Latest / Reformed Thinking / Blessed Are They Whose Iniquity is Forgiven | John Calvin
Transcript
- 0:00Brief audio intro Reformed thinking Welcome to Reformed
- 0:04thinking. We're doing a deep dive today
- 0:06that gets right to the heart of what it means to be a Christian,
- 0:09specifically, the nature of forgiveness.
- 0:11How does it work and how does that forgiveness by itself
- 0:15create peace with God? That's the question we're
- 0:17tackling, and our source material for this deep dive is
- 0:20John Calvin's commentary on the Psalms.
- 0:23We're going to see how he analyzes the doctrine of
- 0:25justification by faith alone, but he does it through King
- 0:28David's reflection in Psalm 32. And we're really focusing in,
- 0:32aren't we, on just the first 2 verses of that Psalm?
- 0:34We should also mention the translation, because the
- 0:36specific wording matters. We're using the 1854 English
- 0:40version from the Calvin Translation Society by Henry
- 0:43Beveridge. Right.
- 0:44That context is helpful. So our mission today is really
- 0:47to unpack Calvin's argument that the free remission of sins isn't
- 0:50just, you know, a step in the process.
- 0:51He says it is the single gate of eternal salvation.
- 0:55We want to understand what that actually means for a believer's
- 0:57assurance, for their conscience, for their peace.
- 1:00Because in Calvin's mind, this isn't just an interesting
- 1:02thought on Psalm 32, he says this is the full definition of
- 1:05the righteousness of faith. So not a piece of the
- 1:08definition, but the whole thing, the mechanism that takes a
- 1:11person from condemned to bless it.
- 1:13So let's start with David starts.
- 1:15Why are his words so layered? OK, so we begin with David's
- 1:19decoration in Psalm 32, and what's immediately striking is
- 1:22that he doesn't just say it once.
- 1:24He repeats this idea of forgiveness and blessedness 3
- 1:28times over. And this repetition isn't just
- 1:30for poetic effect. It's theologically massive.
- 1:33He really drives it home. The source points out these
- 1:35three statements that all define what it means to be blessed.
- 1:38First, blessed are they whose iniquity is forgiven, then whose
- 1:42transgression is covered, And finally, blessed is the man to
- 1:45whom Jehovah imputeth no sin. It's like he's layering these
- 1:49ideas to make sure there's absolutely no misunderstanding.
- 1:53Blessedness is all about God's action on sin.
- 1:56Exactly. And Calvin takes that triple
- 1:58statement and uses it to build his entire argument for sola
- 2:01gratia grace alone. For him, this doctrine that we
- 2:05are only accounted righteous before God by the free remission
- 2:08of sins. He explicitly calls that the
- 2:11gate of eternal salvation. That gate analogy is so
- 2:14powerful. It's not a door, it's not a
- 2:16path, it's a gate. If it's the gate, it means it's
- 2:18the only way in. You can't climb the wall, you
- 2:20can't dig under it. Any other approach, any
- 2:23religious effort. It just doesn't work.
- 2:25So what does Calvin mean by free remission being that single
- 2:29entry point? Well, he means that the only way
- 2:31God can actually accept people who you know, by all rights
- 2:34deserve condemnation is if he performs this total act of, of,
- 2:39of gratuitous reconciliation. It has to be free.
- 2:42He's kind of paid for it. We have nothing to pay with.
- 2:44If it required even a tiny piece of human merit or effort, the
- 2:48gate would effectively be shut for good, because our best
- 2:50efforts, as we'll get into are just fundamentally flawed.
- 2:53Right, the gate isn't a turnstile where you put in your
- 2:56coins of good deeds. It's it's just thrown open by
- 2:59grace. And Calvin points out that the
- 3:01apostle Paul confirms this interpretation.
- 3:04He says Paul in Romans 4 is the assured interpreter and witness
- 3:09of what David is saying here. And that's the link that
- 3:11solidifies the whole thing. It gives us what you mentioned
- 3:13earlier, the full definition of the righteousness of faith.
- 3:17Paul's use of Psalm 32 means that faith is defined not by
- 3:20something we do, but by the state of being.
- 3:23You are only blessed when you are freely reconciled to God and
- 3:26counted as righteous by Him. It's a status that's completely
- 3:28external to your works. Let's go back to that repetition
- 3:31for a second because David's threefold statement seems to be
- 3:34the foundation for believers assurance.
- 3:37Iniquity is forgiven, transgression is covered, and
- 3:39sin is not imputed. Are these just synonyms or is
- 3:42Calvin saying they each do something different?
