5 Christ Our Surety
CHAPTER
5
Christ Our Surety
But the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, and it is founded on better promises. (Hebrews 8:6)
For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. (2 Corinthians 1:20)
Is not my house right with God?/ Has he not made with me an everlasting covenant,/ arranged and secured in every part?/ Will he not bring to fruition my salvation and grant me my every desire? (2 Samuel 23:5).
Covenants are more common and more sacred in Oriental countries than in western society. The Arab chief will guard with his life the person with whom he has made the covenant of bread and salt. God has accommodated Himself to human speech and customs by revealing the glorious plan of mercy to us under the figure of a covenant, and has bound Himself to us by bonds so secure and sacred that they are an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, if we have fled for refuge to the hope set before us in the gospel.
The covenant of redemption
This takes us away back to the ages before the fall and the revelation of God’s mercy. In the counsels of eternity the covenant was made between the Father and the Son. Then it was that, foreseeing the ruin that was to come upon the human race through the awful power of sin, God the Father entered into a covenant with His beloved Son, guaranteeing to Him, on condition that He should assume the liabilities and the nature of the fallen race, to give to Him for them a complete salvation.
On the part of Christ it was necessary that He should take the sinner’s place; that He should stoop from His high and exalted position and become not only a man, but a despised and rejected man, a man of sorrows; that He should bear the taunts and cruelties of man, the pains of death, the assaults and insults of the devil and all his regions of the dead and the throne of intercession as a merciful High Priest, bearing the burdens of His people, making continual intercession for them, enduring their provocations, infirmities and failures and guarding them with unceasing love, until His work might be completed in all their lives.
On the Father’s part, He promised on account of the fulfillment of these conditions that He should give eternal life to all that received His Son and freely forgive and justify them from all their transgressions and create within them a new heart. He also promised that His Holy Spirit should sanctify and perfect them in holiness, should supply to them all needed grace, power, love and blessing, should accept them as the sons of God, make them the heirs of His glory and partakers of the divine nature, and should at last raise them from the dead and glorify them with Jesus in the ages to come, with a place of honor and blessing higher than Adam ever knew, higher than angels will ever possess, and more than compensating for all the evils and miseries of the fall.
This covenant Jesus Christ accepted. “Here I am, I have come!” was His glad answer, “to do your will, O my God;/ your law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:7a, 8). And so He came, lived, loved and died, and at last could say, in His closing prayer, as He committed His work to the Father, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do” (John 17:4), and on the cross could shout, “It is finished” (John 19:30).
Then the Father put His seal upon the finished work by raising Him from the dead, and so declaring forever that the covenant had been fulfilled, the conditions met and the great redemption completed. Christ’s ascension from the tomb was the seal of this; the coming of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost was a second seal; the conversion of every believer since had been a further seal that the covenant is ratified and forever holds fast. Every answer to prayer in the name of Jesus, every blessing that comes to our spiritual life, is an echo from the cross repeating, “It is finished”; and we know that the covenant is fulfilled, and “arranged and secured in every part” (2 Samuel 23:5b). This is the ground of our salvation. It is not because we have a covenant with God, but Jesus has; and we simply accept Him. We come into His covenant, for He could say to the Father, “You granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him” (John 17:2); and then He could add, “protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me—so that they may be one as we are one” (John 17:11b).
Our salvation, therefore, is wholly dependent upon our accepting Jesus, and this brings to us all the promises of the covenant that He has ratified and fulfilled. Therefore, “no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes,’ in Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:20a). Therefore, to the last moment of our life, we have no personal claim upon God for anything. Everything we receive is the infinite mercy of God in Christ and for His sake; and to the last breath of life, we will never receive anything that is not the pure undeserved mercy of God for His sake. How very simple this makes salvation! How very strong our consummation in Christ! How very sacred our hope! How mighty the anchor that holds us in the storm of temptation and doubt and fear!
The revelation of God’s covenant
The law of Moses was not the covenant of God which He designed to be His permanent bond of union with His people. It was simply a temporary revelation, similar to the covenant of works made at the creation of man, which God knew they would not keep, and which was designed, not to save men, not to sanctify them, but to reveal to them their sin and to show the need of a higher covenant of grace and mercy in Christ, even the covenant of grace which Christ has brought in.
The first full revelation of God’s covenant of grace was made to Abraham, and the covenant of Abraham still holds good for all believers. This was not intended for the Jewish people exclusively, but was designed to include all the children of faith, of whom Abraham was the spiritual father. This the apostle clearly teaches us in the epistle to the Galatians, where he tells us that “those who believe are children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you.’ So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith” (3:7–9).
The essence of the covenant with Abraham was the promise of the seed, and this was Christ, so that Abraham’s covenant was just that Jesus was to come and do all things in accordance with the eternal covenant of redemption, of which we have previously spoken.
This covenant Abraham received in the simplest way by naked faith, but he did not do anything to deserve it. He just believed God. God came to him with a revelation of His promise and mercy, and Abraham accepted it like a child and began to act accordingly, and his life was simply one of trust and trustful obedience. For this, God blessed him with His friendship and made him father of all who have since been received into that covenant friendship.
Much more fully in the later Scriptures do we find this covenant unfolding. Particularly in the writings of Jeremiah does God reveal to His people, in the darkest hour of their sin and suffering, His future plans of grace and mercy. “The time is coming,” we read in Jeremiah 31:31–34:
“when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the LORD.
