Query 5. Freedom from the Covenant of Works
QUERY 5. — Is it unique to believers to be free of the commanding power of the law, as a Covenant of Works?
Though our saying that we cannot comprehend how the Covenant of Works, as such, continues to have a commanding power over believers; that covenant form of it being done with away in Christ with respect to them, gives no sufficient foundation to this query, since we affirm nothing concerning any but believers, whose freedom from the commanding power of that covenant, the query seems to allow for as much as we do. We answer affirmatively: for, since it is only to believers that the Spirit of God in Scripture says, “You are not under the law,” Rom 6.14 the main import of this phrase is subjection to the commanding power of it, as a covenant, — “but under grace;” and since, by virtue of their union with Christ, only believers are actually freed from being under the law by Christ’s being made under it, i.e., under its command (as above) as well as under its curse for them. And since according to our Confession, it is the peculiar privilege of believers to therefore have no interest in it — that is, not to be under the law as a Covenant of Works, to be justified or condemned by it — we can allow no others besides believers, to be invested with that immunity.
All unbelievers within, as well as without, the pale of the visible church, since they seek righteousness only by the works of the law, and are strangers to the Covenant of Grace, we always took to be debtors to the whole law, in their own persons. And their obligation, under the DO, or commanding power of that covenant, we took to be inviolably firm, till such time as by faith they have recourse to him who is “the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes;”Rom 10.4 Otherwise we thought, and still think, that if their obligation to the command of that covenant is dissolved, merely by living under an external gospel dispensation, they would be cast completely loose from being under any covenant at all, contrary to the common received doctrine of the Protestant churches: namely, that every person whatever is in and under one or the other of the two covenants of works and grace. And unless they are under the commanding power of the Covenant of Works, they could never be found transgressors of the law of that covenant by any actual sin of their own, nor could they be bound over anew under the covenant-curse by it.
It is true that by the fall, the Covenant of Works is made weak and ineffectual as a covenant, to give us life, by reason of our weakness and disability to fulfil it, being antecedently sinners and obnoxious to its curse — which no person can be, and yet at the same time have a right to its promise. Hence, for anyone to seek life and salvation by it now, is no less than labouring after an impossibility. Yet it nevertheless continues in full force as a law requiring of all sinners, while they continue in their natural state — without taking hold of Christ and the grace of the new covenant by faith — requiring of them, we say, personal and absolutely perfect obedience, and threatening death upon every the least transgression. As we said above, believers and only believers, are freed from the commanding power of this law, requiring universal holiness in such rigour, that on the least failure in substance, circumstance, or degree, all is rejected, and we are determined to be transgressors of the whole law. “But to suppose that a person,” says Dr. Owen, “is by any means freed from the curse due to sin, and then, upon the performance of the perfect sinless obedience which the law requires, to deny that he should have a right to the promise of life by it, is to deny the truth of God, and to reflect dishonour upon God’s justice. Our Lord himself was justified by the law; and it is immutably true that he who does the things of the law, shall live in them.” “It is true.’’ adds the same author, “that God never formally and absolutely renewed or gave this law as a Covenant of Works a second time; nor was there any need for him to do so, unless it were declarative only. And so it was renewed at Sinai; for the whole of it being an emanation of eternal right and truth, it abides and it must abide in full force forever. Wherefore, it is only broken as a covenant so far that all mankind having sinned against its command — and so by guilt, with the impotency to obedience which ensued thereupon — they defeated themselves of any interest in its promise, and the possibility of attaining any such interest; thus they cannot have any benefit by it. But as to its power to oblige all mankind to obedience, and the unchangeable truths of its promises and threatenings, it abides the same as it was from the beginning. Introducing another covenant (he adds again on the same topic) inconsistent with, and contrary to it, does not instantly free men from the law as a covenant. For though a new law abrogates a former law inconsistent with it, and frees all from obedience, it is not so in a covenant, which operates not by sovereign authority, but becomes a covenant by consent of those with whom it is made. So there is no freedom from the old covenant by the constitution of the new, till it is actually complied with. In Adam’s covenant, we must abide under obligation to duty and punishment, till by faith we are interested in the new.”
From all of this it appears to be no cogent reasoning to say that if the unbeliever is under the commanding power of the Covenant of Works, then he would be under two opposite commands at once, namely: to seek a perfect righteousness in his own person, and to seek it also by faith in a surety; for though the law now requires of us both active and passive righteousness in our own persons, and likewise, upon the revelation of Jesus Christ in the gospel, as Jehovah our righteousness, obliges us to believe in and submit to him as such, yet as it is in many other cases of duties, the law requires both these of us, not in sensu composito, as they say, but in sensu diviso. The law is content to sustain and hold for good the payment of a responsible surety, though it provides none itself; and it wills us, being insolvent ourselves, to cheerfully, thankfully, and without delay, accept the unparalleled favour offered to us. But till the sinner, convinced of his undoneness, otherwise accepts, uses, and pleads that benefit in his own behalf, the law will, and does, go on in its just demands and diligence against him. Having never had pleasure in the sinful creature, by reason of our unfaithfulness, it can easily allow for the marriage to another husband, upon a lawful divorce, after fair count and reckoning, and full satisfaction and reparation has been made for all the invasions upon, and violations of the first husband’s honour. But when the sinner, unwilling to hear of any such motion, still clings to the law, its first husband, what wonder is it that the law in that case, goes on to use the sinner as he deserves? In short, this pretended absurdity, at worst, amounts to no more than this: Make full payment yourself, or find me good and sufficient payment by a surety, till which time I will continue to proceed against you without mitigation or mercy. Wherefore, the unbeliever is justly condemned by the law, both because he did not continue to do all things written in the book of the law, and because he did not believe on the name of the Son of God.