The promise is to you and to your children! The promise is to all who are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call!

Comforting words!

Spoken to those whose hearts had been pricked by Peter’s preaching that they were the murderers of the holy and just one. They had rejected Jesus Christ and desired instead a robber and murderer to be given to them. By their wicked hands they had crucified and slain Jesus. But he had been delivered over by God’s determinate counsel and foreknowledge! Crucified and risen, ascended, and then returned in his Spirit. Jesus came, just as he had promised. He came in the Spirit, the evidence of which they all were then seeing and hearing!

“Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (v. 38).

“For the promise is unto you…as many as the Lord our God shall call” (v. 39).

A gracious promise.

The essential thing about the old covenant is that it was a covenant of promise. God gave the covenant and all that it contained by promise. So Abraham was called the friend of God. The law was added at Sinai, but that was for the sake of the promise, to make salvation impossible by the law until Christ—who is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes—be revealed. By promise God revealed himself as the gracious God of believers and their seed in the covenant.

The whole scripture concerns the promise of God. In the Old Testament God spoke the promise and signified and sealed the promise by types and shadows. In the New Testament God fulfilled the promise in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And Christ returned on Pentecost with the promise, the promise of the Spirit.

The promise is rich, so the Bible speaks of the promise in the plural: promises. All of the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ. All of the promises, though, are as many facets of one sparkling diamond. There is one eternal promise of God, one unbreakable word of salvation.

Those promises individually and taken all together as the one promise of God are the infallible oath of God to save the elect people of God from all their sins, to make with them an eternal covenant of grace, and to bring them to heavenly glory in Christ. The promise is the word of God about what God will do to save believers and their seed from their sins to the praise of his wonderful grace and his glorious name.

A promise—not an offer!

An offer is a declaration of the willingness of someone to do something that depends upon the willingness and activity of the one to whom the offer is made. But a promise is a word about what someone will do that is not contingent upon any activity of the one to whom the promise is made.

So a father says to his son, “I will buy you a bike.” That is a promise. Or the father says, “I will buy you a bike if you mow the lawn all summer.” That is an offer. A promise proceeds from the good will of the one who makes the promise. A promise depends only upon the good will of the one who makes the promise. An offer depends upon the work and willingness of the one to whom the offer is made.

And so, too, wherever the blessings of God depend on or come through the works of man, that is an offer. The promise of God is not that he enables one to repent and believe and that, when one does these things, then God gives his blessing. That is an offer and is not a promise.

God gave a promise. “The promise is unto you…as many as the Lord our God shall call.” He gave a word that proceeds from his own good will and that depends for its fulfillment strictly on that good will of God and depends neither in whole nor in part on the one to whom God gives the promise.

A promise that is confirmed with an oath! A sure word.

A promise sealed with a promise so that the heirs of the promise may have a strong consolation! Willing to show to the heirs the immutability of his counsel, God confirmed the promise with an oath! He swore by himself because he could swear by none greater. A holy oath of the triune God: three spoke and bore witness to the truth of God’s counsel and promised to save his people from their sins and to bless them with everlasting salvation.

If God’s promise fails, then he fails; and if he fails, then he is not God.

Oh yes, this too: if his promise is dependent upon you; if his promise is not realized until men do their part; then God is also dependent, and he is not God.

But it is a promise sealed with an oath!

An immutable word.

It is a rich promise.

The promise is Jesus Christ—the full Christ and all his blessings and benefits that he earned by his cross. All that is in Christ is included in the promise.

The promise includes the gift of faith. Believe! For the promise is unto you. So faith is included in the promise.

The promise includes the remission of sins by faith. So God promises to forgive all the trespasses of his people, both their original guilt and the guilt of their own sins. And implied is that he promises to impute the perfect righteousness of Christ to his people and to declare them worthy of eternal life and every blessing.

The promise includes repentance. Repentance is not something one must do to receive the promise, and repentance is not an activity of man upon which the promise depends, but Peter included repentance in the promise.

The promise is the gift of the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ. The content of the promise is especially the Holy Ghost given as a gift. The Holy Ghost, who was given to Jesus Christ to be his Spirit at Jesus’ ascension into heaven. The Holy Ghost, whom Christ poured out upon his church at Pentecost. The Holy Ghost is the blessing that God gives the righteous.

