In the last post I summarized Calvin’s assertion why fallen mankind can understand and live out the necessary “earthly things” in human life. The “earthly things” being things “which do not pertain to God or His Kingdom, to true justice, or to the blessedness of the future life; but which have their significance and relationship with regard to the present life and are, in a sense, confined within its bounds” (Pg., 272).
Calvin had another category; “heavenly things.”
1. To Calvin they are, “The pure knowledge of God, the nature of true righteousness, the mysteries of the heavenly Kingdom, the knowledge of God’s will, and the rule by which we conform our lives” (Pg., 272).
2. Understanding heavenly things demands spiritual insight. To Calvin this spiritual insight consists in three things. “(1) Knowing God; (2) knowing His fatherly favour in our behalf, in which our salvation consists, and (3) knowing how to frame our life according to the rule of His law” (Pg., 277).
3. This understanding and spiritual insight is absent in the minds of fallen man. “Human reason, therefore, neither approaches, nor strives toward, nor even takes a straight aim at, this truth: to understand who the true God is or what sort of God He wishes to be toward us” (Pg., 278).
4. “In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” (Jn 1:4-5).
5. “This means: Flesh is not capable of such lofty wisdom as to conceive God and what is God’s, unless it be illumined by the Spirit of God. As Christ testified, the fact that Peter recognized him was a special revelation of the Father. [Matt 16:17]” (Pg., 278). By “flesh” Calvin means the natural man, the person not born again by God’s Spirit.
6. How then can fallen mankind see and understand heavenly things?
7. “Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Cor 12:3 cf. 1 Cor 2:9-14)
8. Calvin: “Only those men, therefore, who have heard and been taught by the Father come to Him. What kind of learning and hearing is this? Surely, where the Spirit by a wonderful and singular power forms our ears and our minds to understand” (Pg., 279). [Is 54:7, 13; Jn 6:45; 1 Cor 1:13; 1 Cor 2:9, 10, 14; Eph 1:17-18; James 1:17; Jn 14:26]
9. Only God, in sovereign grace and by the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit can cast light into the darkened heart and understanding of sinful man.
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