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    Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life
    Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life
    Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life
    Ebook76 pages1 hour

    Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life

    By John Calvin

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    In this classic devotional, John Calvin urges readers to apply the Christian life in a balanced way to mind, heart, and hand. Rather than focusing on contemplative otherworldliness, the book stresses the importance of a devotedly active Christian life.

    In style and spirit, this book is much like Augustine's Confessions, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, or Thomas à Kempis's Imitation of Christ. However, its intense practicality sets it apart, making it easily accessible for any reader seeking to carry out Christian values in everyday life. Chapter themes include obedience, self-denial, the significance of the cross, and how we should live our lives today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBaker Publishing Group
    Release dateDec 1, 2004
    ISBN9781585581047
    Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life
    Author

    John Calvin

    John Calvin (1509–1564) was one of the most influential theologians of the Reformation. Known best for his Institutes of the Christian Religion, he also wrote landmark expositions on most of the books in the Bible. 

    Read more from John Calvin

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    Reviews for Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life

    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      Excellent concise book of Calvin's ideas about the Christian life.
    • 5/5
      This book is written with sincerety and is heavily weighted in Biblical truth. It weaves together solid intellectual thought with a wholehearted drive for practicality.Besides being worth its weight in gold, it is actually quite an easy read! This is a true gem pulled out of the period of the Reformation, and highly recommended for Christians of our era!
    • 5/5
      An excellent book on the temporary life we live as we prepare for eternity. This book was so encouraging and practical!
    • 5/5
      A little book taken from Calvin's Institutes. Calvin does a great job in laying out the expectations of the Christian in his new walk with Christ. However, Calvin, per usual, is clear that it is not a call to legalism but one of desire to follow after God's desire and to grow towards perfection in Christ and in this life suffer as strangers in a strange world. My book ended up having a lot of highlights and bookmarks. This wasn't a quick read as with most Calvin's writings - one based in difficulty of truth not in material. Final Grade - A
    • 4/5
      At first appearance, Calvin’s Golden Book of Christian Life is yet another collection of sayings, perhaps modeled on the Proverbs, on living the Christian life. A deeper look, however, reveals a larger pattern radiating from the pen of Calvin. Here the reader can find a reflection of Calvin’s strong taste for order in the realms of theology and government in the meaning and living out of Christianity through everyday life.Calvin begins with a simple thesis: the goal of the Christian life is to live in harmony with God’s melody, and the only true way to find the right harmony to offset God’s law is through obedience. This immediately raises the question, obedience to what? Saying, “be obedient to God,” is too broad to be useful. Calvin’s answer is immediate and sure —obedience to God is founded in humility before the Scriptures, in accepting the Scriptures as the true and absolute Word of God. He compares the Scriptures to works of philosophy, showing how they are different from these works in both their thrust and their effect.But what does obedience to the Scriptures look like? How can one be humble before the Scriptures? Again, Calvin has a set of ready answers to this question, beginning with self-denial. “We are not our own, therefore neither our reason nor our will should guide us in our thoughts and actions. We are not our own, therefore we should not seek what is expedient to the flesh. We are not our own, therefore let us forget ourselves and our own interests as far as possible. But we are God’s own; to him, therefore, let us live and die. We are God’s own; therefore let his wisdom and will dominate all our actions. We are God’s own; therefore let every part of our existence be directed toward him as our only legitimate goal.”He continues his treatise with Patience in Crossbearing, where he argues that in order to truly hold yourself in humility before the Scriptures, you must also be patient in the cross God has given you to bear. He carries this thought forward by pointing out that there is crown without a Cross in Hopefulness for the Next World. Finally, he considers the practical implications of living the Christian life in The Right Use of the Present Life. This last section is the most practical of the work, specifically focusing on how the Christian should use this present life to the glory of God, accepting where God has put him , and realizing that God has his own purposes that are being fulfilled, no matter what might appear to be. For instance, Calvin has very helpful words for all those who feel they are laboring “in the background.” “Anyone who is not in the front ranks should be content to accomplish his private task, and should not desert the place where the Lord has put him. It will be no small comfort for his cares, labors, troubles, and other burdens, when a man knows that in all these matters God is his guide.” In a world where popularity is the only measure of success, where there are actually services designed to measure “social influence,” this is a crucial lesson for the Christian to learn.While Calvin’s work is a solid place to look for a challenging view of the Christian life, particularly one that will force the reader to step outside the modern culture of immediate gratification, there are still issues with the Golden Booklet. First, and foremost, while much of the language is focused on God, there is still an undertone of what I can do to please God. This may have been a breath of fresh air in Calvin’s day, but in the current “me centered” culture, it might be all too easy to take this entire work as just another self-help book intent on giving rather self-centered advice.At the same time, there is a strong undertone of fatalism. Again, this undertone was probably not so strongly recognized within Calvin’s own culture —in fact, it’s quite possible that his work was seen as almost frivolous at the time this was written. In a world where it was common for half the children born to a family to die before reaching adulthood, and entire families to be wiped out in wars on a regular basis, the insistence that God’s providence works to the good might have seemed almost euphoric in tone. The one real weakness in Calvin’s work is the buried contradiction between the all-pervasive providence of God on the one hand, and the need for personal works of spiritual growth and moral acts on the other. Calvin doesn’t seem to bring these two things together in any meaningful way, nor does he bring to the front the problem of personal works for spiritual growth while holding a belief that all spiritual growth is really based on the effort of God, rather than the individual believer. It might be a bit much to expect this sort of theological depth in a work that is clearly designed to be more practical, however.This little book is well worth reading for the average Christian, especially if the culture and worldview of the time in which it was written are taken into account.

