Thomas Boston (1676-1732)
was a pastor of God's flock in
Ettrick,
Scotland, whose preaching God abundantly blessed in the saving of
many souls. The son of a Presbyterian who knew the Lord and was imprisoned for
non-conformity, Boston
was raised in times of murderous persecution. Nevertheless,
he lived to see God’s people flourish and multiply, as “the Lord added to
the church daily such as should be saved” (Acts
2:47). He is perhaps best known for his part in the reprinting of
“The Marrow of Modern Divinity”, a book which distinguishes the Covenant
of Works from the Covenant of Grace.
Thus, as we have
shown, stood the important condition of the covenant of grace; and from thence
the following inferences are fairly deducible.
Inf. 1. The
redemption of the soul is precious. Is it not? Look to the price of the
purchase, the ransom of souls, as stated in the covenant; the holy birth,
righteous life, and satisfactory death of the Son of God; and ye must conclude
it to be a costly redemption. Turn hither your eyes, (1.) Ye who value not
your own souls. See here the worth of those souls ye sell for a thing of
nought, for satisfying a corrupt passion, a pang of lust of one sort or
another. Costly was the gathering of what ye thus throw away. Ye let them go
at a very low price; but Christ could not have one of them at the hand of
justice, but at the price of his precious blood. Ye cannot forego the vanities
of a present world for them, nor spend a serious day or hour about them; but
he, after a life-time of sorrows underwent a most bitter death for them. What
think ye? Was he inconsiderate and too liberal in his making such a bargain
for the redemption of souls? He was infinitely just, who proposed the
condition; and he was infinitely wise, who went in to it. He was a Father that
exacted this ransom for souls; and he was his own Son that paid. Be ashamed
and blush, to make so low an estimate of those souls, which Heaven set such a
high price on. (2.) Ye who have cheap thoughts of the pardon of sin, and of
salvation, correct your mistake here. You fearlessly run on in sin, thinking
all may soon be set to rights again, with a God forgive me, have mercy on my
soul; so as you may leap out of Delilah's lap into Abraham's bosom. O fearful
infatuation! Is the mean and low birth, the sorrowful life, and the bitter
death of Jesus the Son of God, not sufficient to give men a just and
honourable notion of the pardon of sin? Look into the condition of the
covenant for pardon, written in the blood of the Lamb of God, and learn the
value a just God puts upon his pardons and salvation. See, O sinner, that it
is not words, but deeds; not promises and resolves to do better, but
perfection of holiness and obedience; not drawing of sighs and shedding of
tears, but shedding of blood; and not thy blood neither, but blood of infinite
value, that could procure the pardon of sin, and salvation. And if thou have
not upon thee by faith all that righteousness Christ fulfilled, to be
presented unto God for a pardon, thou shalt never obtain it. Particularly, ye
are apt to think light of the sin ye were born in, and the corruption cleaving
to your nature; but know, that God does not think light of these. It behoved
to be an article of the covenant, that Christ should be born holy, and retain
the holiness of human nature in him to the end; else the unholy birth and
corrupt nature we derived from Adam, would have staked us all down eternally
under the curse. (3.) Ye that have mean thoughts of the holy law, rectify your
dangerous mistake by the help of this glass. Ye make no bones of transgressing
its commands; ye neglect and despise its curse: as it is a law, ye shew not so
much regard to it as to the laws of men; and as it is a covenant, ye look upon
it as out of date, being in no concern how it may be satisfied for you. And
shall the honour of the holy law lie in the dust, in your case? Rather than it
should so lie in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, God would have them laid in
ashes with fire and brimstone. Yea, for vindicating the honour of the law,
this whole world shall be burnt to ashes, and all the unholy cast out from the
presence of the Lord for ever. And in the case of them that are saved, God
would have the curse of the law executed upon his own Son as their Surety, and
the commands of it perfectly obeyed in all points by him in their name. Sure,
if you are possessed of any share herein, it will be great and honourable in
your sight, as it is in the sight of God.
Inf. 2. The
law is no loser, in that life and salvation are bestowed on believers in
Christ. It is so far from being made void through faith, that it is
established thereby, as the apostle witnesseth, Rom. iii. 31. God would never
dispense his pardons at the expence of the honour of his law; nor declare one
righteous, without the righteousness of the law being fulfilled, either by
him, or in him by another, Rom. viii. 4. Wherefore, life and salvation being
designed for the elect, the law's whole accounts of all it had to charge on
them for life, were taken in; and an infallible method was laid down for
clearing them, the burden of the payment being transferred on Christ their
surety. By this exchange of persons the law had no loss. Nay, it was more for
the honour of the law, that he was made under it, and satisfied it, in virtue
of the claim it had upon him by the second covenant, than if they, being mere
creatures, had satisfied it in all points. But the truth is, they being
sinners, could never by any means have fully satisfied it; though it had
eternally pursued them and exacted of them, it would never have had enough
from them; whereas now, by Christ's taking of their debt on him, it was paid
to the utmost farthing.
