When reviewing Paul’s description of the Christian pastor in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, I was struck again by how much emphasis he places on exceptional character rather than exceptional gifts, and by his focus on what a pastor is to be rather than what a pastor is to do. And yet, when seminaries are training pastors, when churches are seeking pastors, and when pastors are pursuing training, we often turn the Bible’s priorities upside down (David Murray, The Christian Ministry, Loc. 254).

The Institutes is an extended hymn of praise by an exiled Frenchman to a saving God he believed never abandoned the faithful. It was deeply personal. Faith, Calvin writes, is to know that God is Father (Bruce Gordon, John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography, 12).

Calvin would have hated the designation of his Institutes as a book of academic theology. That was precisely what it was not. Above all, his creation was a structured exposition of the biblical account of divinity and humanity, of what Christians should know and how they should live. . . . The Institutes was a book to be lived (Bruce Gordon, John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography, xiii).

Materialism is part of a larger pursuit, not merely of the idols that material possessions may become but of the idol of acceptance. At the deepest levels of our hearts, we want more than simply stuff. We want people to accept us, and one of the ways we sometimes imagine that we will achieve acceptance is by having lots of things: an impressive resume, beauty, fame, or power (Alan D. Strange, Imputation of the Active Obedience of Chrsit in the Westminster Standards, xv).

Christ’s death indeed removes the debt of sin, but it is His active obedience accounted (or imputed) to us that gives us the perfect righteousness we need. We have a need not only for our sin to be paid for but also for the law to be kept for us positively (Alan D. Strange, Imputation of the Active Obedience of Christ in the Westminster Standards, xi).