The Foedus Legale According to Olevianus: A Republication of the Foedus Creationis

The foedus legale for Olevianus is a postlapsarian renewal or reiteration of that dimension of the foedus creationis by which humanity was under obligation from the time of creation to conform to the righteousness and holiness of the Creator. This pactum, he says, was established at Mount Sinai following Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and obligated the people of God to perfect observance of the law through the exercise of their own moral powers. Those who kept the commandments were promised eternal life; those who did not stood under the wrath of God’s curse. As such, the lex scripta (or Decalogue) stood in the same relation to the foedus legale as did the lex inscripta (or law of nature) to the foedus creationis, namely, as a testimony to one’s obligation to perfect obedience. The one is inscribed on human hearts, the other on tablets of stone, but both bear witness to the same ius creationis, to the same guidelines for discerning good and evil, and to the same sentence of judgment. Like their respective covenants, the law given at Sinai was really the law given at creation…
… it was necessary that the law first implanted in our natures at creation be restated. Our obligation to God had not changed, but the chief witness to that obligation had been virtually stilled and God wished for it to be heard once again.
The goal of the legal covenant and its commandments, however, was to produce not only knowledge of moral obligation but also knowledge of sin. God placed the law before us like a promissory note of the obedience we owed Him iure creatione, not because He expected that we could pay our due but precisely because He knew that we could not and would have to turn to Him for help. The law exposes but does not remit sin. It comes with accusations rather than promises. It condemns us; it does not save us. But in its condemnatory role the law points us beyond itself to the gospel and thus serves as a preparation for salvation. In its diagnosis of our illness, it compels us to flee to Christ, the versus medicus. For only when we are emptied of all confidence in ourselves are we able to take hold of the promises of the covenant of grace.
- Lyle D. Bierma, The Covenant Theology of Caspar Olevianus (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books) 122-24.  

Law and Gospel According to Calvin

As Calvin himself goes on to point out, the middle three comparisons of the Old and New Testaments have to do with the differences between law and gospel. For him Old Testament/New Testament, Old Covenant/New Covenant, foedus leagale/foedus evangelicum, and law/gospel were in many respects synonymous terms. But how then can he say, on the one hand, that the two covenants are “in substance and reality… one and the same” and, on the other, that there is a “great difference” and even “antithesis” between the law and the gospel? The answer lies in a distinction he makes between law and gospel in their “broad” and “narrow” senses. In its narrower sense the law is only precept, only “the bare commandments,” only that proclamation of condemnation and death which “belongs peculiarly to the ministration of Moses.” In its broader sense, however, the law is “the whole doctrine contained in the Law and the prophets,” “the teaching of Moses as a whole.” As such it contains not just God’s commandments but His promises of grace as well, including the promise of Christ. So too with the gospel Taken in its broad sense, the gospel “includes those testimonies of his mercy and fatherly favor which God gave to the patriarchs of old”; in its narrow sense it is restricted to the proclamation of grace displayed in the incarnate Christ. The law or Old Testament, therefore is antithetical to the gospel or New Testament only in its narrow sense, that is, only insofar as it “is distinguished from the word of grace and mercy…. Where the whole law is concerned, the gospel differs from it only in clarity of manifestation.” 
- Lyle D. Bierma, The Covenant Theology of Caspar Olevianus (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books) 45-46. 

True Humility: Nothingness

The way of humility is not from outside in, but from inside out. Thus the monkish ideal of humility is overcome precisely by being taken seriously. True humility can only consist in nothingness.
… Our nothingness does not in a positive way fill the gap created by the rejection of the ideal of humility. We cannot place our nothingness before God as a merit. No, it is really nothing but nothingness in the strict sense of the term. Not our nothingness but God’s grace alone is to be glorified. “Hence the stress lies not on the word ‘low estate,’ but on the word ‘regarded.’ For not her humility but God’s regard is to be praised. When a prince takes a poor beggar by the hand, it is not the beggar’s lowliness but the prince’s grace and goodness that is to be commended.” 
- Walther von Loewenich, Luther’s Theology of the Cross (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House) 132. 

What Is Meant by “Free Will”

As from natural power the willing flows, so from the moral disposition flows willing well.
- Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing), 1:669. 

The Pre-Fall Covenant of Works: Man Had the Right of Demanding

Turretin makes it clear that despite the fact that God’s promised reward in the covenant of works was not proportionate to man’s work, man still had the right to demand the reward from God, not on account of any intrinsic worth in man’s work, but on account of God’s promise to reward man’s work (pact and promise).

