100+ Quotes by John Calvin
John Calvin, a theologian and influential figure during the Protestant Reformation, left an enduring mark on religious thought and practice. His systematic theological writings, particularly his magnum opus "Institutes of the Christian Religion," laid out his beliefs on predestination, salvation, and the sovereignty of God. Calvin's theological framework, known as Calvinism, has deeply influenced various Protestant denominations and shaped their doctrines. Beyond theology, Calvin's ideas also had profound implications for governance and social structure, contributing to the development of the Reformed tradition and its impact on cultures and societies. His intellectual contributions and theological legacy continue to spark debates and discussions within the realm of Christian theology and philosophy.
John Calvin Quotes
The Human heart is an idol factory. (Meaning)
All truth is God's truth. (Meaning)
The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul. (Meaning)
All truth is God's truth. (Meaning)
The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul. (Meaning)
The Human heart is an idol factory. (Meaning)
There is no knowing that does not begin with knowing God. (Meaning)
All the arts come from God and are to be respected as divine inventions (Meaning)
There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence. (Meaning)
Humility is the beginning of true intelligence. (Meaning)
Peace is not to be purchased by the sacrifice of truth. (Meaning)
There is no knowing that does not begin with knowing God. (Meaning)
It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone. (Meaning)
All the arts come from God and are to be respected as divine inventions (Meaning)
There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence. (Meaning)
You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy. (Meaning)
When God wants to judge a nation, He gives them wicked rulers.
For the fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being, and it is a monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.
We shall never be clothed with the righteousness of Christ except we first know assuredly that we have no righteousness of our own.
Whatever a person may be like, we must still love them because we love God.
Prayer doesn't change things - God changes things in answer to prayer.
I gave up all for Christ, and what have I found? Everything in Christ.
A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.
While all men seek after happiness, scarcely one in a hundred looks for it from God.
Only those who have learned well to be earnestly dissatisfied with themselves, and to be confounded with shame at their wretchedness truly understand the Christian gospel.
When I took the leap, I had faith I would find a net; Instead I learned I could fly.
Faith is like an empty, open hand stretched out towards God, with nothing to offer and everything to recieve
Humility is the beginning of true intelligence.
If a preacher is not first preaching to himself, better that he falls on the steps of the pulpit and breaks his neck than preaches that sermon.
We should ask God to increase our hope when it is small, awaken it when it is dormant, confirm it when it is wavering, strengthen it when it is weak, and raise it up when it is overthrown.
God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.
Whoever is not satisfied with Christ alone, strives after something beyond absolute perfection.
Nothing is more dangerous than to be blinded by prosperity.
The happiness promised us in Christ does not consist in outward advantages-such as leading a joyous and peaceful life, having rich possessions, being safe from all harm, and abounding with delights such as the flesh commonly longs after. No, our happiness belongs to the heavenly life!
To be Christians under the law of grace does not mean to wander unbridled outside the law, but to be engrafted in Christ, by whose grace we are free from the curse of the law, and by whose Spirit we have the law engraved upon our hearts.
There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make men rejoice.
The pastor ought to have two voices: one, for gathering the sheep; and another, for warding off and driving away wolves and thieves. The Scripture supplies him with the means of doing both.
The excellence of the Church does not consist in multitude but in purity.
Our prayer must not be self-centered. It must arise not only because we feel our own need as a burden we must lay upon God, but also because we are so bound up in love for our fellow men that we feel their need as acutely as our own. To make intercession for men is the most powerful and practical way in which we can express our love for them.
The gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue, but of life.
We must not think that [God] takes no notice of us, when He does not answer our wishes: for He has a right to distinguish what we actually need.
It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone.
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.
We are nowhere forbidden to laugh, or be satisfied with food...or to be delighted with music or to drink wine.
God works in his elect in two ways: inwardly, by his Spirit; outwardly, by his Word.
For what is idolatry if not this: to worship the gifts in place of the Giver himself?
Peace is not to be purchased by the sacrifice of truth.
If God does nothing random, there must always be something to learn.
The blindness of unbelievers in no way detracts from the clarity of the gospel; the sun is no less bright because blind men do not perceive its light.
Our assurance, our glory, and the sole anchor of our salvation are that Christ the Son of God is ours, and we in turn are in him sons of God and heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven, called to the hope of eternal blessedness by God's grace, not by our worth.
We should never insult others on account of their faults, for it is our duty to show charity and respect to everyone.
A man will be justified by faith when, excluded from righteousness of works, he by faith lays hold of the righteousness of Christ, and clothed in it, appears in the sight of God not as a sinner, but as righteous.
Every one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols.
True wisdom consists in two things: Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Self.
Unless God's Word illumine the way, the whole life of men is wrapped in darkness and mist, so that they cannot but miserably stray.
