Posted at Reformation Scotland:
When people hear about Jesus and the possibility of salvation, it can all seem very remote and as if it doesn’t necessarily mean anything for them personally. Perhaps this is because they aren’t really interested, or perhaps because they don’t dare to imagine that Jesus really would save them. Either way, the Covenanting minister Patrick Gillespie (1617–1675) wants everyone to grasp how imperative it is to believe in Jesus. The force of the gospel command should both embolden the hesitant to embrace the Lord Jesus as their Saviour and also compel those who are dismissive to reckon with the authority of God underlying the good news of the gospel. In the following updated extract, Gillespie refers to believing in Jesus in terms of making a “personal covenant” with Him. We mustn’t stay at a distance from the Lord, we mustn’t take it for granted that we will somehow get to heaven eventually, but each of us must personally, particularly, individually embrace Him for salvation.When I say “personal covenanting with God,” I mean an individual soul taking hold of the covenant of grace, explicitly covenanting with God, by choosing and taking God for his or her portion, and giving himself or herself to Him by a marriage covenant, on the terms of the covenant of grace.
The command
This is a commanded duty. Each one personally and formally for themselves must enter into covenant with God through Christ, on the terms of grace. This is not only a thing which we may do, but which we ought to do (and must do, if we obey the call of the gospel). We should look at it, not only as a privilege and happiness to which we should aspire, but as a duty, which we ought to do by the command and call of the gospel, if we want to escape the “vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel” (2 Thessalonians 1:8).
Three things about the nature of the gospel covenant show this to be the case, in three ordinary figures of speech.
A treaty of peace
For one thing, the gospel covenant is a treaty of peace. When God sends ambassadors to negotiate with us, is it not our duty to negotiate with Him? When He proposes good conditions to rebels, is it not our duty to accept them? “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:19–20).