|Of the Parties in the Covenant of Grace.| “I want to see, before I begin, if my little scholar remembers what I have just been telling her,—who the two parties were in the Covenant of Works?”
“God and Adam,” replied Emma.
“Yes, dear, you are right. And in this new covenant or agreement I am going to speak about, there were two parties also. Do you think you could tell me who they were?”
“Was it God and Adam again?” inquired the little girl.
“No, my child,” said the old lady. “Man, having broken the first covenant, could no longer enter into terms with God. There was some one who came in the place of guilty man. Can you tell me who this was?”
“It was the Lord Jesus Christ,” said Emma.
“Quite correct,” replied her grandmother. “God was angry with man, and could no longer speak with him. But Jesus said, ‘I will come in the room of those lost sinners, and speak to God for them.’ So God and Jesus made a covenant together. It was as if Jesus said to God, ‘O my Father, if Thou wilt pardon these poor sinners, I will leave my glorious throne, and come down to the earth, and die for them, and wash their guilty souls in my precious blood.’ And then God promised, and said, ‘I will pardon them! They deserve nothing but wrath; but, for the sake of what Thou art to do and suffer, as their Redeemer, I will shew them “Grace.”’ Hence this new covenant between God and Jesus was called ‘the Covenant of Grace.’”
“I should like to hear more,” said Emma, “about this glorious Being who loved man so much as to die for him. Why is He called by the name of Redeemer?”
|Of the Person of the Redeemer.| “Jesus is called ‘Redeemer,’ because He ‘buys back’ the lost souls of men. No one but God, in our nature, could do this. If the highest angel in heaven had tried to save us, he could not. Jesus Christ was both God and man. He had lived from all eternity ‘with God, and was God.’ He took upon Him our nature, and was born a little babe in the stable of Bethlehem. How sweet for little children to think that Jesus was once himself a little child!”
|Of the Humiliation of Christ.| “How wonderful!” said Emma, “for the great God of heaven to come down to dwell with man on the earth—to be called the ‘Man of Sorrows’—to be poor and hated, and have ‘nowhere to lay His head,’ till He laid it on the Cross, and there died a cruel death!”