John Calvin is 500 years old today, and you can download the classic biography Portrait of Calvin for free at Desiring God (or buy the book for $2 today only – thanks for the tip, Leon).
Here’s why Calvin still matters, according to John Piper’s foreword:
I am eager for people to know Calvin not because he was without flaws, or because he was the most influential theologian of the last 500 years (which he was), or because he shaped Western culture (which he did), but because he took the Bible so seriously, and because what he saw on every page was the majesty of God and the glory of Christ.
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Calvin is inspiring because he labored among so much real life and accomplished so much against such great odds. “He was not unfamiliar with the sound of the mob outside his house threatening to throw him in the river and firing their muskets” (31). Trials were so many and so varied Calvin said, “This I can truly testify, that not a day passed in which I did not long for death ten times over. But as for leaving that Church to remove elsewhere, such a thought never came into my mind” (39).