Top 350 John Calvin Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “The difference between us and the papists is that they do not think that the church can be ‘the pillar of the truth’ unless she presides over the word of God. We, on the other hand, assert that it is because she reverently subjects herself to the word of God that the truth is preserved by her and passed on to others by her hands.”

— John Calvin

202. “Those little children have not yet any understanding to desire His blessing; but when they are presented to Him, He gently and kindly receives them, and dedicates them to the Father by a solemn act of blessing.”

— John Calvin

203. “When we hear any mention of our mystical union with Christ, we should remember that holiness is the channel to do it.”

— John Calvin

204. “No one will calmly and quietly submit to bear the cross except those who have learned to seek their happiness beyond this world.”

— John Calvin

205. “The whole world is a theatre for the display of the divine goodness, wisdom, justice, and power, but the Church is the orchestra, as it were – the most conspicuous part of it; and the nearer the approaches are that God makes to us, the more intimate and condescending the communication of his benefits, the more attentively are we called to consider them.”

— John Calvin

206. “For there is no one so great or mighty that he can avoid the misery that will rise up against him when he resists and strives against God.”

— John Calvin

207. “Faith is a knowledge of the benevolence of God toward us, and a certain persuasion of His veracity.”

— John Calvin

208. “The one condition for spiritual progress is that we remain sincere and humble.”

— John Calvin

209. “We explain justification simply as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as righteous men. And we say that it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.”

— John Calvin

210. “Now we must remark, that there are two parts in the Commandment-the first forbids the erection of a graven image, or any likeness; the second prohibits the transferring of the worship which God claims for Himself alone, to any of these phantoms or delusive shows.”

— John Calvin

211. “There is no group or type of people anywhere in the world that is excluded from salvation, because God desires that the gospel be proclaimed to all without exception.”

— John Calvin

212. “The most accomplished in the Scripture are fools, unless they acknowledge that they have need of God for their schoolmaster all the days of their life.”

— John Calvin

213. “The invention of the arts, and other things which serve the common use and convenience of life, is a gift of God by no means to be despised, and a faculty worthy of commendation.”

— John Calvin

214. “Whenever the Lord holds us in suspense, and delays his aid, he is not therefore asleep, but, on the contrary, regulates all His works in such a manner that he does nothing but at the proper time.”

— John Calvin

215. “We are not to reflect on the wickedness of men but to look to the image of God in them, an image which, covering and obliterating their faults, an image which, by its beauty and dignity, should allure us to love and embrace them.”

— John Calvin

216. “There has been nothing in heaven or on earth which has not witnessed that Jesus Christ is God, Lord and Master, and the great Ambassador of the Father sent here below to accomplish the salvation of mankind. All.”

— John Calvin

217. “But those who wish to prove to unbelievers that Scripture is the Word of God are acting foolishly, for only by faith can this be known.”

— John Calvin

218. “Our true wisdom is to embrace with meek docility, and without reservation, whatever the holy scriptures have delivered.”

— John Calvin

219. “Now, in order that true religion may shine upon us, we ought to hold that it must take its beginning from heavenly doctrine and that no one can get even the slightest taste of right and sound doctrine unless he be a pupil of Scripture.”

— John Calvin

220. “When we see that the whole sum of our salvation, and every single part of it, are comprehended in Christ, we must beware of deriving even the minutest portion of it from any other quarter.”

— John Calvin

221. “In vain people busy themselves with finding any good of man’s own in his will. For any mixture of the power of freewill that men strive to mingle with God’s grace is nothing but a corruption of grace. It is just as if one were to dilute wine with muddy, bitter water.”

— John Calvin

222. “It is not lawful for you to make a compromise with God: to try to fulfill part of your duties and to omit others at your own pleasure.”

— John Calvin

223. “Let this be our rule for goodwill and helpfulness, that whenever we are able to assist others we should behave as stewards who must someday give an account of ourselves.”

— John Calvin

224. “We can experience joy in adverse circumstances by holding God’s benefits in such esteem that the recognition of them and meditation upon them shall overcome all sorrow.”

— John Calvin

225. “We are promised abundance of all good things – yet we are rich only in hunger and thirst. What would become of us if we did not take our stand on hope, and if our heart did not hasten beyond this world!”