    Book preview

    Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life - John Calvin

    Golden

    Booklet

    of the

    TRUE

    CHRISTIAN

    LIFE

    Copyright © 1952 by Baker Books

    Published by Baker Books

    a division of Baker Publishing Group

    P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

    www.bakerbooks.com

    E-book edition created 2011

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

    ISBN 978-1-5855-8104-7

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

    Scripture is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

    Contents

    Preface

    Prayer of Calvin

    CHAPTER I

    Humble Obedience,

    the True Imitation

    of Christ

    CHAPTER II

    Self-Denial

    CHAPTER III

    Patience

    in Crossbearing

    CHAPTER IV

    Hopefulness

    for the Next World

    CHAPTER V

    The Right Use

    of the Present Life

    Notes

    Preface

    The Golden Booklet of the True Christian Walk was first published in 1550 in Latin and in French under the title De Vita Hominis Christiani, that is, On the Life of the Christian Man (the present heading of Chapter Six, Book III, of the Institutes), and later also in English (1594) and in German (1857) under a similar name. In Dutch it appeared in 1858 with the first mentioned title. Originally the Golden Booklet was not a separate volume, but part of the Institutes. It was missing in the short first edition, but in the second, third, and fourth editions it occurred as the last or twenty-first chapter, called De Vita Christiana (On the Christian Life). In the fifth and sixth editions Calvin rearranged the material of the Institutes under four headings: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Church. He placed the thoroughly revised material On the Christian Life halfway through Book III and divided it into five parts, chapters six to ten inclusive. The Institutes were often reprinted both in Latin and in other languages, and some portions were published separately, but the Golden Booklet alone had the honor of being reprinted four times in Dutch, the last reprint being in 1938. The present American edition is a translation of Calvin’s thoroughly revised copy and is based on the French and Latin texts of the Golden Booklet (Inst. III, Chs. 6 to 10, sixth edition).

    This Booklet was purposely written in a simpler style than the other parts of the Institutes. On account of its spiritual and realistic nature it made an indelible impression on the Dutch nation which had brought forth such famous writers as John van Ruysbroec and Thomas à Kempis during the Christian Renaissance (1350–1500). But it must also have made a tremendous appeal to the Pilgrims and the Puritans and to all groups which felt the need of a balanced application of Christianity. Calvin directs himself to mind, heart, and hand, for he is the first one to elaborate on the three offices of Christ. He is intellectual, mystical, and practical. His basic principles satisfied many scholars, religious leaders, and statesmen. But there is, on the other hand, no other devotional book in the world like the Golden Booklet which is so profound and yet so universal. As to style, spirit, and graphic language it can vie with the great classics, like Augustine’s Confessions, Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ, and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Only it is shorter, saner, sounder, more vigorous and to the point. It should, therefore, be welcomed by all people of a genuine religious nature, but especially by those who want to carry out the values of religion in everyday life.

    Although this new translation is modern, the classical text has been adhered to as closely as possible. The editor has, however, taken the liberty of giving some chapters a title more in agreement with their content; he has also given every section a heading, divided the sections into smaller units, and added a few scriptural references in brackets.

    A brief biographical note may be of interest here. John Calvin was born in 1509 in northern France, in the city of Noyon, and died in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1564. He was educated in the classics and philosophy, in law and theology in the colleges and universities of his native land. When persecution came he fled to Basel, in Switzerland, where he wrote the first edition of his Institutes when he was only twenty-six years of age. Then he went to visit the Duchess of Ferrara, the sister of the French king, in northern Italy because she gave shelter to a number of Reformed refugees. On his way back from Italy to Basel he was pressed into service by his friend Farel to help reform Geneva. Here Calvin founded not a new state but a new church, the Reformed or Presbyterian church, and a new school system with a famous university. In the Academy or graduate department of this new university he became a professor of theology.

    In his short life Calvin wrote fifty-eight volumes, some in Latin and some in French. His works are not only of a theological nature, but many contain ethical and philosophical

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