It seems almost human nature to think that we can find something to do for God that will make Him do us favors. If we live more virtuously, or cut down on a vice or two, then God will have to reward us.

But the problem with this notion is that it doesn’t really comport with the idea of God at all. If God is God then He is infinite, independent, and eternal. He is self-sustaining. He doesn’t need anything we have to offer. We deal with fellow human beings all the time in ways that both obligate them to reward us and obligate us to reward them. Because we all have unmet needs, we require one another for life and happiness. Obviously, God is not in that sort of relationship with us. He doesn’t need anything from us so that we could put him in our debt.

Only pagans can believe in gods who we can relate to through what we offer rather than by the grace of God.

The pagans believed their sacrifices fed the gods the food they needed, so they could imagine that they really were in some sort of equal arrangement. In one of the pagan myths of the near-east there is a version of the flood story. In that tale, when the Noah-figure gets off the ark, and offers a sacrifice, the gods are said to be so hungry that they swarm on it “like flies.” The god who caused the flood is repudiated because by threatening the human race he threatened the source of food for the gods.

In that belief-system of finite gods it makes sense that people thought they could bribe these gods to do them favors and merit a reward. The Apostle Paul deals with this degenerate form of religion when he preached in Athens, “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17.24, 25). God gives Himself to us over and over. We are in no position to trade. Everything we have comes from Him.

Adam did not live in a pagan reality, but the gracious reality–the gift of a gracious God

Some people think that, before sin entered the world, man was in a position to earn or merit blessing from God. But, while it is true that sin corrupts everything we do now, even apart from sin our works could never put God in our debt.  On the contrary, Adam was to respond in gratitude and faith to God’s gracious gifts and promises (which in his case, unlike ours, would entail sinless obedience).

Thus John Calvin wrote in 1536 in his first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion,

In order for us to come to a sure knowledge of ourselves, we must first grasp that Adam, parent of us all, was created in the image and likeness of God. That is, he was endowed with wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and was so clinging by these gifts of grace to God that he could have lived forever in Him, if he had stood fast in the uprightness God had given him. But when Adam slipped into sin, this image and likeness of God was cancelled and effaced, that is, he lost all the benefits of divine grace, by which he could have been led back into the way of life (emphasis added).

Twenty-four years later, Calvin still taught the same thing in his final version of the Institutes,

If man had no title to glory in himself, when, by the kindness of his Maker, he was distinguished by the noblest ornaments, how much ought he to be humbled now, when his ingratitude has thrust him down from the highest glory to extreme ignominy? At the time when he was raised to the highest pinnacle of honor, all which Scripture attributes to him is, that he was created in the image of God, thereby intimating that the blessings in which his happiness consisted were not his own, but derived by divine communication. What remains, therefore, now that man is stripped of all his glory, than to acknowledge the God for whose kindness he failed to be grateful, when he was loaded with the riches of his grace? Not having glorified him by the acknowledgment of his blessings, now, at least, he ought to glorify him by the confession of his poverty (2.2.1; italics added).

Indeed, it is a matter of Confessional orthodoxy for those in the continental Reformed tradition to affirm that upright, sinless creatures only live by the grace of God:

He also created the angels good, to be His messengers and to serve His elect; some of whom are fallen from that excellency in which God created them into everlasting perdition, and the others have by the grace of God remained steadfast and continued in their first state (The Belgic Confession, Article 12).

If even sinless angels are preserved by the grace of God for eternal life, why should Adam be any different?

The older Protestant theologians knew this. One of them, James Fisher, authored a “catechism”–a series of question and answers for the purpose of teaching children Christian doctrine–which included a question about the first human being: “Was there any proportion between Adam’s obedience, though sinless, and the life that was promised?” The answer is: “There can be no proportion between the obedience of a finite creature, however perfect, and the enjoyment of the infinite God.”

The catechism goes on: “Why could not Adam’s perfect obedience be meritorious of eternal life?” and answers, “Because perfect obedience was no more than what he was bound to, by virtue of his natural dependence on God, as a reasonable creature made after his image.” Finally, the questions is asked: “Could he have claimed the reward as a debt, in case he had continued in his obedience?” The answer is that all rewards are of God’s grace, his unmerited favor: “He could have claimed it only as a pactional debt, in virtue of the covenant promise, by which God became debtor to his own faithfulness, but not in virtue of any intrinsic merit of his obedience, Luke 17:10.” By “pactional” the author means that it was a only by an gracious decision to bind himself to a promise that God could be obligated in the first place.

