In today’s reading, Calvin presses us into a kind of self-knowledge that is painful but necessary, dismantling every form of pride so that grace alone can stand. He insists that to know ourselves rightly is not to flatter our dignity but to confront our ruin—measuring ourselves not by human judgment but by divine justice, where all confidence in our own powers collapses. From there, he traces the fall of Adam not to mere sensual excess, but to infidelity: a refusal to trust God’s word, which opened the door to pride, ambition, rebellion, and finally the collapse of the entire created order. Adam’s sin was not isolated, nor was its damage superficial; it shattered human nature itself and spread by propagation, not imitation, leaving every person born already in need of mercy. The force of Calvin’s argument is unrelenting: until we grasp the depth  ...