Theological term
Covenant of Works
267 sermons · All terms
The Role of the Law in Justification
Romans 3:20 stands at the hinge of Paul's argument in Romans 1–3: the universal condemnation of Jew and Gentile is summarized and confirmed, and the ground is cleared for the proclamation of a righteousness that comes apart from the law. This sermon examines both the unlawful use of the law — seeking justification before God through law-keeping, which Paul categorically condemns — and the lawful pedagogical use, by which the law defines sin, demonstrates the gravity of human guilt, and drives the sinner to Christ. The central burden is that no amount of moral effort can secure acceptance with God, because the problem lies not in the law but in the sinner; the law's only saving function is to press men toward the law-keeper, Christ, whose obedience and sacrifice are the sole ground of justification.
The Pharisee and the Publican
How can a sinful person be accepted before a holy God? Jesus answers that question directly in Luke 18:9–14, where two men pray in the temple and only one goes home justified. The parable exposes the bankruptcy of self-righteousness — trusting in one's own moral record before God — and vindicates the tax collector who, acknowledging himself as 'the sinner,' casts himself wholly on divine mercy. Justification belongs to those who bring nothing but their sin and receive by faith alone the righteousness of Christ, whose personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience is imputed to all who trust in him.
The Vainglory, the Virtue, and the Verity (Part 1)
Jeremiah 9:23–24 is frequently torn from its covenantal context and reduced to a generic self-improvement maxim, but the prophet issues this warning in the shadow of irreversible divine judgment upon apostate Israel. The passage divides into three movements — the vainglory of misplaced boasting, the virtue of knowing God, and the verities of his character — and this first installment works through the vainglory of glorying in wisdom, might, and riches. The sermon argues that such boasting is doubly condemned: these gifts originate with God alone and therefore belong to his glory, and they are powerless before the whirlwind of infinite divine justice that no political, military, or economic resource can deflect. The application presses both the unconverted and the indifferent to abandon every refuge in creaturely confidence and flee to Christ, the only one in whom boasting is lawful.
2LCF Chapter 11 - Of Justification, Part 3
Justification is the article upon which the church stands or falls, and this exposition of 2LCF Chapter 11 works through the nature, basis, and instrument of justification as the confession presents them. The sermon distinguishes justification sharply from sanctification against the Roman Catholic doctrine of infused righteousness, the neo-Nomian teaching of Richard Baxter, and the New Perspective on Paul, arguing that the elect are accepted by God solely on the basis of Christ's imputed active and passive obedience received through faith alone. The active obedience of Christ — his 33 years of perfect law-keeping — is shown to be as necessary as his death, because forgiveness alone would leave the believer back in a probationary state without a positive righteousness that avails before God. Faith is the alone instrument of justification, not its condition or cause, and is itself a gift of God, so that every ground of human boasting is excluded.
2LCF Chapter 9 - Of Free Will
The doctrine of free will, as confessed in chapter 9 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, is neither denied nor affirmed without qualification — it is carefully defined in relation to the fourfold state of man. In the state of innocency man possessed genuine freedom to do good, yet was mutable; in the state of sin he retains natural liberty of choice but has wholly lost all ability to will any spiritual good; in the state of grace God monergistically transfers the sinner from bondage into freedom to will and do what is spiritually good, yet remaining corruption sustains a continual warfare within; and in the state of glory the will is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone. The central pastoral application is that a true grasp of total depravity and total inability is the only ground on which amazing grace is truly amazing, and the presence of ongoing battle against sin — not its absence — is the mark of regenerate life.
The Payment of the Temple Tax
Matthew 17:24–27 records a miracle found only in Matthew's Gospel, in which Jesus instructs Peter to pay the temple tax from a coin found in a fish's mouth. The passage is not incidental: it is anchored between Jesus's second passion announcement (vv. 22–23) and the teaching on offense in chapter 18, connecting the temple tax — rooted in the ransom and atonement language of Exodus 30 — to the atoning work Christ will accomplish at the cross. Jesus's exemption from the tax declares his unique divine sonship ('the sons are free'), while his willingness to pay nonetheless teaches a principle of self-denying deference that Paul draws on explicitly in 1 Corinthians 8–9. The sermon calls hearers to behold Christ as sovereign Lord over nature, as the fulfillment of every Old Testament ransom-type, and as the one who paid a debt he did not owe for sinners who could not pay it.
