(Substance of speech delivered in Dimnent Chapel for the 1988 Young People’s Convention, sponsored by the Southwest Protestant Reformed young people.)
The truth of God’s covenant stands at the very heart of our Protestant Reformed heritage.
The origin of our churches goes back to the common grace controversy of 1924; and the heritage which comes from that controversy is the truth that God’s grace is not common to all men, but is sovereign and particular, shown only to the elect.
But the truth of God’s sovereign and particular grace has been held by many in the past and is held by many today outside our own circles. We share this truth with a great company of saints past and present.
What is the one doctrine which is our unique and distinctive heritage? The answer is: the truth of God’s covenant.
It is a heritage given to us to treasure and keep.
It is a heritage which was particularly the work of Rev. H. Hoeksema, who developed the doctrine over his entire lifetime, but especially in connection with the split in our churches in 1953. It was prior to this split that the one distinctive truth of our heritage was under fierce and unrelenting attack.
We are the spiritual heirs of that truth; it is ours to know and love; it is ours to treasure and keep; in its truth we are called to the privilege of walking as God’s covenant people in the world.
Ever since the time of the Reformation, the covenant was defined as an agreement between God and man. The general idea was that God and man came together and joined in an agreement on a certain policy and procedure for the future—much like two nations sign a peace treaty after years of war. Man and God were at war. God comes to man with overtures and proposals of peace, various provisions and promises to which God binds Himself, and an expressed willingness and desire to see the warfare ended. The agreement of the covenant is concluded at such a time as man on his part accepts the provisions and promises set forth by God, assumes responsibility for keeping his side of the agreement, and promises to remain faithful to the covenant just concluded.
Many objections can be raised against this notion of the covenant. We mention briefly three or four.
This notion of an agreement is found nowhere in the Bible and cannot be sustained with Biblical support. It is a cold and mechanical way of describing a covenant relation with God: it has nothing attractive or desirable about it; it has no warmth, no life, nothing that stirs the blood. It makes God a God Who wants to get all men into the covenant, for the conditions of peace are held out to all. It makes the whole covenant dependent upon man and introduces into the covenant an Arminianism that robs God of His glory and puts salvation into man’s hands.
The Biblical idea of the covenant is something quite different. While many different metaphors are used in Scripture to help us understand this idea of God’s covenant, the one which is very rich and warm is the figure of a family. God is, in Himself, a family God. He is this because He is three in Person: Father, Son and Holy Spirit; but also He is one in essence. In this family life which God lives, God has perfect joy, perfect happiness, perfect blessedness.
God reveals His own covenant life by taking His people into His own family—the family of His trinity. He does this through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is God’s own Son, the most important person in the family, the Firstborn. Jesus Christ is both God and man, both divine and human. His body is the temple of God in which God dwells and in which the church dwells, for the church is the body of Christ. So, through Christ, God takes us into His own family life which He lives in Himself. He reveals His covenant life to us, not only by telling us about it, but by making us a part of it.
A family, walking down a city street, may perhaps come upon a homeless orphan who has been abandoned at an early age to the streets. She may be wearing rags for clothes; she may be dirty and unkempt with hair full of lice and huge boils and open sores on her scrawny body. If that family begins to talk together about how tragic it is that the little orphan has never known the joys of family life, the family can do two things—and it is not hard to tell what would be the better. The family can decide to tell the wee orphan a bit about its life together as a family so that she may know something of these joys, but if she is left to fend for herself in the cruel streets, all the glowing descriptions do not mean very much. But if the family shows the orphan the joys of family life by taking the little girl home, bathing and cleaning her, putting cool salve on her sores, feeding her, and finally truly making her a part of the family so that the parents are her mother and father and the boys and girls are her brothers and sisters—then she will truly know the great joy of family life. So God does with us when He tells us of the joy of His family life by taking us into it.
But God does this in sovereign and particular grace. He does this as His own mighty work in Christ without the will of man. He does this to us who are undeserving sinners. And He does this only to His own people whom He has chosen from all eternity in Christ and whom He has redeemed through the blood of the cross. It is all God’s work and He receives all the glory.