The Lord has not redeemed you so you might enjoy pleasures and luxuries or so that you might abandon yourself to ease and indolence, but rather so you should be prepared to endure all sorts of evils.
Repentance is the true turning of our life to God, a turning that arises from a pure and earnest fear of Him; and it consists in the mortification of the flesh and the renewing of the Spirit.
How do we know that God has elected us before the creation of the world? By believing in Jesus Christ.
You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy.
Men will never worship God with a sincere heart, or be roused to fear and obey Him with sufficient zeal, until they properly understand how much they are indebted to His mercy.
Scripture is like a pair of spectacles which dispels the darkness and gives us a clear view of God.
We may rest assured that God would never have suffered any infants to be slain except those who were already damned and predestined for eternal death.
Joy is a quiet gladness of heart as one contemplates the goodness of God's saving grace in Christ Jesus.
Assuredly there is but one way in which to achieve what is not merely difficult but utterly against human nature: to love those who hate us, to repay their evil deeds with benefits, to return blessings for reproaches. It is that we remember not to consider men's evil intention but to look upon the image of God in them, which cancels and effaces their transgressions, and with its beauty and dignity allures us to love and embrace them.
We must make the invisible kingdom visible in our midst.
Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, there a church of God exists, even if it swarms with many faults.
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.
When God designs to forgive us he changes our hearts and turns us to obedience by His Spirit.
We must remember that Satan has his miracles, too.
The grace of God has no charms for men till the Holy Spirit gives them a taste for it.
Sometimes it seems things go by too quickly. We are so busy watching out for what's just ahead of us that we don't take the time to enjoy where we are.
Christ is much more powerful to save, than Adam was to destroy.
Doctrine is not an affair of the tongue but of the life.
Prayer is the chief exercise of faith.
Free will does not enable any man to perform good works, unless he is assisted by grace; indeed, the special grace which the elect alone receive through regeneration. For I stay not to consider the extravagance of those who say that grace is offered equally and promiscuously to all
Satan is an astute theologian.
When the Bible speaks, God speaks.
To make intercession for men is the most powerful and practical way in which we can express our love for them.
No man can come to God but by an extraordinary revelation of the Spirit.
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.
Human will does not by liberty obtain grace, but by grace obtains liberty.
Faith does not proceed from ourselves, but is the fruit of spiritual regeneration.
We cannot rely on God's promises without obeying his commandments.
Those who fall away have never been thoroughly imbued with the knowledge of Christ but only had a slight and passing taste of it.
Wherefore all theology, when separated from Christ, is not only vain and confused, but is also mad, deceitful, and spurious; for, though the philosophers sometimes utter excellent sayings, yet they have nothing but what is short-lived, and even mixed up with wicked and erroneous sentiments.
If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house, then in a field,...it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.
A man that extols himself is a fool and an idiot
Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain.
Our physical illnesses serve us for medicines to purge us from worldly affections and retrench what is superfluous in us, and since they are to us the messengers of death, we ought to learn to have one foot raised to take our departure when it shall please God.
Faith alone saves, but the faith that saves is not alone.
The Holy Spirit is the bond by which Christ efficaciously unites us to himself.
The Scriptures obtain full authority among believers only when men regard them as having sprung from heaven, as if there the living words of God were heard.
That man is truly humble who neither claims any personal merit in the sight of God, nor proudly despises brethren, or aims at being thought superior to them, but reckons it enough that he is one of the members of Christ, and desires nothing more than that the Head alone should be exalted.
There is no place for faith if we expect God to fulfill immediately what he promises.
Holiness is not a merit by which we can attain communion with God, but a gift of Christ, which enables us to cling to him, and to follow him.
When our faith is tested by suffering "as gold is tried in a furnace" and we depend with confidence on God and rely entirely on his help, we will be granted the most excellent gift of patience and through faith we may victoriously persevere to the end.
men are undoubtedly more in danger from prosperity than from adversity. for when matters go smoothly, they flatter themselves, and are intoxicated by their success
There is no knowing that does not begin with knowing God.
God is not limited to any person, but calls freely whomsoever He pleases, and bestows on those who are called whatever rewards He thinks fit.
All true knowledge of God is born out of obedience.
The Scriptures should be read with the aim of finding Christ in them. Whoever turns aside from this object, even though he wears himself out all his life in learning, he will never reach the knowledge of the truth.
On the contrary, therefore, Christ declares that the doctrine of the Gospel, though it is preached to all without exception, cannot be embraced by all, but that a new understanding and a new perception are requisite; and, therefore, that faith does not depend on the will of men, but that it is God who gives it.
The one condition for spiritual progress is that we remain sincere and humble.
"The majesty of God in itself goes beyond the capacity of human understanding and cannot be comprehended by it..
