“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people” (Hebrews 8.10.)
Introduction. The doctrine of the covenant lies at the root of all true theology. Man first stood before God under the covenant of works. A certain law was given to Adam. If he kept it, he and his posterity would be blessed. If he broke it, then he and we would be cursed. Because Adam failed, we too are ruined, for we are of him, and he represented all men. We have all failed in his failure. To be saved by the law is now impossible. But Divine mercy has stepped in and provided a plan of salvation from this fall by Christ Jesus, who is called “the second Adam.” He has accomplished this covenant of works, and gained what the first Adam lost. All blessings acquired by Christ through his work belong to those whom God has chosen to believe in him. This is the covenant of grace.
(1) What are the Privileges of the Covenant of Grace? By nature we are dark towards God’s will. The first privilege under the covenant of grace is the illuminating of our mind by the Holy Spirit to know the will of God. The next blessing is that God writes his laws in our hearts, not just on them, but in them. This is gracious work! We then delight to do his will, and hate to oppose it. The preacher of the law tells you to do this and to not do that. But the preacher of the gospel tells you that Jesus Christ has done such a work for sinners that God, through Christ, makes them see right, love holiness, and follow after righteousness. A third blessing is that God is ours. This is unfathomable. What! Is God our father? A friend? A rock? A refuge? A fortress? A high tower? A home? A heaven? Yes, but “I will be their God” means all this and more! Comfort, provision, wisdom! Infinity itself is ours, and all that God is or can be! A fourth blessing is that we are God’s people. By God’s right, all men are his in a certain sense. But we are his peculiar people, his peculiar treasure for whom he keeps the world revolving. The world is just a scaffold for the church. Creation will be pulled down once the saints are done with it.
(2) For Whom has God Made this Covenant? God made it with Christ as the representative of his people. But the question is, “Did Christ Jesus stand in for you?” Well, have you the enlightened mind? Have you a love for good and a hatred for evil? If so, the covenant is yours with all of Canaan’s milk and honey. If not, then I invite you to believe in Jesus. He who does that has eternal life, the blessing of the covenant, and therefore must be in the covenant. To believe in is to ‘trust.’ Whoever will cast away his self-righteousness and all that he depends on, and come and trust in the finished work of the exalted Saviour, is one of the elect. And Christ did not die on the tree to render men salvable, but to actually save them. And saving faith always comes with the new nature and God’s law in the heart. You must have an internal change in order to be saved. Baptism alone is an external washing, like washing the outside of an ink bottle.
Selection from Conclusion. You may go to-night and renounce all your outward vices—I hope you will; you may go and practice all church ceremonies, and if they are Scriptural I wish you may; but they will do nothing for you, nothing whatever as to your entering heaven, if you miss one thing else, that is, getting the covenant blessing of the renewed nature, which can only be got as the gift of God through Jesus Christ, and as the result of a simple faith in him who died upon the tree…the new heart comes from the bleeding heart of Jesus, and the changed nature comes from the suffering nature of our Lord Jesus Christ. Look you alone to Jesus, for there all your help is laid.”
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