A School of Christ

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in. MATTHEW 25:35

Calvin’s teaching was never meant to stay in books. He was a pastor in a real city, with real poor, real sick, real refugees and real children to be taught, and he believed that the gospel must take shape in the common life of the church. The Scottish reformer John Knox, who spent time in Geneva as a refugee himself, famously called it the most perfect school of Christ since the days of the apostles. That was a generous judgement, and Geneva had its faults, as earlier chapters have shown. But three parts of its life deserve to be remembered: its care for the poor, its welcome to the stranger, and its passion for teaching.

Deacons for the poor

In his Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1541 Calvin set the deacons among the four permanent offices of the church. He believed, from his reading of Acts 6 and the early church, that caring for the poor was not an optional charity but a ministry Christ had built into His church. In Institutes 4.3.9 he describes two kinds of deacons in the New Testament: those who administer the church’s goods for the poor, and those who give themselves to the direct care of the sick and needy.

Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. ACTS 6:3

In Geneva these deacons oversaw the city’s general hospital, which cared for the sick, the old, orphans and the destitute, and they distributed relief to the poor in their homes. Calvin believed that the goods of the church belonged, above all, to the poor. In the Institutes he recalls the practice of the early church, in which a large share of its income was set aside for them, and he criticises the medieval church for spending on splendour what should have gone to the hungry (Institutes 4.4.6–8).

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. JAMES 1:27

This was not merely administration. It was, for Calvin, part of what it means to be the body of Christ. We saw in the chapter on self-denial that he taught every gift is held in trust for others, and that we must love the poorest for the image of God they bear. The diaconate was that teaching made visible.

A city of refugees

From the 1540s onwards, and especially in the 1550s, Geneva filled with refugees. They came from France above all, fleeing persecution for their faith, but also from Italy, England, Scotland and the Netherlands. The city’s population swelled greatly. Many arrived with nothing.

Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. DEUTERONOMY 10:19

Calvin was himself a refugee, and he never forgot it. He had lived under false names, pastored a refugee congregation in Strasbourg, and made his home in a city not his own. He pressed Geneva to receive the newcomers, and the wealthier French exiles set up a fund, the Bourse française, to support the poorest among their countrymen: to feed them, house them, care for the sick, and help them find work. It was run by deacons, and it lasted long after his death.

The welcome was not without strain. Many native Genevans resented the flood of French newcomers, who were Calvin’s strongest supporters, and some of the fiercest struggles of his years in Geneva were bound up with that resentment. But the church held to the principle. In a Europe where the persecuted had few places to run, Geneva opened its gates.

Teaching the young and training pastors

Calvin believed that faith and learning belonged together. The gospel was a message to be understood, and a church that did not teach would not last. So from his first years in Geneva he worked for schools and catechesis. He wrote a catechism for children, in question and answer, and wanted every child in the city taught the faith. It begins with the same question as the Institutes: what is the chief end of human life? And the answer is, to know God.

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. PROVERBS 22:6

In his sermon on Enduring Persecution for Christ, in the Ochorus library, Calvin puts the same aim another way: “We know far better what the chief aim of life should be, namely, to glorify God, in order that He may be our glory.”

The crown of this work was the Genevan Academy, founded in 1559 with Theodore Beza as its first rector. It had a lower school for boys and a higher school for training pastors and scholars. Students came from all over Europe. And from Geneva, in the years that followed, many pastors were sent secretly into France to serve the fast-growing Reformed churches there, often at the risk of their lives. Some were caught and executed. Calvin corresponded with them, prayed for them and wrote to strengthen those in prison.

And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. 2 TIMOTHY 2:2

His sermon God Will Have All Men to Be Saved shows the spirit in which this was done. Because God will have people of every nation and condition saved, Calvin says, we must labour as much as possible to draw to salvation those who seem to be far off, and above all pray to God for them, waiting patiently till it please Him to show His goodwill to them, as He has to us.

Honest shadows

The school of Christ had its shadows. The same Geneva that welcomed refugees also exercised a moral discipline that could be oppressive, banished its critics, and burned Servetus. The refugees themselves were not always generous to the native poor, and the city’s care for strangers existed alongside its severity to dissenters. It would be wrong to hold up Calvin’s Geneva as a Christian utopia. It was a city of sinners trying, imperfectly and sometimes harshly, to live under the Word of God.

But the reader should not let the shadows hide the light. A church that set apart officers to care for the poor, that received the persecuted, and that taught its children and trained its ministers to carry the gospel at the risk of their lives, has something to teach every church.

Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. GALATIANS 6:2

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Find out how your church cares for the poor. Offer to help in one concrete way.

2. Pray for refugees, especially those who have fled for their faith, and look for one practical way to welcome a stranger.

3. If you have children or teach young people, ask how you are helping them know God, and begin one simple habit of teaching.

4. Pray for those training for ministry, and for pastors serving in dangerous places.

5. Consider whether your church’s life shows the gospel in its common care for one another, and where it falls short.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You were a stranger, and You were hungry, and You call Your church to receive You in the least of Your brothers and sisters.

Make us a people who care for the poor, welcome the refugee and teach the young to know You.

Strengthen every servant of Yours who carries the gospel into danger, and comfort those in prison for Your name.

Where our churches are harsh, make them gentle; where they are cold, make them generous; and make us, in truth, a school of Christ. Amen.