Appendix A, The Law and the Gospel, The Reformed Reader

CONTENTS

APPENDIX A

Calvin on the Covenant
TuE FOLLOWING IS FROM THE INTRODUCTION to John Calvin’s

Tracts and Treatises on the Reformation of the Church (Grand
Rapids: Ferdmans, 1958), 1:xxi-xxiu.

For Calvin the Covenant represented the gracious and eternal
will of God to ally Himself with His creatures as their God and
Saviour, to commit Himself to His people in paternal kindness,
and to take them into communion with Himself as His dear
children. Calvin took the form of this Covenant to be expressed
in the words: “I will be your God, and you shall be my peo-
pie.” This Covenant is as old as creation, but it was when God
said specifically to Abraham, “1 will be a God to you and to
your seed after you,” that the Church was separated out from
the nations and brought into definite being as the divinely ap-
pointed sphere in history of God’s revealing and redeeming ac-
tivity.
In this Covenant God declared His will for His people: “I am
your God. Walk before me and be perfect. I am holy; therefore
be ye holy.” This Covenant was sealed with two major Sacra-
ments: circumcision, which inscribed the promise of God’s
blessing in the flesh of his people and coven arited them to a life
of obedience and faith; and the passover in which God renewed
His Covenant promising His people redemption from the
bondage of sin and the tyranny of the powers of evil into fel-
lowship with Himself through a sacrifice which God Himself

I
would provide. This Covenant was thus essentially a Covenant
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of grace. God knew that His people would be unable to keep
the Covenant, and to walk before Him in obedience to His holy
Will, and so in His paternal kindness and mercy He provided
within the Covenant a way of obedient response to His loving-
kindness, and a way of cleansing and restoration to fellowship
with Himself. Not only, therefore, did He give His people His
Word and Sacraments through which He revealed Himself fa-
miliarly to them and adopted them as His children, but He pro-
vided for them a Law which clearly set forth His Will, and an
order of worship and sacrifice in the Cult [the word “Cult”
meaning something quite different than it does today] which
supplied His people in their weakness with a covenanted way
of response to His Will. Both of these were also a testimony to
the fact that mercy and judgment belonged to God alone. Calvin
insisted that the Old Testament Cult and Law belong insepa-
rably together, and that if divorced from the Law the Cult has
no meaning; it functions only within the sphere of God’s
Covenant-will as a testimony to His holiness, and as a sign and
promise of His reconciling mercy. Moreover, the Cult and the
Priesthood were designed to educate God’s people by means
of ceremonies into a true understanding of sin and forgiveness,
to lead them into the way of obedience, and to hold constantly
before them the promise of Messianic salvation.
That is the Covenant of the Old Testament, and it is the same
as the Covenant of the New Testament. There is only one
Covenant, but between the Old and the New Testaments there
is a difference in economy or administration. The substance of the
Covenant remains the same, although in the old economy it was
given under the form of promise, and in the new economy it is
fulfilled in Christ, so that in the New Testament we have a more
“solid participation” in the substance of the Covenant than in
the Old. Even here the essential form of the Covenant remains
the same, for here too the Covenant has two essential parts: a
declaration of gratuitous love to which was annexed the
promise of a blessed life, and a sincere endeavor to walk before
God in faith and holiness. But here too, and here above all, God
in His great mercy provides us with a covenanted way of re
I
sponse to His Will in the obedience and sacrifice of Jesus Christ,
in whom the old form of the Covenant is completely fulfilled.
According to Calvin the change in the economy or adminis-
tration of the Covenant began to take place under the teaching
of the great prophets, particularly, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel,
while the first beginnings of the Church in the New Testament

sense are to be discerned in the return of the remnant from the
Babylonian exile. This change Calvin saw to be focussed around
the concept of the Servant of the Lord who fulfilled in His own
body and soul the Covenant-will of God for his people, and
who fulfilled also the covenanted obedience of the people to
God’s holy Will. This righteous Servant, described in the book
of Isaiah, was Christ, so that already in the midst of the Old
Covenant the clear message of the New was being set forth.
Thus of Isaiah 53:11 Calvin said: “He shews that Christ justifies
us, not only as He is God, but also as He is man; for in our flesh
He procured righteousness for us. He does not say ‘the Son,’
but ‘my Servant,’ that we may not only view Him as God, but
may contemplate His human nature, in which He performed
that obedience by which we are acquitted before God. The foun-
dation of our salvation is this, that he offered Himself a sacri-
fice, and in like manner, He Himself declares, ‘For their sakes
I sanctify Myself, that they also may be holy.”’ Christ is thus
the substance of both forms of the one Covenant. In the Old
Covenant He was offered in a promise that was to be fulfilled
in the future; and in the New Covenant he is offered as the One
in whom all the promises have already been realized.
Corresponding to this change in the economy of the Cove-
nant there were changes in regard to doctrine and worship that
must be noted, for they are of the utmost significance.
The Covenant is fulfilled in Christ, the Covenant-union with
God is fulfilled in communion with Christ through the Spirit;
that is to say, it is fulfilled in the Church as the Body of Christ.
This union with Christ is of the very essence of the New
Covenant, and for this reason personal and sacramental com-
munion with Christ transcended the form of union with God
under ceremony and law.

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