworthy indicators of our own redemption in Jesus Christ and reconciliation with God the Father.
Let’s be careful not to grieve God’s Son or to anger our heavenly Father, inviting judgment on us by our unwillingness to be reconciled with one another.  May the world scratch its head as it ponders the power of the gospel lived out through believers and notes, “See how they love one another.”
Instead of the family of God requiring “an agreed-upon fiction to sustain itself,” it will act out an agreed-upon principle which is heaven given.  Reconciliation may be the most redemptive act we are at liberty to perform.  God has not been created for our needs, but Christians have been recreated for His pleasure.  Reconciliation pleases God. 
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa.

John Calvin was a scholar and recipient of the consolation that God gives to his suffering people. For him, consolation was not, as we might think, a second prize, a replacement for what we really want but rather, he thought it as bringing us the most important thing: Christ, his grace, and his mercy.
Wikipedia, that ubiquitous source of unimpeachable scholarship, defines “consolation” as “something of value, when one fails to get something of higher value….” That is precisely the opposite of what John Calvin (1509–64) meant by “consolation.” For Calvin, the consolation that Christ gives to his people, by the gospel, through the Spirit, is not second prize but to be valued above that which we lost. When we consider Calvin, “consolation” might not be the thing we first associate with him. The dominant perception of Calvin in our culture is that of a tyrannical, dyspeptic fellow, who delighted in nothing more than to dispatch a few heretics to the flames before breakfast. That caricature, however, was one drawn by his enemies during his lifetime and sadly, despite the facts, it has stuck for a variety of reasons.
First, the modern picture of Calvin has been skewed badly by the uncritical acceptance by earlier modern historians of partisan caricatures of Calvin and thus, he has been a useful foil for advocates of the modernist religion. Just as the Renaissance scholars juxtaposed themselves as enlightened, in contrast to the allegedly benighted middle ages, so in the various European and British Enlightenments of the 18th and 19th centuries scholars capitalized on sixteenth-century caricatures of Calvin to create a useful whipping boy with which to contrast their own view of the world.
Second, enlightened Modernity went to war against Christian theism, against its doctrines of the Trinity, of God as Creator, of Adam as federal head of humanity, of sin, of grace, of salvation through faith in Christ, and of a divinely instituted church. In short, enlightened Modernity rejected the historic catholic faith and Calvin became a symbol of repressive Christian theism. In place of Christianity, Modernity advocated a religion of a unitarian, unknowable God, of human perfectibility, of the universal fatherhood of God, of the universal fraternity of man, and of human autonomy with respect to all external authorities (e.g., Scripture or the church). For Modernity, nothing was more antithetical to the religion of the Enlightenment than the doctrine of unconditional predestination and thus, in the modern period, Calvin became the theologian of the decree from which writers began to draw inferences about what he must have done in Geneva. The one thing every modern, enlightened person thinks he knows about Calvin is that he killed Servetus. Of course the story was much more complicated and most of what people think they know is false.
The result of the modernist, Enlightenment polemic against Calvin has been what P. E. Hughes called a “popular fantasy” of Calvin as the tyrant of Geneva. Consider a January 2009 article in the New York Times Magazine, which discusses the resurgence of aspects of Reformed theology among evangelicals. To buttress the author’s contention that Calvinism is inherently oppressive she appeals to an unhappy episode in Calvin’s life, suggesting, in effect, that Calvin was a tyrant and thus it is not surprising that his modern followers have similar impulses. To be sure Calvin could be severe with enemies and even friends but he was also a theologian of consolation.
Yes, Calvin was a sinner, but he was more a suffering pilgrim in Geneva than he was a conquering, jack-booted tyrant. He endured regular insults that today would drive most ministers from their pulpits. His opponents discharged firearms outside his house. Some named their dogs after him and threatened him. People made rude comments during sermons and when that was forbidden, they made rude noises in their attempt to thwart his preaching. He was summarily and unjustly fired from his position as minister in the church in Geneva because he dared oppose some of the leading families in Geneva. When, three years later, he was called to return, ostensibly for a short period that turned into 23 years, he obeyed more out of duty than joy.