Inf. 3. Faith
hath a broad and firm bottom to stand on before the Lord. The believer hath a
strong plea for life and salvation, which cannot miscarry; namely, the
condition of the covenant fulfilled by Jesus Christ, even all righteousness:
Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of
Jesus –
let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith," Heb. x.
19–22. The broken boards of uncovenanted mercy, and men's own works, which
presumption fixeth upon, cannot but fail, since the law admits no life for a
sinner on these grounds. But forasmuch as there a gift of Christ and his
righteousness proclaimed in the gospel is by the authority of heaven, he who
by faith receiveth that gift, and makes the same his only plea before the
Lord, cannot miss of salvation: Rom. v. 17, "They which receive (Gr. the)
abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by
one, Jesus Christ;" where the abundance mentioned, relates not to
different degrees of the grace or gift, but to the offence, as appears from
ver. 20: As if he had said, "Who receive the grace and gift of
righteousness which abound beyond Adam's offences saving them out of the gulf
of ruin it plunged them into." Faith uniting a sinner to Christ the head
of the second covenant, makes him partaker of Christ's righteousness, as
really as ever his covenant-relation to Adam made him partaker of his guilt.
So having all that Christ was, did, or suffered, for fulfilling the condition
of the second covenant, to plead for life and salvation; it is not possible
the claim can miscarry, justice as well as mercy befriending the plea of
faith, as a righteous thing with God, 2 Thess. i. 6, 7.
Inf.
4. lastly, All who are in Christ the head of the covenant of grace, and
so brought into it personally, are inherently righteous, or holy. For like as
though Adam did personally break the first covenant by the all-ruining
offence, yet they to whom his guilt is imputed, do thereupon become inherently
sinful, through the corruption of nature conveyed to them from him; so,
howbeit, Christ alone did perform the condition of the second covenant, yet
those to whom his righteousness is imputed, do thereupon become inherently
righteous, through inherent grace communicated to them from him by the Spirit.
So teacheth the apostle in the forecited passage, Rom. v. 17, "For if by
one man's offence, death reigned by one; much more they which receive
abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by
one, Jesus Christ." How did death reign by Adam's offence? Not only in
point of guilt, whereby his posterity were bound over to destruction; but also
in point of their being dead to all good, dead in trespasses and sins:
therefore the receivers of the gift of righteousness must thereby be brought
to reign in life, not only legally in justification, but also morally in
sanctification, begun here, and perfected hereafter.
Accordingly,
answerable to the three parts of the condition of the covenant of grace,
undertaken and performed by the second Adam, to wit, holiness of nature,
righteousness of life, and satisfaction for sin; there are three characters to
be found in all capable subjects, who being personally brought into the
covenant, have the righteousness of Christ upon them, and imputed to them.
Char.
1. They are all born again, and so made partakers of a new and holy nature: 2
Cor. v. 1, "Therefore," (namely, since he died for all, ver. 15)
"if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." Christ's being born
holy, secured a holy new birth to them in him: so they are all new creatures,
"created in Christ Jesus unto good works," Eph. ii. 10; new made in
Christ, as sure as they were married in Adam. And how can it be otherwise? Can
a man be ingrafted in the true vine, and not partake of the sap and juice of
the stock, that is, the Spirit and grace of Christ? No, surely: "If any
man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his," Rom. viii. 9. Or,
can the Spirit and grace of Christ be in any, and yet no change made on their
nature, but it still remained unrenewed? No, indeed: "If Christ be in
you, the body is dead, because of sin; but the Spirit is life, because of
righteousness," ver. 10. Consider this, ye who pretend to rely on the
righteousness of Christ, but are very easy in this point, whether ye are born
again, or not; whether there is a holy nature derived from Christ to you, or
not. Believe it, sirs, if it be not so, ye have no saving interest, part, nor
lot in Christ's righteousness. Ye may on as good grounds pretend, that howbeit
the guilt of Adam's sin was imputed to you, yet there was no corrupt nature
derived from him to you; as pretend, that Christ's righteousness is imputed to
you, while yet ye are not born again, your nature is not changed, by the
communication of sanctifying grace from Christ, else you will perish: for
"except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God," 1
John iii. 3.
Char.
2. They are all righteous and holy in their lives; Isa. lx. 21, "Thy
people also shall be all righteous." Chap. lxii. 12, "And they shall
call them the holy people." How did ungodliness, unrighteousness, and
profanity, enter into the world, the which are now overflowing all banks? Was
it not by one man, by Adam's sin, which is imputed to all mankind? Rom. v. 12.
