Calvin on Anxiety

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John Calvin gets a lot of flack (from me even) for being a scientist with the faith with his institutes of religion and his theocrasy. But I am always struck by the beauty of his language in his commentaries (the man wrote a commentary on almost every book of the Bible on top of his volumes of institutes). His commentary is fairly clean of any references other than the scriptures. That doesn't mean he is only speaking from his own brain, he was well read and well studied and loved the early patriarchs (his conception of Eucharist borrowed heavily Eastern Orthodoxy), but he doesn't directly reference them as we do inncessently in our much more scientific commentaries of the past 50 years. But enough on that.

Speaking for Christ, Calvin writes of John 15:10 (If you keep my commandments, you will abid in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.) "'In me', says he, 'is brightly displayed the resemblence of those things which I deman from you; for you see how sincerely I am devoted to obedience to my Father, and how I persevere in this course. My Father, too, hath loved me, not for a moment, or for a short time, but his love toward me is constant." (italics are mine) And farther down commenting on the following verse he talks of Christ as the author of joy: "I call him also the Author of it, because by his Spirit he drives away dread and anxiety in our hearts, and then arises that calm cheerfulness."

Christ Spirit drives away dread and anxiety ... let those words speak to us. And more, for us anxious souls of the 21st century: "He adds, that this joy will be solid and full; not that believers will be entirely free from all sadness, but that the ground for joy will be far greater, so that no dread, no anxiety, no grief, will swallow them up..."

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