john-calvinDr. Joel R. Beeke

John Calvin focuses more on the practice of prayer than on its doctrine, which shows how practical his theology is.1 For Calvin, prayer is the essence of the Christian life; it is a precious gift, not an academic problem.2 He writes warmly and experientially3 about prayer in his sermons and commentaries—especially on the Psalms—and in one of his longest chapters of the Institutes (3.20).4

Let us look at Calvin’s thoughts on prayer: what it is; how effective it is; its purposes, methods, and rules; how it is built on a trinitarian foundation; and how prayer promotes authentic piety. Throughout, we will notice that though he sets high standards for prayer, even acknowledging that praying rightly is a “peculiar gift,”5 Calvin assures his readers that these standards are not his but God’s, as taught in His Word. As such, these standards are not attainable by our sinful human natures,6 but God is pleased to help His children pray (Rom. 8:26).

The Definition and Effectiveness of Prayer

Calvin defines prayer as “the communion of men with God by which, having entered the heavenly sanctuary, they appeal to him in person concerning his promises in order to experience…that what they believed was not in vain.”7 Prayer is holy and familiar conversation with God, our heavenly Father; reverently speaking, it is family conversation, or even intimate covenantal conversation in which the believer confides in God as a child confides in his father.8 Prayer is “an emotion of the heart within, which is poured out and laid open before God.”9 In prayer we both communicate and commune with our Father in heaven, feeling our transparency in His presence. Like Christ in Gethsemane, we cast our “desires, sighs, anxieties, fears, hopes, and joys into the lap of God.”10 Through prayer a Christian puts his “worries bit by bit on God.”11 We are “permitted to pour into God’s bosom the difficulties which torment us, in order that he may loosen the knots which we cannot untie.”12 Prayer is the outpouring of the soul, the deepest root of piety, the bedrock of assurance.

The childlike outpouring of the soul before its heavenly Father involves entreaties and thanksgiving.13 Proper requests include “those things which make for the extension of his [God’s] glory and the setting forth of his name, and those benefits which conduce [serve] to our own advantage.”14 Proper thanksgivings “celebrate with due praise his [God’s] benefits toward us, and credit to his generosity every good that comes to us.”15

To the objection that prayer seems superfluous in light of God’s omniscience and omnipotence, Calvin responds that God ordained prayer more for man as an exercise of piety than for Himself. Our prayers do not get in the way of providence because God, in His providence, ordains the means along with the end. Prayer is thus a means ordained to receive what God has planned to bestow.16 What God “has determined to give of His own free will, even before He is asked, He promises to give all the same in response to our prayers.”17 Prayer is a way in which believers seek and receive what God has determined to do for them from eternity.18

Nevertheless, prayer is still effective, for these two truths must never be forgotten: “first, that in His divine wisdom God anticipates our prayers; and second, that in His divine love God responds to them.”19 It is against God’s nature not to hear and answer the prayers of His people. God feels drawn to help us and not to disappoint us in His grace.20

The Purposes and Method of Prayer

According to Calvin in Book 3, chapter 20, there are at least six purposes of prayer: (1) to fly to God with every need and gain from Him what is lacking in ourselves to live the Christian life; (2) to learn to desire wholeheartedly only what is right as we place all our petitions before God; (3) to prepare us to receive God’s benefits and responses to our petitions with humble gratitude; (4) to meditate on God’s kindness to us as we receive what we have asked for; (5) to instill the proper spirit of delight for God’s answers in prayer; and (6) to confirm God’s faithful providence so that we may glorify Him and trust in His present help more readily as we witness His regularly answering our prayers.21 All of these purposes are designed to foster communion with God so that “the promises of God should have their way with us.”22

These purposes are to be pursued in a biblically directed way. For Calvin, faith and prayer are inseparable. Faith nourishes and compels prayer, and prayer nourishes and confirms faith.23 “The true test of faith lies in prayer,” for “we cannot pray to God without faith.”24

Prayer must be rightly grounded in God’s Word by faith. “Prayer rightly begun springs from faith, and faith, from hearing God’s Word.”25 The content of our prayers must be shaped, controlled, and restrained by Scripture. This faith provides boldness and confidence in prayer.

