Chapter 7: Of God's Covenant With Man

Understanding The Westminister Confession of Faith
Chapter 7:
Of God’s Covenant with Man

A covenant is an agreement or contract between two parties.

However, as Andrew Fausset, a noted Bible commentator explains, the word “in the strict sense, as requiring two independent contracting parties, cannot apply to a covenant between God and man. His covenant must be essentially one of gratuitous promise, an act of pure grace on His part.”

Hence, in Psalm 89:28, “covenant” is explained by the parallel word “mercy” - “My mercy will I keep for him forevermore, and my covenant shall stand fast with him.”

While the covenant is gratuitous on God’s part, Fausset says it “requires man’s acceptance of and obedience to it, as the consequence of His grace expeerienced, and the end which He designs to His glory.”

The principal covenants are: a) the covenant of works - God promising to save and bless men on condition of perfect obedience; and, b) the covenant of grace - or God’s promise to save men of their believing in Christ and receiving him as their Master and Saviour.

Describing this latter covenant, the WCF says, “Man by his fall having made himself incapable of life by that (first) covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace: wherein he freely offered unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him that they may be saved, and promising to giving unto all those that are ordained unto life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe.”

To put this in simple terms: man by his fall has made himself incapable of life by the first covenant. The Lord is pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace, and sovereignty imposed it. He did not consult man to see if he would like such a covenant and then institute it. God consulted only Himself. The covenant of grace was an agreement not between God and man but between the Persons of the Godhead. God the Father agreed to give His son. Christ agreed to give
His life a ransom for many. And the Holy Spirit agreed to make actual application of this redemption to those whom the Father had chosen.

Knowing this, how can we not thank God our Saviour and obey His word?

In Christ,
Rev Robert Chew