— John Calvin

226. “For so blindly do we all rush in the direction of self-love, that every one thinks he has a good reason for exalting himself and despising all others in comparison.”

— John Calvin

227. “Free-will cannot will good and of necessity serves sin.”

— John Calvin

228. “Mingled vanity and pride appear in this, that when miserable men do seek after God, instead of ascending higher than themselves as they ought to do, they measure him by their own carnal stupidity, and, neglecting solid inquiry, fly off to indulge their curiosity in vain speculation. Hence, they do not conceive of him in the character in which he is manifested, but imagine him to be whatever their own rashness has devised.”

— John Calvin

229. “Can true repentance exist without faith? By no means. But although they cannot be separated, they ought to be distinguished.”

— John Calvin

230. “Would the Lord have dressed the flowers with a beauty that runs freely to meet our eyes if it were wrong to be moved by such beauty? Would He have endowed them with so sweet a fragrance that flows freely into our nostrils if it were wrong to be moved by the pleasantness of such fragrance?”

— John Calvin

231. “Those who set up a fictitious worship, merely worship and adore their own delirious fancies; indeed, they would never dare so to trifle with God, had they not previously fashioned him after their own childish conceits.”

— John Calvin

232. “The only right stewardship is that which is tested by the rule of love.”

— John Calvin

233. “If God does nothing random, there must always be something to learn.”

— John Calvin

234. “It seems harsh to many to think that God chooses some and rejects others, and does not consider men’s worth, that by his own free will he chooses whom he pleases and moreover rejects others. But what is this scruple except a desire to call God to order and subject him to their judgment?”

— John Calvin

235. “We have been adopted as sons by the Lord with this one condition; that our life expresses Christ, the bond of our adoption. Accordingly, unless we give and devote ourselves to righteousness, we not only revolt from our Creator with wicked perfidy, but we also abjure our Savior Himself.”

— John Calvin

236. “We are cold when it comes to rejoicing in God! Hence, we need to exercise ourselves in it and employ all our senses in it – our feet, our hands, our arms and all the rest – that they all might serve in the worship of God and so magnify Him.”

— John Calvin

237. “God tolerates even our stammering, and pardons our ignorance whenever something inadvertently escapes us – as, indeed, without this mercy there would be no freedom to pray.”

— John Calvin

238. “Where is our acknowledgement of God if our thoughts are fixed on the glamour of our garments?”

— John Calvin

239. “There are sons of God who do not yet appear so to us, but now do so to God; and there are those who, on account of some arrogated or temporal grace, are called so by us, but are not so to God.”

— John Calvin

240. “It is no small honour that God for our sake has so magnificently adorned the world, in order that we may not only be spectators of this beauteous theatre, but also enjoy the multiplied abundance and variety of good things which are presented to us in it.”

— John Calvin

241. “Those who, rejecting Scripture, imagine that they have some peculiar way of penetrating to God, are to be deemed not so much under the influence of error as madness.”

— John Calvin

242. “God would remain absolutely hidden if we were not illuminated by the brightness of Christ.”

— John Calvin

243. “There is no golden mean between these two extremes; either this early life must become low in our estimation, or it will have our inordinate love.”

— John Calvin

244. “Christ, on the other hand, declares that every single one of God’s creatures is under his hand and care, and that nothing happens by chance. In.”

— John Calvin

245. “Christ’s intercession is the continual application of his death to our salvation.”

— John Calvin

246. “How can it be said that the weakness of the human will is aided so as to enable it to aspire effectually to the choice of good, when the fact is, that it must be wholly transformed and renewed?”

— John Calvin

247. “It is a promise which eminently deserves our observation that all who are united to Christ and acknowledge Him to be Christ and Mediator will remain to the end safe from all danger, for what is said of the body of the Church belongs to each of its members since they are one in Christ.”

— John Calvin

248. “As by the revolt of the first man, the image of God could be effaced from his mind and soul, so there is nothing strange in His shedding some rays of grace on the reprobate, and afterwards allowing these to be extinguished.”

— John Calvin

249. “It is not after we were reconciled by the blood of his Son that God began to love us, but before the foundation of the world.”

— John Calvin

250. “The whole comes to this, that Christ, when he produces faith in us by the agency of his Spirit, at the same time ingrafts us into his body, that we may become partakers of all spiritual blessings.”

— John Calvin