If therefore upright man in that state had obtained this merit, it must not be understood properly and rigorously. Since man has all things from and owes all to God, he can seek from him nothing as to his own by right, nor can God be a debtor to him–not by condignity of work and from its intrinsic value (because whatever that may be, it can bear no proportion to the infinite reward of life), but from the pact and the liberal promise of God (according to which man had the right of demanding the reward to which God had of his own accord bound himself) and in comparison with the covenant of grace (which rests upon the sole merit of Christ, by which he acquired for us the right to life). However, this demanded antecedently a proper and personal obedience by which he obtained both his own justification before God and life, as the stipulated reward of his labors.
- Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing), 1:578. 

Galatians and the Gospel

The Christian way stresses what God has done in Christ rather than what sinners do. There can be no improvement on the divine action by any human achievement, either by way of ritual observance or moral improvement. The cross is the one way of salvation, and no part of Scripture makes this clearer than does Galatians.
- D.A. Carson and Douglas Moo, An Introduction to the New Testament - 2nd Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan) 474. 

Certainty of Salvation: License to Sin?

So far is the doctrine of the certainty of grace from being the mother of security and the midwife of licentiousness, that there is no greater incentive to true piety than a vivid sense of the love of God and of his benefits. This so powerfully lays hold of and inflames the mind that it is all on fire with a reciprocal love of him from whom it receives so great favors and has been so highly preferred over others left in the common mass of perdition. 
- Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing), 1:378.

The Means of Grace in Christian Worship

The Spirit promises to make these outward means effectual for our salvation. God honors his own promises and uses the Word, sacraments, and prayer to save. No such divine blessing is promised for wearing “What Would Jesus Do” bracelets or listening to Amy Grant sing “Father’s Eyes.” So the choice comes down to eating the manna of God’s gracious provision or supping on the food of our own creation. And to make that choice, we need to see how great God’s provision is for us in worship, and how important it is to our own spiritual health and well being. The means of grace are part and parcel of Christian worship. We worship to praise God and to give him the glory that he alone deserves. And in worship through the means of grace, God is also at work, extending his blessing to his people, and transforming us into his image.
- Darryl G. Hart and John Muther, With Reverence and Awe (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing), 143-44.  

The Church at Worship: Fulfilling the Great Commission

Thus, it is the church, and specifically the church at worship, that fulfills the Great Commission. She is ministering to God by gathering a people before him in order to offer the sacrifice of praise. She is ministering to the body of Christ by nurturing it through the ordinances of Word and sacrament. And all of this happens before a watching world. It sees the church engaged in an odd ritual, speaking a strange language, worshiping the true and living God, and rejecting the gods of this world.
Unless we see worship from the perspective of the Great Commission, rightly understood, our worship is prone at best to dishonor God, and at worst, to be a form of blasphemy. Just as bad, it will be ineffective. For finally, only worship that honors God, that conforms to what he has commanded, will God use for convincing and converting sinners and for building them up in holiness and comfort (WSC 89). In other words, worship is essential to the task of the church because it is the Christ-commissioned means of discipling the nations. 
- Darryl G. Hart and John Muther, With Reverence and Awe (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing), 48. 

Twofold Beholding of God: Natural (Theology of Glory) and Spiritual (Theology of the Cross)

(1) The natural beholding of God is practiced by the unconverted; the spiritual beholding of God by those who are true recipients of grace, have truly been regenerated, and truly believe.
(2) The natural beholding of God occurs by the light of nature and the external illumination of the Word, by one’s own spirit, imagination, and mental powers, and by the drawing of rational conclusions; the spiritual beholding of God occurs by the illumination of the Holy Spirit who has drawn believers out of darkness into His marvelous light.
(3) The natural beholding of God has God as its object as He reveals Himself in nature as the eternal, exalted, and glorious One, etc. In the spiritual beholding of God a person beholds Him in the face of Jesus Christ; that is, in the manifestation of all the perfections of God in the work of redemption….
(4) The natural beholding of God leaves a man alienated from God; the separation remains. The illusion of being united with God is but a union according to their own imagination, for true union occurs only by way of faith — something they do not possess. The spiritual beholding of God brings the soul near to God — yes, unites her with God as belonging to Him….
(5) The natural beholding of God leaves man unchanged, that is, in the state of nature — even though through the knowledge of God they may flee from excessive pollution of the world. The spiritual beholding of God causes the soul to become increasingly a partaker of the divine nature, and to become holy as He is holy…. See to it that you do not immediately deem all beholding of God to be spiritual in nature.
- Wilhelmus a Bràkel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service (Vol. II) (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books), 674-75.