Sword & Trowel 2016: Issue 2


John Bunyan – ‘The word “law” and the word “grace” in this sixth [chapter] of Romans, do hold forth the two covenants which all men are under; that is, either the one or the other.’


and demands, and if any individual or any nation could keep these, they would hold the key to happiness, bliss, prosperity and life, now and eternally. But because of sin the law condemns, and the law of Moses looks like doomed works rather than grace. It appears to be a developed reiteration of the covenant of works given in the Garden of Eden. Is this so? Or can the Presbyterian school of thought be right which takes the line (enshrined in the Westminster Confession of Faith) that the Mosaic covenant is an administration of the covenant of grace? Without doubt, many great theolo-


gians of the Presbyterian viewpoint have said beautiful things about God’s covenants and his dealings with men, but Baptists back in the seventeenth century believed they were greatly mistaken in identifying the Mosaic covenant as an adminis- tration of the covenant of grace. In due course the Baptists published their own version of the Westminster Confession with radically altered state- ments on divine covenants. Leading the way in the protest


against Sinai being gracious was the towering theologian John Owen (not a Baptist) whose writings were devas- tating to the Presbyterian view of the covenant, even though he stood with them in so many things. The fi rst and chief problem with the idea that Sinai was gracious is that the New Testament identifi es


it as a covenant of works. We have only to read Galatians and Hebrews to fi nd an unbridgeable chasm placed between the covenant under Moses and the covenant of grace gradually unfolded in the promises of the Old Testament and fully revealed in the New. They are described as oppo- sites.


The second problem is a whole


group of errors that the wrong view of Sinai brings into churches, be- cause if you make the law covenant a dispensation of the covenant of grace, you make the New Testament church a continuation of the Old Testament church, making the two almost identical. You say that baptism is the equivalent of circumcision, and admit people into Christ’s church without professing faith; you make New Testament church government hierarchical in some form, similar to the government of the Old Testa- ment. Also, you set aside the goal of a regenerate church membership, because that was not a feature of the


God’s Parallel Covenants page 5


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