Theological term
New Covenant Theology
14 sermons · All terms
CTF 2026 - Dr Richard Barcellos Book Presentation - A Faithful Steward
At a seminary conference, colleagues and friends present Dr. Richard Barcellos with a festschrift titled 'A Faithful Steward,' compiled in his honor. The presentation draws on 1 Corinthians 4:2 — 'it is required of stewards that they be found faithful' — as the governing theme of his decades of ministry in preaching, writing, and theological education. John Gill's exposition of that verse is read as a description of Barcellos's own ministry: preaching the pure gospel without human mixture, declaring the whole counsel of God, seeking the honor of Christ rather than the applause of men.
Ask FGBC Batch 7: Anabaptists, Calvinism, Sincere Offer & More | Reformed Baptist Theology
This panel discussion brings together three Reformed Baptist pastors to address questions submitted to Free Grace Baptist Church on confessional identity, soteriology, covenant theology, and Lord's Day worship. The conversation distinguishes Particular Baptists from Anabaptists on historical-documentary grounds, examines the relationship between Calvinism and confessional Reformed Baptist identity, and evaluates the free and sincere offer of the gospel against what the panelists regard as the theological liabilities of well-meant-offer language. The discussion also treats the threefold division of the law, prosopological exegesis, and the scriptural rationale for two Lord's Day services, consistently grounding each answer in the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession and the exegetical tradition of the Particular Baptists.
Ask FGBC 70: Is Progressive Covenantalism Compatible with the 1689?
Progressive Covenantalism and New Covenant theology are examined against the standard of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, with particular attention to whether either system can consistently affirm the covenant of works, the covenant of redemption, and the law/Sabbath chapters of the Confession. The discussion traces the hermeneutical root of these systems — a tendency toward biblicism that resists theological vocabulary not found verbatim in Scripture — and argues that their own best instincts, illustrated by Gary Long's late work on the Adamic covenant and the creation rest, point toward the fuller confessional expression of covenant theology. The conversation closes by considering the covenant of redemption and whether collapsing it into the eternal decree is adequate, finding devotional and doxological value in the anthropomorphic language of the pactum salutis even where precise metaphysics must be qualified.
Getting the Garden Right — Dr. Richard Barcellos | Why Genesis 1–3 Matters for Everything
Genesis 1–3 is not merely the Bible's opening chapter but the theological foundation upon which the covenant of works, the divine rest, and the entire eschatological structure of Scripture are built. Richard Barcellos surveys the argument of his book 'Getting the Garden Right,' contending that New Covenant theology and progressive covenantalism go wrong precisely where they fail to reckon with Adam's probationary status under the covenant of works and the eschatological significance of God's Sabbath rest as a state into which the obedient image-bearer was to enter. The discussion ranges from hermeneutical method — the necessity of allowing the New Testament to illuminate the Genesis narrative — to the typological continuity of the Sabbath from creation ordinance through the resurrection of Christ to the weekly Lord's Day. Listeners are pressed to take the primary sources of the Reformed tradition seriously and to see that whatever Adam failed to attain, Christ secured, bringing many sons to the glory that is better than the beginning.
2LCF Introduction and Preface to the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689) did not arise in a vacuum — it was forged under persecution, shaped by theological antiquity, and published to correct misrepresentations of Particular Baptist doctrine. This study introduces the Confession through its original preface, examining the necessity and utility of creeds and confessions, the historical context of 17th-century England, and the specific additions, changes, and deletions the Particular Baptists made to the Westminster Confession and Savoy Declaration. The Confession stands as a faithful summary of biblical doctrine and a demonstration that Particular Baptists stood firmly within the stream of historic Protestant orthodoxy, differing from their Presbyterian and Congregationalist brethren only on baptism, church polity, and certain covenant theology distinctions.
The Promise of Blessings and Curses (Part 1)
Leviticus 26:1–13 opens with a promise of blessing conditioned on Israel's obedience — a structure that raises the question of how the Old Covenant relates to the New. This study expounds the covenantal framework underlying Leviticus 26, arguing that the Old Covenant operated as a covenant of works at the national level, distinct from the covenant of grace realized in Christ. The blessings of rain, peace, and God's presence promised to Israel find their fulfillment in the New Covenant, where the obedience that secures blessing is Christ's own, imputed to his people by faith alone.
2LCF Chapter 7 - Of God's Covenant, Part 2
1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 7, paragraph 3 sets out three theological covenants — the covenant of grace, the covenant of redemption (pactum salutis), and the covenant of works — as the structural architecture of all Scripture. This sermon expounds each in turn, demonstrating from texts in Genesis, Isaiah, Hosea, Galatians, and Romans that the covenant of grace is founded on an eternal transaction between the Father and the Son, and that it is God's provision for sinners rendered incapable of acceptance with God since Adam's fall. The covenant of works is shown to be indispensable to a right understanding of justification: without it, the imputed righteousness of Christ collapses into either moralism or antinomianism, and the distinction between forgiveness and imputation is lost. Covenant theology is pressed not as academic machinery but as the very ground of the believer's comfort, assurance, and stability before God.