Such prayer leans on God’s promises.26 Calvin writes: “Let us learn that God in his promises is set before us as if he were a willing debtor.”27 God’s promises supply meditation and fuel for prayer.28 Through the intercession of Christ, prayer obtains what God promises by faith.

The promises of God buttress our faith because God has bound Himself to fulfill them. Those covenant promises invite and allure us to prayer.29 God would deny Himself and His covenant were He not to fulfill them.30

The Rules of Prayer

For Calvin, prayer is not some undisciplined habit of Christians. He writes, “Unless we fix certain hours in the day for prayer, it easily slips from our memory.”31 Calvin prescribes several rules to guide believers in offering effectual, fervent prayer.32 The first is a heartfelt sense of reverence. In prayer we must be “disposed in mind and heart as befits those who enter conversation with God.”33 Our prayers should arise from “the bottom of our heart.”34 Calvin calls for a disciplined mind and heart, asserting that “the only persons who duly and properly gird themselves to pray are those who are so moved by God’s majesty that, freed from earthly cares and affections, they come to it.”35

The second rule is a heartfelt sense of need and repentance. We must “pray from a sincere sense of want and with penitence,” maintaining “the disposition of a beggar.”36 Calvin does not mean that believers should pray for every whim that arises in their hearts, but that they must pray penitently in accord with God’s will, keeping His glory in focus, yearning for every request “with sincere affection of heart, and at the same time desiring to obtain it from him.”37

The third rule is to have a heartfelt sense of humility and trust in God. True prayer requires that “we yield all confidence in ourselves and humbly plead for pardon,” trusting in God’s mercy alone for blessings both spiritual and temporal,38 always remembering that the least drop of faith is more powerful than unbelief.39 Any other approach to God will only promote pride, which will destroy us; “if we claim for ourselves anything, even the least bit,” we will be in grave danger of destroying ourselves in God’s presence.40

The final rule is to have a heartfelt sense of confident hope.41 The confidence that our prayers will be answered does not arise in ourselves but through the Holy Spirit working in us. In believers’ lives, faith and hope conquer fear so that we are able to “ask in faith, nothing wavering” (James 1:6). True prayer is confident of success, owing to Christ and the covenant, “for the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ seals the pact which God has concluded with us.”42 Believers thus approach God boldly and cheerfully because such “confidence is necessary in true invocation…which becomes the key that opens to us the gate of the kingdom of heaven.”43

These rules may seem overwhelming—even unattainable—in the face of a holy, omniscient God. Calvin acknowledges that our prayers are fraught with weakness and failure. “No one has ever carried this out with the uprightness that was due,” he writes.44 But God tolerates “even our stammering and pardons our ignorance,” allowing us to gain familiarity with Him in prayer, though it be in “a babbling manner.”45 In short, we will never feel like worthy petitioners. Our checkered prayer life is often attacked by doubts,46 but such struggles show us our ongoing need for prayer itself as a “lifting up of the spirit”47 and continually drive us to Jesus Christ who alone will “change the throne of dreadful glory into the throne of grace.”48 Calvin concludes that “Christ is the only way, and the one access, by which it is granted us to come to God.”49

The Trinitarian Focus of Prayer

Calvin stresses the trinitarian aspect of prayer. Prayer originates with the Father, is made possible through the Son, and is worked out in the soul by the Spirit, through whom it returns via Christ to the Father. The Triune God gives, hears, and answers prayer.

Prayer is given by the Father, who graciously invites us to pray through Christ and buttresses that invitation with His promises. Apart from Christ, it is “folly and rashness for mortals to presume to address God.”50 They should rather wait for the Father’s call that He implements through His Word, “for when he promises to be our Savior he shows that he will always be ready to receive us. He does not wait till we come seeking him; rather, he offers himself and exhorts us to pray to him—and in doing so, tests our faith.”51 He draws us to prayer by the very sweetness of His name Father.

