The covenant of grace

This week's questions

Did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery? God having, out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life did enter into a covenant of grace, to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer.

Question 20

Question 19 ended with the pains of hell for ever (last week). Question 20 answers at that very place: no. Here, after God, his works and our fall, the catechism first reaches the gospel. Question 21 takes up its last words, ‘a Redeemer’, next week.

Of his mere good pleasure

God did two things: he elected some to everlasting life, and he entered into a covenant of grace to deliver them. The first proof text gives the time and the place of that choice:

For He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in His presence.

Ephesians 1:4

‘From all eternity’ is before the foundation of the world, as grace was given us in Christ Jesus "before time began" (2 Timothy 1:9). ‘Mere good pleasure’ means that the reason lies in God, not in us. Paul's word for God's good pleasure in Ephesians 1:5 and 1:9 is eudokia (εὐδοκία), what God delights to do. Moses told Israel that God chose them not because they were many, but because he loved them and kept his oath to their fathers (Deuteronomy 7:7-8). Charles Spurgeon, the London Baptist preacher, said the same: "the reason of his salvation is not to be found in him, but in God" Spurgeon, Sovereign Grace and Man's Responsibility.

Election does not bypass the means. Paul thanks God that he chose the Thessalonians "to be saved by the sanctification of the Spirit and by faith in the truth", and called them to it through the gospel (2 Thessalonians 2:13-14). The Canons of Dort (1619), of the continental Reformed churches, define election as God's unchangeable purpose by which, "out of mere grace, according to the sovereign good pleasure of His own will", he chose from the fallen race a certain number to redemption in Christ Canons of Dort 1.7.

The Reformed confess that election rests on nothing God foresaw in us. The Remonstrants, who followed Arminius, and the Methodists of Wesley's line teach election in view of foreseen faith: God chooses in Christ the people he knows beforehand will believe The Five Articles of Remonstrance; Arminius, Declaration of Sentiments. Lutherans, in the Formula of Concord, trace God's choosing to grace alone and hold that he has predestined no one to damnation Formula of Concord, Art. 11. The Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth spoke of Jesus Christ as both the electing God and the elected man, in whom God chose humanity and took its rejection on himself; Barth would neither teach nor rule out that all will finally be saved Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2. Within the Reformed family, infralapsarians and supralapsarians differ over the order of God's decrees.

John Calvin reminded those who handle these depths that God's wisdom here is something "which it is his pleasure that we should not apprehend but adore" Calvin, Institutes 3.21.1.

The covenant of grace

The next two proof texts say that this salvation does not come by the law: no one is justified by works of the law, but the righteousness of God has been revealed through faith in Jesus Christ (Romans 3:20-22).

For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come from the law. But the Scripture pronounces all things confined by sin, so that by faith in Jesus Christ the promise might be given to those who believe.

Galatians 3:21-22

Where the covenant of life was broken, God made a covenant of promise. It was first given just after the fall, in the word about the woman's offspring (Genesis 3:15), and carried on in the covenant to be God to Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 17:7). The Larger Catechism teaches that it "was made with Christ as the second Adam, and in him with all the elect as his seed" Larger Catechism, Q. 31. The headship of the last two weeks is turned around: as we fell in the first Adam, so we are raised in the second. The Reformed Baptists' Second London Confession of 1689 confesses this covenant in almost the words of the Westminster Confession WCF 7.3, as one:

wherein he freely offereth unto Sinners, Life and Salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them Faith in him, that they may be saved; and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal Life, his holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to believe.

Second London Confession 7.2

The same confession adds that the covenant is founded in "that Eternal Covenant transaction, that was between the Father and the Son, about the Redemption of the Elect" 7.3. Many Reformed theologians call this the covenant of redemption, though not all Reformed use the name.

Grace and election, in the Christian Doctrine course, sets the views side by side; the Reformed Faith course teaches the decree, Dort and the two covenants at length. See also What is predestination? and covenant of grace.

To ponder this week

If God's choosing rests on his good pleasure and not on my worth, what does that do this week to my pride, and to my fear? Read Ephesians 1:3-14 as a hymn: Paul does not argue about election there, he blesses God for it. If the reason for my salvation is not in me, I have nothing to boast of, and no reason to despair over what I lack.

Practice