“This is why Paul upholds the teaching of the gospel in such a
forceful way ... Seeing such an example and such a picture of man’s
great weakness and fickleness, Paul states that the truth of the gospel
must supersede anything that we may devise … he is showing us that we
ought to know the substance of the doctrine which is brought to us in
the name of God, so that our faith can be fully grounded upon it. Then
we will not be tossed about with every wind, nor will we wander about
aimlessly, changing our opinions a hundred times a day; we will persist
in this doctrine until the end. This, in brief, is what we must
remember.”
~John Calvin, Sermons on Galatians
Whatever kind of tribulation
we may suffer, this should always be our goal: to learn contempt for
the present life, and thus to be led
to meditate on the life to come.
Because the Lord well knows
our readiness to embrace the world with blind and even brutish love,
he uses the very best means to part us from it and to rouse us from
our lethargy, so as to free our hearts from so foolish an attachment.
All of us, in the course of
our lives, like to be seen as people who long for immortality in
heaven, and who are trying very hard to attain it. The thought that
we are no better than the brute beasts, and that their lot is
in no way inferior to ours, would be humiliating were we not
left with some hope of eternity after death. If, however, we think
hard of the schemes we all devise, the plans we lay, the things we do
and undertake, we will find them to be mere dust!
Our folly comes from the fact
that our minds are more or less dazzled by the false glitter of
wealth, honour, and power, which are superficially attractive and
which stop us looking further ahead. By the same token our
heart is taken by greed, ambition, and other evil desires, and is
held so fast by them that it
cannot look higher up. Lastly, our entire soul seeks its
happiness here on earth, because it is wrapped and entangled in the
pleasures of the flesh.
To remedy this evil, the Lord
teaches his servants to recognize the vanity of this present life,
carefully training them by means of various afflictions. Lest they
look forward in this life to peace and tranquillity,
he allows war, turmoil, theft, and other evils to upset and trouble
them. Lest
they thirst too much for ephemeral wealth or trust too fondly
in the wealth they have, he reduces them to poverty, sometimes by
sending barrenness upon the earth, sometimes by fire, sometimes by
other means; or else he condemns them to bare sufficiency.
Lest they delight too much in
marriage, he gives them difficult or headstrong wives who torment
them, or wayward children to humble them, or else afflicts them with
the loss of spouse and children. If, however, in all these things he
treats them kindly, to stop them from becoming proud in their conceit
and complacent through excessive confidence, he warns them by means
of sickness or peril, and gives them as it were visible proof of how
fragile and fleeting are the goods we enjoy, since they are subject
to decay.
Thus the discipline of the
cross is of great benefit to us when we understand that the present
life, judged in itself, is full or worry, trouble and much
misfortune. It is never completely happy at any time, and all the
blessings we hold dear are transitory and uncertain, trifling and
tinged with endless misery.
The conclusion we draw, then,
is that here we must expect nothing but conflict. If we would seek
our crown, it is to heaven that we must look. We may be sure that our
heart will never really learn to want the life to come, and to
meditate on it, without first feeling disdain for this earthly life.
"Can
true repentance exist without faith? By no means. But although they
cannot be separated, they ought to be distinguished." ~John Calvin