He married Idelette de Bure in 1540. They were married for nine years. In that time she bore him a son, Jacques, who died in infancy, in August of 1542. Idellete herself died in 1549 leaving Calvin a widower. We do not often think of Calvin as a widower and father who lost an infant child, and Calvin did not encourage others to pity him. He recorded very little about his interior, emotional life and there was no sixteenth-century equivalent of Oprah in Geneva. Nevertheless, Idellette’s suffering and death and the loss of his son “left a mark,” as we say. These aspects of Calvin’s life, however, did not make it into the New York Times Magazine.
It is those who know their sins, who know their need for a Savior, who look to Christ for consolation. John Calvin was just such a one. He found comfort in the good news of Christ’s incarnation, obedience, death, resurrection, and ascension, in justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. He found consolation in his union with Christ, in the sacraments, in corporate and private prayer, in friendship, and in the support of fellow ministers in and around Geneva. Calvin was, as Herman Selderhuis has reminded us, a theologian of the cross.
The Calvin of history, however, was, as Bob Godfrey reminds us, a pilgrim and a pastor, who needed and found consolation in the midst of suffering, in Christ and his work for us, through the work of his Spirit in us, and who ministered that comfort to others. In the following parts of this series we will see how he was an exegete, theologian, and pastor of consolation.
I. Calvin’s Exegesis of Consolation (in Paul)
In the first part we saw that Calvin was a pilgrim who himself needed the consolation of the gospel, given by the Spirit, through the ministry of Word, sacrament, and prayer. He was also a careful, thoughtful, and sophisticated reader of texts and principally Scripture. It is well known that Calvin was deeply influenced by Renaissance humanism. We all know about the Renaissance concern to get back to original sources (ad fontes) and to read them in their original context, according to the original intent of the author. A less well-known aspect of the humanism in which Calvin was trained was concern for the well-being of humans as God’s image bearers.
In his 1539 commentary on Romans we get a picture of how he understood Paul’s doctrine of paraklesis (consolation or comfort). Commenting on Romans 15:4, on the phrase, “through the patience and the consolation of the Scriptures we might have hope,” he recognized that the noun paraklesis might be translated a couple of different ways. He wrote:
The word consolation some render exhortation; and of this I do not disapprove, only that consolation is more suitable to patience, for this arises from it; because then only we are prepared to bear adversities with patience, when God blends them with consolation.
There were two reasons for not translating “paraklesis” as “exhortation,” the first is because “consolation” or “comfort” fit the context better, but the second reason is pastoral, because it is better pastoral theology. One of the chief purposes of Scripture is to “to raise up those who are prepared by patience, and strengthened by consolations, to the hope of eternal life, and to keep them in the contemplation of it.” He made the same choice in his interpretation of paraklesis in his 1548 commentary on Philippians 2:1.
No Pauline epistle focuses more on consolation than 2 Corinthians. In his 1546 commentary on 2 Corinthians Calvin had opportunity to consider the biblical doctrine of consolation at length. On 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, “The God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our tribulation.” Calvin argued that Paul was able to endure “his tribulations with fortitude and alacrity” because of the “support derived from his consolation….” The source of our consolation is the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” who is the source of blessings, “for where Christ is not, there the beneficence of God is not.”
On verse 4, he noted that the consolation that Paul had received was not for his own benefit but for that of the Corinthians, because “whatever favors God conferred upon him, were not given for his own sake merely, but in order that he might have more in his power for helping others. And, unquestionably, when the Lord confers upon us any favor, he in a manner invites us by his example to be generous to our neighbors.” This he said is particularly true for pastors.
In his comment on 2 Corinthians 2:15 he argued that the comfort spoken of there should not be taken “actively” but “passively,” to mean “that God multiplied his consolations according to the measure of his tribulations.” The troubles of this life are “common to good and bad alike,” but when they happen to “the wicked” there is nothing redemptive in them. When they happen to believers, those Christians “are conformed to Christ, and bear about with them in their body his dying, that the life of Christ may one day be manifested in them.” Because our sufferings are in union with Christ, part of our identity with his sufferings, we are “sustained by the consolations of Christ, so as to prevent him from being overwhelmed with calamities.”