The Bible uses various figures to describe this truth. As we said already, sometimes the figure of a family is used. In that family, God is Father, Christ is the elder Brother, and all God’s people are brothers and sisters. It may be something of this idea that Jesus has in mind when He talks in John 14:1-3 about His Father’s house of many mansions.
Sometimes the covenant is described as a marriage in which Christ and His people are married and become one flesh. Heaven is said to be a great wedding feast to give us some idea of the wedding not only, but to tell us of the great joy of that wedding, the happiness and laughter, the blessedness and joy.
Sometimes the idea of friendship is used. The idea of friendship is well-known to all of us. Everyone needs a friend. And friendship has in it all the connotations of fellowship, of speaking to each other, of opening one’s heart to someone who can be trusted, of sharing one’s life with someone very dear. That too is the relationship between God and His people. Abraham was the friend of God.
So always the covenant is described in Scripture as a close and intimate bond of communion, love, friendship, fellowship. It is something warm, living, pulsing with life, attractive and unutterably blessed.
At the same time Scripture is very clear that this warm and personal relationship is not between two who are equals. It is between God and His people. God is great. He is infinite. All the nations of the earth are less than grasshoppers in His sight. We are not very much at all, really less than nothing. And we are so very little because, besides being only creatures, we are sinners.
But this great difference means that the covenant is always a wonder of God’s grace, God’s unmerited favor and love. And because it is of grace, other things have also to be said about it. For one thing, it is always one-sided. That is, God does all that is necessary that that covenant may be a reality. He establishes that covenant with His people without their doing anything—just as Abraham was sleeping when God established the covenant with him (Genesis 15). God takes us into that family life, adopting us as His children. God makes us His bride even though we are adulteresses. God keeps us faithful, forgiving always our unfaithfulness, and blessing us when we do not deserve it. God brings us to heaven where we dwell with Him forever. And so there are no conditions to the covenant at all. All is the work of God. And to God belongs all the glory.
That covenant is also established with believers and their children in the line of generations. Not all the children of believers, for Esau was born of believers, too, but he was a reprobate. But among the children of believers are the elect. And so children too are taken into that covenant. New families are also brought in through the mission work of the church. But new families are brought in, new converts and their children. For God always works in the line of generations.
While we are still in the world, God makes us His covenant people. This is a great privilege. We are called to represent God’s cause in this world of sin. When the world speaks of its devotion to sin, we are called and have the privilege of witnessing and testifying of our devotion to God.
The calling is there because we are members of God’s family who are proud of our Father in heaven and our elder Brother. Our calling is a privilege because we are the bride of Christ, married to Him and faithful to our Husband. No more than a person who betrays the secrets of his friend who confided in him, would we betray the love of God which He has confided in us. This is a place in the covenant of which the wicked world has no idea and which is our pride and boasting.
This does not mean that we never sin. And two things need to be said here. First, a child of the covenant, when he sins, is always sorry for his sin, confesses it to God and Christ, runs to the cross to find forgiveness, and seeks from the cross of His Savior greater power to be more holy. So, second, if one who is born in the covenant sins, but is not sorry for his sin, will not confess it, finds great pleasure in his sin and keeps living his ungodly life, he only shows that he is like Esau, not a true child of the covenant after all, a reprobate, unless he does yet repent and turn to God.
We are the heirs of a great heritage, a heritage which is distinctively Protestant Reformed. To this heritage we must be faithful if our churches are to endure.
It is a heritage which has been a great blessing to our church. It has brought about happy and stable marriages. It has resulted in rich and blessed family life in our homes. It has stood at the foundation of our whole Christian school system. It has led us all to realize how precious children are as a heritage of the Lord.
To forget this heritage will lead to a loss of these very things we consider so dear. And such is surely possible if we refuse to walk as God’s covenant people. We must never forget that the lines of election and reprobation run through covenant lines. To be born of covenant parents is not in itself a guarantee that we belong to the covenant and will go to heaven. If we despise the privileges of the covenant given to us as those born and raised within the covenant, we are as unfaithful wives, as truant children, as untrustworthy friends who betray confidences of dear friends. All the privileges will be taken away.
But if we do walk in the ways of God’s covenant, then we will be blessed with the friendship of God Himself, already in this life and fully in the life to come.