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Walking along the shores of Lake Léman toward downtown Geneva, Switzerland, the cloud-shrouded Alps frame your gaze to the right as the twin towers of St. Pierre Cathedral rise above the modern skyline straight ahead. Neither the famous Jet d’Eau fountain that aspires skyward in the lake nor the green spire that pierces the cool, clear air above the ancient cathedral date to Calvin’s time. Yet both somehow offer fitting tribute to the 16th-century reformer, whose campaign to build a church on the Word of God by preaching the gospel of grace reached heavenly heights but never eluded the sin that tethers us to the dust of the earth.

Geneva today everywhere bears the marks of Calvin’s influence if you search carefully down the winding but well-ordered streets lined by signs of prosperity and peace. Right next to Calvin’s church you can visit Musée international de la Réforme (International Museum of the Reformation). While beautiful and informative, the museum somewhat downplays the Reformation by viewing it mainly as a helpful step toward today’s secularism. If you want to actually see Calvin’s theology vitally embodied and propagated in our own day, you must travel about 15 minutes by car northeast along the shore of Lake Léman toward the border with France. Down the road from the World Economic Forum, embedded in one of the world’s wealthiest neighborhoods, L’Institut Biblique de Genève (Bible Institute of Geneva) testifies to its Reformed confession with a main hall named for Guillaume Farel, the fiery prophet who warned Calvin of God’s judgment if he did not settle in town to work for reform. Late last month the site hosted about 650 French-speaking evangelicals to study the gospel of Jesus Christ revealed in the book of Galatians. Évangile 21, the Francophone ministry affiliated with The Gospel Coalition, hosted Tim Keller along with French speakers Don Carson, Henri Blocher, E21 catalyst Mike Evans, and more than 15 other workshop teachers.

Keller delivered three plenary talks from Galatians along with an interview on ministry and marriage with his wife, Kathy, and a seminar on church planting in global centers such as Geneva and Paris. He opened his exposition of Galatians 1:1-10 by observing that the gospel is not only a doctrine but also a power that changes our lives. Calvin saw himself as liberating the people of Geneva from enslavement to the law, from the legalism and ritualism of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. Yet Calvin taught that the gospel of grace now gives us more power than we ever had before to obey God’s law—albeit with radically changed motivation. Negatively, the Christian soul restrains itself from disobeying God’s law “not out of dread of punishment alone, but because it loves and reveres God. . . . Even if there were no hell, it would still shudder at offending him” (Institutes 1.3.2). Positively, Calvin says that the experience of costly grace means “you are not your own, you are bought with a price” (1 Cor 6:19-20 in Institutes 3.6.7). This means that a grace-changed heart no longer lives for itself. Calvin says it now places its happiness in God (Institutes 1.3.1) rather than using God in order to get things that make it happy. To not live for yourself—but for God and for your neighbor—is the definition of love and the sum of all the commandments. So while we are freed from the law as a system of salvation we are freed for the law as a way to be liberated from self in service to God and others. There is an equal and concomitant emphasis on both free grace and therefore loving obedience.

Then as now, Keller observed, unbelievers cannot understand this Christian motivation from the outside. Because they do not understand the gospel they necessarily think that Christians just want to control people in order to bolster our self-image and give us a sense of superiority. But as Calvin led his company of pastors to practice, we must embody the truth of the gospel in our lives to show the world the glory of God in how we love our neighbors as ourselves.

Bearing Burdens

Whether we’re reading Calvin’s polemics against the “papists” or Paul’s rebuke for the Judaizers, we clearly observe how they warn readers that no one can earn salvation from God by observing works of the law. But we sometimes miss how they call us to live out the implications of the grace that comes from God alone through our trust in the finished work of Jesus. Paul writes in Galatians 2:19-20: “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Because we have have been freed from the law through the death and resurrection of Jesus, we have also been freed to actually serve one another through love (Gal. 5:13). The world will know we rest in this grace from God when they see us love them and one another without any regard for our reputation or self-interest. Even when someone sins against us, we need not retaliate. No matter what anyone says about us, we need not respond in kind. Rather, Paul tells us in Galatians 6:2, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” You bear one one another’s burdens when you do not return sin for sin.

Love to the End

If we struggle to obey this command today we might find it helpful to consider the slanders and other attacks delivered against Paul and Calvin. Both were surely tempted to live out the law that requires an eye for an eye. We see evidence in Calvin’s writing that he sometimes succumbed to sinful anger. But they drew on at least three different motivations identified by Keller as gracious means to pursue holy love. We, too, love because our sin may bring about the judgment of God. We love because we want to enjoy eternal rewards in heaven with the Father. And above all we love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19).

Keller explained that many of us gloss over this primary motivation because we only see ourselves as free from the punishment of the law. We do not understand what it means to be counted as righteous before God. Therefore we fall back into the trap of anxiously trying to make God love us through good works that actually reveal our insecurity and pride. But in Christ we’re adopted as sons of God! We will inherit a kingdom that will never end! As Keller told the crowd in Geneva, “Jesus Christ was treated as we deserved so that when we believe in Jesus, God treats us as Jesus deserves.”
No one and no circumstance can touch a Christian who lives in light of this grace. Paul could endure shipwrecks, imprisonment, and betrayal. Calvin could endure sickness, slander, and threats of Roman Catholic invasion. Since we enjoy the same Spirit who helps us in every need, we can love to the end, no matter what may come in the meantime.

Free to Love

From Geneva Keller traveled directly to Rome where he preached for the first time in a city mentioned by the Bible. He met with students and church planters laboring among countless difficulties to sow the gospel in the city that helped Martin Luther first understand the futility of obeying the law apart from justification by faith alone. Before Keller left for Rome he and I discussed the essential insight of the Reformation, as true today as nearly 500 years ago in 1517. As Keller read Calvin’s Institutes in preparation for his visit to Geneva, he dwelled on Calvin’s critique of the Roman Catholic sacrament of confession before a priest. The medieval church insisted that an individual cannot secure forgiveness for a sin directly—she can only receive absolution through a priest. But, Calvin argued, this practice pushes everyone to one of two extremes. Either it will make you a guilt-crushed person who needs to run to the priest every hour, or it will lead you to sin away and simply get absolution later. It will make you either into a legalist or an antinomian.

Whether in Rome or Geneva, the same gospel offers the only hope for sinners either puffed up in self-righteousness or dragged down in self-indulgence. Only grace can free us from the law of sin and death (Rom. 8:2) so that we can fulfill the law of love (Rom. 13:8, 10). This is the law that turns the other cheek (Matt. 5:39). This is the law that goes the extra mile (Matt. 5:41). This is the law that serves others in humility (John 13:1-17). This is the law that took Jesus to the cross as an example for us (1 Pet. 5:21). This is the law that will point the world toward the grace that can only be received as a gift by faith in the guiltless Savior who suffered for sin.

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.
To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.

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