John Calvin on Certainty in Prayer

One of the benefits of the past ca. 75 years in Calvin studies has been the move beyond his Institutes of the Christian Religion to the reading of other portions of his corpus, which has provided a deeper understanding of his life and thought. This is true in particular of our understanding of Calvin on prayer. Most of what has been written on this subject has focused on Institutes 3.20, the genre of which is structured and lucid but restrictive. In my reading of Calvin, what he says on prayer elsewhere—particularly in his sermons and commentaries (I will focus on the former in this piece)—is significantly more insightful, practical, and edifying.

So, what does he say? The overriding emphasis I see is Calvin’s insistence that prayer entails absolute assurance on the part of the believer that God will answer; that to pray to God without this certainty is offensive and insulting to God. It is to call him a liar and to take his name in vain. This being so, Calvin focuses in his sermons on trying to create within his hearers this certainty. Of course, Calvin mentions certainty in Institutes 3.20, but not nearly to the degree, depth, or precision he does elsewhere.

In his sermons, Calvin provides his congregation with arguments they can use to strengthen their confidence in God answering their prayers. He urges us to remember times when God answered our prayers in the past and to use these memories to stimulate greater certainty in the present. He says if one hears of anyone who has had his prayers answered, it should be an encouragement that your prayers will also be answered because God is equal and just to all who call on him. He sets down explanations of God’s character that are aimed at inspiring absolute confidence. He urges us to call to mind God’s almighty power which can easily answer all our prayers. God’s generosity, he explains in a sermon on Psalm 119:73–80, must not be assessed according to our human comprehension. He then cites Isaiah 55:8–9 (“My ways are not your ways”) to argue that God’s generosity must be understood as infinite. He insists, in a sermon on Deuteronomy 2:8–23, that God wants to give believers more but their unbelief keeps him from doing this. He reminds his hearers that God has bound himself to believers and that this fact must create within believers the certain conviction that God will always keep his word to them.

Calvin’s emphasis here mirrors, he believes, Scripture’s emphasis when it discusses prayer. To him, answered prayer is part of what the Bible depicts as a regular part of a believer’s life. The awareness of answers to prayer, moreover, fuels the believer’s spiritual growth. Conversely, if we do not know the regular experience of God answering our cries, this absence can have serious effects on our life and godliness.

I know of only one place in Calvin’s sermons (namely, a sermon on Deuteronomy 3:26–29) where he states that God sometimes refrains from giving believers what they ask for. In this place, Calvin emphasizes passionately the idea that God chooses, instead, to give us what he knows is good for our salvation. I am sure he says this elsewhere, but it is much more common to see Calvin insisting that God always hears and answers believers’ prayers.

Now, Calvin does say that prayers should be for things God has promised and that if we were to ask for just anything that came into our mind, it would be an offense to God. Believers cannot simply barge into the Lord’s presence. We must be invited by the Lord on the basis of his promises. We must request those things God has promised us. And when we ask for these things, Calvin repeatedly insists God will answer and moreover that Christians must know that he will.

But what of hypocritical praying? In Calvin’s expounding of, “they will cry to God, but he will not answer them” (Micah 3:4), he identifies a problem. Calvin says this verse seems to contradict God’s promise to hear prayers. How should it be understood? One might possibly assume Calvin will raise divine sovereignty here to explain God’s right not to hear people’s cries. He does not. Referring to Psalm 145:18, “who call on him in truth,” Calvin explains that God hears and answers all prayers, but when people cry to God without faith as Esau did, God does not hear them because these are not true prayers.

They were not calling upon God out of trust in God’s goodness, nor were they coming to God as God’s children.

Thus, Calvin resolves the potential contradiction in a way that still allows him to insist God hears all prayers—they just have to be true prayers. Micah’s warning is, in Calvin’s mind, addressing those who cry out in unbelieving desperation, like Esau did. It follows that true prayer itself is a divine gift, and Calvin turns immediately to state this: “We have to note, therefore, that God does not always grant us the grace to call upon him.” But when God does, we pray prayers that rest on the divine goodness; we approach God with the confidence of one of God’s children.

Calvin does address the apparent silence of God, when it seems one has prayed and not been heard. He discusses the impact this has on our confidence in God’s kindness. He explains that when this happens one must continue in prayer with the absolute certainty that God will answer. To do otherwise is, he insists, an offense to the God whose word one must treat as already accomplished.

Calvin recognizes that this is hard. Sin runs so deep in believers and moves us to feel anxious when confronted with even small inconveniences. God, he says, ordinarily “does not hear us at the first chop.” Thus, waiting is inevitable; it is a basic part of the prayer-life of Christians. Facing this reality, we must place the fatherly goodness of God before our mind and heart perpetually. We must persist in prayer, knowing that God will answer. “If we know not today what our prayers have availed us, God will make us to perceive it tomorrow.”

As an aid to dealing with this difficulty, the believer should, Calvin says, pray: “quicken me according to Your word” (as David says in Psalm 119:107 and throughout the Psalms). Explaining this quickening, Calvin says that God’s word should take deep root in us. It should take hold of us and “pluck us as it were out of the grave.” God’s promises quicken us by awakening us from death and giving us a clear vision of the generous God who always answers.

This difficulty, Calvin fully acknowledges, is not brief or easy to bear. It represents an incredibly hard temptation. He appeals to his hearers that this is something all Christians struggle with. But the believer must persist in prayer, maintaining an assurance that God will hear him—this is true if our wait is a week, several months, or many years. Calvin notes that David did not pray once and then quit. Rather, he awoke early. He stayed up late. He continually prayed, never allowing his certainty to wane. Pointing to the numerous places in the Psalms where David explains himself in this way (e.g. “my eyes fail looking for your promises,” Psalm 119:82), Calvin says David is setting out to believers what their duty is.

Given this duty, Calvin explains that Christians should request that God would “show unto us by proof” that he has answered our prayers. The point here is not to be demanding. Rather, it is to hold firmly to the belief that God will answer; to be so utterly assured of his answer that we anticipate it and ask God to point it out to us because we know God will give it and we don’t want to miss it.

Does all we have been considering seem demanding? Does it make prayer seem more of a burden and less of a blessing? In Calvin’s judgment, it should not.

Calvin focuses our attention on God’s promises. Concerning them, he says believers ought not to think they are general but rather we must understand God speaks his promises to us individually and we must apply them to ourselves. If someone sees God’s word as spoken only to humankind in general, it will mean nothing to them, Calvin insists. He presses the point further, arguing one could read the Bible 100 times but will never benefit from it unless we see the words as spoken individually to us. As for the complaint that this assurance makes prayer superfluous (i.e., ‘we should just wait for God to fulfil his promises’), Calvin contends such assurance, when it is really felt by believers, actually moves us to pray even more fervently for what we know with absolute certainty God has promised us.

And the capstone of Calvin’s understanding of certainty in prayer, it seems to me, is his linking of it to the character of God. So, Calvin explains in his commentary on Psalm 65:2 (“O You who hear prayer”):

The Psalmist does not say that God has heard prayer in this or that instance but gives him the name of the hearer of prayer, as what constitutes an abiding part of his glory, so that he might as soon deny himself as shut his ear to our petitions.

Thus, practical to the end, Calvin argues that reflection on God’s glory ought to stimulate prayer. In other words, what we need to meditate on in order to be certain that God will answer our prayers is the fact that it is in God’s very nature to answer prayer and God cannot deny himself.