Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles John Calvin
John Calvin ence among them, as if he should say, Seeing many boast that they are sons of Abraham, who were unworthy of such honor, show yourselves to be no bastardly seed. Let us learn by this that it is not a fault common to one age only, that good and sincere worshippers being mixed with hypocrites, have the name of the Church common among them. But we must have a great care hereof, that we be indeed that which we are called; which thing the true fear of Almighty God will bring to pass, and not the external profession alone.
17. The God of this people. This preface did witness that Paul did go about no new thing, which might lead away the people from the law of Moses. There is but one God, who is God of all nations; but he calleth him God of that people, to whom he had bound himself, and who was worshipped amongst the posterity of Abraham, amongst whom alone true and pure religion was to be found. To the same end tendeth that which is added immediately, He chose our fathers. For he testifieth by these words that he seeketh nothing less 799 than that they may fall away from the true and living God, who hath separated them from the residue of the world. Neither do I doubt but that he did more manifestly express that he did not preach to them an unknown or strange God, but the same who revealed himself long ago to their fathers; so that he doth briefly comprehend the sound knowledge of God, grounded in the law, that their faith, conceived out of the law and prophets, may continue firm.
Notwithstanding, he doth, in the mean season, commend and set forth the free love of God toward that people. For how came it to pass that only the children of Abraham were the Church and inheritance of God, save only because it pleased God to dissever them from other nations? For there was no worthiness to distinguish them; but the difference began at the love of God, wherewith he did freely love Abraham.
Of this free love of God, Moses doth oftentimes put the Jews to mind, as Deuteronomy 4:7, 8, 10, 14, 32, 34, and in other places; wherein God did set before us a mirror of his wonderful counsel, in that finding no excellence in Abraham, an obscure person and miserable idolater, he doth, notwithstanding, prefer him before all the world. Furthermore, this election was common to all the people, as was also circumcision, whereby God did adopt to himself the seed of Abraham; but there was also a more hidden election, whereby severing to himself a few of many children of Abraham, he did declare, that not all who came of the seed of Abraham according to the flesh are reckoned in the spiritual stock.
He did drive out a people. Paul teacheth that all those benefits which God bestowed afterwards upon the Jews, did proceed and flow from that free favor which he did bear toward their fathers. For this was the cause that they were delivered by the wonderful power of God, and brought by his hand into the possession of the land of Canaan, after that he had driven
799"Nihil se minus captare," that there is nothing he less desires.