TiL- Reformed Covenant Theology part 1

Welcome to the Truth in Love podcast. We enjoy being with you. We appreciate you being here with us.

Tonight we're going to be talking about covenant theology, Reformed covenant theology from a

Presbyterian perspective and a Reformed Baptist perspective. We're going to be looking at a particular book and Dan is going to help walk us through that book together.

Stick with us. How you doing,

Dan? I'm doing fantastic. Better than I expected. I have been for days. Allergy season comes late up here in New York, and so I've been struggling for like the last two weeks and finally today

I hadn't had to struggle so hard. I'm absolutely thrilled. I might still be a little bit puffy, but I'm nothing like I was.

Well, that means you could be with us with me tonight doing this. Absolutely, so there's drawbacks to everything.

We're going to be talking about covenant theology for a while. We don't know how long this series is going to last, but we'll see. We'll see how it goes.

As I have been growing, I know some people can say he's being a tossed to and fro, but I don't think just because I haven't completely landed means

I'm being tossed to and fro. I'm still learning. I'm still growing. I'm becoming Presbyterian.

I'll let you hold on to that. I'll let you hold on to that, but no, I would lean and I would have considered myself for a while Reformed Baptist.

I know you and one thing that I've learned, you are Presbyterian now.

And one thing that I've learned studying this covenant theology and and also listening to you guys and having these conversations is that it's kind of redundant.

Would you agree with that? Some people say it's kind of redundant to say Presbyterian covenant theology or Reformed Presbyterian.

Reformed and Presbyterian are almost like saying the same thing is what I'm hearing. They can be

Reformed has to do with the theology and Presbyterian has to do with church polity.

So, I don't know. Reformed Presbyterian is actually different than Reformed or Presbyterian, but that goes back specifically to the

Scottish Covenanters and that's our guys, the Reformed Presbyterians. RPCNA.

Yeah, RPCNA. In fact, we've got a whole international conference coming up where you're gonna have the

Reformed Presbyterians from Ireland, Scotland. I believe there's some coming from over from Australia, Japan, come from all over the world.

They're gonna meet with meet together. So, while our Synod for the RPCNA is meeting tomorrow actually, starts tomorrow.

That's gonna take place in July where the international guys come together and everybody talks.

So, if y 'all could pray for our Synod because they're going over some some pretty pretty intense stuff.

They'll be discussing whether or not we're gonna keep women deacons. They're gonna go over a bunch of stuff.

I think somebody's bringing up wine and communion. We've got somebody talking about what do you do when you're in a church that doesn't sing the

Psalms? There's a one of them's about the the meditorial kingship of Christ.

So, all of our all of our big distinctives are kind of being discussed in some way form or fashion.

So, be fun for them. At this time, don't know when whoever listens or watches will listen or watch this unless you're listening or watching live right now.

Yeah, the one or two of you. At the time we're doing this live, the

Southern Baptist Convention is happening this week. Oh, that's right. I saw their

Formula One car. Yeah, how about that? We're spending our money wisely, right? Well, I'm hoping what happened is and I don't know but I could see a situation where somebody who's involved in Formula One or IndyCar, I don't really know which one, said, hey, we've got a test car.

Somebody said, hey, we can wrap it. Wouldn't that be cool if we had it there? And it wasn't actually a lot of money and it was just something that would look cool and everybody donated their time and stuff.

Best case scenario. Worst case scenario, your Cooperative Fund money got blown on some ridiculous stuff.

So, hold your judgments till you figure out which one it is. Good call.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, wait for the body cam footage to come out before you make any decisions on that one.

One of the biggest things I've heard that's supposed to be going on is a law amendment that we, that there's a law amendment coming up that we're supposed to be, or the folks in attendance is supposed to be voting on and it's about making the the wording more clear on women in pastoral or elder position.

We would not be in friendly cooperation with the church that has a woman in any,

I think it says any pastoral or elder position. Sure. I think they're going to vote on that.

I think they're also going to vote on whether or not to amend the Baptist faith and message to This isn't a joke.

