John Calvin Salvation Quotes & Sayings

No man is excluded from calling upon God, the gate of salvation is set open unto all men: neither is there any other thing which keepeth us back from entering in, save only our own unbelief. — John Calvin

The salvation of all the elect is not less certain than the power of God is invincible. — John Calvin

The faith of the gospel is called the knowledge of God's grace; for no one has ever tasted of the gospel but the man that knew himself to be reconciled to God, and took hold of the salvation that is held forth in Christ. — John Calvin

God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation. — John Calvin

There has been nothing in heaven or on earth which has not witnessed that Jesus Christ is God, Lord and Master, and the great Ambassador of the Father sent here below to accomplish the salvation of mankind. All — John Calvin

Again, if we have any anxiety about our own salvation, we ought to make no peace nor truce with him who is continually laying schemes for its destruction. But such is the character given to Satan in the third chapter of Genesis, where he is seen seducing man from his allegiance to God, that he may both deprive God of his due honour, and plunge man headlong in destruction. — John Calvin

Antinomianism and legalism conspire in forcing us to make a false choice: Is salvation a matter of God's forgiveness or is it moral transformation? This is a trick question from the Reformers' point of view. Calvin reasons, "Surely those things which are connected do not destroy one another!" Forensic justification through faith alone is not the enemy but the basis of sanctification. — Michael S. Horton

In fact, it was the religion of Calvin of which Sandy felt deprived, or rather a specified recognition of it. She desired this birthright; something definite to reject. It pervaded the place in proportion as it was unacknowledged. In some ways the most real and rooted people whom Sandy knew were Miss Gaunt and the Kerr sisters who made no evasions about their believe that Gold had planned for practically everybody before they were born an nasty surprise when they died. Later, when Sandy read John Calvin, she found that although popular conceptions of Calvinism were sometimes mistaken, in this particular there was no mistake, indeed it was but a mild understanding of the case, he having made it God's pleasure to implant in certain people an erroneous since of joy and salvation, so that their surprise at the end might be the nastier. — Muriel Spark

To have a proper understanding of the gospel, we must recognise that we need to lean entirely upon the Lord Jesus Christ and his mercy alone as our only hope of salvation ... No one can be justified by the law; justification is through faith alone. — John Calvin

When we see that the whole sum of our salvation, and every single part of it, are comprehended in Christ, we must beware of deriving even the minutest portion of it from any other quarter. — John Calvin

The knowledge of faith consists in assurance rather than in comprehension ... We add the words "sure and firm" in order to express a more solid constancy of persuasion. — John Calvin

If the testimony by which the Jews were assured of the salvation of their posterity is taken away from us, the coming of Christ would have the effect of making God's grace more obscure and less well attested to us than it was to the Jews before us. — John Calvin

Thus, to have a proper understanding of the gospel, we must recognise that we need to lean entirely upon the Lord Jesus Christ and his mercy alone as our only hope of salvation. We — John Calvin

All the more vile is the stupidity of those persons who open heaven to all the impious and unbelieving without the grace of Him whom Scripture commonly teaches to be the only door whereby we enter into salvation. — John Calvin

Christ's intercession is the continual application of his death to our salvation. — John Calvin

It is at this point that the gospel differs most from philosophy, since it teaches that the salvation of men is through the free remission of sins. It — John Calvin

Whenever our sins press hard against us, whenever Satan would drive us to despair, we must hold up this shield, that God does not want us to be overwhelmed in everlasting destruction, for He has ordained His Son to be the salvation of the world. — John Calvin

First, we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell within us. — John Calvin

There is no group or type of people anywhere in the world that is excluded from salvation, because God desires that the gospel be proclaimed to all without exception. — John Calvin

And we must so discuss them as to bear in mind that this is the main hinge on which religion turns,3 so that we devote the greater attention and care to it. For unless you first of all grasp what your relationship to God is, and the nature of his judgment concerning you, you have neither a foundation on which to establish your salvation nor one on which to build piety toward God. But the need to know this will better appear from the knowledge itself. — John Calvin

Give what is absolutely free, because he sees nothing in us that can be a ground of salvation. — John Calvin

How do you know yourself to be a son of God in fact as well as in name?"
Answer: "Because I am baptized in the name of God the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." - John Calvin (from his catechism) — John Calvin

Whether each of the faithful has a particular angel assigned him for his defense, I cannot venture certainly to affirm; not one angel only has the care of every one of us, but that all the angels together with one consent watch over our salvation ... — John Calvin

Now, it is beyond a doubt that the steps by which the Lord in his mercy consummates our salvation are these, "Whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified" (Rom. 8:30). — John Calvin

All things being at God's disposal, and the decision of salvation or death belonging to him, he orders all things by his counsel and decree in such a manner, that some men are born devoted from the womb to certain death, that his name may be glorified in their destruction. — John Calvin

Luther and Calvin were as dogmatic and intolerant as the Church had been. For those who had to decide whether to become Protestant or to remain Catholic, it was a terrible time. For once the original religion fragments, which religion then leads to salvation? — John Rawls

All the Apostles abound in exhortations, admonitions and rebukes, for the purpose of training the man of God to every good work, and that without any mention of merit. Nay, rather their chief exhortations are founded on the fact, that without any merit of ours, our salvation depends entirely on the mercy of God. — John Calvin

We say, then, that Scripture clearly proves this much, that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom it was his pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, it was his pleasure to doom to destruction. We maintain that this counsel, as regards the elect, is founded on his free mercy, without any respect to human worth, while those whom he dooms to destruction are excluded from access to life by a just and blameless, but at the same time incomprehensible judgment — John Calvin

Union with Christ is right at the center of the Christian doctrine of salvation. The whole of our relationship with God can be summed up in such terms. John Calvin agreed when he wrote: "For we await salvation from him not because he appears to us afar off, but because he makes us, ingrafted into his body, participants not only in all his benefits but also in himself."1 — Robert Letham

We are taught that the salvation of all the elect is as certain as that God's power is invincible. Besides, — John Calvin

The only reason for security is that our salvation is in God's hand. Our — John Calvin

No man that ever lived, not John Calvin himself, ever asserted either original sin, or justification by faith, in more strong, more clear and express terms, than Arminius has done. — John Wesley

Our assurance, our glory, and the sole anchor of our salvation are that Christ the Son of God is ours, and we in turn are in him sons of God and heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven, called to the hope of eternal blessedness by God's grace, not by our worth. — John Calvin