Chapter 7 – God’s Covenant
Confession The Faith–The 1689 Baptist Confession for the 21st Century
Chapter 7 – God’s Covenant
1. Though rational creatures are responsible to obey God as their Creator, the distance between God and these creatures is so great that they could never have attained the reward of life except by God’s voluntary condescension. He has been pleased to express this through a covenant framework.1
1Luke 17:10; Job 35:7, 8.
2. Since humanity brought itself under the curse of the law by its fall, it pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace.2 In this covenant he freely offers to sinners life and salvation through Jesus Christ. On their part he requires faith in him, that they may be saved,3 and promises to give his Holy Spirit to all who are ordained to eternal life, to make them willing and able to believe.4
2Genesis 2:17; Galatians 3:10; Romans 3:20, 21. 3Romans 8:3; Mark 16:15, 16; John 3:16. 4Ezekiel 36:26, 27; John 6:44, 45; Psalms 110:3.
3. This covenant is revealed in the gospel. It was revealed first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation through the seed of the woman.5 After that, it was revealed step by step until the full revelation of it was completed in the New Testament.6 This covenant is based on the eternal covenant transaction between the Father and the Son concerning the redemption of the elect.7 Only through the grace of this covenant have those saved from among the descendants of fallen Adam obtained life and blessed immortality. Humanity is now utterly incapable of being accepted by God on the same terms on which Adam was accepted in his state of innocence.8
5Genesis 3:15. 6Hebrews 1:1. 72 Timothy 1:9; Titus 1:2; 8Hebrews 11:6, 13; Romans 4:1, 2ff.; Acts 4:12; John 8:56.
Additional: Covenant of Works
6.1 God created humanity upright and perfect. He gave them a righteous law that would have led to life if they had kept it but threatened death if they broke it.1 Yet they did not remain for long in this position of honor. Satan used the craftiness of the serpent to seduce Eve, who then seduced Adam.
19.1 1 God gave Adam a law of comprehensive obedience written in his heart and a specific precept not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.1 By these God obligated him and all his descendants to personal, total, exact, and perpetual obedience.2 God promised life if Adam fulfilled it and threatened death if he broke it, and he gave Adam the power and ability to keep it.3
1Genesis 1:27; Ecclesiastes 7:29. 2Romans 10:5. 3Galatians 3:10, 12.
20.1 Because the covenant of works was broken by sin and was unable to confer life, God was pleased to proclaim the promise of Christ, the seed of the woman, as the means of calling the elect and producing in them faith and repentance.1 In this promise the gospel in its substance was revealed and made effectual for the conversion and salvation of sinners.2
1Genesis 3:15. 2Revelation 13:8.