- 3:45Calvin sees them as three ways of confirming the absolute
- 3:48certainty and the completeness of that remission.
- 3:52So yes, they point to 1 great action, but each phrase kind of
- 3:56pushes back against a different kind of guilt or fear we might
- 3:58have forgiven means the debt is canceled.
- 4:02The burden is literally lifted off.
- 4:04OK, so that's the weight being removed.
- 4:05What about covered? Covered means the offense is
- 4:09hidden from God's judging eye. It's concealed.
- 4:12It's not that it didn't happen, but it's no longer visible to
- 4:14the judge. And then there's the third one,
- 4:16which feels very legal. Blessed is the man to whom
- 4:19Jehovah imputeth no sin. That's about imputation.
- 4:23Right, that's exactly what it is.
- 4:25Imputation is a legal reckoning. When God imputeth no sin, it
- 4:29means he doesn't add it to your account.
- 4:31He treats you for the purposes of judgement as if the sin never
- 4:34happened. So forgiveness is removal,
- 4:37covering is concealment, but non imputation.
- 4:41That's the judicial act. That's the declaration that you
- 4:44are righteous in his sight. And this is so central to
- 4:47Reformed thinking, because if God just forgave you, you might
- 4:51still lack the positive righteousness you need to stand
- 4:53before Him. But by not imputing sin, the way
- 4:56is cleared. That clarity on non imputation
- 5:00is so helpful for the listener because you can see the Direct
- 5:03Line from the Old Testament idea of blessedness to the New
- 5:06Testament doctrine of salvation. Kelvin even brings in
- 5:09Zacharias's song from Luke's Gospel, where the knowledge of
- 5:12salvation is defined as knowing the remission of sins.
- 5:15It is. Salvation is defined by this
- 5:17change in legal status. And what's really striking in
- 5:20Calvin's analysis is the fixed order this creates for anyone
- 5:23who's looking for happiness or peace with God.
- 5:26You can't come at it backwards. What do you mean?
- 5:28You have to start by admitting that you are on your own,
- 5:30completely worthy of destruction.
- 5:32That's the zero point. And from there, the only way
- 5:35forward is to accept that God can only be reconciled to you by
- 5:38free pardoning you and bestowing His favor out of grace.
- 5:41So if you're a listener seeking that kind of reconciliation, you
- 5:44can't start by polishing up your spiritual resume.
- 5:46No, you have to start with a full and honest acknowledgement
- 5:49of your own inability, your complete dependence on God's
- 5:53free favor. It seems the gate itself demands
- 5:57that you leave all your own efforts behind.
- 5:59That's a great way to put it. And that clarity on the free
- 6:02part of remission leads to this huge theological consequence.
- 6:07Calvin puts it in very stark terms.
- 6:09The blessedness that David is talking about here, it utterly
- 6:13destroys the righteousness of works.
- 6:15Utterly destroys, not weakens, not diminishes, destroys.
- 6:18That's so final. I think we need to spend some
- 6:20time on why that destruction is so necessary.
- 6:22Why can't our good works just, you know, coexist with God's
- 6:25grace in the process of justification?
- 6:27Why is it a 0 sum game? It has to be a 0 sum game
- 6:30because of the standard God judges by.
- 6:32The sources lay this out very clearly.
- 6:34If God were to withhold mercy and just judge everyone
- 6:37according to His perfect law, every single person would be, in
- 6:41Calvin's words, utterly wretched and accursed.
- 6:44This isn't about just making some mistakes.
- 6:46It's about the very nature of who we are and what we do.
- 6:49You're talking about the doctrine of total inability, the
- 6:51idea that before God works in US, every part of us, our mind,
- 6:55our will, our desires, is corrupted by sin.
- 6:58That's right. And because of that, before
- 7:00regeneration, a person's entire life is, from God's perspective,
- 7:04hateful and loathsome. Every thought, every action,
- 7:07every intention, it's all tainted by that original
- 7:11corruption. There's just nothing left
- 7:12untouched which makes any effort to clean ourselves up totally
- 7:15futile. Which brings us back to what you
- 7:17said earlier. We have to rely on the grace of
- 7:19God alone. If everything we produce is
- 7:21hateful and loathsome, then we literally have nothing to offer.
- 7:25We show up at the gate empty handed.
- 7:26And this is where Calvin directly confronts what he calls
- 7:29the error of the papists, which really stands for any system
- 7:33that tries to bring human merit into the picture.