The gift of the Spirit is the chief difference between the old dispensation and the new. It is not that in the old dispensation God’s people had no Spirit and that in the new dispensation they have the Spirit. God’s people in the old dispensation also had the Spirit but in small measure. They did not have Christ in reality but in promise in the types and shadows and in all the symbols and figures. Christ came and fulfilled all those types and shadows, and he gives God’s people his Spirit, who is the reality of the salvation promised in the old dispensation.

The Spirit as the promise brings Christ and all Christ’s salvation. The Spirit applies Christ and his salvation to the hearts and lives of his people and preserves them in it. The Holy Ghost gives all things that Christ has. The Spirit works faith in their hearts and maintains it in them. The Spirit works in their consciences and experiences, so that they know God as their gracious God and Father. The Spirit works in their hearts by the gospel to break the ruling power of sin, to make them new creatures, and to cause them to live holy lives. God promises to avert all evil or turn it to their profit. God promises to preserve his people in this life in holiness until the day that he presents them in heaven without spot or wrinkle and when all tears are dried away. God promises to give them a new heaven and a new earth after this old one is burnt. He promises them the resurrection, body and soul, and acquittal in the final judgment. All things are Christ’s, and God promises his people all things in Christ.

The Spirit comes and personally establishes the covenant relationship. By that Spirit God incorporates a man into Christ, shows that man the covenant, and pours out upon him heavenly graces. To receive the promise is to be brought nigh, to be numbered among God’s children, to have God as your God and Jesus Christ as your savior, and to be assured that God will be your God and the God of your seed.

By promise God gives the covenant not merely in an objective way, formally, or legally; but by the promise God gives the covenant in its life and experience, in its blessings and glory.

Is this not especially true because the promise is the Spirit? To receive the Spirit is to receive the experience of salvation. It is especially the Spirit’s work to give to God’s people the experience of salvation, to cause them to taste that the Lord is good; to give them to know Christ and to be warmed and filled with Christ; to assure them and testify with their spirits that they are the children of God. They know God; they experience God; they enjoy God as their God by the work of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

The promise makes that covenant of grace unconditional. Because the covenant of grace and all the blessings of the covenant of grace and all the experiences of the covenant of grace are by promise, the covenant of grace cannot be conditional. Since the promise is the Spirit, the covenant of grace and all the blessings and experiences of the covenant of grace are the work of the Spirit. Since the promise gives everything, there is nothing left for man to do to establish the covenant, to make that covenant sure, or to experience that covenant.

Sure promise.

Sovereign word.

As many as the Lord our God shall call.

It is not a promise to or for all. A promise for all is a promise dependent on what man does. In order to make the promise to all, the preacher does not have to say that the promise is for all. The preacher only needs to make the promise depend on what man does. A promise for all teaches that there is something that all must do in order to make the promise sure and effectual in their hearts and lives and thus also that their children must do to make the promise sure and effectual in their lives. Man must do this to experience the promise! Man must do that to experience the favor of God! Man must do this to have the assurance of his salvation! That is not a promise. That is an offer. That is not grace. That is works. Then what man must do is not included in the promise. A promise for all is no promise at all.

Surely there is a universal proclamation of the promise. The promise goes to the ends of the earth, to everyone and to every place where God in his good pleasure sends the promise. Even where the promise is preached, God is sovereign!

As many as the Lord our God shall call.

The promise is to you who are listening…as many as the Lord our God shall call.

The promise is to your children…as many as the Lord our God shall call.

The promise is to all who are afar off…as many as the Lord our God shall call.

To whom does the promise come as they sit in the midst of darkness in the world? To whom is the promise light and life and salvation? Upon whom does the promise bestow all the saving benefits of Christ Jesus and his cross? To whom does the promise give the gift of the Holy Spirit?

To as many as the Lord our God shall call.

The calling is the sovereign and living voice of God.

The calling comes by means of the preaching of the gospel. The calling does not come by the preaching of the law. The calling comes by the preaching of the gospel. God sends out ministers of reconciliation, by whose mouths he speaks the gospel of Jesus Christ and by that gospel of Jesus Christ brings the call. The preaching of the gospel is the instrument of the calling. So much so that scripture seems at times to identify them. But the preaching of the gospel and the calling of God that Peter spoke about must be distinguished.

