Covenant of Grace

 The gospel call comes forth from the covenant, and summons sinners into it. It is a voice from within the covenant, addressed to those that are without, with the view of bringing them within. Its administration is itself one of the stipulations of the covenant: “Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knewest not” (Isa. lv. 5). And its success is equally guaranteed by the covenant: “And nations that knew  not thee shall run unto thee, because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee” (idem). Such is the covenant intercommunion of the Father and the Son concerning the gospel call, stipulating that it shall be given, and that when given it shall not be without success. And it is, as it were, fresh from rehearsing and recording what he hath been a witness to between the Father and the Son concerning the gospel call, that the Spirit turns to us and ministers it to us, shining fresh in the light of covenant Divine counsels concerning it:— “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found; call ye upon him while he is near” (see vers. 6-13). It is therefore a sure source of inevitable error to overlook the relations between the call and the covenant; and, more particularly, it must most manifestly derange all scriptural and correct views, to seek for the call a basis broader than the covenant sup­plies. The call is a voice from within the covenant, summoning sinners to come within its gracious bonds. Of course, therefore, it is a universal call. The one thing which it takes for granted is that sinners are out­side the covenant. This is all that is requisite to render them fit subjects for its gracious proposal and authoritative requirement. It is, of course, therefore, a universal call, because it is a call addressed to those that are with­out. Is there any inconsistency between this and the fact that it calls them to come within the covenant, itself therefore coming from within, and resting on grounds not wider than those on which the covenant rests? Could it call sinners into the covenant if itself rested on grounds outside the covenant? Whatever is without the covenant, outside its limits — as an indefinite, unlimited atonement is—has nothing to do with the gospel call; can impart to it no validity, no strength, no enlargement; can constitute for it no real basis or foundation. An indefinite atonement, therefore, as pleaded for by some in the interests of the freeness of the gospel call, is one of the most self-contradictory and self-negativing devices that can be imagined.

Besides, it ought to be ever borne in mind that in the giving of the gospel call the preachers of the gospel are ambassadors, and ambassadors merely. We are minis­ters. We give the call ministerially. He who really calls is Christ. And when Christ, by His ambassadors, and in His instituted ordinances, gives forth the gospel call, it is a glorious exercise of Hi8 kingly office. But Christ executes His kingly office by covenant. The exercise of His kingly office cannot possibly be placed on any wider, broader, more gracious foundation than the Covenant of Grace. Not any more, therefore, can the gospel call. For, as we have said, the solitary thing which it takes for granted is that sinners are not inside—not yet interested in—this blessed covenant or constitution; that they are aliens from the blessed kingdom of which it is the charter. It is, therefore, in its essential nature obviously a universal call. It is so because it is a call to the covenant. What possible contradiction or want of harmony can there be between this and the fact that the call comes from within the covenant,—resting, therefore, on foundations as broad, neither more nor less, as those on which the covenant itself rests? For my part, I do not see what it is that is supposed to require, or even permit of reconciliation. On the contrary, to make the Call proceed upon grounds broader than the Covenant, and on considerations not contained within it, is, in my opinion, to create a necessity for reconciling and harmonising to an extent and of a kind which it will be found in strict reason utterly impossible to meet. The Call itself is destroyed in all the intrinsic worth and in all the professed design of it, as a call to the Covenant, and to all its free grace and sure and saving blessings, if it be a call coming from any quarter but the Covenant itself—be it even from Christ, if it be not from Christ as the covenant-head. It is in fact simply impossible to regard it as resting on any grounds, or as based on any considerations, save those which the Covenant embraces.

These considerations have been somewhat abstract as well as miscellaneous. But we propose to resume the subject in the following chapter, treating it in a somewhat more directly scriptural manner. For we should like to commend the federal theology to the younger preachers and students of our Churches. It seems to us to have fallen too much out of view; for what reason it is not easy to see. It is a noble category of revealed truth. It is a thoroughly scientific generalisation, commending itself by the ease with which it ranges, in their right positions and relations to each other, the great leading truths of the Word of God as these bear on the redemption that is in Christ: and it is unrivalled as an instrument of defence against the various attacks that are at present being made on the doctrine of Christ’s sacrifice as a true expiation of the sins of His people. We can compare it, in a strategic point of view, to nothing more aptly than to the lines of Torres Vedras in the old Peninsular campaign,—affording both a base of operation for forward movement, and an impregnable protection against hostile assault. Nor is it only or chiefly in a controversial point of view that we value the federal theology. The exposition of it adapts with the greatest ease, and with uniform acceptability, to the instruction of those who have believed the Gospel. It is always welcome to the children of God. And we should not like to see the day in Scotland when the least acceptable of candidates for the office of the ministry should be he who expounds most explicitly and richly the doctrine of the Covenant of Grace.

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Author

Hugh Martin (1821-1885) Was one of the young men training for the ministry of the Church of Scotland who, in 1843, cast in their lot with the Free Church of Scotland. In 1844 he became the first Free Church minister of Panbride where he remained for 14 years, and where his son, Alexander— the future Principal of New College — was born in 1857. In 1858 Hugh Martin became minister of Greyfriars Free Church, Edinburgh. Owing to ill-health, he retired from the pastorate in 1863, but followed an itinerant ministry, at home and abroad, until within a short time of his death. At a time when the Calvinism of the Reformed Church in Scotland was discarded in favour of rationalistic Modernism, he edited The British and Foreign Evangelical Review,  and The Watchword, thereby rendering invaluable service to Reformed evangelicalism.