There's a bunch of jokes I could have gone, but to to add the Nicene Creed as a part of the Baptist faith and message,

I think from what I've been hearing, but yeah, I'm, once again, not Baptist. So, right,

I don't know, I still don't know how, where a good place is to keep up with all this stuff that's supposed to be happening.

I'd like to find that place other than hearing about it later. Good place to start.

It's not bad. Who's the other guy? Rod Martin from the executive committee.

He's a pretty good guy to follow on it. It was a fellow out in Texas. I think it's

Texas. Tom Buck. Good, good Baptist guy to listen to. They'll be opinionated, but they'll steer you in the right direction anyway.

Yeah, I think so. Good suggestion. All right. Well, and one more thing before we jump into the book and Dan is going to lead us in this discussion, but he's going to introduce the book and start the conversation.

But one other thing that I thought about, Dan, and we kind of have two perspectives and that's where I was going with this earlier about Baptist and then

Presbyterian. Reform Baptist perspective, Presbyterian perspective, but there's one other perspective.

And I was just curious what your thoughts are on this. When it comes to covenant theology, you've got a camp that would call themselves

New Covenant Theology. Some would somewhat describe them as progressive covenant theology.

Would they have a, say you and I are having this discussion looking at it from different perspectives. If we had a third party and they're a

New Covenant theologian, would they have a different perspective in this conversation or would they?

Yep, pretty much the first oh, I don't know, half of this book would be going over, wouldn't even matter.

Right. Well, and that would be something good to hear about. And maybe you can enlighten us along the way.

Yeah, I'm no expert, but I can give you a broad brushstrokes. Of course, like that camp is it's,

I'd say fairly new. There hasn't been a ton of literature put out.

they're still kind of finding their way on how to actually say stuff. So I don't know, it'd be really easy to misrepresent them.

Yeah, that's true. Well, I have some dear brothers that hold to the New Covenant theology. So I respect them and I respect their opinion.

So that's yeah, I'm not trying to bring in some crazy new ideas just because I have respect for my brothers that hold to that.

I thought it'd be interesting to hear their perspective on what we're talking about. Yeah, a Baptist covenant theology and a

Presbyterian or Reformed covenant theology are going to look they're going to be much more closely aligned than a

New Covenant perspective would be. Okay. Anyway, so I guess that brings us to our book that we're going to kind of go be going through.

We're not going to do like a solid review or I mean, we may reference it from time to time and do little quotes here and there, but mainly we're just going to go over the ideas in the chapters, maybe a chapter at a time, or if the chapters are dense, maybe a couple episodes at a time.

The book is by an OPC pastor named Harrison Perkins. It's called Reformed Covenant Theology.

Yeah, so one of the things I liked about it is they had it had what do you call it?

Reviews by both Baptist and Presbyterian types who found it very helpful.

It comes at it from a slightly different perspective. And what I mean by that is instead of a lot of works on covenant theology,

I approached the situation from a biblical theology standpoint.

So they trace the they trace the covenants throughout the scripture, biblically taking it as a whole to arrive at their conclusions, which

I think is great. This fella, while of course he's building biblically through there, he understands it to be more of a more of a he presents his material in more of a systematic way.

So it's it reads more like a systematic theology, but it's talking about biblical theology themes.

Which I thought was neat. So it kind of gets into some stuff where he examines some scripture and looks at different parts of especially in the later chapters.

He'll look at different things and how they relate as far as how the theology works together as a system.

It's pretty neat approach to it. But I guess if Rob doesn't have any questions or thoughts on the start, we'll just dive right into the first chapter a little bit, which is pretty basic.

Just talking about covenant theology. In opposition to covenant theology,

I guess folks, and I'm not going to presume anybody's background that may be watching this.

I do hope that our conversations reach folks in the pew.

Folks that that I interact with now, folks that I've interacted with in the past, folks that I'll interact with in the future.

But folks in the pew and sometimes they, like me growing up, there's terminology, didn't know it existed, that helps describe what you're being taught.

And I would say growing up, I was taught from a dispensational point of view.

That's kind of the opposition to covenant theology and what we're looking at.

I'll say this, when I was in certain dispensational churches growing up,

I heard some wild things about covenant theology, especially from our independent fundamental

Baptist friends. Wild stuff. It's where you get the term replacement theology.

It's from them, because they'll talk about how we say that the church has replaced

Israel and somehow we've replaced God's promises and we're and they say all sorts of wild stuff.

So if you are a dispensationalist or you don't really know, maybe just going to your church and you've heard the phrase covenant theology, before you tune us out, just give it a listen.

We're not going to be hitting hard and trying to step on any toes or anything. We're just going to present the material as it comes, talk about it, questions that we had and things that we're going through.

And all from a biblical perspective, as we use this book of the

God, I'm hoping we'll be going through, at least in later episodes, we'll be going more through scripture than anything.

So in a nutshell, would you agree that this dispensational theology or these two things, dispensationalism and covenantalism, are ways of interpreting scripture, the way we view scripture, right?

Or how God helps men. More so dispensationalism than covenant theology, because dispensationalism is an interpretive method.

Covenant theology is, I don't know, I don't want to sound uncharitable by saying that they just read the

Bible. It'd be kind of, but it's less of a grid to view things through and more of a storyline to follow, if that makes any sense.

And then the dispensationalism, they're going to look at how God has dealt with man in different dispensations, and that could have been in different forms or means.

Right, so you have to go back to the system itself in order to figure out how you should read the

Bible. So if, okay, I mean, this is taking place during this period of time, which means

I have to put this set of rules on it. So that means that this doesn't apply to me because it was to that people at that time.

So it only means this, and it just gets wild. Which, you know, to a degree,

I can see where some people can make that case because,

I mean, we don't follow, I mean, just like you and I were talking about before we went on the air, we were talking about Romans chapter 7 and how our relationship with the law is different.

And so I can sympathize with somebody who's saying, well, God deals with us, you know, differently because our relationship with the law is different.

But yeah, I think we'll, as we go through this reformed covenant theology book, we'll make a case for covenant theology and maybe see why it's a more biblical perspective than the dispensatory.

Yeah, I think so. It's interesting that you bring that up, because one of the things he brings up in the book,

I think it's on the first page. In fact, it's the first sentence. It says, covenant theology, how many words can

I say without copyright? I'm going to say a sentence and hope that's not enough.

I'm quoting Harrison Perkins on page one of this book. There you go. Covenant theology quite simply concerns our relationship with God, making it about our understanding of ultimate matters.

How are we with God? A couple pages later, he says, no, what is our standing with God?

Our standing with God is based on covenant. It's based on covenant because covenant is just a formal relationship between two folks or multiple folks.

So, how do we stand before God? We stand before God on the basis of our relationship with Him.

If that relationship is severed and there's sin in between, then that sin must be dealt with.

If we stand in relationship with God on the basis of Jesus Christ and His shed blood, then we have full communion with God.

So, that's how he starts off the book, that we are

Here's another quote from him. We are creatures made for communion with God and covenants are the way that God facilitates that communion with us.

I underlined that one too. It was a really good sentence. Well, to me, it's a bold sentence.

I mean, it's a bold sentence. It's a bold claim, but it's hard to argue what you're talking about.

How does God relate to man? When you read scripture, you see that He makes covenants.

He has made covenants with man. Right from the very beginning.

Yeah, I know some don't like to call the covenant with Adam about the

I know they don't like to call that the covenant in the garden, the covenant, but the Old Testament and other places calls it a covenant.

So, yeah, I'm just gonna go with that. All right.

So, if covenant theology is just how we stand with God, then it's kind of as far as our relationship goes, it'd be helpful to look at the covenants as they come up in scripture.

And so, it kind of divides them up into two different categories. There's the historical covenants, which are the ones that you find listed out in scripture.

So, you've got the covenant with Adam, with Noah, Moses, David, the new covenant, the ones that are actually written out in history.

Formally written out in history. So, you see them as they come up. These are the ones that God made with mankind in history that are recorded for us in scripture as they happen.

Does that make sense, Rob? Yeah. All right. So, he puts that in distinction to doctrinal covenants.

Not that these didn't happen in history, but these are covenants that are made that they kind of set a framework for the rest of our doctrine.

So, would you say those doctrinal covenants were made amongst the

Trinity? Well, some, some not.

He gives us three doctrinal covenants. So, he gives us three covenants that are a framework for the whole of history, of relational history between God and man.

So, he gives us three of them. And then within those three, you find all of the other covenants existing in history.

So, he says that two of them are covenants between God and man, and one of them is a covenant between the members of the

Godhead. So, here's what they are. Um, first you have the covenant of works.

Covenant of works is a covenant that took place between God and man, uh, between God and Adam, specifically when he told him in the garden, um, here is all the trees of the garden.

Uh, there's a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Do not eat it. If you eat it, you'll die.

So, he gave him a, a, uh, um, here's our relationship.

You're here with me. You're made in my image. I've said everything is good. You're naming all of the, the animals out here.

We're walking together in the cool of the day. Here's the only thing you can't do.

If you're going to be in good standing with me, here's the only thing you can't do. Don't eat that tree. Uh, the thing behind it was, um, there was going to be a reward for Adam listening, but he didn't.

Um, that we're going to bring it all out a lot more in the, in the next few episodes as we go through, but that's the basics, basis of the covenant of works.

So, that covenant, um, Rob, do you know if that covenant was kept or not? It was, it was not kept half of it.

Well, actually, and see, this is, this is going to come up probably much later on, but as I, as I'm studying covenant theology,

I veer off a little from, from the norm. When I said half of it, especially in this instance, specifically what we're talking about, you've got

God and Adam in a relationship here. Adam didn't keep his, but God was faithful with sure.

It still is. And that's one of the things that he brings out. Um, let me give

Harris, Harrison Perkins. Um, Oh, I just read it.

Believers should find immense comfort in knowledge and knowing that God has not determined his faith faithfulness to us by how he might feel at any given moment, but has made infallible promises to his people of ages past has kept those promises even to believers today.

So it doesn't, his faithfulness doesn't depend on us. Right. And his faithfulness doesn't depend on, you know, feelings, but his faithfulness depends on his promise, which he's going to keep.

Right. His, his word is sure. And he is, he's unchangeable and he is good. Yeah. Yeah. Um, where, where I kind of drift off from the norm,

I believe that the covenant of works was kept in Christ. Well, we'll get to that discussion on it, but let's, let's give the framework first.

The second doctrinal covenant is a covenant of redemption.

Covenant of redemption is that covenant between the persons of the Godhead where they decided, um, to redeem fallen man.

Um, so the, the persons of the Godhead decided that, that the father was going to decree that, that salvation was going to be made possible in Jesus Christ.

Jesus, uh, took on the responsibility of actually coming, being born of a virgin, living a perfect life, dying as a sacrifice for sins, taking those sins upon himself, laying in the grave for three days, rising again and being exalted in order to purchase salvation for mankind.

And the Holy spirit took on the role of, um, of applying that salvation to fallen man.

So that way they would actually have the redemption goes purchased by Christ. So the covenant of redemption is the covenant between the members of the

Godhead to save mankind through their various, um, dealings in the world, especially the dealings that, that led to, um, um,

Christ's death, burial and resurrection. So that means that in the old Testament, when the children of Israel about to be wiped out and God's promises couldn't have moved forward, that the children of Israel, when you see them being miraculously saved by like, uh, angel armies over on the tops of the mountains, where they confuse people and go down and they don't have to actually fight, but folks are, are killed on their behalf.

That's God's faithfulness to his promise to redeem mankind because he had promised further to redeem them through the nation of Israel, through the descendant of Israel.

So he, he kept his promises the whole way through. Um, the, the, the covenant that he made with the persons of the

Trinity, kept it all the way through history to where they all accomplished, um, the one goal of God in salvation as well as what we call the covenant of redemption that God chose to save.

And he did. There's one thing that I want to bring up about the covenant of redemption and one thing about, and one thing about the covenant of grace when, when we get to it next, um, and both of them relate to both covenants a little bit.

So let me throw the first, first one at you, since you were talking about the covenant of redemption. So help explain this to me.

We talk about the covenant of works first, and we talk about the fall of man through Adam, through one man, all man's sin.

And then we talk about the covenant of redemption. I know, I know the covenant of redemption comes second in the book and I know nothing surprises

God, but, but it almost comes across, you know, if you're the reader trying to learn this stuff, it almost comes across as a reaction to the fall of Adam.

So we've got to formulate this covenant of redemption because there's been a fall, a breach in contract.

Um, but I know that's not how the Trinity is eternal and, and, and Christ, um, is the lamb slain before the foundation of the world.

So it's, it's not a reactionary thing. No, you're exactly right.

When it says the lamb slain before the foundation of the world, the plan that Jesus Christ would die for the sins of men came about in, in that inner

Trinitarian covenant before we were ever created. So, so God created knowing that, that the fall would occur, knowing that someone would, that he would need to redeem us.

And so the covenant of redemption was, was made before, uh, before we were even created, you know, before the foundations of the world, before let there be light was, um,

God's promise within himself to, to do this for a people he hadn't even made yet.

Right. And that has a lot of implications to God's sovereignty. Sure does.

Like all of it. Yeah, it really does.

Um, so it's something to look into. Oh yeah. Even decent.

Yeah. Uh, the third, uh, doctrinal covenant is a covenant of grace, which is that covenant between God and man, that he would redeem us, uh, through Jesus Christ, that it was no longer because of that, that, that though we had fallen and broken the covenant of works, that we would then be saved through Christ who would come and redeem humanity.

So it was no longer on the basis of the works of the law because we had broken the law is now on the basis of the grace of God giving to us what we didn't deserve in Christ.

So you've got those, those three, uh, covenants, the, the covenant of works, which was broken by mankind, kind of a redemption, uh, within the

Godhead that he would save people in the covenant of grace, which is God saying to mankind, uh, if you wish to be in right relationship with me, it must be on the basis of the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

Well, now you, you forced it out of me. I have two questions now on the covenant of grace.

We're out of time. Yeah, we're out of time. We've had to come back later.

That was a teaser. No. Um, I would like to ask you these questions and, and see how off track

I am in my thinking. Um, because I, I believe in covenant theology.

I believe in the covenants and that's how God has determined and chosen to interact with man with, with covenants.

Um, I agree with these covenants, um, but how they're, how they're fleshed out, how they, uh, work out maybe a little bit differently.

And so I'm wondering how far off track I am from historic, um, covenant reform, covenant theology.

So, so with the covenant kind of works and, and how you explained it is how

I understand traditionally it's explained, explained here in the book, but kind of works ended with Christ after Christ, the covenant of grace.

That's how we obtain a right relationship with God is, is through his grace.

Don't know. Grace. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that. Okay.

Uh, mankind is still under the covenant of works. Okay. Um, the, a broken and failed covenant.

That is the, that is the way that mankind is still. Um, and I'm going to have to say more than one thing to not sound completely heretical here.

So just give me a chance. Uh, the covenant of works is still in place in that we are still covenant breakers before God because of sin.

God has told us do not send. We with Adam reached up and grab the fruit and send ourselves.

We are all breakers of the covenant of works. So that's still there.

Okay. Um, however, uh, covenant of grace, uh, like it says in Romans that we would die to the law as we were buried with Christ, as we, as crisis come to make a new humanity on the basis of his obedience.

So that would be where, where, um, covenant of grace comes in.

So covenant of grace then is salvation promise to mankind through Christ, which happens, uh, right after the fall.

When you, when we see the, the first, uh, promise to, uh, to crush the head of the serpent.

And then we see the, the clothes of, of, of animal skins as the animal slaughtered in front of them.

And then they were given the clothes of animal skins. Um, so I had stopped right there.

Cause it didn't really, it's not like a, they're running together. We are all guilty of breaking the covenant of works, but the covenant of grace is the only way that someone has ever been saved because it is

God's promise to mankind that he will save us through Jesus Christ. And that's kind of where I was going with it, that I see them running parallel, see them running together.

Um, and that's why I mentioned earlier that, that I see that Christ where Adam failed

Christ, um, succeeded in fulfilling the covenant of work.

Sure. That's why, that's why Christ is called the second Adam. Right. And, and in the old

Testament, we, we know that, um, Abraham is kind of righteous because of faith.

So, so we see, we see faith happening, granted in the old

Testament. Sure. And, and so I see them running parallel and I don't,

I don't see them ending just fulfilled in Christ. All right.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't know what you mean by that, but I can see several ways where I would agree with you.

So we'll say, okay, until we get there. So, so if you say the covenant of works is, is the, you, you gotta obey

God perfectly to be in a right relationship with God. Well, I'm in a right relationship with God because the, the law was kept perfectly.

It wasn't me. It was Christ. Sure. And so I am in a right relationship with God because of the covenant of works, but not because of me, but because of Christ.

Well, not kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Because, because of, on the basis of Christ's obedience.

Right. On his obedience, not mine. Yep. And because I couldn't obey it, he extends grace as a gift to me based on what he's accomplished.

Yep. Yeah. So, so we're saved by the covenant of works and by the covenant of grace and in Christ is the.

I, I, I, I understand what you're saying, but it might be a little theologically.

Gymnastics. No, fuzzy to say it that way.

Okay. Yeah. Cause, cause it's not, cause we're not saved through the covenant made with Adam in the garden.

We're saved through the covenant made between God and mankind on the basis of righteousness.

So while that obedience that we didn't do in the covenant of works caused our downfall and our damnation, the obedience that does exist in Christ is what's given to us as our righteousness for salvation.

So it's not the covenant of works that properly speaking, but it is the obedience that was required in the covenant of works that Christ accomplishes for us.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just worded a lot better. That's the

Presbyterian. But, but in either case,

Christ gets the credit. Yeah. Yeah. You have to. Yeah. We're, we're credited with his righteousness.

It's an alien righteousness to us. It's his. It doesn't belong to us. We didn't earn it. Couldn't earn it.

Yep. Yep. So here's my second question. Here's my second question on the covenant of grace.

So this seems like you're talking about the covenant between the

Trinity when it comes to the covenant of redemption about saving man, redeeming man. And part of that here is the covenant of grace.

God extends grace to us or grants that gives us grace so that we may be saved.

So this sounds real individualistic to me. From my understanding, post -millennialism is popular, most popular probably in the

Presbyterian realm or denomination. And when it comes to post -millennialism, we see a success eventually in the world.

And so here in these covenants, I'm seeing a more individualistic aspect and that, that kind of,

I see a separation. I don't see where, where that success of his covenant, his gospel is, is discussed here in covenant theology.

That success that he's going to have in the entire world where he is authority in all spheres of, of authority.

I see a disconnect.

I don't see how, how it could be disconnected because you're starting at the very beginning where there was just God and man, all of the government that needed to be was there.

All the family structure, government, the way that things were run, work, everything was all there in the covenant of works.

All of that was, was there. It was in small form because there's just a couple of folks, but it was all there.

So when we fell, we as, as, as mankind fell and that relationship was broken.

So in the redemption of mankind, you see all those things put back together.

Because he did, he's not just redeeming the soul of man.

He's redeeming mankind as a whole because he's, he's redeeming his creation that the creation that he had, the purpose that he had for us in the very beginning is what he's redeeming us for and what he's redeeming us to.

In fact, the, the, the, the blessings that, that Adam would have had as he kept the covenant of work, had he kept the covenant of works is blessing that we have to look forward to today.

Only I would say even greater because we have, we've been so linked with Christ through, through our adoption as sons that we're in even greater communion than we would have been if Adam would have been, would have been faithful.

So would it be okay if I stated like this, that even though it may not be specifically addressed in this section that we're talking about, let's say

Adam and Eve before the fall, they had, they had a mandate, they had a duty, go and go and do this, fill the earth, subdue it.

They fell, therefore they, they didn't and they couldn't fulfill that obligation.

So with, within that covenant of redemption, not only are we saved for glory or for heaven, but we're, we're saved and that ability to fulfill that duty is reignited.

We are, we are saved by grace.

We're saved through faith. And we are his workmanship, creating

Christ Jesus for good works. What other works would there be that are good except for the ones that God had given us to do?

And especially the ones that God had given us to do as his creatures in the unfallen state. So it's kind of understood that we are redeemed so that we can fulfill those good works.

It's, yeah, it's, it's not just a, imagine, imagine you're a, well, imagine you're the prodigal son.

You have everything and you fall, you go into sin, you're over there eating pig pods.

You come home. And when you get home, the father gives you the ring, the robe over here, and you're brought right back into where you were before.

So his redemption wasn't just, okay, you can live now. His redemption was that he was restored to his place in relationship with the father.

And that's, that's what redemption is. That's why the Pharisees were ticked off that all these old sinners were able to, you know, have, have their place, their right standing with the father restored.

And that's why an understanding of the covenant of grace makes it so amazing. Yeah. Well, it shows us where we stand with God and then it gives us the covenants unite the whole storyline throughout the whole

Bible. So you can see from one end to the other, this is what God is doing. This is how we understand our relationship with him.

And this is how we know what God is doing throughout history, because he's told us, this is what

I'm doing. Now that looks different to us in different situations, but it's still

God doing the same thing throughout history. Right. God looks kind of jacked up at some points, but God being faithful to his promises, but God is still being faithful to everything that he's ever done.

Yeah. He's still being perfect and flawless. Yeah. So, I mean,

I guess we covered, that's basically the first chapter. We covered law and grace.

That was the two basic other principles that he brought up. But he did kind of put it to you at the end.

And I don't know if he actually came out and said it, but this is what I took from it. It kind of made you ask yourself, or at least me, where do

I stand? Am I under this covenant of works that's been broken by me?

Or am I under the covenant of grace where I have the promise of salvation secured by Jesus Christ?

The salvation that's only brought by his power, his grace, and received by faith.

So that's kind of what I took away from this first chapter. That's where I was left saying, where do

I stand? And if I stand, I stand either alone because of my own sin, or I stand in Christ because Christ has done some amazing work on my behalf.

Yeah, absolutely. And two sentences from Perkins to conclude the end of that chapter.

He says, so the law shows us how we need the promise because sinners cannot obtain God's blessing, but by grace.

And then post -grace, post -salvation, we still strive to keep God's law as an expression of our new life and gratitude for redemption.

So we can't keep it. We don't exert ourselves.

It's like climbing a rope of sand. We can never do enough. We can never make it to the moon on a rope of sand or even an inch trying to do it that way.

But Jesus, because of the plan from eternity past, came down willingly, fulfilled all the law's demands in a way that we could never please

God. But he did it to glorify his father, to fulfill and be faithful to the promise, and to give us life so that we could be restored and be able to do these good works to bring him glory here on this earth.

And so there's no other call, no more important call to any of us than have we bent the knee to our king, turn from our rebellion, turn from our sin, and put our faith and trust in his work and receive his grace.

If you haven't, repent today, repent of your sin, put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, and join us in this kingdom of glorious work for the king.

Dan, would you close us in prayer? Sure. Dear heavenly father, thank you for your goodness, for your grace, for your covenanting with mankind.

We pray that we would remember you, your goodness, your holiness, and we would honor you as king, the one who deserves to be worshiped, the one who's created us and called us to be in relationship with him.

In Christ's name we pray, amen. Amen. Well, I've enjoyed conversation number one on Reformed Covenant Theology by Harrison Perkins and my brother

Dan. Hopefully we'll do it again soon, and we'll see you soon to do part number two of Reformed Covenant Theology.

Remember that Jesus is king. Go live in the victory of Christ, to speak with the authority of Christ, and go share the gospel of Christ.