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 3
What role did the Holy Spirit play in the earthly ministry of Christ, and why does it matter for the doctrine of salvation? Expounding 2LCF Chapter 8, Paragraph 3, this session traces the Spirit's work across every stage of the Mediator's mission: the virginal conception, the public ministry, the cross, and the resurrection. Because Christ executed his mediatorial office in his human nature — not merely by the immediate operation of his divine nature — the Father's gift of the Spirit without measure to the man Christ Jesus is essential to orthodox Christology and to the assurance that a genuinely human Mediator has met every demand of the covenant on behalf of the elect.
The Glory of the Father
John 17:1–5 records the opening of Christ's High Priestly Prayer, in which the incarnate Son petitions the Father to glorify Him in and through His approaching death, resurrection, and exaltation. The sermon expounds three grounds for that petition: the salvation of the elect, the accomplishment of redemption through Christ's active and passive obedience, and the restoration of the pre-incarnate glory to the God-Man. Central to the exposition is verse 3, where Christ defines eternal life as the knowledge of the only true God and Jesus Christ — a knowledge that necessarily issues in glorifying God, sustaining believers through trial, and grounding assurance not in personal performance but in the character and covenant of the triune God. Hearers are pressed to pursue that knowledge through the ordinary means of grace: the reading of Scripture, prayer, and faithful attendance upon the Word.
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 2
The deity and humanity of Jesus Christ, as confessed in 2LCF Chapter 8 paragraphs 1–3, stand as the twin foundations of orthodox Christology. This session from a series on the 1689 London Baptist Confession works through what the confession affirms — and what it denies — regarding both natures of the one Mediator, showing how its language recapitulates the early church's creedal formulations. The study demonstrates the deity of Christ from his self-identification as the divine 'I Am,' his equality with the Father, explicit New Testament declarations, Old Testament Yahweh texts applied to him in the New Testament, and divine prerogatives predicated of him. The humanity of Christ is then established from the birth narratives, apostolic declaration, and Christ's own evidential self-disclosure, preparing the ground for a subsequent session on the incarnation proper.
2LCF Chapter 7 - Of God's Covenant, Part 3
Covenant theology is not abstract speculation but the architectural blueprint of all Scripture, and a faulty grasp of it distorts both law and gospel. This session works through 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 7, paragraph 3, tracing the covenant of grace from its first announcement in Genesis 3:15 through the Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants as progressive, concentric revelations of the same redemptive promise, culminating in the new covenant ratified by Christ's blood. The eternal covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son grounds the covenant of grace, so that for sinners, grace is free and unconditional, while for Christ, it was a covenant of works demanding exact, entire, and personal obedience. The session closes with the axiom that 'the covenant of grace is the covenant of works kept for us,' and applies this structure to the necessity of sola fide against Federal Vision, Baxterian, and Roman Catholic distortions.
4 Aspects of the Incarnation
Galatians 4:4–5 contains one of the most compressed statements of the gospel in all of Scripture, setting forth the incarnation of the eternal Son of God as the decisive corrective to the Galatian error of adding legal works to faith in Christ. This sermon examines four aspects of the incarnation: the timing sovereignly appointed in the eternal covenant between Father and Son, the triune glory visible in the Father's sending of both Son and Spirit, the double humility of Christ being born of a woman and born under the law, and the twofold purpose of redemption and adoption. The application calls hearers to be astonished at God's sovereign plan, to know the Trinity rightly, to rejoice in Christ's condescension, and to rest solely in His finished work — neither adding legal performance nor trusting in one's own standing as a professing Christian.
2LCF Chapter 6 - Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment Thereof
1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 6, paragraph 1–5, traces the fall of man from its covenantal roots through its universal consequences and the only remedy found in Christ. The covenant of works established a principle of justice in the garden, making Adam's transgression a covenantal violation with representative consequences for all his posterity — every faculty of soul and body wholly defiled, every man by nature a child of wrath. The divine purpose in the fall was not an accident requiring a divine plan B, but was ordered by God according to His wise and holy counsel to manifest both His justice in reprobation and His grace in the redemption of the elect by the second Adam. Believers are freed from the power, guilt, and condemnation of sin by Christ alone, yet remaining corruption persists through this life, driving the regenerate to the means of grace.
