The New Covenant¹

1. What Kind of Covenant?

William Bridge

Thirdly, what kind of covenant is this? What are its properties? To name but three:

(1) It is a covenant of grace in opposition to works, or to all our own worth or worthiness. It is a covenant of grace, for it is made with sinners. The covenant that was made with Adam in the state of innocence was made with a saint, having the image of God upon him, and therefore a covenant of friendship. The covenant that God makes now, he makes with sinners, and it is a covenant of reconciliation, and therefore a covenant of grace. Then by the covenant of works, that God made with Adam, there was no room for repentance, or for remission for sin, now there is room for both.

For repentance, “I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh”, says God.

For remission, “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more”, says the covenant; indeed, the covenant of grace so deeply promises remission of sins that, whereas the covenant of works would own no such things, the covenant of grace so deeply undertakes to forgive sins that it is made the chief, and the reason of all the others. He promises to write His law in their hearts, and they will all know Him. Why? “For . . . their sins. . . will I remember no more” (Heb 8:12). By the first covenant, if we had sinned, we should have provoked God thereby to damn us and to destroy us. By this covenant, when a man that is in covenant sins, he provokes God by it to pity him and to have compassion on him. In the covenant of works the Lord gave a man strength to stand and left him to himself. But now the Lord has promised in this covenant to cause him to walk in His ways.

When the Israelites had to do with the Egyptians, the Egyptians required from them their tally of brick, but gave them no straw. Now we have to deal with so good a Lord, in this covenant, that we have straw and strength, and not only strength but God Himself is a co-worker with us. Indeed, what grace is there that you lack, or complain for the lack of it, but it is promised in this covenant?

¹The first of four points taken (numbers 3-6), with editing, from a sermon entitled, “Christ and the Covenant” in The Works of William Bridge, vol 3. His text was, “And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel” (Heb 12:24). The first point explained what this covenant is, and the second why it is called a new covenant (these first two points are not being printed here). Bridge was a Puritan minister in Yarmouth.

Do you complain that you are not converted? “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts”, says God now.

Do you complain that you are ignorant? “They shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them,” says the covenant.

Do you complain that your heart is hard? God says, “I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh”. Grace, grace. This covenant then is a covenant of grace; it is a gracious covenant.

(2) As it is a gracious covenant, so it is a free and unconditional covenant. It is free in opposition to all conditions to be performed by us. Do not mistake me, I do not say there is no condition in the new covenant, but the condition is performed by Christ, our second Adam. Nor do I say that faith, obedience and repentance are not required. But I say that faith, obedience and repentance are required in the new covenant as duties, but not as conditions.

This I say then: it is a free covenant, in opposition to all conditions to be performed by man; for when the covenant of grace is mentioned in Scripture, where do you find any condition annexed to anything that is there promised.

The Lord says, “Their sins. . . will I remember no more”. Upon what condition? None is mentioned.

He says, “I will put my law in their inward parts”. Upon what condition? None is mentioned.

He says, “They shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them”. Upon what condition? None is mentioned. Where do you ever find the covenant mentioned with a condition?

Plainly, if there was a condition, the condition must be distinct from the thing promised. If I promise to go on a journey with a man on condition that he shall bear my charges, his bearing my charges and my going on the journey are distinct things. Now what condition can there be? Faith, repentance or obedience? But these are all promised in the covenant; therefore they cannot be the condition, for the thing promised in the covenant and the condition that we are to perform must be distinct. I say, if there is a condition, it must be distinct from the thing promised; yet there is nothing that we can perform but is promised in the covenant. Therefore there can be no condition.

The prophet Isaiah tells us that this covenant is after the nature of the covenant that God made with Noah – that the world will be drowned no more. And that is absolute, it depends upon no condition. Junius² thinks that, on this account, this covenant of grace is called a testament, for, he says, a testament has no condition. A man makes his last will and testament; and

²Franciscus Junius (the Latinised form of his French name, François du Jon) (1545-1602). Born in France, he became a minister in Antwerp and later taught theology in Heidelberg in Germany, and Leiden in the Netherlands.

though now and then a man may hang a condition on a rebellious child, yet ordinarily a man then gives, and gives freely, without any condition; and so this covenant is called a testament. Why? Because no condition is to be performed by us. This is the second thing, it is a free covenant in opposition to all conditions to be performed by ourselves.

(3) As it is a free covenant, in opposition to all conditions to be performed by us, so it is an everlasting covenant, a covenant of salt that cannot be broken. “Which my covenant they brake”, says God, speaking of the former covenant. He says, in Zechariah, “I took My staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break My covenant which I had made with all the people”. God broke it; that is, the former covenant. But now this covenant of grace is an everlasting covenant, “ordered in all things and sure”, an everlasting covenant that cannot be broken. Thus you see what kind of covenant it is; it is a covenant of grace, in opposition to all works and worth in us; a free covenant in opposition to all conditions to be performed by us; and an everlasting covenant. This is the covenant that is made with the children of men.

