4. What Is Involved in the Covenant? (2)
Rev Roderick Macleod
3. Conditions. In a covenant there is often a conditional element. Something has to be done by one or all parties, or the thing proposed cannot be realised. Having discussed the thing proposed and consented to, we see that the performance of the Surety was the condition of the covenant of grace. The salvation of those whom God loved with an electing love can be brought about only if the Son of God meets all their obligations to the law and, as their Surety, meets all their liabilities to offended holiness.
The condition of the covenant required of the Son of God, as the last Adam, is satisfied by the holiness of His human nature, the righteousness of His life and the accomplishments of His death and resurrection. He was to take their law place, to be arrested by justice and pay the penalty due to their sins. This mysterious arrangement further requires that Christ be the Trustee, Testator and Executor of the Covenant. He is the Trustee in the sense that in Him all the riches of the grace of God are laid up, as the storehouse of the blessings of the Covenant; it is He who has the authority to distribute them. He is the Testator because the blood-bought riches of the covenant of grace were in His hand to give as a legacy to His people. Paul calls Him the Testator in Hebrews 9:16,17. The Old and New Testaments are the sacred record of the beloved Testator’s will and testament, which He has sworn to be true. There we read, in a solemn, inviolable bequeathing, what arrangements He has put in place for His people. He is the Executor of His own will and testament because, though He was dead, He is alive for evermore. Christ’s principal work as Trustee and Executor of His own testament is (1) prophetic: revealing and teaching by His Word and Spirit the grace of God for our
1Last month’s section of this Theological Conference paper began to compare the covenant of grace with some general features of covenant agreements, beginning with (1) the parties involved and (2) the proposal. This final article continues the points of comparison.
salvation; (2) priestly: making intercession in heaven, on the basis of His sacrifice of Himself; (3) princely: defending His people and bestowing the blessings of His kingdom as King.
- Promises. In a covenant something is promised. In the Bible we read of promises made by the Father to the Surety. We have already mentioned Hebrews 10:5, where the Surety acknowledges that His human nature was prepared by the Father in accordance with a covenant promise made to Him in eternity. We can also mention the promise that His soul would be filled with the Holy Ghost, without measure and without intermission: “And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord” (Is 11:2). Jehovah the Son would become Jesus.
The name Jesus translates “Jehovah Saviour”: “Thou shalt call His name Jesus: for He shall save His people from their sins” (Mt 1:21). The divine Surety would take the nature that was “doomed to die”. Several places in Scripture indicate that He would perform the work of suretyship with a sense of the weakness of the human nature. The powers and prerogatives of His own deity would not be laid aside, but they would remain in silent personal union with His sinless but frail humanity. He would not draw on the boundless, timeless, changeless perfections of His deity but would trust with a perfect faith in the promises made to Him, personally, in the covenant of grace.
In Isaiah 50, He who is described as giving His “back to the smiters” (that is Jesus, the blessed Surety) is represented as trusting, with a perfect trust, the promises made to Himself personally, in the eternal council of peace. He says, “For the Lord God will help Me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. He is near that justifieth Me; who will contend with me? Let us stand together: who is Mine adversary? Let him come near to Me. Behold, the Lord God will help Me; who is he that shall condemn Me? Lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth shall eat them up” (vv 7-9).
This dependence on covenant promises, along with a sense of the sinless weakness of His human nature, is felt throughout the first 21 verses of Psalm 22. Verse 19 of this Psalm is a most affecting appeal to heaven by the Lord Jesus Christ, while trusting in the eternal promises of upholding: “But be not Thou far from me, O Lord: O My strength, haste Thee to help Me”. Every word of this verse, and of this whole Psalm, is heavy with glorious grace.
Psalms 110 contains several promises of glorious rewards for the God-man Surety on completion of His suretyship. He is promised a perfect vindication of His Suretyship before the rational universe, and of His absolute dominion over the created universe. This will be for the good of His people and will
result in the destruction of their enemies: “The Lord said unto My Lord, Sit Thou at My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool; the Lord shall send the rod of Thy strength out of Zion: rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies. Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: Thou hast the dew of thy youth. The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. The Lord at Thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of His wrath. He shall judge among the heathen, He shall fill the places with the dead bodies; He shall wound the heads over many countries. He shall drink of the brook in the way: therefore shall He lift up the head.”
