John Calvin (1509-1564) on Matthew 5:44-45

 (I)

 

[Source: Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.25.9]

 

“We know that in Adam we lost the inheritance of the whole world, and have no more right to the enjoyment of common aliments, than to the fruit of the tree of life. How is it, then, that God not only ‘maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good,’ [Matt. 5:45] but that, for the accommodations of the present life, his inestimable liberality is diffused in the most copious abundance? Hence we see, that things which properly belong to Christ and his members, are also extended to the impious; not to become their legitimate possession, but to render them more inexcusable. Thus impious men frequently experience God’s beneficence in remarkable instances, which sometimes exceed all the blessings of the pious, but which, nevertheless, are the means of aggravating their condemnation.”

 

[Cf. Comm. on Jeremiah 33:8 … “[God] may, indeed, supply us bountifully with whatever we may wish, while yet he himself is alienated from us, as we see to be the case with the ungodly, who often abound in all good things; and hence they glory and boast as though they had God as it were, in a manner, bound to them. But whatever God grants and bestows on the ungodly, cannot, properly speaking, be deemed as an evidence of his favor and grace; but he thus renders them more inexcusable, while he treats them so indulgently … For except pardon goes before, he must necessarily be adverse to us; for as long as he looks on us as we are, he finds in us nothing but what deserves vengeance. We are therefore always accursed before God until he buries our sins.”]