# “His measureless benevolence” by John Calvin

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2015/05/01/his-measureless-benevolence-by-john-calvin/
- Published: 2015-05-01T12:00:09-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“Godly souls can gather great assurance and delight from this Sacrament. In it they
have a witness of our growth into one body with Christ such that whatever is His
may be called ours.

As a consequence, we may dare assure ourselves that eternal life, of which He is
the heir, is ours. And that the Kingdom of Heaven, into which He has already entered,
can no more be cut off from us than from Him.

And again that we cannot be condemned for our sins, from whose guilt He has absolved
us, since He willed to take them upon Himself as if they were His own.

This is the wonderful exchange which, out of His measureless benevolence, He has
made with us:

that, becoming Son of man with us, He has made us sons of God with Him;

that, by His descent to earth, He has prepared an ascent to heaven for us;

that, by taking on our mortality, He has conferred His immortality upon us;

that, accepting our weakness, He has strengthened us by His power;

that, receiving our poverty unto Himself, He has transferred His wealth to us;

that, taking the weight of our iniquity upon Himself (which oppressed us), He has
clothed us with His righteousness.

In this Sacrament we have such full witness of all these things that we must certainly
consider them as if Christ here present were Himself set before our eyes and touched
by our hands.”

–John Calvin, [_Institutes of the Christian Religion_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0664239110?tag=toletaupanre-20)(
ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; vols. 1-2; The Library of Christian
Classics; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), (4.17.2-3), pp. 1361–
1362.

[[HT: Matt Merker](http://twitter.com/merkermatt)]

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