Hero in an Unmarked Grave
We may rightly regard Calvin as a hero of the faith, but he didn’t ultimately see himself that way. Humility had taught him to walk modestly before God and others—and, in the end, the freedom to lie down in a forgotten grave.
On May 27, 1564, just after eight o’clock in the evening, a nurse urgently summoned Theodore Beza (1519–1605) to Calvin’s bedside. “We found he had already died,” Calvin’s friend and fellow pastor later wrote. “On that day, then, at the same time with the setting sun, this splendid luminary was withdrawn from us.”1 Calvin was 54 years old.
Calvin’s death sent a shock wave throughout Geneva and beyond. Beza writes, “That night and the following day there was a general lamentation throughout the city . . . all lamenting the loss of one who was, under God, a common parent and comfort.” He records that two days later “the entire city” gathered at the St. Pierre Cathedral to honor their beloved pastor. Despite Calvin’s prominence, the funeral was unusually simple, “with no extraordinary pomp.”2 But Calvin’s burial was particularly unusual.
Unmarked Grave
Eighteen years earlier, on February 18, 1546, fellow Reformer Martin Luther died at the age of 63. As was common practice for ministers, Luther’s remains were interred inside the church where he had faithfully served. His casket lies in Wittenberg’s Castle Church, near the pulpit, seven feet below the floor of the nave. Luther’s successor and fellow Reformer, Philip Melanchthon (1490–1560), is buried beside him.
So also William Farel (1489–1565), who first called Calvin to Geneva in 1536, is buried in the cathedral of Neuchâtel, where he spent the final years of his ministry. When Calvin’s friend and successor Theodore Beza died in 1605, he was buried next to the pulpit of St. Pierre, the Genevan church in which he and Calvin ministered together.
But Calvin’s remains lie elsewhere.
Rather than being interred in St. Pierre, Calvin’s body was carried outside the city wall to a marshy burial ground for commoners called Plainpalais. With close friends in attendance, Calvin’s body was wrapped in a simple shroud, enclosed in a rough casket, and lowered into the earth. Beza writes that Calvin’s plot was unlisted and, “as he [had] commanded, without any gravestone.”3
Why did Calvin command that he be buried, contrary to common practice, in an unmarked grave? Some speculate that he wanted to discourage religious pilgrims from visiting his resting place or to prevent accusations from the Roman church that he desired veneration as a saint.4 But the answer lies somewhere deeper — in Calvin’s understanding of Christian modesty.
Forgotten Meaning of Modesty
When we speak of modesty today, we most often mean dressing or behaving in such a way as to avoid impropriety or indecency. But modesty more generally refers to the quality of being unassuming or moderate in the estimation of oneself. For centuries, the church understood the connection. Immodest dress was not simply ostentatious or sexually suggestive; it reflected an overemphasis on appearance. As Jesus warned, outward appearance can mask impiety (Matthew 6:16) or pride (Luke 18:12).
This is why both Gentile women converts in Ephesus and the Jewish Christians addressed in Hebrews are urged to consider how their outward appearance relates to the disposition of the heart. Excessive adornment could be evidence of self-importance (1 Timothy 2:9). Acceptable worship requires a posture of reverence, not pretension (Hebrews 12:28). Thus, a modest person represents himself neither too highly nor too meanly because he understands both the dignity and the humility of being transformed by the grace of God.
Modesty, then, is simply the outward reflection of true Christian humility. It obliterates pride by embracing the reality that a Christian is both creaturely and beloved. In this light, self-importance becomes absurd. Grandiosity becomes laughable. Celebrity becomes monstrous.
We Are Not Our Own
For Calvin, the gospel radically reshapes our view of self. As those created in God’s image, provisioned by his goodness, redeemed by his mercy, transformed by his grace, and called to his mission, those who belong to Christ no longer live for themselves. “Now the great thing is this,” Calvin writes, “we are consecrated and dedicated to God in order that we may thereafter think, speak, meditate, and do, nothing except to his glory.” Calvin continues,
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The Surprising Fruit of Cultural Christianity
If you live in a part of the country (or world) that’s more “culturally Christian,” don’t merely look down on those who you live among as being “inauthentic Christians.” That’s your mission field, and the fields just might be ripe for harvest.
Several months ago I had the opportunity to visit some family friends who recently relocated to rural, East Tennesee from NYC. The couple (I’ll call them Tony and Susan), both in their sixties, are as quintessentially New York as it gets. They talk, sound, and act like New Yorkers, and as someone who was raised not more than 60 miles from NYC, being around them feels familiar and comfortable.
I thought it was super strange that they chose to move to a relatively remote part of Tennessee instead of a more suburban area of Knoxville or Nashville. While having dinner, we learned that they had started going to a local Baptist church. I was intrigued. What were a couple of lapsed Italian Catholics doing with a bunch of backroad Baptists? Further conversation revealed that Susan truly understood the gospel, and was planning on getting baptized. This was independent of any influence coming from us, as we hadn’t seen them in years.
“That’s what people do”
When I asked what prompted them to start attending church, especially after having no involvement in any church for most of their lives, Susan said something like, “Well, down here that’s what people do – so we figured we would as well.” She went on to explain that after attending church for a few months, she started reading the Bible and was convicted that she was a sinner in need of God’s grace. We had the privilege of being at her baptism this last Sunday (we’re still working on Tony).