The calling of which Peter spoke is the divine address of a sinner in the very depth of his being as he sits in his sin, in his darkness, in his guilt, and in his pollution. God speaks in the calling with his own voice—an irresistible voice, a creative voice, a life-giving voice—and God addresses that sinner not only in the ears of the head but also in the ears of the heart. God speaks to the sinner and calls him powerfully and effectually out of the darkness of his sin and death, his guilt and pollution, and calls the sinner into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, Jesus Christ. God says to the dead sinner, “Live,” and to the hardened sinner, “Repent,” and to the smug sinner, “Become nothing.” God says to the lame, “Walk,” and to the blind, “See,” and to the captive, “Be set free.” By the power of God’s voice—irresistible, creative, and life-giving—they become what he speaks.

God does not say this so that they know what they must do to be saved. He says this to effectually accomplish what he speaks. So the gospel comes to all; and the command to repent and believe comes to all; and the promise is proclaimed to all. God speaks by that to as many as he shall call. God calls by that means and makes that preaching effectual. God does that. God makes the choice upon whom that preaching will be effectual to call them out of darkness, to work faith and repentance in their hearts, to justify them, and to sanctify them.

And God’s calling proceeds from the eternal fountain of election. There are not two sources of salvation: God’s grace and man’s activity, or God’s will and man’s will. There is one eternal source of salvation in the eternal predestination of God. From this eternal fountain of God’s love, grace, and mercy, the calling issues forth. He called the salvation of his people into existence out of his counsel at the cross. There he said, “Let salvation be,” and it was. And he sends out the gospel—not the law, not do this and do that—as the power of God to salvation and calls their salvation into being in their hearts and lives. Whom he did predestinate, them he also called!

The promise is to as many as the Lord our God shall call! The promise is to all whom God calls by his secret and gracious calling in their hearts. All whom God calls are the elect and them only.

Thus also he does not call the reprobate, whom he appointed to damnation, and so the promise of God is not to them. They are not incorporated into his covenant; he speaks no word of promise to them; he gives them no word except a word of damnation and a command to repent and believe, which command, so soon as it comes, works their greater condemnation.

When Peter said, “The promise is unto you, and to your children,” he declared that God’s saving call—and thus God’s election—runs in the lines of generations. It is the calling of the covenant God, the family God, and thus the God who saves his people in the lines of families and shows to them—believers and their seed—his covenant. The promise is a promise to believers and their seed. And this means not only that God’s call but also God’s election run in the lines of believers and their seed.

“And to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” A promise to be proclaimed to the ends of the earth and to all the nations of the world that all nations be blessed with father Abraham!

Promise received!

The promise is to them. It is to as many as the Lord our God shall call. The promise is to you, and it is to your children! That does not only mean that it is meant for them. That is true. God intends it for them and them only. When the gospel of Christ comes and the promise of the gospel is preached, then we must hear this beautiful thought expressed. We are hearing about God’s eternal intentions regarding the heirs of the promise. We are hearing of all the divine love and favor toward us that God purposed for us in Christ and that he accomplished at the cross. We are hearing of God’s grace and favor to sinners, to the blind, to the lame, to the imprisoned, and to his own wretched enemies. We are hearing of God’s intentions to bless us in Christ, to save us from our sins, to take away our guilt, to free us from sin’s dominion, to bless us in this life, and to bring us to heavenly glory. Oh, the preaching of the promise is the preaching of God’s intention and his naming of the heirs of his promise by name. That is wonderful news for the believer and his children and all who are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.

But Peter preached an even more profound truth. The promise is to them; so that God gives, bestows, and makes reality all that he promises in their lives, in their experiences, and for their assurance. According to the divine decree of election and by the powerful and efficacious call of the gospel, God actually bestows all these things on them. He bestows them powerfully and efficaciously on adults, as well as on the children of those both far and near, as many as he calls. He bestows all these things by bestowing on the heirs of the promise his Spirit.

The promise does not wait on a decision or a work or an activity of man. The experience of the promise does not follow upon some decision, work, or activity of man.

The promise is to them, so that when God calls they receive all that the word of God promises and so that God works out all that he intended for them in their hearts and in their lives and in all their circumstances. When God calls, they repent; believe; and are forgiven, justified, sanctified, and glorified.

For the promise is unto you. You are God’s child, an heir of the promise, a heavenly creature already. Not, you must yet do this and this; but God realizes his promise that is to you.