We find the same kind of conditional promise in Isaiah 53:10-12: “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief: when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied: by His knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many; for He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He hath poured out His soul unto death: and He was numbered with the transgressors; and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” These promises are made to Him on condition of finishing the proposed work of suretyship.
Promises are made to Him for the salvation of His people. Eternal life will be theirs, if He fulfils the necessary conditions. Some make our acting faith the condition of the covenant. Yet, while there is no salvation without faith and repentance, neither of them can be considered proper conditions of the covenant, to be performed by us, which God will reward by giving us salvation. (1.) Nothing we do can answer the demands of outraged justice and offended holiness. (2.) If the salvation of His people was promised to Christ before the world began, it must hang on what He will do, not on something we do. (3.) Faith is promised in the Covenant and therefore cannot, without confusion, be spoken of as a condition of the covenant.
What is the relation of the believer’s faith to the covenant? It is wrought by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those for whom Christ died, on the basis of His finished work. Believing that they are guilty and condemned, they believe also that there is sufficient in the gospel feast for them as sinners – in the surety-righteousness and surety-suffering of Christ. They believe that the feast is perfectly adapted to their need as perishing sinners. They believe that they, as sinners, on the basis of the Scripture invitations to sinners, have a warrant to come and dine. This faith is the gift of God and by it they are united to Christ and have a right to all the saving blessings described in the
promises. In union to the first Adam, the promise of eternal life was “yea” and then “nay”. By union to the last Adam, this promise is yea and amen; “for all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him amen, unto the glory of God” (2 Cor 1:20). “All things are now ready.” “They shall come and shall declare His truth and righteousness and that He hath done this” (Ps 22:31).
Conclusion. Here are great riches for broken men. It is a most blessed and mysterious feast prepared at great cost, purchased by the blood of a glorious Person to meet the needs of worthless sinners. David marvelled at it and said that God “remembered us in our low estate: for His mercy endureth for ever”. According to Richard Alleine, in Heaven Opened, his book on the covenant of grace, there are such true riches here that earthly riches do not deserve to be called riches in the same day. “Good news from heaven,” he says, “the dayspring from on high hath visited this undone world. After the deluge of sin and misery, behold the bow in the cloud! The Lord God hath made and established a new covenant, and this is it that hath cast the first beam on the dark state of lost and fallen man, and hath brought immortality to light. This is the covenant of hope for sinners; the riches of saints; the Magna Carta of the city of God; the renewal of the forfeited lease of eternity; God’s deed of gift wherein He hath, on fair conditions, granted sinners their lives and settled upon His saints an everlasting inheritance.”
Let us come to the throne where grace reigns and ask for the blessings of the covenant bequeathed by the Testator (who was dead and is alive again); stored up by the faithful Trustee and freely dispensed by the generous and large-hearted Executor of the covenant of grace. Come and taste of justification, adoption, sanctification, assurance of God’s love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Spirit, increase of grace and perseverance therein to the never-ending ages of everlasting glory. “Come for all things are now ready.”
Some are greatly tempted that the doctrine of election, which is at the very heart of this covenant of free and sovereign grace, stands between them and the universal, indiscriminate invitations to sinners to partake of the covenant provision. But these invitations, as we saw at the beginning of this paper, are at the very forefront of this covenant. It is important to remember that the predestination of sinners to salvation belongs to the secret things of the Lord. Having believed that doctrine, we have no further responsibility in that area. Our responsibility is, in the light of this gracious covenant, summed up in Mark 1:15, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel”.
The Holy Spirit has composed a prayer for our use which gives glory to a sovereign God and at the same time pleads for covenant mercies in the full glare of divine predestination, in Psalm 106:4,5:
“Remember me, Lord, with that love which Thou to Thine dost bear;
With Thy salvation, O my God, to visit me draw near:
That I Thy chosen’s good may see, and in their joy rejoice;
And may with Thine inheritance triumph with cheerful voice.”
“Come, for all things are now ready.”