- 7:36Their objection was that, OK, you need pardon for your sins at
- 7:40the beginning of your Christian life, right?
- 7:42But once you're cleaned up, you can start earning merit.
- 7:44You can start building up your own righteousness through your
- 7:46works. Well, that sounds logical to the
- 7:48natural mind. You get a fresh start and then
- 7:50you get to work. Why is Calvin so insistent that
- 7:54this view is completely wrong and actually destructive to the
- 7:59whole idea of free pardon and assurance?
- 8:01Because it completely misunderstands God's standard.
- 8:04Calvin's counter is that we need mercy perpetually, even after
- 8:08regeneration. This is the part people miss.
- 8:11We don't just need justification to get started, we need it to
- 8:13continue every single day. So even the good things a
- 8:16Christian does, the works done after being made new in Christ,
- 8:20even those aren't good enough to stand before God.
- 8:23Not even close. He argues that no work done by a
- 8:26person can please God unless he pardons the sin which mingles
- 8:30with it. Think about that.
- 8:33When a believer prays or shows charity or fights a temptation,
- 8:38there is always some mixture of a wrong motive or pride or a
- 8:42lack of perfect love mixed into that action.
- 8:45Sin is still present in the believer.
- 8:47That really forces you to reevaluate your own efforts.
- 8:50Yeah, we tend to judge our good works by, you know, looking at
- 8:53other people or maybe how we used to be.
- 8:55But Calvin is saying the only standard that matters is God's
- 8:58perfect law. Exactly.
- 8:59The sources quote him saying that even the works of the
- 9:01Saints are spotted with stains and are unworthy of reward when
- 9:04judged by that perfect standard. We just failed to grasp how
- 9:07absolute God's judgement is. It demands flawless perfection.
- 9:11And to make that point, he uses that incredible, severe
- 9:14metaphor. He says that in God's eyes, the
- 9:17very brightness of the stars is but darkness.
- 9:20Yeah, that metaphor tells you everything about God's holiness.
- 9:22Just picture the brightest star you can imagine in the night
- 9:25sky. It's radiating this pure,
- 9:27intense light. That's the best righteousness we
- 9:29can possibly conceive of. And yet, when you put it next to
- 9:32the infinite, blazing perfection of God's own holiness, that
- 9:37star's light just it's gone. It's rendered as darkness.
- 9:42It's not just that there's a gap between US and God, it's that
- 9:44the gap is unbridgeable by our efforts.
- 9:47If the best works of the most devoted Saints are seen as
- 9:50darkness in God's sight, then the whole idea of human merit
- 9:53just evaporates. It's not a factor.
- 9:56And that leads to this inescapable conclusion, since
- 9:59perfection, like a perfect fear of the Lord, is simply not found
- 10:03anywhere in human experience. Our salvation requires
- 10:06continuous, free reconciliation. It's not just the door you walk
- 10:10through at the beginning. It has to be the very path you
- 10:12walk on every day. If that same grace doesn't
- 10:15accompany them to the last step of their life, then assurance is
- 10:18impossible. So this whole section just
- 10:20dismantles the idea that once you become a Christian, you kind
- 10:23of graduate from grace and start relying on your own performance.
- 10:26If the brightest stars are darkness, than relying on your
- 10:29own works even for a moment puts you right back outside that
- 10:32gate. That is the point.
- 10:33It's meant to constantly confront and crush our pride
- 10:37because even the most mature believer, when they look at
- 10:40their life against the perfect standard of the law, has to
- 10:43admit that they're standing before God is only because of
- 10:46Christ's righteousness and the free pardon that covers their
- 10:49ongoing faults. OK, so since this doctrine is so
- 10:53critical, but also so contrary to our human nature, which
- 10:58always wants to contribute something, this brings us back
- 11:00to David's repetition. Why did he say it three times?
- 11:03Forgiven, Covered, not imputed? If it's one truth, why the
- 11:08insistence? Calvin is very clear that this
- 11:10is no vain repetition. He says it's divinely necessary
- 11:13because it performs 2 completely different functions.
- 11:15It's designed to address 2 opposite problems of the human
- 11:18conscience. So the repetition is like a
- 11:20medicine for two different illnesses, spiritual laziness in
- 11:23one hand and crushing anxiety on the other.
- 11:26Let's start with the first one to awaken the careless.
- 11:29This is for the person who needs to hear about the destruction of
- 11:31works we just talked about. The doctor is meant to raise up
- 11:34those who are falling asleep and quicken the dull.
