In preparing to preach Hebrews 10:19-25 for church tomorrow, I came across this extended quote from Calvin that is too good not to share widely. In it the French reformer explains why unity and love is so hard to come by in the local church: Our own pride and tendency to look down on others. Apparently churches in 16th century Geneva weren’t much different than those in 21st century America! This, again, is taken from Calvin's commentary on Hebrews 10:25:
“It is an evil which prevails everywhere among mankind that everyone sets himself above others, and especially that those who seem in anything to excel cannot well endure their inferiors to be on an equality with themselves. And then there is so much morosity (READ: ill-temperament) almost in all, that individuals would gladly make churches for themselves if they could; for they find it so difficult to accommodate themselves to the ways and habits of others. The rich envy one another; and hardly one in a hundred can be found among the rich, who allows the poor the name and rank of brethren. Unless similarity of habits or some allurements or advantages draw us together, it is very difficult even to maintain a continual concord among ourselves.
“Extremely needed, then, by us all is the admonition to be stimulated to love and not to envy, and not to separate from those whom God has joined to us, but to embrace with brotherly kindness all those who are united to us in faith. And surely it behoves us the more earnestly to cultivate unity, as the more eagerly watchful Satan is, either to tear us by any means from the Church, or stealthily to seduce us from it. And such would be the happy effect, were no one to please himself too much, and were all of us to preserve this one object, mutually to provoke one another to love, and to allow no emulation among ourselves, but that of doing good works. For doubtless the contempt of the brethren, moroseness, envy, immoderate estimate of ourselves, and other sinful impulses, clearly show that our love is either very cold, or does not at all exist.”
How much of our church drama stems from our having a proud attitude toward others, viewing church as the place I go to be "fed" (i.e. to get what I want), not as the Lord's appointed venue in which I am to stir up others to love and good works?