Then be sure, if the second Adam's righteousness be imputed to you, holiness
of life will come along with it: 1 Cor. vi. 11, "But ye are washed, but
ye are sanctified, but ye are justified." Does sanctification then go
before justification? No: but it hath a necessary dependence on justification,
and evidenceth it to the world, and to one's own conscience. Unjustified,
unsanctified; and unsanctified, unjustified. Did our blessed Saviour come into
the world, and in our nature lead a holy righteous life, that men might live
as they list? Nay, quite the contrary; even that we being delivered out of the
hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and
righteousness before him, all the days of our life," Luke i. 74, 75. If
then Christ lived for you, assuredly ye shall live for him. Consider this, ye
who are far from righteousness of life, living in the neglect of the duties
either of the first or second table, or both. Your ungodly and unrighteous
life declares you to be yet in your sins, under the curse, and far from
righteousness imputed. There is indeed a righteousness of Christ; but alas! it
is not upon you: ye are naked for all it, and stand exposed to revenging
wrath.
Char.
3. The old man is crucified in them all: Gal. v. 24, "They that are
Christ's, have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts."
Therefore I say to you in the words of the apostle, Rom. viii. 3, "If ye
live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify
the deeds of the body, ye shall live." When our Saviour hung on the
cross, he hung there as representative of all that are his, with all their
sins on him by imputation, that the body of sin might be destroyed in his
sufferings for it, Rom. vi. 6. He hung there as the efficient meritorious
cause of their mortification, that by his death they might destroy the power
of death in them; which appears not in any thing more, than in living lusts
preying on their souls: Hos. xiii. 14, "I will redeem them from death: O
death, I will be thy plagues." See Tit. ii. 14; Rom. vi. 6, 7; Eph. v.
25, 26. And he hung there as the exemplary cause of their mortification; so
that all who are his, and have sinned after the similitude of Adam's
transgression, are likewise crucified and die to sin, after the similitude of
his crucifixion and death; being crucified with him, Gal. ii. 20; planted
together (with him in the likeness of his death, Rom. vi. 5; the fellowship of
his sufferings making them conformable unto his death, Phil. iii. 10. Will ye
then live after the flesh, not wrestling against, but fulfilling the lusts
thereof; living in sin and to sin, instead of being mortified to it; and yet
pretend that the satisfaction of Christ is imputed to you for righteousness?
Truly you may on as good grounds say, that the blood of Christ shed for you,
hath proven ineffectual; and that he hath so far missed of his aim and design
in suffering for you; or that he died for you, that you might live in your sin
without danger. These would make a blasphemous profession. Accordingly, your
presumptuous sinful life and practice, is a course of practical blasphemy
against the Son of God, making him the minister of sin; and evidenceth your
pretensions to the imputation of his satisfaction to be altogether vain. Nay,
of a truth, if ye have any saving interest in the death of Christ, your old
man is crucified with him, Rom. vi. 6; and ye are dead with him, ver, 8; dead
with him to sin, to the world, and to the law.
(1.)
If ye have a saving interest in Christ's death, ye are dead with him to sin:
Rom. vi. 10, "In that he died, he died unto sin once." Ver. 11,
"Likewise also reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin."
While our Lord Jesus lived in the world, the sins of all the elect, as to the
guilt of them, hung about him, and made him a "man of sorrows" all
along; when he was upon the cross, they wrought upon him most furiously,
stinging him to the very soul, till they killed him, and got him laid in the
grave. Then they had done their utmost against him, they could do no more. So
dying for sin, he died unto it, he was delivered from it: and in his
resurrection he shook them all off, as Paul shook the viper off his hand into
the fire, and felt no harm; rising out of the grave, even as he will appear a
second time, without sin. Wherefore, if ye do indeed know the fellowship of
his sufferings, if you really have fellowship with him in them, death will
have made its way from Christ the head unto you as his members; his death unto
sin cannot miss to work your death unto it also. If you are dead indeed with
Christ, as ingrafted into him, sin hath got its death's wounds in you; the
bond that knit your hearts and your lusts together, is loosed; and ye will be
shaking off the viperous brood of them into the fire, in the daily practice of
mortification. But if ye are not dead, but still living unto sin, it is an
infallible evidence ye are none of the members of Christ: Rom. vi. 2,
"How shall we that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" Ver.
3, "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ,
were baptized into his death?"
(2.)
