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1. ADULTS IN THE COVENANT.
Adults can only enter this covenant voluntarily by faith and
confession. From this it follows that in their case, unless their confession be false, entrance into
the covenant as a legal relationship and into the covenant as a communion of life coincide.
They not merely take upon themselves the performance of certain external duties; nor do they
merely promise in addition to this, that they will exercise saving faith in the future; but they
confess that they accept the covenant with a living faith, and that it is their desire and intention
to continue in this faith. They enter upon the full covenant life at once therefore, and this is the
only way in which they can enter the covenant. This truth is implicitly or explicitly denied by all
those who connect the confession of faith with a merely external covenant.
2. CHILDREN OF BELIEVERS IN THE COVENANT.
With respect to the children of believers, who
enter the covenant by birth, the situation is, of course, somewhat different. Experience teaches
that, though by birth they enter the covenant as a legal relationship, this does not necessarily
mean that they are also at once in the covenant as a communion of life. It does not even mean
that the covenant relation will ever come to its full realization in their lives. Yet even in their
case there must be a reasonable assurance that the covenant is not or will not remain a mere
legal relationship, with external duties and privileges, pointing to that which ought to be, but is
also or will in time become a living reality. This assurance is based on the promise of God, which
is absolutely reliable, that He will work in the hearts of the covenant youth with His saving
grace and transform them into living members of the covenant. The covenant is more than the
mere offer of salvation, more even than the offer of salvation plus the promise to believe the
gospel. It also carries with it the assurance, based on the promises of God, who works in the
children of the covenant “when, where, and how He pleaseth,” that saving faith will be wrought
in their hearts. As long as the children of the covenant do not reveal the contrary, we shall have
to proceed on the assumption that they are in possession of the covenant life. Naturally, the
course of events may prove that this life is not yet present; it may even prove that it is never
realized in their lives. The promises of God are given to the seed of believers collectively, and
not individually. God’s promise to continue His covenant and to bring it to full realization in the
children of believers, does not mean that He will endow every last one of them with saving
faith. And if some of them continue in unbelief, we shall have to bear in mind what Paul says in
Rom. 9:6-8. They are not all Israel who are of Israel; the children of believers are not all children
of promise. Hence it is necessary to remind even children of the covenant constantly of the
necessity of regeneration and conversion. The mere fact that one is in the covenant does not
carry with it the assurance of salvation. When the children of believers grow up and come to
years of discretion, it is, of course, incumbent on them to accept their covenant responsibilities
voluntarily by a true confession of faith. Failure to do this is, strictly speaking, a denial of their
covenant relationship. It may be said therefore that the legal relationship in which the children
of believers stand, precedes the covenant as a communion of life and is a means to its