We must adore its loftiness rather than investigate it, so that we do not remain overwhelmed by so great a splendor."
The first part of a good work is the will, the second is vigorous effort in the doing of it. God is the author of both. It is, therefore, robbery from God to arrogate anything to ourselves, either in the will or the act.
God would remain absolutely hidden if we were not illuminated by the brightness of Christ.
I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.
There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence.
The surest source of destruction to men is to obey themselves.
Let our chief goal, O God, be your glory, and to enjoy You forever.
Where riches hold the dominion of the heart, God has lost His authority.
Hatred grows into insolence when we desire to excel the rest of mankind and imagine we do not belong to the common lot; we even severely and haughtily despise others as our inferiors.
A perfect faith is nowhere to be found, so it follows that all of us are partly unbelievers.
Where God's Spirit does not reign, there is no humility, and men ever swell with inward pride.
It is a most blessed thing to be subject to the sovereignty of God.
Let that ethical philosophy therefore of free-will be far from a Christian mind.
Without the Gospel everything is useless and vain.
For it was not after we were reconciled to him by the blood of his Son that he began to love us, but he loved us before the foundation of the world, that with his only begotten Son we too might be sons of God before we were anything at all.
The whole gospel is contained in Christ.
Free-will cannot will good and of necessity serves sin.
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.
By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which He determined with Himself whatever He wished to happen with regard to every man
Doubtful prayer is no prayer at all.
Whomever the Lord has adopted and deemed worthy of His fellowship ought to prepare themselves for a hard, toilsome, and unquiet life, crammed with very many and various kinds of evil.
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.
Unless we fix certain hours in the day for prayer, it easily slips from our memory.
The sufferings of Christ are the means of forgiveness of sin and eternal glory
The true wisdom of man consists in the knowledge of God the creator and Redeemer.
Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God.
The evil in our desires typically does not lie in what we want, but that we want it too much.
The Bible is the sceptre by which the Heavenly King rules His Church.
Man with all his shrewdness is as stupid about understanding by himself the mysteries of God, as an ass is incapable of understanding musical harmony.
All truth is God's truth.
Things that are seen are temporal; things that are unseen are eternal.
There can be no courage in men unless God supports them by his Word.
The Angels are the dispensers and administrators of the Divine beneficence toward us. They regard our safety, undertake our defense, direct our ways, and exercise a constant solicitude that no evil befall us.
Faith is the evidence of divine adoption.
God does not bestow his spirit on his people in order to set aside the use of his word, but rather to render it fruitful.
So great and boundless is God's wisdom that he knows right well how to use evil instruments to do good.
Let us be peaceable as near as we can: let us relent of our own right: let us not strive for these worldly goods, honour and reputation: let us bear all wrongs and outrages, rather than be moved to any debate through our own fault. But in the meanwhile, let us fight for God's truth with tooth and nail.
For it is better, with closed eyes, to follow God as our guide, than, by relying on our own prudence, to wander through those circuitous paths which it devises for us.
Nothing, including human suffering, happens by chance.
We are surrounded by God’s benefits. The best use of these benefits is an unceasing expression of gratitude.
The church is the gathering of God's children, where they can be helped and fed like babies and then guided by her motherly care, grow up to manhood in maturity of faith.
You cannot imagine a more certain rule or a more powerful suggestion than this, that all the blessings we enjoy are divine deposits which we have received on this condition that we distribute them to others.
Prosperity inebriates men, so that they take delights in their own merits.
On the one hand, undeserved success gives no satisfaction... but, on the other hand, well-deserved failure gives no satisfaction either.
Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the heavenly science of Christ.
Prayer unaccompanied by perseverance leads to no result.
Against the persecution of a tyrant the godly have no remedy but prayer.
If we are proud of our talents we betray our lack of gratitude to God.
The fire of affliction reveals the quality of our faith
The principle exercise which the children of god have is to pray. For in this way they give true proof of their faith.
There is also an old proverb, that they who pay much attention to the body generally neglect the soul.
When a certain shameless fellow mockingly asked a pious old man what God had done before the creation of the world the latter aptly countered that he had been building hell for the curious.
Christians rejoice even while they truly sorrow - because their rejoicing is in the hope of heaven... While joy overcomes sorrow, it does not put an end to it.
In knowing God, each of us also knows himself.
Scripture will ultimately suffice for a saving knowledge of God only when its certainty is founded upon the inward persuasion of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, these human testimonies which exist to confirm it will not be vain if, as secondary aids to our feebleness, they follow that chief and highest testimony. 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.
Again I ask whence it happened that the fall of Adam involved, without remedy, in eternal death so many nations, together with their infant children, except because it so seemed good to God? A decree horrible, I confess, and yet true.
― John Calvin Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
