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{The Application
Application for the Ungodly
Confirm and Complete All by Solemn Covenant
Directions: Confirm Your Covenant with God
The Author’s Advice}
I advise you to make this covenant, not only in heart, but in word, and not only in word, but in writing. With all possible reverence, spread the writing before the Lord and present it to Him as your act and deed. And when you have done this, sign it with your hand and keep it as a memorial of the solemn transactions that have passed between God and you. You may thus have recourse to it in times of doubt and temptation.
And now, beloved, having shown you the way to the Father, give me leave to be insistent with you in pressing you to listen to me: Come and join yourselves thus to the Lord. I believe you will find this solemn and express way of covenanting with God to be of great advantage to you. That is why I make it my great request to you. But if you will not be persuaded to it, take heed that you do not refuse to engage your hearts to the Lord and make a full closure with Christ on all the particular terms laid before you. Until you do that, I must be bold to tell you again, as I have told you already, that you are short of Christianity, strangers from the covenant of promise, and aliens from the commonwealth of [spiritual] Israel. Brethren, the Lord God has sent me among you on the same errand as Abraham sent his servant in Genesis 24 to take a wife for his son: to bring you to Christ. I am not without fear just as that servant was not without fear. I fear that some of you will not follow me. But the Lord may see fit to send His angel before me to make my way prosperous. The Lord may give me success in this great thing so that I may thus bring you into covenant with Him. If so, I will have performed the main part of my ministerial work among you. I will have betrothed you to Christ, married you to that one Husband (2 Corinthians 11:3; Ephesians 5:26–27). I will have brought you within the narrow gate and set your foot safely in that difficult way that leads to life. I will have laid the foundation of your following the Lord in holiness and comfort here and of living with Him in blessedness forever.
First Reason for Your Blessedness
{The Application
Application for the Ungodly
Confirm and Complete All by Solemn Covenant
Directions: Confirm Your Covenant with God
The Author’s Advice
First Reason for Your Blessedness}
Once you are sincerely in covenant, from then on you have a God you may call your own. To Him you may have free access. From Him you may be sure to find grace to help in all times of need. How blessed is the condition of one who is able to say, “I have no friend in the world, but I have a God in Heaven. I have many enemies, but I have a God. I have no house, money, or lands, but I have a God. I have troubles and I have sins that are a daily torment and vexation to me, but I have a God. I have a God to feed, succor, and shelter me. I have a God to pardon me, sanctify me, and save me.
Second Reason for Your Blessedness
{The Application
Application for the Ungodly
Confirm and Complete All by Solemn Covenant
Directions: Confirm Your Covenant with God
The Author’s Advice
Second Reason for Your Blessedness}
Once you are in covenant union with Christ, you have the blessing of communion with Him.
{The Application
Application for the Ungodly
Confirm and Complete All by Solemn Covenant
Directions: Confirm Your Covenant with God
The Author’s Advice
Second Reason for Your Blessedness
Whatever Is Christ’s Is Yours}
Whatever belongs to Christ has now become yours. The husband gives his wife leave to set her name on all his goods. You may now write your name on all that Christ has and say boldly, “All this is mine: His prayers, His tears, His obedience, His blood, and His Spirit. All are mine because He is mine.”
{The Application
Application for the Ungodly
Confirm and Complete All by Solemn Covenant
Directions: Confirm Your Covenant with God
The Author’s Advice
Second Reason for Your Blessedness
Whatever Is Yours Is Christ’s}
Whatever is yours is His: your sufferings, your sins, and your debts. Your wants are all upon your husband. Like the old man to the Levite (Judges 19:20), Christ says to you, “Let all your needs be on me; let all your debts, difficulties, fears, and troubles be on me.”
Christ and You Will Have One Lot Together
{The Application
Application for the Ungodly
Confirm and Complete All by Solemn Covenant
Directions: Confirm Your Covenant with God
The Author’s Advice
Second Reason for Your Blessedness
Christ & You Will Have One Lot Together}
Christ and you will have your lot together. God deals with Christ and a believer as one and the same party.243 They must be absolved or condemned, stand or fall, and live or die together. Christ’s justification secures your justification. Christ’s resurrection secures your resurrection. Christ’s glorification secures your glorification forever. Because He lives, you will live also (John 14:19). This is the portion and inheritance of all of God’s covenanting servants. You who are yet in your sins, in your old covenant with death, and in agreement with Hell: will you yet be persuaded by what has been said to say to one another, “Come let us break these bonds [of sin] asunder and throw the cords from us. Come, let us go over to Christ. Let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that will never be forgotten.” You who have sincerely come within the bonds of this covenant of the Lord: from now on, the Lord is your God and Christ is your savior. You have flown over the chasm between Hell and Heaven. That good work has begun that the Lord will perform on you until the day of Christ.244 You have gotten within the gate and have entered onto the path of life.
243“Same party” here means a measure of shared assets and liabilities as in a business company, and must not be taken too far; believers do not become divine.
244Day of Christ: the Last Judgment.
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