FAQ – Common Grace, the Well-Meant Offer, and the Covenant

Q. 1. “One of the popular views of the covenant is that it is an agreement between God and man. In close connection with the idea of the covenant as an agreement, the promise of the covenant is sometimes said to be general, that is, it is given to all the children who were baptized even though all the children were not elect—the promise is to all, but the actual realization of the promise is dependent upon the fulfillment of the condition of faith. Does this have connection to the idea of the well-meant offer?”

If it is true in some sense of the word that the promise of God in baptism comes to reprobate children as well as elect children, a promise in which God swears to be the God of those who are baptized and swears to make them His people, then the same thing can be said of the preaching, namely, that God, in the preaching, expresses His desire to save all who hear whether they are elect or reprobate.

We repudiate, however, this notion of the covenant as being, in essence, an agreement, and believe that Scripture emphatically teaches that the basic nature of the covenant is a bond of friendship and fellowship between God and His people in Christ.

… [When] one makes of the covenant an agreement, one is almost surely bound to the idea of a general promise; for children, who receive the promise when baptized, cannot, in fact, enter into an agreement until they arrive at years of maturity when they know what they are doing. Hence, under the idea of an agreement, all children receive the promise at baptism, but the promise becomes effective for them only when they become sufficiently mature to agree to the provisions of the agreement.

For detailed treatment of this, see my book, God’s Everlasting Covenant of Grace. (Prof. Herman C. Hanko, “The History of the Free Offer,” chapter 8)

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Q. 2. “What is the association between the idea that God makes a promise to each and every child who is baptized (a general, conditional promise), and the well-meant offer?”

It is not difficult to see how this is closely associated with the idea of the well-meant offer. After all, the same promise signified and sealed in baptism is also proclaimed in the preaching. If the promise is, in some sense of the word, made to all the children who are baptized, then that same promise when it is proclaimed in the preaching comes to all who hear the gospel. That promise, because it proclaims that God will be the God of those who hear, quite naturally fits in very well with the idea that the gospel is an offer, i.e., that it expresses God’s desire and intention to save all those who hear. In other words, a general and conditional promise of the covenant is fundamentally the same thing as a well-meant offer made to all, but given only upon condition of faith. (Prof. Herman C. Hanko, “The History of the Free Offer,” chapter 9)

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Q. 3. “Is it not true that some of those who are said to be “fitted to destruction” (Rom. 9:22) God also brings under the preaching of the gospel and even within the pale of the historical development of His covenant? For what other reason than to be gracious to them?”

[He does this] not to be gracious to them, but that in and through them sin may become manifest in all its horror and God may be just when he judges. They will be beaten with double stripes, and it would have been better for them had they never known the way of peace and righteousness (II. Pet. 2:20–21). (Rev. Herman Hoeksema, “The Rock Whence We Are Hewn,” p. 391)