- 11:37Absolutely. Calvin saw that most people,
- 11:40whether they're religious or not, find ways to ignore their
- 11:42conscience, he says. They use devices of their own.
- 11:46They've explained away their sins.
- 11:47They've become, in his words, intoxicated with deceitful
- 11:50pleasures. And they operate under a
- 11:53perverse carnal security. What does that carnal security
- 11:56look like in real life? It's the person who has just
- 11:59shut their eyes to the massive load of sin they're carrying.
- 12:02They've convinced themselves that they're basically OK with
- 12:05God. Maybe they compare themselves to
- 12:06others, or they go through some religious motions.
- 12:09They make light of their sins. They don't reflect on the real
- 12:12danger they're in from God's judgment.
- 12:14So it's a kind of self delusion. They might say, Oh yeah,
- 12:17everyone sins, but they fail to look at the sheer volume and
- 12:21weight of their own personal guilt before a perfectly holy
- 12:25God. Precisely.
- 12:26And Calvin basically challenges them.
- 12:28He asks how can you continue to sleep so securely while you are
- 12:32overwhelmed with an immense load of sins?
- 12:35He's telling the listener that their feeling of security is
- 12:37built on ignorance, not on reality.
- 12:40That is really strong language. It's meant to shock the
- 12:43complacent person into seeing their true condition, and the
- 12:47repetition of the promise is what drives that hard truth
- 12:50home. It takes a lot of divine effort
- 12:52to get us to believe that our only blessedness is in free
- 12:55forgiveness. It does, but then the repetition
- 12:59is just as vital for the exact opposite problem.
- 13:02And that's the second purpose, to tranquilize the anxious.
- 13:06The goal here is to give fearful and anxious minds an assured and
- 13:09steady confidence. And this speaks right to the
- 13:11experience of a genuine believer, someone who has been
- 13:15awakened, who sees their sin and is actively fighting it.
- 13:18Once you realize the perfect standard of God's law, it's so
- 13:22easy to swing from complacency right into terror and despair
- 13:25because you know your best works are darkness.
- 13:27That's the constant battle for a true believer.
- 13:30Even the people who have tasted God's mercy, he says, are
- 13:32constantly agitated and disquieted.
- 13:35They're trying to hold onto grace, but they're frequently
- 13:37abashed or made to stagger by all the assaults on their faith.
- 13:40And that agitation comes from the remaining sin and the
- 13:42accusations of the law and of the enemy.
- 13:44So if a believer truly understands that their own works
- 13:47are stained, how can only ever feel secure?
- 13:50Doesn't Calvin's own high standard just add to that
- 13:53anxiety? How does repeating the promise
- 13:56fix that? It fixes it because the
- 13:58repetition pulls the focus completely away from the quality
- 14:02of the believers own performance and puts it back onto the
- 14:05completeness of thoughts action. The believer knows they're
- 14:08imperfect, and that makes them doubt, but the repetition
- 14:11forgiven, covered, not imputed, acts as this threefold
- 14:15confirmation that battles the internal war in their
- 14:18conscience. So it's a constant reminder that
- 14:20what God has done is complete and finished.
- 14:23Since doubts are often coming upon them one after another,
- 14:26just hearing it once isn't enough.
- 14:28Not at all. That's why he says the Holy
- 14:29Spirit confirmed and ratifies the remission of sins with many
- 14:32declarations. This repetition gives incredible
- 14:35comfort because it's an objective promise.
- 14:37It stands outside of your feelings or your performance on
- 14:40any given day. It's what keeps despair from
- 14:42completely overwhelming you, and it's what gives you that assured
- 14:45and steady confidence that is built on God's declaration, not
- 14:48your own holiness. That double purpose is just
- 14:50pastorally brilliant. It first crushes the pride of
- 14:53the person who thinks they're righteous, and then it lists the
- 14:56crushing weight off the person who knows they're not.
- 14:58And the one thing both people need is to rely completely on
- 15:02the freeness of the pardon. Right.
- 15:03And to really feel the force of this doctrine of free remission,
- 15:07we have to look at the specific contrast Calvin was drawing in
- 15:11his own time. He directly targets any view
- 15:14that tries to undermine the sufficiency of God's grace by
- 15:18denying how complete that free pardon, really.
- 15:20Is yeah, the source is named the Papists of his day, but we
- 15:23should probably understand that as a critique of any system,
- 15:26then or now, that tries to sneak human contribution back into
- 15:30justification. His main complaint is that they
- 15:32make light of the blessedness of forgiveness that David is
- 15:34describing in Psalm 32. They do, he says.