Calvin devotes considerable attention to the work of Christ in prayer.52 In His walk on earth, Jesus counseled His disciples to ask anything in His Name (John 16:23). God will hear our prayers for the sake of His Son when we pray in His Name.53 Calvin also gives a stern warning that if we do not approach God in the name of Jesus Christ, “no way and no access to God remain; nothing is left in his throne but wrath, judgment, and terror.”54

Christ is the nexus between the believer and God; He is the junction where the believer’s sinful prayers are purified “by sprinkled blood” and presented to the Father.55 “Let us learn to wash our prayers with the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Calvin counsels.56

The Holy Spirit also plays a crucial role in the prayer life of believers, Calvin says. He is “our teacher in prayer, to tell us what is right and [to] temper our emotions.”57 He intercedes for us with groans that are unutterable (Rom. 8:26). Calvin explains that He “arouses in us assurance, desires, and sighs, to conceive which our natural powers could scarcely suffice.”58 He affects our heart in such a way that these prayers “penetrate into heaven itself by their fervency.”59 We should never cease to pray for the increase of the Spirit.60

Prayer as Part of Piety

Calvin’s concept of piety (pietas) includes attitudes and actions that are directed to the adoration and service of God. Prayer is the principal and perpetual exercise of faith and the chief element of piety, Calvin says.61 Prayer shows God’s grace to the believer even as the believer offers praises to God and asks for His faithfulness. Prayer expresses piety both privately and corporately.62 An increased piety requires prayer, for prayer diminishes self-love and multiplies dependence on God. Prayer unites God and man, not in substance, but in will and purpose. Like the Lord’s Supper, prayer lifts the believer to Christ and renders glory to God.

That glory is the purpose of the first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer as well as other petitions dealing with His creation. Since creation looks to God’s glory for its preservation, the entire Lord’s Prayer is directed to God’s glory.63 In the Lord’s Prayer, which Calvin dwells on at length in the Institutes, Christ “supplies words to our lips.”64 The Lord’s Prayer is a model prayer for us; we are bound by its pattern, not its words. Our words may be “utterly different, yet the sense ought not to vary.”65 The Lord’s Prayer shows us how all our prayers must be controlled, formed, and inspired by the Word of God.66 Only the Word can provide holy boldness in prayer, “which rightly accords with fear, reverence, and solicitude.”67

There is also a corporate element of piety in prayer. Upon Christ’s ascension, the church now has “a surer advocate,”68 Calvin says. Christ is an individual advocate as well as a corporate advocate to whom the church can apply for strength and comfort. Consequently, Calvin counsels us “to direct all intercessions of the whole church to that sole intercession” of Christ.69 The corporate church and the individual believer pray for one another through and in Christ’s name. The best way we can love one another as believers is to pray for each other and to identify with each other so that we weep and rejoice together. Our prayers should include the universal church and all mankind, even generations unborn.70

The prerequisite of effective corporate praying is effective private prayer, Calvin says.71 Individual piety must be learned and nurtured so that the church’s corporate piety can grow. Calvin refers to the Old Testament temple as bearing the God-given title of “house of prayer” and that therefore “the chief part of his [God’s] worship lies in the office of prayer.”72 By this corporate prayer, the “unity of the faith” is nurtured so that “the prayers of the church are never ineffectual.”73

Calvin includes singing as a way to “exercise the mind in thinking of God and keep it attentive.”74 Singing allows believers to glorify God together and it allows “all men mutually, each one from his brother [to] receive the confession of faith and be invited and prompted by his example.”75 Singing greatly aids prayer, not only because it glorifies God, but because it promotes corporate piety towards God.