Clip: Flyover of Covenant Theology (2LCF Chapter 7 - Of God's Covenant)
Covenant theology serves as the central hermeneutical architecture of Scripture, and this introductory flyover situates it against competing systems — dispensationalism and New Covenant theology — before tracing its practical consequences for continuity between the Testaments, the role of ethnic Israel, the subjects of baptism, and the law of God in the new covenant. Two key distinctions between the 1689 London Baptist Confession and the Westminster Confession are noted: the particular Baptists' omission of an explicit covenant of works statement in Chapter 7, and their refusal to identify the Old Covenant as an administration of the covenant of grace. The sermon locates covenant theology not merely in academic method but in pastoral comfort, grounding the blood-bought people of God in the assurance that God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself.
The Second Missionary Journey, Part 6
Acts 17:16–21 presents the Apostle Paul in Athens, a city saturated with idolatry and celebrated for its philosophical culture. The sermon traces three movements in this brief passage: Paul's provocation of spirit at the sight of rampant idolatry, his deliberate response of preaching Christ in both the synagogue and the public marketplace, and his engagement with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers who summon him to the Areopagus. Paul's example establishes that righteous anger at the transgression of the First and Second Commandments, mingled with grief and compassion, is a mark of God's people — and that the fitting response to such provocation is not silence but the proclamation of Jesus and the resurrection.
The Second Missionary Journey, Part 1
Acts 15:36–16:5 records the opening of Paul's second missionary journey — beginning with a sharp contention between Paul and Barnabas over John Mark, continuing through Paul's recruitment and circumcision of Timothy in Lystra, and concluding with a summary report of churches strengthened and growing daily. The sermon argues that God's sovereign providence overruled the division between two godly men to send out two missionary teams, and that Timothy's circumcision was a strategic pastoral act entirely consistent with Paul's settled rejection of Judaizing. Throughout, the exposition presses the congregation toward a recovery of faithful, word-centered ministry as the only legitimate means of church growth and stability.
Genesis 36
Genesis 36 presents the genealogy of Esau (Edom), a passage easily dismissed as a bare list of names. This study examines why Moses inserts this extended genealogy at the precise hinge between the narrative of Isaac and the narrative of Jacob, arguing that it serves as a demonstration of divine faithfulness: God fulfilled every promise made to the non-elect son — nationhood, territorial blessing, and temporal prosperity — which grounds the believer's confidence that His covenant promises to the elect will be no less certainly realized. The contrast between Esau's temporal inheritance and Jacob's spiritual and eternal inheritance sharpens the distinction between common providence and saving grace, and the goodness God shows even to the reprobate is intended to lead sinners to repentance.
The Great Commission, Part 4
Matthew 28:20 calls the church to a lifelong, comprehensive teaching ministry — the fourth imperative of the Great Commission. The sermon examines this teaching activity under four headings: its simplicity (Scripture alone, not opinion or entertainment), its scope (all Christ's commands, Old and New Testaments, issuing in obedience), its perpetuity (traceable from Acts through the pastoral epistles to the end of the age), and its comprehensiveness (the whole counsel of God applied to individuals, families, churches, and civil society). The closing appeal summons hearers to the cross — the ransom of Matthew 20:28 and the invitation of Matthew 11:28 — as the indispensable foundation for any biblical obedience.
2LCF Chapter 22 - Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day, Part 4
The Fourth Commandment's perpetual and universal obligation — rooted in both natural law and the Word of God — binds new covenant believers to Sabbath observance no less than it bound old covenant saints. This session of a consecutive study through the 1689 London Baptist Confession (chapter 22, paragraphs 7–8) examines the twofold testimony to Sabbath necessity (general and special revelation), the positive-moral character of the Fourth Commandment, and the pre-Sinaitic origins of the Sabbath in Genesis 2. The change of the day from the seventh to the first is introduced and will be treated in full in the following session. The governing spirit of Christian Sabbath observance is not legal fear but cheerful compliance, strengthened by the risen Christ and the sweetness of the gospel.
The Fourth Commandment
The Fourth Commandment, as confessed in the 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 22, binds all men in all ages to set apart one day in seven for the worship of God. This exposition of Deuteronomy 5:12–15 traces the Sabbath from its creation ordinance grounding in Genesis 2, through its Sinaitic rationale of creation and redemption, into its prophetic anticipation in Isaiah 56 and 58, and finally to its New Covenant fulfillment on the first day of the week as the Lord's Day. The sermon argues that the Sabbath's moral principle — one day in seven devoted to God — is permanent and continuous across the covenants, while the positive element (the particular day) shifts from Saturday to Sunday in light of Christ's resurrection. Hearers are called to receive the Sabbath not as a legalistic burden but as God's gift, and to guard equally against Pharisaic rigidity and antinomian dismissal.