“This is the covenant I will make with the
house of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the
LORD,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the LORD.
“For I will forgive their wickedness,
and will remember their sins no more.”
That this is the covenant of the gospel is perfectly certain from the fact that in the epistle to the Hebrews it is twice quoted by the Holy Ghost as the rule of God’s dealings with His people today and as the bond into which He brings them in Jesus Christ, who is the surety of this better covenant established upon better promises.
Promises of the covenant
The promises of this covenant are very wonderful. The first of them is our sanctification. It is very glorious that the thing that God first undertakes to do is to make and keep us right. Instead of giving us an outward law and compelling us to keep it without power, He promises to put it in our hearts, to make us live it, to make us incorporate it into our being, to enshrine it in our affections, to make it our very nature, until we shall live it and keep it, spontaneously, joyfully, lovingly and with our whole heart. This is what the Holy Spirit does, and therefore, on the day of Pentecost, the anniversary of the giving of law, He came to be the inner law of holiness and power in every believer’s heart.
Next, He promises to be our God. He next comes to us to be our all-sufficiency for every need. He lets us own Him and possess Him as our God and use Him in His infinite resources for every need. Further, He promises that we will know the Lord for ourselves and have His light and guidance, not being dependent upon others to teach, but receiving directly from His will and mind for us.
Finally, it includes complete forgiveness and eternal obliteration of all sin and transgression, the blotting out of the past, entire justification, and the treating of His children as if they had not sinned.
Beloved, will you take this mighty covenant? It is yours by purchase of the Redeemer’s blood; and if you simply accept Jesus, “how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things” (Romans 8:32b)? What can you need besides this mighty provision?
The security of this covenant
He says, “[It is] an everlasting covenant,/ arranged and secured in every part” (2 Samuel 23:5). Again He says, “ ‘Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed,/ yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken/ nor my covenant of peace be removed,’ says the Lord, who has compassion on you” (Isaiah 54:10).
The reason it is so secure is that it is not dependent upon us at all, but on its great surety, the Lord Jesus Christ. If we were dependent upon our works in the slightest particular, we should fail and wreck all our prospects. But He has confirmed it and therefore it must stand, and if we simply stand in Him, trusting and following Him, He will accomplish all its provisions in us and for us. Therefore the apostle says, “Therefore, the promise comes by faith, that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring” (Romans 4:16a). If it had been of works it could not have been sure; but it is by faith, and faith in nothing but receiving a gift, thanking Him for it, and continuing to trust Him for it.
Again, it is sure because God not only promised it, but He has covenanted it and sworn to it. The very strongest language has been employed to emphasize the absolute security of this great promise of mercy, “that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged” (Hebrews 6:18). If we simply have fled for refuge and are holding fast to our hope in Christ and to Christ our hope, the anchor must hold amid all the storms of doubt and temptation.
Again, it is secure because it is based on God’s pure mercy and not upon our deserving. He takes us from the beginning and He holds us to the end as the children of His mercy. It is not merely that He takes us at first in mercy and afterwards treats us according to our deserving, but all the way along we must recognize ourselves as worthless and undeserving, living upon His mercy, and saved and sanctified through His free grace.
Therefore our very sanctification, instead of being a merit, is simply a richer mercy, and the apostle says, “those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:17b).
It is so sweet to feel that we are ever lying in the bosom of His mercy, and that we claim His great salvation with the consciousness of our nothingness and worthlessness and yet of our infinite and everlasting life in Christ! Therefore the apostle has said that “no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:20a). Everything we ever claim in answer to believing prayer must come through His mercy and covenant; but we claim that all for this great reason, “for Jesus’ sake.” They all are yes at the beginning, and shall be amen at the end, for we simply claim them and hold to them for His sake and in His name. He is the surety of our covenant.
His secure and everlasting covenant
Or, will we say that the yes is God’s assurance, His repeated word, His second immutable thing, and the Amen is the echo of our faith as it takes Him at His word and declares it shall be done. Thank God for His secure and everlasting covenant. Thank God that in Christ it covers us. Let us take it, and let our names be written in it afresh and cover with it all our future way.
Let us cover with it our sins behind, our hearts within, our way before, our hours of temptation and conflict, our hours of service, our ignorance and helplessness, our perils and our paths of difficulty all the way down to the tomb, all the way up to His coming. It covers all right up to the throne; and the anchor will hold, until, within the veil, all the storms are past and the surges swell no more, and we will say around the throne, with a great shout, “Salvation belongs to our God,/ who sits on the throne,/ and to the Lamb” (Revelation 7:10).
Have you been thinking mostly of your faith and your works and your fidelity to God? Have you not, perhaps been somewhat under the covenant of Sinai, and therefore weakened and crushed? Oh! hasten to Calvary, and take refuge in the hope set before you in the gospel with a heart humbly and simply yielded to Jesus. Take His great covenant rather than yours, and rest in His faithful and everlasting pledge to carry you through all. Say, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ” (Romans 8:35a)? It is not the babe’s arms that hold the mother; but the mother’s arms that hold the babe.
It’s not my love to Thee,
That I delight to tell,
But on Thy love, O Christ to me,
How I delight to dwell!
Or angels sang above,
The records of the past disclose,
Thine everlasting love.
Lord, help me to believe
Thy wondrous love to me,
So shall my heart more fully give,
Thine own love back to Thee.