The Encouragement of Conditional Promises

I have been meaning to write this post for a while but just haven't gotten around to it. This is mainly from a book I read earlier in the year A Lifting Up for the Downcast by William Bridge. The book is a collection of 13 sermons Bridge preached on Psalm 42:11 - "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God." This particular sermon is a lifting up in the lack of assurance.
One of the things that Bridge brings up to lift up his people in the time of discouragement is the promises of God. But he as a good Puritan "physician of the soul" asks the objections that a person would have in banking on the promises of God for encouragement and assurance. One objection that he raises and then answers is that of conditional promises.

"Oh, you reply, but yet, when I go to the Scripture, I find that God's promise still runs upon some condition, and I cannot perform that condition. I do not find that condition in myself; and therefore I fear that I may not go to these promises and that I have no right to them."

He answers this question in several ways, but two are striking to me. The first is that the condition of some promises in Scripture is the promise of other promises. An example:

Repentance is the condition of the promise in 2 Chron. 6:36-40- "36 "If they sin against you-for there is no one who does not sin-and you are angry with them and give them to an enemy, so that they are carried away captive to a land far or near,
37 yet if they turn their heart in the land to which they have been carried captive, and repent and plead with you in the land of their captivity, saying, 'We have sinned and have acted perversely and wickedly,'
38 if they repent with all their mind and with all their heart in the land of their captivity to which they were carried captive, and pray toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, the city that you have chosen and the house that I have built for your name,
39 then hear from heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their pleas, and maintain their cause and forgive your people who have sinned against you.
40 Now, O my God, let your eyes be open and your ears attentive to the prayer of this place."

And yet, repentance is the promise of Ezekiel 36:26 - "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh."

Faith and coming to Christ is the condition of the promise in Matthew 11:28 "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And in John 6:37 it is the thing promised: "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out."

Obedience is required in one promise: Isa. 1:19 "If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land" and promised in Ezekiel 36:27 "And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules."

So, the point of this is not that we should not repent or obey, or come to Christ in faith, but that we should see great encouragement in conditional promises because in Christ for God's people they are promised by God in His mercy and grace. So we can cleave to the promise of repentance and faith in Christ because God has done everything for our salvation and promised the very conditions of it! What grace upon grace! We can be assured and run to the promises.

The second striking thing he noted was that if we are in Christ, he has perfectly performed the condition for us and his covenant keeping obedience is credited to us! What could be better. We have not met the conditions, true, but Jesus has done it perfectly and we are in union with Him by faith. So, Christian, take hold of Christ and the promises of God, especially the conditional ones, for there we see that God's grace not only true but over-abundant and wonderful.


-In Christ alone,
The Holowell's (Josh, Whitney and Tyko)