How to answer the question ‘Is your conscience at peace?’ A reading of any or all of these forty-four extant sermons on Acts by John Calvin will help the reader determine whether his conscience is at peace or simply asleep! Calvin’s vigorous presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ in its full extent shows the sixteenth-century expositor understood the ramifications of New Testament theology, just as did his mentor, the apostle Paul, who, after presenting his reasoned understanding of the meaning of Christ’s work, immediately follows it with the ‘therefore’ of consequence. Calvin mixes biblical teaching and its demands on the believer’s life together so closely that the theology and its effects cannot be easily separated. Divine judgment and mercy underlie this ‘effects theology’, and it is the sense of judgment versus the promises of and the conditions for forgiveness and acceptance that informs the reader’s conscience whether he is indeed forgiven and at peace, a member of the body of Christ.