What initially struck me after hearing her story was how somebody on the right politically that had chosen to relocate to a place primarily for its support of their value structure had found their way into saving faith in Christ simply by following the logical flow of the cultural Christianity around them. Now, obviously, salvation is a work and gift of God, and He had no doubt been working on Susan for some time. It’s probably just a coincidence because, after all, we’re often warned about the dangers of Bible-Belt, cultural Christianity.
A Similar Pattern
However, Susan’s story isn’t really an outlier. In fact, I’ve heard and encountered similar stories for several years now – most of them since the great paradigm shift that began in 2020. It sort of goes like this:Either because of covid-19 restrictions, the 2020 BLM rioting, or an increasing number of local drag-queen story hours at the local library, an individual or family decides that the blue area they live in isn’t ideal anymore.
They relocate, either to a red state like Idaho, Tennessee, Texas, or Florida, or they move to a more-red area inside their blue state.
While getting acclimated to the area, they start to deal with the normal things that happen when you relocate: isolation, loneliness, lack of familiar community – so they decide to start attending the local evangelical church (be it Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, or a hip non-denominational church with a name like “The Hill,” “The Eastside Chuch,” Or “Church at the Grove”).Read More
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Judge Makes Stunning Ruling for Businesses with Religious Beliefs
The Washington Examiner explained the judge ordered, “The court holds that the Religious Business-Type Employer Class, and All Opposing Employer Class, are permitted to create and maintain codes of conduct that regulate the sexual conduct of their employees, to the extent that those policies do not target solely homosexual or transgender activities.”
A federal judge has ruled that for-profit businesses when they operate on sincerely held religious beliefs are protected from liability for claims of discrimination by those who choose the LGBT lifestyles.
The company that filed the action, Braidwood, “has established Title VII places a substantial burden on its religious exercise, and defendants fail to meet the burden to show a compelling interest,” wrote the judge. “But even if their broad formulation of their interest in ‘preventing all forms of discrimination’ were sufficient, defendants have not selected the least restrictive means.
“Forcing a religious employer to hire, retain, and accommodate employees who conduct themselves contrary to the employer’s views regarding homosexuality and gender identity is not the least restrictive means of promoting that interest, especially when defendants are willing to make exceptions to Title VII for secular purposes.”
Bloomberglaw reported the case was decided just days ago by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Forth Worth.
The report explained the judge’s decision starts the process of resolving multiple questions left unaddressed by the Supreme Court’s decision in its Bostock case, where the justices granted anti-bias protections for sexual orientations and gender identity.
That decision was reached based on the belief that decades ago, when Congress was writing nondiscrimination law, the members, when they cited “sex,” intended that word to be understood to include transgenderism, gender identity and such.
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Take Offence at What is Really Offensive
The Bible itself also warns and sometimes describes evil in some amount of detail. But it does so out of love for others. Warning of the many dangers and threats that exist is always the most loving thing to do. So some believers need to stop shooting the messenger. They need to start being offended by the real evil that is out there, and not taking offence with the one who in prophet-like fashion seeks to warn against it.
It happens all the time: those who should know better will take offence at all the wrong things. Primarily, instead of taking offence at the many great evils and dangers that are all around us, some folks – including some rather clueless Christians – will take offence at those who point out these evils, at those who sound the alarm. They are happy to shoot the messenger while ignoring the danger.
The very fact that you are trying to act as a watchman on the wall and warn of impending danger will upset some people. Many are Christians, and they seem to prefer having their heads buried in the sand and not knowing anything about the threats and risks that are all around us.
They just want to live in their own little quiet bubble and not be bothered by a world that is not only going to hell, but is having a very real impact on them and their loved ones, whether they know it or not. Examples of this are many. And I have dealt with them for decades now as I seek to warn and sound the alarm.
For many years the mainstream media would contact me about various issues, including sleazy programs on television (this before the internet had really taken off). Whenever some controversy broke out, I was given a call by the media to give the conservative viewpoint on things. So that I would do.
Yet I even had those who should have been onside making complaints or running with the world’s point of view. ‘If you don’t like what’s on TV, just turn it off’ was a common response I would get from both friend and foe. Hmm, these folks were completely clueless.
I can turn off the TV all I like, or even throw it out the window. But that completely misses the point. My neighbours and their children are still being exposed to all this free-to-air sewage constantly. And as they get contaminated by it, that will have an impact on me and my children. So simply ‘turning it off’ was a rather useless bit of advice. Stopping the rot at the source was the way that we wanted to proceed.
Other examples are easy to come by. How often do we hear both believers and non-believers complain about pictures of aborted babies and the like. They seem to get really offended by this. Well, guess what? They really should be taking offence at abortion! Killing unborn children IS offensive. Warning and trying to raise awareness about it is not.
Indeed, I would suggest that these folks – be they Christians or not – who get more upset and bothered by pictures showing the result of an abortion than the abortion itself have a very skewed moral compass. Their values are wrong – even upside down. Recall that when the Allies won the war they made German citizens go and view the concentration camps. They HAD to be made aware of this gross evil. It should be the same with abortion.
And some Christians will get upset about the least little things, with very little provocation. I recall once when I was working for a pro-family ministry and editing their publications, I ran with an article warning about so-called safe sex and the condom culture.
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