Obedience showing faith and faith showing obedience: like a child serving his father
God summoned Adam to walk in faith, to live out of the communion he enjoyed with his God and Father. Notice Calvin’s own point about proving out, showing forth, the gift of faith that he already had. Calvin’s words are helpful with respect to holding together the notions of Adam’s sonship-walk and a test of his faith, the probation at the tree in the Garden.
Calvin writes:
“We must, therefore, look deeper than sensual intemperance. The prohibition to touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a trial of obedience, that Adam, by observing it, might prove his willing submission to the command of God. For the very term shows the end of the precept to have been to keep him contented with his lot, and not allow him arrogantly to aspire beyond it. The promise, which gave him hope of eternal life as long as he should eat of the tree of life, and, on the other hand, the fearful denunciation of death the moment he should taste of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, were meant to prove and exercise his faith.”
16th Century French Reformer, John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.1.4
G. Mark Sumpter
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