2Co 4:7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.
This is a constant theme. Being constantly humbled and not being allowed to think we are the cause of what God does. Regeneration is an act of God in us, nothing we do. Justification is by faith (something itself worked in us by the Holy Spirit) and not works so that we cannot boast. And here we are in earthen bodies even though regenerated and justified and in God's Kingdom. In the Old Testament the theme emerges whenever Israel - or even a gentile nation - thinks that when it wins a battle or war it is they that do it and not God. They usually get sent a message of the truth of that in some way.
2 comments:
This is relevant to this subject:
"Let the aim of believers in judging the mortal life, then, be that while they understand it to be of itself nothing but misery, they may with greater eagerness and dispatch betake themselves wholly to meditate upon that eternal life to come. When it comes to a comparison with the life to come, the present life can not only be safely neglected but, compared to the former, must be utterly despised and loathed. For, if heaven is our homeland, what else is the earth but our place of exile? If departure from the world is entry into life, what else is the world but a sepulcher? And what else is it for us to remain in life but to be immersed in death. If to be freed from the body is to be released from perfect freedom, what else is the body but a prison? . . . Therefore, if the earthly life be compared with the heavenly, it is doubtless to be at once despised and trampled underfoot. Of course it is never to be hated except in so far as it holds us subject to sin; although not even hatred of that condition may ever properly be turned against life itself. In any case, it is still fitting for us to be so affected either by weariness or hatred of it that, desiring its end, we may also be prepared to abide in it at the Lord’s pleasure, so that our weariness may be far from all murmuring and impatience. For it is like a sentry post at which the Lord has posted us, which we must hold until he recalls us." (Institutes, III.ix.4)
The above translation of Calvin's Institutes is, I think, the Battles translation. It is not the Beveridge. It's a good example of why I prefer the Beveridge to the Battles. Battles frankly is just a strangely clunky-bad translation. Some of that last part is not even really intelligible. Read Beveridge in that passage and you'll see he makes sense of Calvin's sentences.
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