The Last Calvin Quote (for now...maybe...well, we'll see!)

Here is Calvin's explanation of the effects of regenerating grace. Notice his "new creation" terminology. He is implicitly speaking about the restoring of God's image to man through the work of the Spirit.

"It would be right to think about the remedy divine grace provides for correction and curing natural corruption. The Lord, in coming to our aid, gives us what we need and thereby reveals our helplessness. When the apostle says to the Philippians, 'being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus (Phil. 1:6), there can be no doubt that by the good work begun he means the first step of conversion in the will. So God begins the good work in us by arousing in our hearts a desire, love, study of righteousness. More accurately, he turns, trains, guides our hearts to righteousness. He completes the good work by strengthening us to keep going to the end. In case anyone tries to quibble that the good work done by the Lord consists in helping the will (which is weak in itself), the Spirit states what the will is able to do on its own. 'I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws' (Ezek. 36:26-27). How can it be said that the weakness of the human will is merely assisted effectively to choose good things, when in fact it must be totally transformed and renewed? If there is any softness in a stone or you can make it malleable, then you could say that the human heart could be reshaped correctly, so long as the imperfect is assisted by divine grace. If the Spirit intends to show that no good thing can ever be drawn from our hearts, unless they are made new, we must not try to share with him what he claims for himself alone.

It is like turning a stone into flesh, when God gets us to follow the right way, everything belonging to our own will is abolished, and what succeeds is wholly of him...I maintain that this is totally God's work, because as the apostle teaches, 'Not that we are competent to claim anything for ourselves' (2 Cor. 3:5). In Philippians 2:13 he says not merely that God helps the weak or corrects the depraved will, but that he works in us to will. From this we can infer that everything good in the will is entirely the result of grace. In the same way the apostle says, 'There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men' (I Cor. 12:6). He is not referring to universal government, but stating that all the good qualities which believers possess are due to God. In using the term 'all', he definitely makes God the Author of spiritual life from beginning to end. He explained this in different terms when he said that 'there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things come and through whom we live' (I Cor. 8:6). Here he plainly extols the new creation, by which everything in our common nature is destroyed. There is a tacit antithesis between Adam and Christ, which he explains more clearly when he says, 'For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do' (Eph. 2:10). He shows in this way that our salvation is gratuitous, because the beginning of goodness is from the second creation, obtained in Christ. If we had the slightest ability in ourselves, there would be merit. But to show our complete destitution, he argues that we merit nothing because we are created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared. He implies by these words that all the fruits of good works are straight from God. So the Psalmist, after saying that the Lord has made us, immediately adds 'not we ourselves', to take from us any share in the work. It is obvious from the context that he is referring to regeneration, the beginning of spiritual life, because his next words are, 'we are his people, the sheep of his pasture' (Ps. 100:3). Not content with simply giving God the glory for our salvation, he specifically excludes us from any part in it. Man has not an atom of cause to boast. The whole work is God's" (98-100).