Forgiveness – Divine and Human¹

3. Further Answers to the Objection

Hugh Martin

1. It is an objection which, without cause, takes for granted that in mutual forgiveness, as enjoined in Scripture, believers have no regard to the atonement of Christ. It supposes that I can adequately discharge this scriptural duty before I have any true knowledge of the atonement, and before my heart has been influenced by it. For it supposes that I have so discharged this duty that I am thereafter free to consider whether there is any atonement. Indeed, it supposes that my discharge of this duty is so utterly apart from, and uninfluenced by, the truth and nature of Christ’s atonement that by discharging it I am the more free and qualified to consider, as an open question, whether there is any true and proper atonement by Christ at all.

But this is the reverse of the fact. Christian mutual forgiveness is directly

¹Taken with editing from The British and Foreign Evangelical Review, vol 30 (1881). Last month’s article addressed an objection to scriptural teaching on the atonement which ignores “God’s supremacy and office as the Judge of all the earth”. The objection is: If God requires us freely to forgive an offending brother – without demanding any atonement – should He not forgive without an atonement? This final article continues to refute that unscriptural idea.

influenced and prompted by the truth of Christ’s true and proper satisfaction for believers’ sins. I do not, as a Christian, first forgive an offending brother without demanding satisfaction; and then feel my mind and heart free to consider whether the Judge of all the earth should, in like manner, abstain from demanding a satisfaction to His justice for sin. On the contrary, it is the fact that He forgives all my sin, and all my brother’s sin also, freely through the blood of Jesus, which truly prompts in me a free and generous forgiveness towards my brother. For,

1. It is the love of God alike towards me and my brother that prompts me and prevails with me to forgive him. But, whatever others think or say concerning the mercy and compassion of God, as for me, if I have believed on Jesus Christ and Him crucified, I know of no love of God save that which reaches me through the cross and death of His dear Son – that love which comes through the full, righteous and holy expiation of all my sin on the cross. Herein is love, not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us and given His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Hereby we have known and believed the love that God has towards us.

All other fancied love is indeed but an idle dream of merest fancy. Conscience in its righteousness and rising power puts the dream to flight, and awakes the dreamer to a sense of the infinite unrighteousness of sin and the righteousness of death as its wages. But conscience sees these wages and death in the cross of Christ and is at peace; and the heart, set free from the fear of condemnation, is satisfied, overwhelmed and melted with evidence of holy love by an atonement. “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us.” It is under the warming beams and melting power and holy sanctifying influence of this love – and just in so far as I yield to its generous, gracious promptings – that I find it impossible to avoid forgiving my brother also.

1. While the love of God in forgiving my sin through an atonement prompts me to forgive my brother, the righteousness of God in expiating his sin calls on me also to forgive him. For if my brother is a believer – and I am to deal with him in charity on the supposition that he either is or may yet become a member of Christ – then Christ bore his sins as well as mine in His own body on the tree and satisfied Divine justice for all his iniquity. In particular, Christ bore in His own body all the guilt of this particular offence against me. For while it is an offence against me, its infinitely chiefest offensiveness is its being a sin against God. For God is the Lawgiver and Judge, not only in all that pertains to my duty and my brother’s duty directly towards God, but in our mutual duty towards each other. When therefore we fail in our duties towards each other, we sin against that God who has enjoined them.

And in everything in which we need forbearance and forgiveness from each other, we need infinitely more from God.

My brother’s offence against me is simultaneously an infinitely greater offence against God; greater as far as God is greater than I am. Yes, so true is this that both I and my brother, even when we have offended each other and are alive to our sin against each other, therein may turn aside to God and say with truth, each of us to Him, and without doing injustice to the other, “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned”. Great and terrible, as against my brother, was the criminality of him who first uttered these memorable words.

But if, when I see my brother’s sin and criminality against God so infinitely greater than against me, I see also that the justice of God is satisfied for all its guilt in the expiation of the cross, shall I disparage and disallow the glory of that atonement by refusing on my part to forgive, by insisting on a satisfaction for myself? May not the Lord well hold this as a proof on my part that I am setting aside that atonement for my own soul; that I do not see its infinite power and preciousness; that I am casting such contempt upon it as is inconsistent with my own personal faith in it? And may not this fully explain why, if I cannot forgive man, I cannot have forgiveness with God, seeing I do such dishonour and injustice to the only sacrifice and satisfaction through which the Judge of all the earth can forgive me? May not this well justify the Lord Jesus in saying, “If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father forgive your trespasses”? And does this not bring out the force of the injunction, “Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you”?

The objection is: the fact that our mutual forgiveness takes place without an atonement affords a proof that, similarly, God requires no atonement. But it is just because there is forgiveness with God through an atonement that we are to demand none in our forgiveness of each other.