This last answer is accompanied by a Scripture text, Luke 17.10: “Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’”  Note that James Fisher uses a parable about the relationship of redeemed sinners to their Lord to explain the relationship between Adam and God before the Fall.

James Fisher was only one of many who understood the true God and therefore rejected all human merit. Reformed theologian John Ball writes the common consensus, appealing to the same text that Fisher uses:

In this state and condition Adam’s obedience should have been rewarded in justice, but he could not have merited that reward. Happiness should have been conferred upon him, or continued unto him for his works, but they had not deserved the continuance thereof: for it is impossible the creature should merit of the Creator, because when he hath done all that he can, he is an unprofitable servant, he hath done but his duty (A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace).

Unworthy servants are what we are, even when we have done all our duty! How much less can we ever rightfully claim to obligate God to reward us when we both fail to do our duty and actively violate God’s commands every day?

The fact is, when human beings are attracted to the idea of dealing with God on the basis of their merits, they are not only denying their own sinfulness before a Holy God, but they are denying who God is. Make no mistake, the issue here is not merely the sinfulness of sin but the deity of God. As the Westminster Confession states in chapter 2, paragraph 2:

God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself; and is alone in and unto himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them. He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things; and hath most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever himself pleaseth.

To claim that we can earn from this God, that we can intrinsically merit from him some reward, is truly insane–an exchanging of the creature for the Creator. We might as well worship beasts as pretend that we could ever, under any circumstances, offer God works that are truly meritorious before him when he himself has enabled and ordained for us to do every good deed we produce.

Thus, the Westminster Confession goes on to affirm that we can never merit anything from God, not only because of our sinfulness in comparison to God’s holiness, but also because of our finitude in comparison to God’s transcendance:

We cannot by our best works merit pardon of sin, or eternal life at the hand of God, by reason of the great disproportion that is between them and the glory to come; and the infinite distance that is between us and God, whom, by them, we can neither profit, nor satisfy for the debt of our former sins, but when we have done all we can, we have done but our duty, and are unprofitable servants: and because, as they are good, they proceed from his Spirit; and as they are wrought by us, they are defiled, and mixed with so much weakness and imperfection, that they cannot endure the severity of God’s judgment (16.5; emphasis added).

Happily, God is gracious. Before sin entered the world, God established a gracious relationship with humanity in Adam whereby he would inherit eternal glory if he persevered in faith and obedience.

But Adam did not remain in the vine (John 15.1ff). In the words of the sixteenth-century Protestant French Confession of Faith, “by his own guilt he fell from the grace which he received.” Rather than destroying Adam and Eve in condemnation, God gave exponentially greater grace to deal with sin and restore man to the glory that he had failed to inherit. He sent His own Son to die in our condemnation on the cross in order to give Jesus the exaltation for us that Adam had failed to trust Him to give him.

Repenting and believing the Gospel is never about earning God’s favor or putting him in our debt by some sort of good work. It is simply the only appropriate response to the clear fact that God has already revealed that He loves us and freely offers us both salvation from sin and an eternal inheritance of incomprehensible glory. And even our response to that offer is God’s gift. If his Spirit did not overcome our obstinancy we would go on asserting the possiblity that we could merit something other than death from Him.

I post all this due to the palpably false charge that Peter Leithart has denied some alleged bi-covenantal scheme in the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms.  I know it is too much to ask Presbyterians to read the Bible.  But I was hoping some would prove willing to deal with the confession.

Or maybe they could read Dr. Ligon Duncan:

What God is doing is not merited. Adam has not merited this. We use the phrase Covenant of Works, not to say that man earned these blessings, but to express the fact that this original relationship had no provision for the continuation of God’s blessings if disobedience occurred. So it was a covenant contingent upon Adam continuing in his obligations. (emphasis all in the original).

Now compare this to this claim on page 11:  “Leithart rejects this bi-covenantal structure…”  But I don’t see (and I may have missed it) any attempt to show that Dr. Leithart believes that there was, in the “original relationship” a “provision for the continuation of God’s blessings if disobedience occurred”?  The analysis used to condemn Peter reads like a Rorschach test.

As I have written before, here is the baseline:

“The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam; and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.

I quote from the Westminster Confession’s chapter on God’s covenant. I don’t think we learn anything additional from the rest of the Westminster documents except that the name, “covenant of works” is not the only name one can use (if someone notices something I’ve missed, let me know). Perhaps we should also say the representative nature of the covenant is affimed outside the paragraph above. That too would be part of the doctrine.