- 15:37They fail to penetrate the real meaning of the prophet.
- 15:40They might read the verse, but they treat it like a common
- 15:43saying and of little importance. They don't grasp the huge
- 15:46doctrine of justification that Paul pulls from it.
- 15:49They just assume blessedness comes from following a moral
- 15:52code, not from a radical change in your legal standing before
- 15:56God. And the root of that mistake,
- 15:58according to Calvin, is what he calls the delusion of Satan.
- 16:02That's incredibly strong language.
- 16:04What exactly was the error that he felt was so dangerous?
- 16:08The delusion is the idea that people are adorned with merits
- 16:11that can get them God's favor. So instead of relying only on
- 16:14grace, they obtrude their virtues upon God.
- 16:17They essentially shove their good deeds in God's face, acting
- 16:20as if they've earned a big part of their blessedness through
- 16:22their own efforts. And that, of course, completely
- 16:25contradicts the idea that blessedness utterly destroys the
- 16:28righteousness of works. This desire to mix our effort
- 16:31into justification seems to lead to all sorts of man made
- 16:34religious practices, doesn't it? The human mind just wants to
- 16:37make it a transaction. Yes, they fool themselves with
- 16:40what he calls the device of a partial righteousness.
- 16:43They invent these frivolous rituals to try to clear their
- 16:48guilt and buy God's favor. You can see it in all kinds of
- 16:51religious systems. Penances, pilgrimages, intense
- 16:54self denial, all seen as ways to tip the scales back in your
- 16:57favor. Let's get specific because
- 16:59Calvin mentions 2 technical terms that our listeners might
- 17:01not know. He talks about satisfactions and
- 17:05works of super irrigation. What are those?
- 17:07Good question. He says they thrust in their
- 17:10satisfactions and works of super irrigation.
- 17:12So satisfactions historically were acts of penance that a
- 17:15person had to perform after confessing a sin.
- 17:18The idea was that even though the eternal guilt was forgiven,
- 17:21you still had to do something like fasting or giving alms to
- 17:24satisfy God's justice for the temporal or earthly consequences
- 17:27of that sin. OK, so your eternal destiny
- 17:29might be secure, but you still owe a debt in this life that you
- 17:33have to pay off through these acts of satisfaction.
- 17:35Exactly. And then you have works of super
- 17:37irrigation. This is the idea that you can do
- 17:40good deeds that go above and beyond what God's law actually
- 17:43requires. And in that system, these extra
- 17:46merits could be stored up in a kind of treasury of merit, and
- 17:50then they could be applied to other people who are falling
- 17:52short. This whole system just creates a
- 17:54massive problem for believers assurance because it denies them
- 17:58the complete forgiveness David is talking about.
- 18:01If you still have to perform a satisfaction, or if you're
- 18:04relying on someone else's extra credit, then your standing is
- 18:07still tied to this flawed human economy.
- 18:10It results in what Calvin called a half pardon.
- 18:13They might distinguish between the fault being forgiven and the
- 18:15punishment being forgiven, but if you're still on the hook for
- 18:18some kind of punishment, you haven't received a full pardon.
- 18:21True remission, like David describes, forgiven, covered,
- 18:25not imputed, has to be total and absolute.
- 18:28And this all comes back to that fundamental mistake.
- 18:32They believe that the pardon of sin is only necessary at the
- 18:35beginning of righteousness. That's the error that keeps
- 18:38repeating. It leads them to think their
- 18:40later works are actually worthy of reward because they just
- 18:43completely miscalculate God's perfect judgement.
- 18:46They don't see the stain that's mixed in with everything they
- 18:48do. And that destroys assurance.
- 18:51How could it not? If you're standing with God,
- 18:53depends even a little bit on your works of satisfaction or
- 18:56merit, how could you ever know if you've done enough?
- 18:59Your conscience would be in a constant state of terror, always
- 19:02calculating your efforts against your failures.
- 19:04Assurance becomes this fragile thing that depends on your
- 19:07feelings and your performance. So Calvin's conclusion is really
- 19:11clear. True blessedness demands that
- 19:13you accept that God is reconciled to you, even though
- 19:16he could justly treat you as an enemy.
- 19:18It requires complete, ongoing reliance on that gratuitous
- 19:21reconciliation. There's just no room for human
- 19:24merit to gain favor, and that is the only foundation that can
- 19:27possibly support an assured and steady confidence.