The ground of comfort is extrinsic, it is the promise of God in Christ. It has subjective consequences, however, just as the afflictions of which Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians 1:6 refers to our personal experience of misery. Comfort or consolation is the antidote, as it were, for our experience of being “pressed down with anxiety from a feeling of misery.” Consolation refers to the lightening of the mind of grief.
For Calvin, Paul’s sufferings and experience of consolation “flowed out to the whole Church” and served as an encouragement to them that, “inasmuch as they concluded, that God who had sustained and refreshed him in his emergency, would, in like manner, not be wanting to them.” Paul’s sufferings were for the salvation of the Corinthians, not that they were “expiations or sacrifices for sins, but as edifying them by confirming them.” Salvation and comfort were joined “with the view of pointing out the way in which their salvation was to be accomplished.”
Why does God permit us to suffer? On 2 Corinthians 1:9 Calvin argued that we don’t appreciate how “how displeasing to God confidence in ourselves must be” so that, as a corrective, “it is necessary that we should be condemned to death.” The good news is that “God raises the dead. As we must first die, in order that, renouncing confidence in ourselves….” We must begin with despair, but “with the view of placing our hope in God.” He returned to that theme on 2 Corinthians 7:6. The Lord “comforts the lowly.” “Hence a most profitable doctrine may be inferred—that the more we have been afflicted, so much the greater consolation has been prepared for us by God.”
Though he is often pictured as a systematic theologian and though most people give most of their attention to Calvin’s Institutes, in fact Calvin was a preacher and a student of Scripture. His Institutes were harvested out of his biblical commentaries and preaching. So, his conception of the necessity, nature, and source of consolation, for the Christian, was shaped by the way he encountered the biblical teaching about consolation and particularly from his work in the Pauline epistles.
II. His Theology of Consolation (1559 Institutes)
In the previous installment we looked at the way Calvin read Paul’s epistles and how he drew from them a doctrine of consolation, of God’s presence with his people in Christ, by the Spirit, in the gospel, in the sacraments, and in prayer. In this (third) part of this series we consider Calvin as a theologian of consolation.
Read More

“Thy kingdom come”. After knowing God we will want to see his purposes advance. They are summed up in the reality of a kingdom: God rules the world, but his kingdom purposes are not yet fully realized. To put it awkwardly, there is an agenda which we want urgently to see actualized. Our life has a purpose which is not self-fulfillment but kingdom-centered.

It might seem an odd question: Does the Lord’s Prayer represent a worldview? It might even seem a bit indecent. How could a model prayer, the ultimate way to connect with God personally, have anything to do with such an abstract notion as a “world-and-life” philosophy? The first thing to say is that worldview thinking properly conceived is not really abstract. It should entail not only a statement of philosophy but a heart commitment. The second thing to say is that prayers represent more than simply access to God, but avenues to truth.
The Lord’s Prayer contains everything essential to our Christian view of life. Here is how. Classically understood there are seven “petitions” to the prayer. There are three “thy” petitions (thy name, thy kingdom, thy will), and four “us” petitions (give us, forgive us, lead us not, and deliver us).
The prelude to the prayer is “Our Father, which art I heaven.” In a way that says it all. God is God, “I am that I am”. But he is our Father. We have been adopted into is family. And he dwells in heaven, that is, he is not to be confused with our earthly, physical father, but lives in the realm of divine righteousness and divine sovereignty. This is a central argument for the Christian faith. Compare it to Islam, where Allah is aloof, fatalistic, nearly inaccessible. Or to Buddhism which requires agnosticism.
“Hallowed be thy name”. God is to be worshiped. His very name is holy. In this way the Christian faith is not simply a statement of propositions, but an act of worship. It is the opposite of aloofness or agnosticism. 
Read More
Related Posts: