Happy is the man who can lift his eyes to heaven and say with David, "The Lord hath made with me an everlasting covenant." The covenant of grace was made in eternity by the Persons of the Divine Trinity and secured forever the salvation of God's elect.
THE WORDS TRANSLATED "COVENANT" IN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS CLEARLY DEFINE THE MEANING OF THE COVENANT. Both the Hebrew and Greek words translated "covenant" mean "to create, to choose, and to dispose of". In the covenant of grace God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit created a scheme of grace, chose a people to save, and disposed of all things in sovereign predestination to accomplish the salvation of those chosen. In the New Testament the same word is at different places translated both "covenant" and "testament". It is the word we would use when speaking of a person's will, the appointment and disposition of all things in an estate. In the covenant of grace the Triune God appointed his heirs and appointed their inheritance of glory.
THIS COVENANT IS CALLED BY VARIOUS NAMES IN THE WORD OF GOD. We sometimes call it "the covenant of grace" because all grace flows to chosen sinners from this covenant (Eph. 1:3-14). Sometimes we call it "the covenant of redemption" because it is the covenant by which our redemption was secured. But in the Word of God it is called by four specific names:
1. A COVENANT OF PEACE (Isa. 54:10; Mal. 2:5) - In the covenant the Lord God laid down the terms of peace and reconciliation, Christ agreed to meet those terms, and peace was promised to the chosen.
2. A COVENANT OF LIFE (Mal. 2:5) - It contains in it the promise of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, made to Christ as the Representative of his people before the world began.
3. A NEW COVENANT (Jer. 31:31) - It is new in the sense that it is newly revealed in the gospel of Christ, and in the sense that it is ever new and never grows old.
4. AN EVERLASTING COVENANT (Heb. 13:20) - It is everlasting both ways. Made in eternity, it reaches to the endless infinity of eternity. It cannot be broken.
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