The Place of Good Works
Ephesians 2:10 establishes that good works occupy a precise and necessary place in the Christian life — not as a condition of salvation, but as its inevitable consequence. This sermon traces the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith alone through Paul's letters to the Romans and the Galatians, exposing the Roman Catholic error of collapsing justification and sanctification into a faith-plus-works scheme and demonstrating why any such admixture invalidates grace entirely. Drawing on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the 1689 Confession, and writers from Machen to Gill, the sermon argues that the predestinating grace of God not only secures the salvation of the elect but also sets them on a course of holy living. Believers are exhorted to neither hide behind sola fide as a license for indolence nor to mistake moral performance for the ground of their acceptance before God.
The Exceeding Riches of God's Grace
Ephesians 2:8–9 presents the doctrine of salvation as originating entirely in the triune God — elected by the Father before the foundation of the world, redeemed through the blood of the Son, and sealed by the Holy Spirit. Preached on Reformation Day, this exposition traces the grace-alone, faith-alone framework of the Five Solas back to their Pauline foundation, demonstrating that the Protestant Reformation was a recovery of plain biblical reading rather than a theological novelty. The sermon confronts the human tendency toward self-credit in salvation by exposing total depravity in Ephesians 2:1–3, so that the 'but God' of verse 4 lands with full force. Hearers are urged to abandon every ground of boasting and to look to Christ alone for salvation.
2LCF Chapter 4 - Of Creation
The doctrine of creation, as confessed in chapter four of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, encompasses far more than the sheer scale of the cosmos — it demands precise theological definition on every point from the time and agent of creation to its purpose and result. This study works through three sections of the chapter: the overview of creation (paragraphs on creation ex nihilo, the triune authorship, divine purpose, the full extent of all things visible and invisible, the literal six-day duration, and the verdict 'all very good'), the apex of creation (the constitution, identity, and integrity of man made in God's image in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness), and the fulcrum of creation (the covenant of works in the garden as the hinge upon which God's redemptive purpose to save sinners by Christ Jesus turns). Creation is neither an emanation nor a reshaping of pre-existent matter, but a free act of the triune God out of nothing, ordered ultimately to the manifestation of his glory and the redemption of his elect to the praise of his glorious grace.
The Majestic Maker
Genesis 1:1 declares that in the beginning, the triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — created the heavens and the earth ex nihilo, by the word of his omnipotent power, in six literal twenty-four-hour days. The Hebrew term Elohim, a plural of majesty used with a singular verb, identifies the Creator as the sole rightful object of worship, the sovereign lawgiver, and the one to whom all creatures owe praise. The sermon draws out five lessons from the opening verse: the world had a beginning; the triune God is the active agent; creation was ex nihilo by divine speech; the Creator is the rightful lawgiver and proper object of worship; and mankind possesses unique dignity as image-bearers. Unbelievers are warned that creation renders them without excuse before the judgment seat of God, and are called to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who fulfilled the law and died as the perfect sacrifice.
The One Who Justifies the Ungodly
Romans 4:5 announces that God justifies the ungodly — a declaration that seems to violate the standard of Proverbs 17:15, which condemns justifying the wicked. The doctrine of imputation resolves the apparent tension: God reckons, credits, and accounts righteousness to sinners not on the basis of moral transformation but on the basis of Christ's active and passive obedience received through faith alone. Three acts of imputation structure the biblical argument — Adam's sin imputed to his posterity, the elect's sin imputed to Christ, and Christ's righteousness imputed to the elect — establishing that the gospel upholds rather than undermines divine justice. This sermon was preached in the context of a Lord's Supper service, directing communicants away from any sense of personal worthiness and toward the finished work of Christ as the sole ground of acceptance before God.
The Gospel's Prophetic Prologue
Mark 1:1–4 introduces the gospel not as a literary convention but as the announcement of a real, historical event: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This passage establishes that the gospel's ministerial beginning is rooted in prophetic fulfillment, as both Malachi 3 and Isaiah 40 foresaw a wilderness messenger who would prepare the way of Yahweh himself. The identity of Jesus as the divine Son of God is not incidental to the gospel but is its very foundation — without his deity, there is no sufficient Redeemer. The sermon closes with a call for believers to know and proclaim the gospel precisely, to walk in a manner worthy of it, and for unbelievers to turn from sin and believe on Christ alone.
