As noted in previous installments, Calvin’s discussion of prayer is especially helpful in uncertain times such as our own. His third rule of prayer focuses upon giving up on our own righteousness, confessing our sins, and pleading for pardon, in preparation for prayer. From this flows proper prayer.
Third Rule: We yield all confidence in ourselves and humbly plead for pardon.[1]
We come as humble suppliants for mercy
Calvin points out that we must consider who we are our and our sinful state before we undertake prayer.
Anyone who stands before God to pray, in his humility giving glory completely to God, abandon all thought of his own glory, cast off all notion of his own worth, in fine, put away all self-assurance—lest if we claim for ourselves anything, even the least bit, we should become vainly puffed up, and perish at his presence. We have repeated examples of this submission, which levels all haughtiness, in God’s servants; each one of whom, the holier he is, the more he is cast down when he presents himself before the Lord.
Calvin appeals to Daniel and David as illustrations of his point
Thus spoke Daniel, whom the Lord himself commended with so great a title: “We do not pour forth our prayers unto thee on the ground of our righteousnesses but on the ground of thy great mercy. O Lord, hear us; O Lord, be kindly unto us. Hear us, and do what we ask . . . for thine own sake . . . because thy name is called upon over thy people, and over thine holy place” (Dan. 9:18–19). Nor does he, by a devious figure of speech, as some men do, mingle with the crowd as one of the people. Rather he confesses his guilt as an individual, and as a suppliant takes refuge in God’s pardon, as he eloquently declares: “When I had … confessed my sin and the sin of my people” (Dan. 9:20). David also enjoins this humility by his own example: “Enter not into judgment with thy servant, for no man living is righteous before thee” (Ps. 143:2).
Isaiah and Jeremiah also provide illustration.
In such a form, Isaiah prays: “Behold, thou wert wroth, for we sinned . . . . The world is founded upon thy ways, therefore we shall be saved . . . . And all of us have been full of uncleanness, and all our righteousnesses like a filthy rag; we all have faded like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, scatter us. There is no one who calls upon thy name, who bestirs himself to take hold of thee. For thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast made us to melt away in the hand of our iniquities. Yet, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, thou art our potter and we are the work of thy hand. Be not angry, O Lord, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold now, consider, we are all thy people” (Isa. 64:5–9). Observe that they depend on no assurance whatever but this alone: that, reckoning themselves to be of God, they do not despair that he will take care of them. Likewise, Jeremiah: “Though our iniquities testify against us, act . . . for thy name’s sake” (Jer. 14:7).
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