I was prepping for the Wednesday Night message this week where we discuss the Apostles’ Creed and ran across these quotations from John Calvin on the Incarnation. They are absolutely wonderful, so I thought I would share here.
“…that the work to be performed by the Mediator was of no common description: being to restore us to the divine favour, so as to make us, instead of sons of men, sons of God; instead of heirs of Hell, heirs of a heavenly kingdom. Who could do this unless the Son of God should also become the Son of man, and so receive what is ours as to transfer to us what is his, making that which is his by nature to become ours by grace?”—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Henry Beveridge, 1994, Book II, Chapter XII, par. 2
Later, he writes.
“Therefore, our Lord came forth very man, adopted the person of Adam, and assumed his name, that he might in his stead obey the Father; that he might present our flesh as the price of satisfaction to the just judgment of God, and in the same flesh pay the penalty which we had incurred. Finally, since as God only he could not suffer, and as man only could not overcome death, he united the human nature with the divine, that he might subject the weakness of the one to death as an expiation of sin, and by the power of the other, maintaining a struggle with death, might gain us the victory.”—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Henry Beveridge, 1994, Book II, Chapter XII, par. 3
How marvelous is the grace of God in the Incarnation? Let us praise Him!
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