Training · The 1689 Baptist Confession
God's covenant
Why God deals with people by covenant at all, and what the covenant of grace is.
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Card 1 of 6
Why can't people simply earn a reward from God by obedience?
Because the distance between creator and creature is so great that obedience is only ever what is already owed. Any reward has to come from God stooping to promise one.
The argument does not rest on our sin. Even unfallen people, obeying perfectly, would have no claim on God, because doing what you are made to do earns nothing extra. Covenant is God freely binding himself to give what he did not have to give.
It's the same with you. When you've done everything you were told, just say, "We're only servants. We've just done what we were supposed to do."'
Luke 17:10Confession 7.1
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What was the first arrangement between God and people called, and what became of it?
The covenant of works - life promised on the condition of obedience, and it was broken in the fall. Chapter twenty says the gospel was given as soon as it was.
The 1689 handles this more briefly than the Westminster Confession, which gives the covenant of works a paragraph of its own here. The Baptists compressed it and led instead with the distance between creator and creature, so the chapter turns on God stooping to promise anything at all rather than on one contract being swapped for another.
Confession 7.1
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What is the covenant of grace?
God freely offering sinners life and salvation through Jesus Christ - requiring faith, and promising to give the Holy Spirit to make the unwilling willing and the unable able.
The second half is what keeps the first half from being empty. Faith is required, and nobody has it in them after the fall; so the covenant supplies the condition it demands. That is why it is called grace and not an offer.
I'll give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I'll take away your stubborn, stone-like heart and give you a heart that's alive and responsive.
I'll put my Spirit inside you and move you to live by my ways and keep my rules.
Ezekiel 36:26-27Confession 7.2
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When was the covenant of grace first revealed?
In the promise about the woman's offspring, immediately after the fall - and then by further steps until it was fully disclosed in the New Testament.
This is what makes the Bible one book for the confession. Not two religions with a change of management, but one arrangement, announced early in outline and progressively filled in.
I'll make you and the woman enemies, and your offspring and hers will be enemies too. Her descendant will crush your head, and you'll strike his heel.
Genesis 3:15Confession 7.3
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What is the covenant of grace founded on?
The eternal transaction between the Father and the Son about the redemption of the elect.
Behind the covenant made with people there is an agreement within God himself, settled before anyone existed. It is the confession's way of saying that the rescue was not a response to an emergency.
Confession 7.3
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How many covenants of grace are there, on the confession's account?
One. It was revealed in stages - immediately after the fall, then by further steps - but it is not a different covenant in each stage, and it was only fully disclosed in the New Testament.
This is where the 1689 and the Westminster Confession part company in emphasis. Westminster describes the Old and New Testaments as two administrations of one covenant; the 1689 drops that language and speaks instead of one covenant progressively revealed and formally established in Christ. The difference looks small on the page and it is the root of the disagreement over who should be baptised.
Confession 7.3