To affirm the traditional doctrine of the Covenant of works then one must affirm and only affirm that

1. There was a covenant made with Adam that is now superseded.
2. That this was the first covenant with man.
3. That Adam’s and Eve’s works were acceptable to God.
4. That life was promised to Adam (and to him as a public person, not to himself alone but to his posterity)
5. That Adam would forfeit this promise and be eternally condemned (not only for himself but also for his posterity) if he refused to give God perfect and personal obedience as the condition for the covenant.

When considering whether someone teaches the covenant of works in an orthodox manner, it might be helpful to keep the traditional baseline in mind.  Where is the evidence that Leithart falls short?

Where is any interest shown in discovering any evidence that Leithart falls shorts.  We hear about “precise” theology and “precision” till our ears bleed from the points, and then, when it should really matters, we get slogans of “bi-covenantal structure” that could mean anything used as a basis for saying a minister of the Gospel must face a prosecutor?  This “sounds like” administration, so call for a trial?

This imprecision did not just happen; it was embedded in the first of “nine declarations” passed by a General Assembly in 2007.

As I wrote rather scathingly in May of 2007, quoting the first declaration and responding:

1. The view that rejects the bi-covenantal structure of Scripture as represented in the Westminster Standards (i.e., views which do not merely take issue with the terminology, but the essence of the first/second covenant framework) is contrary to those Standards.

The parenthetical remark is public notice that this declaration threatens no one except those with the wrong friends.

Crudely said, I suppose.  Perhaps I was too willing to come across as hostile.  But I still don’t see how my basic point is in any way inaccurate. There is nothing that Peter says that in the least contradicts the Standards on this point. And whatever one wants to do with any exceptions Peter might have to the Westminster Standards, one ought not invent them out of vague slogans but ask about the actual statements in the standards.

When Shepherd was dismissed from Westminster Theological Seminary for political and not theological reasons, Jelle Faber wrote a series of editorials in Clarion lamenting this, defending Shepherd, but not uncritically. I suspect Shepherd’s more recent books are not widely read in Canadian Reformed circles.

Though I respect Norman Shepherd a great deal, and cherish him as a Reformed father and a brother in Christ, I do demur from some of his positions. In my mind he tends to over-accentuate continuity between old and new covenants. I’m not convinced either by his arguments against the imputation of Christ’s active obedience in justification. That said, I’m not entirely comfortable with the theology of many of his critics either. I share with Shepherd the conviction, on exegetical grounds, that Romans 4 is not about the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. I agree with Shepherd that faith is the sole instrument of justification and that faith without works is dead. I find it deeply regrettable and irresponsible that his name is so cavalierly tarnished in segments of the Reformed community.

Read the whole entry: Episcopos: Questions for the CanRC (2).

Originally from  June 29, 2009:

In case anyone is interested, these are the things I have written about the Westminster Standards. Some of these are direct expositons. Others are Biblical studies that defend Westminster Doctrine.

CREDO on justification

Not much expositon. More a testimony about the lack of theological competence among theological guardians.

Justification & Salvation Quiz

Irony with the Westminster Confession and Catechisms being the answer key.

Law & Gospel in Presbyterianism

A pretty straightforward exposition of what the Westminster Confession actually states regarding the topic of “law and gospel.”

MIXING “LAW” & GOSPEL IN THE ABRAHAMIC PROMISE: A Response to Michael Horton

Pretty much similar content to “Law & Gospel in Presbyterian” but applied to someone offering a revisionist account. Arguably my own brief exegetical defense is also rather new.

The Moral Law Commands Faith in Christ Alone

As (the original movie version of) Buffy would say, “Does the word, ‘duh,’ mean anything to you?” I’m not going to make you suffer through an explanation as to why I wrote this piece, but points two and six are from the Westminster documents, so I must include it here.

The Necessity of New Obedience: The Westminster Standards, Repentance, & Pardon

The title is pretty self-explanatory as to content and why it gets included in this list. Not much Scripture (I’m embarrassed to admit) just an exposition of the content of Westminster’s faith related to this particular topic.

The God of Grace

An exposition of the Reformed view of grace that touches on the covenant of life and the basis of God’s relationship with Adam before the Fall. It is a general survey of the Reformed confessional tradition, but it shows that Westminster was perfectly consistent with this heritage, rather than an exception to it.