Persevering for Precious Communion in Prayer

Throughout his writings, Calvin offers a theology on prayer. He presents the throne room of God as glorious, holy, and sovereign, while also accessible, desirable, and precious in and through Christ. Given the rich blessings accessible to us through prayer, those who refuse to pray “neglect a treasure, buried and hidden in the earth, after it had been pointed out”76 to them. They also commit idolatry by defrauding God, since prayerlessness is a blatant denial that “God is the author of every good thing.”77

We must persevere in pursuing precious access to God in prayer, Calvin concludes.78 Discouragements may abound and almost overwhelm us: “Our warfare is unceasing and various assaults arise daily.” But that gives all the more reason to discipline ourselves to persevere in prayer, even if “we must repeat the same supplications not twice or three times only, but as often as we need, a hundred and a thousand times.”79 Ceasing to pray when God does not answer us quickly is the surest mark that we have never become a believer.80

Calvin counsels believers not only to better methods of prayer, but to a deeper devotion and a surer access to the Triune God who has given the gift of prayer. He modeled this prayer life by accompanying every public act with prayer and providing forms of prayer81 and appointing days of prayer for a variety of occasions—as well as privately in his own life.82 These merge well in the last prayer he records in the commentary on Ezekiel, which, due to failing health, he was not able to complete:

Grant, Almighty God, since we have already entered in hope upon the threshold of our eternal inheritance, and know that there is a certain mansion for us in heaven after Christ has been received there, who is our head, and the first-fruits of our salvation: Grant, I say, that we may proceed more and more in the course of thy holy calling until at length we reach the goal, and so enjoy that eternal glory of which thou affordest us a taste in this world, by the same Christ our Lord. Amen.83

Ultimately, for Calvin, prayer is a heavenly act, a holy and precious communing with the Triune God in His glorious throne room, grounded in an assured eschatological hope.84

“Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1).