The Word Became Flesh
John 1:14 presents one of the most concentrated statements of Christology in all of Scripture: the eternal Word, who was God and was with God in the beginning, became flesh and tabernacled among men. This sermon expounds the incarnation under two heads — the fact of the Word becoming flesh, and the glory beheld in that incarnate Word — with sustained attention to the doctrine of eternal generation, the Shekinah-tabernacle background of John's prologue, and the covenantal purpose of the incarnation in redemption. The hearer is called to rest in the Christ who perfectly fulfilled the law, bore the wrath due to sinners in their stead, and rose for their justification, and to hold fast to a sound Christology as the very ground of salvation.
The Theology of the Cross
The transfiguration of Christ in Luke 9:28–36 cannot be understood apart from Peter's confession, Jesus' prediction of his passion, and his teaching on the conditions of discipleship — all delivered eight days before. Moses and Elijah appear in glory not to discuss heaven's wonders but to speak of Christ's exodus, his death in Jerusalem, establishing that the entire Old Testament economy converges on the cross. The Father's voice from the cloud corrects Peter's impulse to prolong the mountaintop experience and commands the disciples to hear his Son — the appointed prophet, priest, and king. Against every theology of glory that bypasses the cross through mystical experience or spiritual ecstasy, this text calls believers to find their deepest and most lasting fascination in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Justification By Faith Alone
Philippians 3:7–11 presents the Apostle Paul's own testimony as the sharpest exposition of justification by faith alone: he counted every religious credential as loss in order to be found in Christ, 'not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ.' The sermon works through Paul's possession of Christ (vv. 7–8), his position in Christ (v. 9), and his privileges in Christ (vv. 10–11), giving sustained attention to the forensic character of justification — pardon of sin and imputation of Christ's righteousness — as defined by the 1689 London Baptist Confession 11.1 and the Westminster Shorter Catechism Q33. The Roman Catholic doctrine of justification, as codified at the Council of Trent (Canons 9 and 11), is examined as a counter-example, demonstrating that any conflation of justification with sanctification destroys assurance and leaves the dying sinner without the comfort of Romans 8:1.
The Three Whos of Christ
How does Christ serve as the supreme example for Christians called to suffer in an ungodly world? Expounding 1 Peter 2:21–24, this sermon identifies three Christological realities Peter sets before suffering believers: Christ's sinless messianic humanity, His non-retaliatory resolve under verbal abuse and physical torment, and His substitutionary curse-bearing on the cross. The sermon argues that substitutionary atonement is not a negotiable theological option but the irreducible heart of the gospel, and calls believers to wonder at the Savior who bore their sins in His own body while refusing to revile those who reviled Him.
Deuteronomy 34
Deuteronomy 34, the final chapter of the Torah, records the death of Moses and the transfer of leadership to Joshua, framing both events within the larger structure of covenantal succession. The chapter's central theological weight falls on the faithfulness of the covenant Lord, who fulfils to the letter every promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob regarding the land — a faithfulness Moses witnesses from the summit of Pisgah. Moses' death and anonymous burial serve as an emblem of the law's inability to bring God's people into the heavenly inheritance, a typological thread that runs forward to Joshua (whose name is the Hebrew form of 'Jesus') and ultimately to the Mediator of the new covenant, whose own 'exodus' Moses would discuss face to face on the Mount of Transfiguration. The sermon closes with a sustained application on the means of grace, arguing that corporate worship ordered by God's own prescription — word, prayer, and sacraments — is the appointed means by which God's people gain their clearest foretastes of the heavenly Canaan.
Deuteronomy 32
Deuteronomy 32, the Song of Moses, functions not as an emotional appendix to the covenantal legislation but as a doctrinal witness designed to penetrate Israel's heart and promote fidelity to Yahweh. The chapter moves through four movements — the creation of Israel as a chosen people, Israel's apostasy through ingratitude and idolatry, the covenantal judgment God brings through Assyria and Babylon, and the ultimate salvation and vindication of God's people — all within the framework of the Mosaic covenant's blessing-and-curse structure. Idolatry, rooted in the rejection of God and the embrace of His gifts over the Giver, is shown to be the defining sin of the nation, and its antidote is robust theology proper. The song closes with Gentile inclusion in covenant blessing, which Paul explicitly cites in Romans 15 as fulfilled in the new covenant era.
