Following the Thread: Christ, Calling, and Justification in the 1689 Confession

In Part 2 we saw that chapter 3 of the 1689 Confession lays out a map of the means God decreed for saving his elect: fallen in Adam, redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, kept. Now we follow that thread through the chapters that fill it in, and we bring John Gill along to see where he walks with the Confession and where he leans further toward eternity.

Chapter 8: a price paid in time, a benefit across all time

Chapter 8, "Of Christ the Mediator," tells us how the elect are "redeemed by Christ." Paragraph 5:

The Lord Jesus, by His perfect obedience and sacrifice of Himself, which He through the eternal Spirit once offered up to God, has fully satisfied the justice of God, procured reconciliation, and purchased an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven for all those whom the Father has given unto him.

Christ's obedience and death are what accomplish justification. They satisfy God's justice and procure reconciliation. But that raises an old question: if the price was paid in AD 30, what about Abraham, or David? Paragraph 6 answers:

Although the price of redemption was not actually paid by Christ until after His incarnation, yet the virtue, efficacy, and benefit thereof were communicated to the elect in all ages successively from the beginning of the world, in and by those promises, types, and sacrifices wherein He was revealed, and signified to be the seed of the woman which should bruise the serpent's head; and the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, being the same yesterday, and today and for ever.^*

The payment happened at one point in history. Its benefits reach backward and forward to every believer, through the promises and types by which Christ was revealed before he came.

Then there is that striking phrase: "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." The Confession's proof text is Revelation 13:8: "everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain." It is tempting to read the Confession as placing Christ's sacrifice, in some sense, in eternity.

That reading does not survive a closer look. Revelation 13:8 can be taken two ways: either the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world, or names were written from the foundation of the world in the book of the slain Lamb. More importantly, the Confession's own sentence says the price was "not actually paid" until after the incarnation. What reaches back to the beginning is the sacrifice's "virtue, efficacy, and benefit," communicated through promises and types. The death itself happened once, in history.

The Confession guards just as carefully against locating justification at the cross. James Renihan, in his exposition of chapter 11, notes that some in the seventeenth century taught justification "from eternity, or alternately from the accomplishment of redemption at the cross." The second view rightly held that Christ finished his work and satisfied God's justice, but wrongly concluded that this justified all the elect then and there, so that they were never under God's wrath. Paragraph 4 of chapter 11 answers both views.^†

Renihan points to Thomas Goodwin, who distinguished "three stages" of justification. In the eternal covenant, "justified then we were when first elected, though not in our persons, yet in our Head." At Christ's resurrection, "when he was justified we were justified also in him." But both of these, Goodwin insists, "are wholly out of us, immanent acts in God," acts toward us rather than upon us. In this life "God doth judge, and pronounceth his elect ungodly and unjustified, till they believe."^‡ So the eternal and the historical are real, but they are not yet a sinner's justification. That waits for faith. Keep Goodwin's distinction in mind; Gill uses one very like it.

Gill on Christ the testator

Gill picks up the same language. He calls Christ the "testator of the covenant of grace," and reasons from the way a will works. An inheritance is not payable until the testator dies, he grants,

but such is not only the certainty of Christ's death, and which with God was as if it was, before it really was, but such is the virtue and efficacy of it, that it reaches backward to the beginning of the world, as before observed.

That is the Confession's own idea, expounded: an event that happens in time, yet is so certain in God's purpose that "with God [it] was as if it was, before it really was." Gill then adds a distinction that will matter later:

There is another concern and part which Christ has in the covenant, and that is the messenger of it, Mal. 3:1; but as that respects the administration of it, it will be considered in its proper place, after the fall of man.^§

For Gill the covenant of grace is founded on God's will from all eternity, but it is administered in time, after the fall. Hold on to that pair. It is the key to reading Gill fairly.

Chapter 10: an appointed time, by appointed means

The next stop on the map is effectual calling. Chapter 10, paragraph 1, begins:

Those whom God hath predestinated unto life, He is pleased in His appointed and accepted time, effectually to call by His Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ.⁵

Two things stand out. First, election and calling cannot be pulled apart: all whom God predestined, he calls. None of the elect is lost between the two. Second, there is an appointed time and there are appointed means. Chapter 3 said the Spirit works "in due season"; chapter 10 says when and how. The time is within the believer's life, and the means are the Word and the Spirit.

Gill says the same:

At conversion; as effectual calling itself is according to the purpose of God, as to time, place, and means; so the providence of God is concerned in the bringing of it about agreeable thereunto; there is a time fixed for it, called the time of life, and the time of love; because there is then the first appearance of both; this is sometimes in the earlier and sometimes in the latter part of life, and is not restrained to any, but is always at the time appointed by God, and then it is providentially brought about;⁶

Whatever Gill believes about eternity, he does not think calling happens there. It happens at conversion, at "the time of life."

Chapter 11.1: whom he called, them he also justified

Chapter 11, "Of Justification," opens the way chapter 10 did, by tying itself to what came before: "Those whom God effectually calls, he also freely justifies." Elect, called, justified: the full number of the elect stays intact at every step, echoing Romans 8:30.

Gill describes these blessings as just as inseparable:

Election and vocation are put together; the one as the fruit, effect, and evidence, of the other, 2 Pet. 1:10; and election is to be known by the internal call of the Spirit, through the ministry of the word, 1 Thess. 1:4, 5; and they may also be comfortably assured of their justification; for whom he called, them he also justified; and such may conclude themselves safe from all charges, from all condemnation, and from wrath to come; and they may most certainly expect eternal glory; for whom God calls and justifies, them he also glorifies: between calling-grace and eternal happiness, there is a sure and an inseparable connexion.⁷

Notice the means Gill names: "the internal call of the Spirit, through the ministry of the word." He and the Confession agree on how God calls, and on the certainty that the called will be justified.

Chapter 11.2: faith, the alone instrument

Paragraph 2 calls faith "the alone instrument of justification." An instrument is the tool by which something is received. For faith to be the instrument of justification, faith must come first, at least in some sense. You do not use a tool after the work is done.

Gill agrees:

It is by faith men receive the forgiveness of sins; and by it they receive abundance of grace, and the gift of righteousness to justification of life; and this is what the Scriptures call justification by faith.⁸

Men receive forgiveness by faith and are justified. That is plain Reformation doctrine. But Gill immediately qualifies what kind of justification he means:

I have, in a former part of this work, vol. i., b. ii., page 292, treated of justification, as an immanent and eternal act in God; and so it may be said to be from eternity, and before faith; and in what sense it is so, with a removal of objections, has been shown in the place referred to; and therefore shall only now discourse concerning justification, as it terminates in the conscience of a believer; and which the Scriptures style justification by faith.⁹

Here is Gill's distinction in his own words. There is justification as an act in God, which he says is eternal and before faith. And there is justification as it "terminates in the conscience of a believer," which is by faith. The first is God's accomplishing; the second is God's applying.

Next

So Gill and the Confession walk together through chapters 8, 10, and 11.1–2. The real test comes at paragraph 4, where the Confession says the elect "are not justified personally" until the Spirit applies Christ to them. Does Gill's eternal act contradict that sentence? That is the subject of Part 4: Decree, Procurement, Application.

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