Notes:
1. Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, trans. Harold Knight (London: Lutterworth Press, 1956), 156.
2. Charles Partee, “Prayer as the Practice of Predestination,” in Calvinus Servus Christi, ed. Wilhelm H. Neuser (Budapest: Pressabteilung des Raday-Kollegiums, 1988), 246.
3. Robert Douglas Loggie stresses that it is particularly Calvin’s discussion of prayer in the Institutes, 3.20, that contributes to the experiential flavor of his third book (“Chief Exercise of Faith—An Exposition of Calvin’s Doctrine of Prayer,” The Hartford Quarterly 5, 2 [1965]:67).
4. Only Calvin’s chapter on faith is longer in the original Institutes.
5. Inst. 3.20.5.
6. John Calvin, Commentaries of Calvin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948–50), on Jeremiah 29:12.
7. Inst. 3.20.2.
8. Commentary on Psalm 10:13; cf. Herman J. Selderhuis, Calvin’s Theology of the Psalms (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 219.
9. Inst. 3.20.29; cf. Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life (London: Oliver and Boyd, 1959), 281–82.
10. Commentary on Psalm 89:38 – 39.
11. Commentary on Psalm 86:6.
12. Commentary on Genesis 18:25.
13. Calvin, Instruction in Faith, 58 – 59.
14. Inst. 3.30.28.
15. Ibid.
16. Inst. 3.20.3.
17. Commentary on Matthew 6:8.
18. Partee, “Prayer as the Practice of Predestination,” 254; cf. David Crump, Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 297.
19. Commentary on Psalm 119:38.
20. Commentary on Psalm 65:2; Selderhuis, Calvin’s Theology of the Psalms, 225.
21. Inst. 3.20.3.
22. Cited in Niesel, Theology of Calvin, 157.
23. Commentary on Zephaniah 3:7; Acts 8:22.
24. Commentary on Matthew 21:21; Romans 8:26.
25. Inst. 3.20.27.
26. Commentary on Psalm 85:5.
27. Commentary on Psalm 119:58.
28. Wallace, Calvin, Geneva, and the Reformation, 211.
29. Commentary on Psalm 50:14; 36:13; cited in Selderhuis, Calvin’s Theology of the Psalms, 220.
30. For covenantal prayer in Calvin, see Peter Lillback, The Binding of God: Calvin’s Role in the Development of Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 267–69.
31. Commentary on Daniel 6:10.
32. Inst. 3.20.4 –16.
33. Inst. 3.20.4 –5.
34. John Calvin, Sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1973), 679.
35. Inst. 3.20.5.
36. Inst. 3.20.6–7.
37. Inst. 3.20.6; cf. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life, 280 – 81.
38. Inst. 3.20.8–10.
39. Inst. 3.2.17.
40. Inst. 3.20.8.
41. Inst. 3.20.11–14.
42. Cited in Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, 153.
43. Commentary on Ephesians 3:12; for a helpful explanation of Calvin’s four rules of prayer, see Don Garlington, “Calvin’s Doctrine of Prayer,” The Banner of Truth, no. 323 –24 (Aug-Sept 1990):45–50, and Stephen Matteucci, “A Strong Tower for Weary People: Calvin’s Teaching on Prayer,” The Founders Journal (Summer 2007):21–23.
44. Inst. 3.20.16.
45. Ibid.; Commentary on the Psalms, 2:171.
46. Commentary on Matthew 21:21.
47. Inst. 3.20.1, 5, 16; cf. Joel R. Beeke, The Quest for Full Assurance: The Legacy of Calvin and His Successors (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1999), 49.
48. Inst. 3.20.17.
49. Inst. 3.20.19.
50. Sermon on 1 Timothy 2:8, in Grace and Its Fruits: Selections from John Calvin on the Pastoral Epistles, ed. Joseph Hill (Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 2000) 259–60, cited in Hesselink, On Prayer, 4.
51. Ibid.
52. E.g., Inst. 3.20.17–20.
53. Inst. 3.20.17.
54. Inst. 3.20.19.
55. Inst. 3.20.18.
56. John Calvin, Sermons on Election and Reprobation, trans. John Fields (Audubon, N.J.: Old Paths, 1996), 210.
57. Inst. 3.20.5.
58. Ibid.
59. Commentary on Rom. 8:26.
60. Commentary on Acts 1:14; cf. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life, 286 –87.
61. See Loggie, “Chief Exercise of Faith,” 65–81; H.W. Maurer, “An Examination of Form and Content in John Calvin’s Prayers” (Ph.D. dissertation, Edinburgh, 1960); Joel R. Beeke, Puritan Reformed Spirituality (Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 2006), 1–33.
62. Cf. Thomas A. Lambert, “Preaching, Praying, and Policing the Reform in Sixteenth Century Geneva” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of WisconsinMadison, 1998), 393 – 480.
63. Inst. 3.20.11.
64. Inst. 3.20.34; cf. 3.20.34–39.
65. Inst. 3.20.49.
66. Joel R. Beeke, “Calvin on Piety,” The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, ed. Donald K. McKim (Cambridge: University Press, 2004), 125–52.
67. Inst. 3.20.14; Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life, 276–79.
68. Inst. 3.20.18.
69. Inst. 3.20.19.
70. Commentary on Psalm 90:16.
71. Inst. 3.20.29.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid.
74. Inst. 3.20.31.
75. Ibid.
76. Inst. 3.20.1.
77. Inst. 3.20.14.
78. Inst. 3.20.51–52.
79. Cited in Hesselink, On Prayer, 19.
80. Commentary on Psalm 22:4; Wallace, Calvin, Geneva, and the Reformation, 214.
81. John Calvin, Treatises on the Sacraments of the Church of Geneva, Forms of Prayer, and Confessions of Faith, trans. by Henry Beveridge (reprint, Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2002); Charles E. Edwards, Expositions and Prayers from Calvin (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1897); Clyde Manschreck, ed., Prayers of the Reformers (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1958); W. de Greef, The Writings of John Calvin: An Introductory Guide (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989), 126–31.
82. Elsie McKee, John Calvin: Writings on Pastoral Piety (New York: Paulist Press, 2001), 29, 167ff.
83. Commentary on Ezekiel 20:44.
84. Wallace, Calvin, Geneva, and the Reformation, 214.

Published by The Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, used with permission.