Calvin on the Proper View of This World

On Matthew 5:11-12:

“This is the sense of Jesus’ teaching in this passage. To be rich, to be glad, to be satisfied is to be drunk on prosperity and to live the life of senseless beasts. If we are comfortably off, it is not so that we may cover ourselves with gold and silver, or boast of owning fields and meadows, alike those whose goal in life is to have everything they want. Those kinds of people are as good as dead: they bury themselves in their perishable possessions and are incapable of seeing heaven above. As for us, we must take heed to ourselves lest the Son of God condemn us with his own lips: only by looking to him for continual blessing can we escape the misfortune promised here. We are taught, then, to pass through this world as strangers, convinced, as St Paul says, that those who have should be as those who have not. No one would deny that those who have plenty to live on meet many more temptations and run more risk of falling. They need, therefore, to turn constantly to God, and to learn that his gifts are meant to draw them closer t him, to quicked their love and to encourage their obedience. The good things they receive must never bewitch them to point that they become captives of this world.” –John Calvin, Sermons On The Beatitudes p. 79, 80.

A few things like light to a newborn babe strike us:

1)That this world is constantly trying to lay hold upon us much like an octopus. Its tentacles are many, they come from the job, the friends, and even from inside the marketed church as people covet everything from books to fiancé’s. The subtly with which octopi stalk their enemies is no less encompassing then the night drawn up by the dusk. It is coming unless we with wide eyed sober defense resist and run to the city upon a hill, the cross of Christ.
2) We must be as strangers and aliens. As those who immigrate to this country know enough of the language to get by, but none of the slang so let us be so unfamiliar with this world and its ways that the slang of sin is never upon our lips, ‘innocent as doves’ and yet the beauties of heaven always sweetly sweeping silently into our conversations as snakes through the grass. This then will spark the joy of heaven, the sincerity of evil and sin, and the hope of the cross in others lives and God works through the preaching of his word. Marvelously wrapped up in light he will fold this world unto himself in the blissful cosmic redemption. Hope is real.
3)Obedience is paramount upon our being. That with our conversion we would obey our Lord. The duty given by grace induced imperatives shines light upon the path to the joy in times of midnight desperation. And in times of abundance the joy guides us along to the path of consistent, prayerful, duty. Let us do this and live, ‘those who live by the spirit fulfill the law’ (Romans 8:3,4).