Thoughts on John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion

By the true preaching of the gospel, “Christ is depicted before our eyes as crucified,” (see Gal 3:1), and thus those who turn aside to idols rather than the ministry of the Word do so because they themselves cannot see Christ in the pages of Scripture. (Book I: 11.7)

It is clearly evident to me that the Scriptures (and the study of it) is absolutely crucial not only to maintaining our salvation (by the seeing of Christ), but also unto the glory of God—that we may stop turning to gliterring idols and may find deep contentment and satisfaction in the majesty of Christ found within the pages of Scripture. Indeed the general doctrine may be made that we turn aside to idols (viz. visible objects used for comfort or satisfaction) because we are blind to Christ crucified as is claimed in Galatians 3:1, that by the true preaching of the gospel, the Galatians had before their eyes Jesus Christ publicly portrayed as crucified. Thus much of the Christian life is simply a fight to see Christ crucified within the inspired word of the living God (under the illumination of the Spirit). The alternative is for us to sit blind of Christ, for man’s nature is a perpetual factory of idols and we will never see His glory until the Spirit be breathed into our hearts and our eyes opened to the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ (2 Cor 4:6).

This is further aided by “the example of the Israelites,” which “shows the origin of idolatry to be that men do not believe God is with them unless he shows himself physically present.” (I: 11.8) And so it is the wilderness sin of unbelief that leads to the call for a golden calf, which the man-pleasers of our day gladly construct for the pleasure of the masses. It is the foolish call for tangible, finite comforts and pleasures to appease the hunger in our souls for the intangible, infinite God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Indeed, “daily experience teaches that the flesh is always uneasy until it has obtained some figment like itself in which it may fondly find solace as in an image of God.” (I: 11.8) Let this then stir us to be watchful, for there is much gold in our midst, and God forbid that any one of us be the Aaron who casts its glittering sparks into the mold of the calf.