Kim: Calvin encouraged Christian pilgrims who struggled to turn to their sovereign Father and cry out to him in faith. In fact, he wrote more about prayer than he did about predestination.

Kim: Calvin believed that the doctrine of providence was a very practical reality that every Christian needed to know and embrace. Because God's care is powerful, purposeful, and personal. He is intimately involved in the affairs of his creation. He also has a purpose. And when you realize that God is purposeful, then no matter what happens in your life you can persevere. God is sovereign and he is good.

Kim: Calvin sought to glorify God primarily through his pastoral ministry. During his time in Geneva he ministered to a community of Protestant French refugees. These refugees didn't know how difficult life would be. So Calvin, a pilgrim, became a shepherd to fellow pilgrims.

There were two foundational themes to Calvin's ministry. First, the doctrine of providence and its importance for the Christian life. Second, his theology of worship.

Kim: Calvin believed that once a Christian saw the glory of God as central then a proper discussion of salvation could follow. He wrote, "We are born first of all for God and not for ourselves."

Calvin believed God's glory was most tangibly seen in the work of salvation.

He argued that a correct understanding of the doctrine of justification by faith alone was central.

He argued that for God to be glorified in the saving work of his children, two things need to happen.

1. A sinner must come to see his utter helplessness and hopelessness, and the coming judgment.
2. A sinner must hear the knowledge of God's way of salvation.

Kim: Calvin said that what the Scriptures principally teach is that God alone deserves glory. At the end of the day, what's most important is that God is glorified, not only in his creation but also in his plan of redemption.

Kim: As heirs of the Reformation, do our churches today have the same confidence in the truthfulness and the authority of the Word of God? How important is it in our lives? In many of our churches the Bible has been functionally rejected in place of what we could gain from some sort of rational exercise or emotional experience. Our minds and our experience thus become the final judge of what is true and right.

Kim: Calvin's conversion marked the writing of his first major Christian book: The Institutes of the Christian Religion. The Institutes was an introduction to the Christian faith and was an outline to what Calvin himself saw as important: the sufficiency of Scripture and submission to those Scriptures.

Sometime in his 20's he came into contact with the writings of people like Luther and started to study the Scriptures. He came face to face with the depth of his sin and the wrath of God. Then he discovered the gospel and the grace of Jesus. A student and scholar of the classics became a student and scholar of the Word of God.

Kim: Calvin was born into a middle-class family. He father wanted him to study law. He went to different schools for four or five years. The switch in schools provided for John the sharpening of his mind as well as the Renaissance pursuit of ancient sources. John published his first work, a commentary on Seneca, at 23 years of age.

Dr. Julius Kim: John Calvin was a faith possessed pilgrim with a passion to know Christ and make him known.

Kim: Calvin was a faith-possessed pilgrim with a singular passion to know God and to make him known. Through this brief introduction to Calvin, my prayer is that you as a Christian pilgrim would also be able to taste and see the same grace and glory that thoroughly transformed this 16th century Christian pilgrim.

Julius Kim: I'd like to begin by reading a passage of Scripture that I'd like to believe was Calvin's favorite. As I've been reading Calvin getting ready for this talk, a common theme kept coming up over and over again: John 17:3. "Now this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."

John Piper explains where the theme "The Theater of God" originated.

Ready, set, go! Scott Anderson opens up the first session.