- 19:31Right. So now that we've seen that free
- 19:32remission is the gate and that it destroys our works, we have
- 19:36to look at the completeness and the persistence of this grace
- 19:39through the whole life of a believer.
- 19:41And David's repetition really defines that completeness.
- 19:44God's action is total. He performs remission by freely
- 19:48pardoning, which means lifting off and taking away.
- 19:52He's covering the sin and he's not imputing it.
- 19:54These are all definitive acts of God that result in a complete
- 19:58forgiveness, not some partial pardon that we have to top up
- 20:01with our own efforts. And that complete action sets up
- 20:04the final part of the argument, which is that this grace isn't
- 20:07just for getting in the door. It has to accompany them to the
- 20:10last step of their life. The believer is still involved
- 20:13in faults, everyday sins of omission, sins of Commission,
- 20:17failures and love. If they had to rely on their own
- 20:19strength for justification, they would fail God's judgement every
- 20:22single day. So justification is a
- 20:25declaration that happens once, but our need for its covering
- 20:28for its application to our daily sin, that's continuous.
- 20:30It's the persistent reality for a justified person until the day
- 20:34they die. It is, and we see the perfect
- 20:36example in David himself. Here is a man who had made huge
- 20:39advances in holiness, and yet he placed the alpha and Omega of
- 20:43his salvation, the beginning and the end of it, in his gratuitous
- 20:47reconciliation to God. If David, the man after God's
- 20:50own heart, knew that his entire hope rested on mercy, well, how
- 20:54much more should we? It seems like it's often the
- 20:57people who are most advanced in holiness who are most aware of
- 21:00their constant need for forgiveness.
- 21:01Why is that? Kelvin says that the person who
- 21:04excels most in holiness actually feels himself farther from
- 21:07perfect righteousness. The closer you walk with God,
- 21:10the brighter He lost. His perfect law shines on you,
- 21:13and the more clearly you see your own remaining sin and just
- 21:16how vast the distance is between your best efforts and God's
- 21:19perfect standard. So, ironically, growing in
- 21:22holiness actually increases your humility and makes you trust
- 21:25only in God's mercy. That is a fascinating paradox.
- 21:28The spiritual giants aren't the ones who think they've built up
- 21:30a surplus of merit. They're the ones who see most
- 21:33clearly that they are utterly dependent on free pardon for
- 21:35their standing with God moment by moment.
- 21:38Yes, the more you know the law's demands, the more you know your
- 21:41own sin. So the greatest Saints are the
- 21:43ones who most eagerly embrace the definition of blessedness
- 21:47from Psalm 32, that their security rests entirely on God's
- 21:51free favor. So the final implication for
- 21:54you, the learner, is that knowing you are accounted
- 21:56righteous before God solely by the free remission of sins, that
- 22:00knowledge is the only refuge. It's the place where terror and
- 22:04anxiety are traded for assured and steady confidence.
- 22:08The repetition of that promise in Psalm 32 is exactly what's
- 22:12needed to give that assurance and make peace possible even in
- 22:15the middle of our daily struggle with sin.
- 22:17It's the only solid ground there is.
- 22:19Every statement in the Bible about blessedness is founded on
- 22:21the free favor of God by which he reconciles us to Himself.
- 22:24And that reconciliation which defines the righteousness of
- 22:27faith, is the only source of eternal hope in our present
- 22:30peace. This has been a really helpful
- 22:32deep dive into Calvin's perspective on Psalm 32.
- 22:35We've seen that the gate of eternal salvation isn't opened
- 22:38by our striving or our merit, but only by fully embracing the
- 22:42free remission of sins. And that same truth crushes the
- 22:46pride of the careless and completely reassures the anxious
- 22:49conscience. To sum it up, the blessedness
- 22:51David celebrates destroys every claim to human merit.
- 22:55It grounds our hope completely in God's free favor.
- 22:58And that is why the knowledge of salvation is the same thing as
- 23:00the knowledge of the remission of sins.
- 23:02Now for a final thought to take with you.
- 23:05Given Calvin's assertion the believers need this same grace
- 23:08to the last step of their life, and that our sanctification, our
- 23:11growth and holiness, never contributes one bit to our
- 23:14justification, how does realizing the daily, hourly
- 23:19necessity of forgiveness change our motivation for that growth
- 23:22and holiness? If our good works can't earn us
- 23:24anything, what new reason drives our obedience?
- 23:27Think about how a continuous reliance on free pardon changes
- 23:30the way we pursue holy life. Thank you for joining us on
- 23:33Reformed Thinking. Until next time.