1. In one view, this objection to the atonement arises from pressing the analogy between our mutual forgiveness of each other and God’s forgiveness of us too far. In fact, it can arise in reality only by not attending to that analogy sufficiently. The argument is to this effect: we are required to forgive our brother without demanding satisfaction; but if God demands a satisfaction, is the analogy between His forgiveness and ours not destroyed, and ours made the more gracious and handsome of the two? I reply, It is not the introduction of the atonement of Christ which would destroy this analogy. It is this very objection that destroys it. This objection itself attempts to introduce a dissimilarity or failure of analogy between the cases, which does not exist.

We are to demand no reparation, no satisfaction, from an offending brother when we forgive his trespass. And if God forgave us only in consideration

of a satisfaction demanded by Him and obtained from us, then indeed the analogy would be at an end. But this is not the doctrine of the atonement, as the objection must take for granted if it is to have even the appearance of validity. If such were the doctrine of the atonement, we admit that it would set forth our commanded forgiveness of a brother in a light of higher graciousness, handsomeness and generosity than the forgiveness which God extends to us. But forgiveness through the propitiation of the cross – through the true and proper satisfaction to Divine justice in the death of Jesus, through the full and perfect expiation of sin in the blood-shedding of the Lamb of God – forgiveness so bestowed, bestowed on this righteous, holy, valid ground, brings against us no demand for satisfaction any more than we are to bring against an offending brother.

No, it is this very provision, freeing us from all the demands of justice, which renders complete the analogy between God’s forgiveness of me and my forgiveness of my brother. For really, at first, it would seem that there could be no analogy at all. God is my Judge; I am not my brother’s judge. Hence it would seem as if God’s forgiveness of me and my forgiveness of my brother must from first to last be altogether incomparable. God, as Judge, has claims against me, such as I cannot have against my brother. He has claims, not only infinitely greater in degree, but different – incomparable in kind as well as incomparably greater in degree. It would appear that there can be no analogy at all.

It is really the atonement which alone renders them analogous. The atonement answers those claims of God as a Judge which threatened to make the cases eternally incomparable. The great Judge and Sovereign of the universe introduces the atonement in satisfaction of those very claims. He abstains from pressing those claims on me; He makes no demand on me; He requires no atonement, no satisfaction from me. On the contrary, He provides an atonement for me. He Himself provides a Lamb for a burnt offering. He freely, in His love, gives me a substituted surety. He so loves me that He does not spare His own Son, but freely gives Him up unto death, making Him to be sin for me. Then without money and without price He gives me a free and full remission of sin, a forgiveness infinitely handsome, a forgiveness which so secures and exalts me as to make me a son of God in Christ. It is a forgiveness which it is profanity to fancy can ever be excelled in its grace and handsomeness, and which I can only imitate at an infinite distance.

Now it must be manifest that my procedure in forgiving my brother, without atonement from him, is not more handsome than God’s forgiveness of me. Instead it is God’s unparalleled grace in providing an atonement for me and my brother both which must inspire both him and me with that mutual

love in which we shall be found “forbearing one another and forgiving one another” in some faint reflection of that infinitely handsome, generous, sovereign grace in which God “for Christ’s sake hath forgiven” us.

Let a brief application close the subject:

1. Be very sure that it is the sacrifice of the cross, provided for us by the infinite love of God, and satisfactory to His unbending justice, which will either fill our consciences with true peace towards God or our hearts with true love to man. Peace of conscience with God derived from any other source than the cross of Christ will treacherously vanish in actual face-to-face dealings with God as He is in His awful majesty and inviolable holiness. And tenderness of heart towards man learned in any other school than that of Calvary will vanish too in actual dealings with men, as they are full of infirmities and manifold weaknesses and perversities of temper. If your gentle amiabilities are not sanctified and strengthened by the stern realities of righteousness as it is vindicated in the cross, and not warmed by the matchless love of the atonement beyond earth’s power to cool them, they may live in the hothouse air of refined sentimentalism, but they will never rough it in the tear and wear of actual weary human life.

2. Let your attempt to forgive a brother find all its success from a fresh contemplation of the incalculable expense to Christ, and the free love to you implied in God’s forgiveness – “forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any, even as God for Christ’s sake forgave you”. It is the fresh, sweet, humbling sense of being afresh and anew forgiven by God that will banish every angry and vindictive feeling. And realising your union with Christ, and having a fresh sense of your right to say, “I am crucified with Christ”, your feelings towards your enemies will coincide with those of Christ in His crucifixion hour: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”.

3. Nor need you be afraid of any unevangelical, legal tendency in embracing heartily the declaration, “If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you”. If from the heart you can forgive, be encouraged thereby to expect forgiveness from God: seeing that it is the truth of His forgiving love and the work of His Spirit that have wrought this grace within you. Our Father who art in heaven; forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.

The man of an unforgiving spirit is governed too much by a regard to himself, and too little by a regard to the happiness of others, to be a Christian man. He attaches no importance to that course of conduct which tends to make the world in which he lives the holier and the happier.

Gardiner Spring