Calvin is insistent that believers must actively employ their strength to bring God’s salvation to others.
In his sermon on Deuteronomy 33.18-19 Calvin can thus argue that it is not enough to be involved in God’s service. Christians need to be drawing others to serve and adore God. Specifically, how does God use the strength of Christians? Calvin’s answer is that it is by their words and by their deeds.
The Word of God and missions
Given Calvin’s high appreciation of the Word of God one would naturally expect that this would be seen as a major means of witness. Thus, Calvin can state that whenever the Old Testament prophets foretold ‘the renewal of the church or its extension over the whole globe’, they always assigned ‘the first place to the Word’.
Acting on this conviction, Calvin encouraged the translation and printing of the Scriptures in the work of reformation in Geneva. This also explains his own devotion to regular expository preaching and his penning of commentaries on all of the books of the New Testament except for 2 and 3 John and Revelation, and on a goodly number of Old Testament books.
Preaching is also central here, as Calvin notes: ‘God wants his grace to be known in all the world, and he has commanded that his gospel be preached to all people’.
Bearing witness through our deeds
Witness, though, is borne not only by the Word, but also by our deeds. Calvin had established an academy in Geneva to especially train men to be missionaries for his native land, France. A significant number of these men did indeed go back as missionaries and some died as martyrs.
Five such missionaries, for example – Martial Alba, Pierre Ecrivain, Charles Favre, Pierre Navihères, and Bernard Seguin – had come from Lausanne to Geneva in the Spring of 1552 where they had got to know Calvin as they prepared to go back to France as missionaries in the region of Lyons. As they were on the road to Lyons they met a man who asked if he could travel with them. They had no suspicions of him. He seemed very hospitable and, on arrival at Lyons, he urged them to come and stay with him. They did so, and he subsequently betrayed them into the hands of the authorities in April 1552.
As soon as Calvin heard of their arrest he began a letter-writing campaign seeking to bring pressure on the French king Henri II through a number of German Protestant allies. By the Spring of 1553, however, it became obvious that he would not be able to obtain their release. Calvin wrote to the five who were facing death by martyrdom on 15 May, 1553. The students never saw this letter for they were burned on 16 May: ‘Since it pleases him [i.e. God] to employ you to the death in maintaining his quarrel [with the world], he will strengthen your hands in the fight, and will not suffer a single drop of your blood to be spent in vain. And though the fruit may not all at once appear, yet in time it shall spring up more abundantly than we can express. But as he hath vouchsafed you this privilege, that your bonds have been renowned, and that the noise of them has been everywhere spread abroad, it must needs be, in despite of Satan, that your death should resound far more powerfully, so that the name of our Lord be magnified thereby. For my part, I have no doubt, if it please this kind Father to take you unto himself, that he has preserved you hitherto, in order that your long-continued imprisonment might serve as a preparation for the better awakening of those whom be has determined to edify by your end. For let enemies do their utmost, they never shall be able to bury out of sight that light which God has made to shine in you, in order to be contemplated from afar.’
Here, Calvin saw the act of martyrdom as a powerful witness for the gospel, though it is one without words.
Every believer a witness
Calvin was also convinced that each and every Christian must be prepared to witness, by both word and deed, about God’s grace and mercy in Christ and that to all whom they can. When it comes to the spreading of the gospel, it is noteworthy that he makes no distinction between the responsibility of pastors and of other Christians. All believers must be involved.
