The Pastoral Wisdom of John Calvin

Ordained Servant printed this sermon of John Calvin on 1 Timothy 5:1-3 under the heading of his pastoral wisdom. Calvin works through Paul’s instructions on reproof: correction must be sweetened like a physician’s medicine, old men exhorted as fathers rather than rebuked, preaching supplemented by private admonition, and the pastor kept above any occasion of slander.

Turning to “widows indeed,” he describes the enrolled widows of the early church as public servants, even called deacons, who nursed the sick and served the poor, and he holds up that charity as a looking glass that shames the stinginess of his own day.

He ends by applying Paul’s care in filling even this office to the choice of all officers, down to Geneva’s approaching election of magistrates.