If ye have a saving interest in Christ's death, ye are dead with him to the
world: Col. iii. 1, "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things
which are above." Ver. 3, "For ye are dead, and your life is hid
with Christ in God." The world hated him, and used him very unkindly
while he was in it; and when he died he parted with it for good and all, John
xvii. 11, "Now I am no more in the world – I come to thee." The
quietest lodging that ever the world allowed him in it, was a grave: and
coming out from thence, he never slept another night in it. He tarried indeed
forty days in it after that; as many days as the Israelites' years in the
wilderness; the former an exemplar, the latter a type of the Christian life,
from conversion till the removal into the other world; nevertheless he was
dead to the world still; he conversed now and then with his own, but no more
with the world. Now, if ye are his, ye are dead with him unto the world too,
in virtue of his death; being crucified unto it, Gal. vi. 14. Union with
Christ by faith lays sinners down in death, in Christ's grave; and so
separates between them and the world for ever: and withal, it raiseth them up
again with Christ into a quite new manner of life; no more that manner of life
which they lived before their union with him, than that which Christ lived
after his resurrection, was the manner of life he lived before his death: Rom.
vi. 4, "We are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ
was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should
walk in newness of life." If your title to heaven is indeed settled, by
your receiving the atonement, now is your forty days before your ascension
into it; now are ye no more of the world, although you be in it: your treasure
and heart are no more there. Ye are no more indwellers in it, as natives: but
travelling through it, as "strangers, coming up from the wilderness,
leaning on the beloved," Cant. iii. 5.
(3.)
Lastly, If ye have a saving interest in Christ's death, ye are dead
with him to the law also: Gal. ii. 19, "I through the law am dead to the
law." Ver. 20, "I am crucified with Christ." Our Lord Jesus
took on our nature to satisfy the law therein: the whole course of his life
was a course of obedience to it, for life and salvation to us; and he suffered
to satisfy it in what of that kind it had to demand, for that effect: in a
word, he was born to the law, he lived to the law, and he died to the law;
namely, to clear accounts with it, to satisfy it fully, and get life and
salvation for us with its good leave. He was "made under the law, to
redeem them that were under the law," Gal. iv. 4, 5. And when once it
fell upon him, it never left exacting of him, till it had got the utmost
farthing, and he was quite free with it, as dead to it, Rom. vii. 4. In token
whereof he got up the bond, blotted it out, yea, rent it in pieces, nailing it
to his cross, Col. ii. 14. Now, Christ became dead to it, dying to it in his
death on the cross: so that the holiness and righteousness of the man Christ
did thereafter no more run in the channel in which it had run before, namely,
from the womb to his grave; that is to say, it was no more, and shall be no
more for ever, obedience performed to the law for life and salvation; these
having been completely gained and secured by the obedience he gave from the
womb to the grave. "Wherefore, my brethren," if ye be his, "ye
also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ," which became dead
to it on the cross, Rom. vii. 4. As ye will not be libertines in your life and
practice, being dead to sin and the world with Christ; so ye will not be
legalists in your life and practice neither, being also dead with him to the
law as a covenant of works. Your obedience will run in another channel than it
did before your union with Christ, even in the channel of the gospel. Ye will
serve in newness of spirit, in faith and love. The frowns of a merciful Father
will be a terror to you to frighten you from sin; love and gratitude will
prompt you to obedience. The grieving of the Spirit of a Saviour will be a
spring of sorrow to you; and his atoning blood and perfect righteousness will
be the spring-head of all your comfort before the Lord; your good works but
streams thereof, as they evidence your saving interest in these, are accepted
through them, and glorify God your Saviour. Ye will not continue to serve in
the oldness of the letter, as before; at what time the law was the spring of
all the obedience ye performed; fear of the punishment of hell for your sins,
and hope of the reward of heaven's happiness for your duties, being the
weights that made you go, though for all them you often stopped; your sorrows
springing from your ill works, under the influence of the law allenarly; and
your comforts from your good works, under the same influence; ye being alive
to the law and dead to Christ. Rom. vii. 6, "But now we are delivered
from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in
newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter." If by faith you
wholly rely on Christ's righteousness, the holiness of his nature, the
righteousness of his life, and his satisfaction for sin, how is it possible
but ye must be dead to the law? for the law is not of faith, Gal. iii. 12. But
if you perform your obedience for life and salvation, looking for acceptance
with God on the account of your works, you go in a way directly opposite to
the way of faith, and either altogether reject Christ's satisfying of the law,
or else impute imperfection unto his payment of the bond. And "Christ is
become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye
are fallen from grace," Gal. v. 4.
Thus
far of the first part of the covenant, namely the conditionary part.
[The
first part of the covenant of grace is the conditionary part. The
conditions of this covenant are fulfilled in Christ the Second Adam.
The
second part of the covenant is the promissory part. The
promises are for sinners of mankind to apprehend by faith in Christ.]
Reference
“A View of the Covenant of Grace” by Thomas
Boston. Focus Christian Ministries Trust, 1990. pp 80-87.