Christ and the Paralytic
The forgiveness of sins, not physical healing, is the central miracle of Matthew 9:1–8. Christ's pronouncement to the paralytic — 'Son, be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven you' — exposes sin as the problem worse than paralysis and declares the primary mission of Matthew's Gospel: Jesus saves His people from their sins. The scribes' charge of blasphemy is answered not refuted by argument but by the visible healing of the paralytic, which serves as public proof that the Son of Man possesses on earth the divine authority to forgive sins. The proper response to this authority is the response of the multitude: marvel and fear that together fuel genuine worship and praise.
Deuteronomy 28
Deuteronomy 28 sets out the covenantal sanctions of the Mosaic economy: comprehensive blessing for obedience and devastating curse for disobedience, with the curses dwarfing the blessings in scope and detail. The chapter's structure mirrors ancient Near Eastern treaty form, and its predictive detail concerning plague, exile, siege, and national reversal has been dismissed by naturalistic interpreters who deny Mosaic authorship — a denial the sermon firmly rejects. The curses, including cannibalism during siege and the reversal of every Abrahamic promise, are traced through Israel's history from the wilderness to A.D. 70. The sermon closes by directing the hearer to praise God for the new covenant, in which Christ as covenant surety rendered the personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience Israel never could, bearing the curse of the law so that the blessing of Abraham might come upon His people.
Deuteronomy 27
Deuteronomy 27 marks the transition from the stipulation section of Israel's covenantal constitution to the sanctions section, where blessings and curses are attached to covenant faithfulness or breach. This exposition works through the future covenant renewal ceremony at Mounts Ebal and Gerizim (vv. 1–10) and the twelve maledictory curses pronounced upon covenant-breakers (vv. 11–26), showing that the curses addressed both external conduct and the secret intentions of the heart. The self-maledictory 'amen' sworn by Israel on Ebal anticipates the curse Christ bore as covenant head and mediator, whose personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience fulfills what no Israelite could render. The law's function, then, is to expose human sinfulness and drive the covenant people outside themselves to the Redeemer.
The Demonstration of God's Love
Romans 5:8 encapsulates the entire gospel in a single verse: God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. This sermon works through Romans 5:6–11 to establish that the objects of God's redeeming love were helpless, ungodly, sinners, and active enemies of God — leaving no ground for human merit in salvation. The demonstration of that love at Calvary is the sole foundation of justification, reconciliation, and assurance, and it calls the redeemed to a joy that fuels genuine gospel holiness rather than moralistic striving.
A Brief Survey of Covenant Theology, Part 3
Why is the New Covenant necessary? This session of a three-part survey of covenant theology works backwards through redemptive history to answer that question with six interlocking reasons: the Mosaic Covenant was temporary and could not save; the Abrahamic Covenant promised but did not present Christ; Genesis 3:15 gave only the first promise of a mediator; Adam's failure as covenant head made Christ's obedience necessary; Adam broke the covenant of works God placed him under at creation; and the entire plan was purposed by God before the foundation of the world. The argument culminates in the claim that the New Covenant does not restore believers to Adam's pre-fall probationary state but brings them, through the last Adam, to the glorified status Adam forfeited and Christ secured.
A Brief Survey of Covenant Theology, Part 1
What is a divine covenant, and why does 'covenant theology' accurately describe the Bible's own architecture? This lecture — the first in a three-part survey — defines divine covenants as relational arrangements sovereignly initiated by God for man's benefit, with ways and means established by God alone to obtain the designated blessings. Drawing on Nehemiah Cox, 2 Samuel 7, Exodus 19, and Hebrews 10, the speaker demonstrates that both Testaments are covenantally structured documents: the Old Testament is the covenantal record for old covenant Israel, and the New Testament is the covenantal record for the new covenant church, both centering on Christ in his sufferings and glory. The lecture concludes that covenant theology is not an alien grid imposed on Scripture but the organic, Christocentric shape of biblical revelation itself, best interpreted by allowing the New Testament to illuminate the Old.