After listening to Jeff Johnson (advocate of Baptist covenant theology) and Michael Horton (advocate of one take of Presbyterian covenant theology that I don’t agree with) debate
I can understand how we are awash in anti-nomianism. Each emphasize in their own way how the New and better covenant does not have a necessary bilateral echo, each insisting that the covenant of grace is only Unilateral without a bilateral echo.
And yet every time I baptize a baby the formulary I read speaks to the bilateral nature of the covenant. These words follow the initial words that teach the unilateral nature of the covenant of grace;
“Third, the covenant of grace contains both promises and obligations. Having considered the promises, we now consider the obligations. Through baptism, God calls us and places us under obligation to live in new obedience to Him. This means that we must cling to this one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We must trust in Him and love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We must renounce the sinful way of life. We must put to death our old nature and show by our lives that we belong to God. If we through weakness should fall into sin, we must not despair of God’s mercy, nor use our weakness as an excuse to keep sinning. Baptism is a seal and totally reliable witness that we have an eternal covenant with God.”
It strikes me that both Michael Horton and Jeff Johnson must deny this aspect of the formulary because
1.) Horton denies the bilateral nature of the covenant because he insists that those requirements set forth in the Mosaic covenant were an aspect of the works nature of the Mosaic covenant. For Horton, the Mosaic covenant has a broad aspect that should be thought of as gracious but it also has an aspect that should be thought of as narrow and that narrow aspect (the law requirements… “Do this and live”) belongs to the covenant of works. In the new and better covenant that narrow aspect is no longer in operation since Christ has fulfilled the narrow aspect of the Mosaic covenant. For Horton (and R2K) because Christ fulfilled all the righteous requirements of the law, the bilateral aspect of the covenant of grace seems no longer to have any application. Four times in that formulary above you find the words “WE MUST.” This is emphasizing our obligation (that word is even used three times above) in the covenant of grace. I don’t see how Horton or R2K could use the formulary above given their insistence that in its narrow aspect the Mosaic covenant is a legal covenant that was completely fulfilled in Christ.
My insistence would be that the Mosaic covenant was a completely gracious covenant and that the law requirements were not so that Israel could assist in meriting grace, but rather the law requirements were given as the proper response of gratitude expected from a people completely saved by grace alone. The Mosaic law was never given with the intent that Israel could merit either righteousness with God or the ability to stay in the land. The law was given to a redeemed people (see the prologue to the 10 Words in Ex. 20) to answer the question, “How Shall We Then Live.” The law was given to Israel in what today we call “it’s third use.” However, because many in Israel desired to put God in their debt they turned God’s gracious law-Word into a means to put God in their debt. At that point the law’s intent was to reveal to them their sin in never being able to keep God’s law. Instead of being tutored by this first use of the law, many instead chose the route of hypocrisy and insisted that because they kept God’s law God was a debtor to them.
2.) While Horton introduces a covenant works element into the Mosaic covenant of grace, Johnson goes one better and insists that the Abrahamic covenant was also a mixed covenant characterized by works and grace and then notes the Mosaic was consistent with the Abrahamic covenant of being both a law and grace covenant. He insists, that with the New and Better covenant all of the OT covenants in terms of their bilateral realities are eclipsed and the New and Better covenant is completely unilateral with no obligations or “We Must” found in the formulary reading.
Because of this it strikes me the inevitable consequence of both Horton’s and Johnson’s covenant theology is an unfortunate antinomianism.
Biblical covenant theology is Unilateral with a bilateral echo. Christ has done all the saving. He has kept all the covenant of works conditions that was required by Adam and all the typology found in the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenant is fulfilled. Christ is the one who, in the Abrahamic covenant, takes on all the covenant curses while Abraham sleeps, and Christ is proleptically present in all those Mosaic covenant sacrifices and ceremonial laws communicating that they all spoke a better word. Christ brings in the new and better covenant which is first spoken in the proto-Evangelium of Gen. 3:15 and then found flowering into incremental full growth in the subsequent OT covenants (Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic). The Lord Jesus Christ, introduced typologically in an ever burgeoning way in each and all of the subsequent OT covenants is the one old testament covenant of grace now in full flower. Once the new covenant is present in Christ then all the OT shadows fall away much like different stages of a rocket fall off during a moon shot, leaving only what was always the main point all throughout revelation.
However, the bilateral echo of our obedience as read in the formulary above was always part of the Unilateral covenant of grace. The idea that, by the outpouring of the Spirit, we as God’s people would increasingly become what we have been freely declared to be in Christ has always been part of the covenant of grace. God has saved a people, in Christ, and that people in both the covenant in the OT and in the new and better covenant have always been described as a people who are hungry to glorify God and who are zealous for good works and in order to be zealous for good works there must be a standard by which good works are measured and that standard has always been God’s gracious Law-Word.
The Heidelberg catechism puts it this way:
Question 91: But what are good works?
Only those which proceed from a true faith,5 are performed according to the law of God,6 and to His glory;7 and not such as are founded on our imaginations or the institutions of men.8
But if the law has been eclipsed the way Horton and Johnson want to suggest by insistence that obedience to God’s standard was only a “covenant works” aspect of either the Mosaic (Horton) or the Abrahamic and Davidic (per Johnson) then the bilateral aspect spoken of in the infant Baptism ceremony should be excised.
Again, the bilateral aspect of the covenant does not deny its unilateral reality. In light of our walking obedience we are not adding anything to Christ’s finished work for sinners. After all, as Christians we all know that the best of our works still need to be imputed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ in order to be found as a sweet aroma before the Father. No, our obedience, just as the obedience found in those who were the Israel of God in the Abrahamic and the Mosaic and the Davidic covenants is always graciously given and received only by grace. It was true for our OT fathers as it is for us today as New Covenant Christians that it was required to work out our salvation in fear and trembling knowing that it is God who works in them and us to will and to act on behalf of His good purpose.