The Covenant of Works, the Mosaic Covenant, & the Necessity of Obedience for Salvation in the Day of Judgment

I almost left this out because the Westminster stuff is alonside many other confessions and catechisms and it is somewhat redundant with other stuff I’ve linked. It is an excerpt from my essay defending Norman Shepherd (yes, I know I need to put it through a major proofread, but who has time?).

Of the Church: An Exposition of Chapter XXV of the Westminster Confession of Faith

What the title says. I simply expound the chapter, writing a sermon of what the chapter teaches and applying it to the lives of a hypothetical congregation. This was a class assignment from Dr. David Calhoun at Covenant Theological Seminary for his course on the Westminster Confession of Faith. He gave me a high grade at the time, but Hogwarts was not under the wathful eye of the Ministry of Magic back then.

Charles Hodge’s Deficient Idea of the Church

Among other things, I hold up an essay by Charles Hodge to scrutiny according to what the Westminster Confession teaches about the church.

Heads of Household Membership & Male-Only Voting in the Church

I may have messed up my argument by dealing with what could be two separate things as one mistake to refute, but I’ve never had the energy to redo this as two different essays. I argue from the Reformed and Westminsterian doctrine of baptism against the practice of doing membership “by household” and restricting voting to the head of household and/or males only.

What is the Old Testament Precursor to the Pastor? How does the Former Illuminate the Latter?

Barely relevant but endnote #2 qualifies it for this list. I wrote this to get ordained into the Gospel Ministry by Pacific Northwest Presbytery.

Admission into the Church: Biblical Theology & Baptism

A defense that baptism is “admission… into the visible church.”

Baptismal Theology Within Reformed Evangelicalism

Deals with the Reformed heritage as a whole, but has some remarks about WCF 14.1 that qualify it for this list.

Is God the God of the Mature Professing Christians Only

Big ugly counterattack on a credobaptist critic of Reformed paedobaptism. Use the Westminster Confession and Catechisms to clarify the paedobaptist position in order to better defend it from Scripture. (As per my exception to the Standards, I agreed with the critic regarding the inconsistency of credocommunionism.)

Quest for a Converting Ordinance

Deals with an archaism and tangentially with Q&A #91 of the Shorter Catechism.

SACRAMENTAL ASSURANCE & THE REFORMED FAITH: The Biblical Perspective of the Westminster Standards

How and why the sacraments confirm our faith in the Westminsterian doctrine, with a defense from Scripture.

Samuel Miller, Baptism, and Covenant Theology

Criticizes this professor of old Princeton for ignoring Westminster in order to posit an unecessary gap between himself and the Evangelical Anglicans.

The Westminster Standards & Sacramental Efficacy

Title self-explanatory. Probably my earliest writing on this topic.

Trying to be Objective: A Short Test For Those Concerned About An Alleged “Baptismal Regeneration” Teaching

This was an attempt to try to diffuse some misunderstandings that are being diligently spread in conferences and on the internet. I probably need to edit the tone of this. It is all about Westminster.

Why Do We Baptize? A Provisional Attempt at Biblical Reformulation

Mostly exploratory Bible stuff, but also a vindication of Westminster on baptism.

Why I Did Not Baptize My Daughter: My Role as a Parent in My Children’s Salvation

Basically argues that my role is to provide for the need for salvation by bequeathing her sin and death. Mostly argumentation from the Bible but also uses Westminster for support. This is sort of related to my essay about households and church membership.

JUSTIFICATION BY UNION WITH CHRIST Only Through Living Faith: A Brief Comparison of Calvin’s Institutes with the Westminster Confession and Catechisms regarding the shape of imputation

A demonstration that Richard Gaffin’s views on union with Christ and the ordo salutis are quite familiar to anyone knowledgeable regarding the Westminster Confession and Catechisms.

Celebrating a Calvinist Christmas with a Clear Conscience: Is the Holiday Unpresbyterian?

Whatever some majority of Divines may have wished the Confession or Catechisms to clearly say, what they actually wrote provides an easy rationale for the voluntary observance of Christmas (and other celebratory Christian days). Since the entire Christian world has approved of Christmas–including the entire Protestant and even Reformed world outside of the Anglo-American stream–I argue it is not treason to celebrate. This is especially true because the Bible nowhere condemns such a practice and it is legalism to bind consciences where God has remained silent.

As far as I know, this is everything. But if you find anything that should be added here, please let me know.

Shame and guilt and self-hatred are universal. Whether you chalk it up to original sin or to Oedipus or call it Jewish guilt or Catholic guilt or white guilt or black guilt, every single one of us knows he is not the person he was made to be. There are honest ways to confront that. You can kneel before God and pray for forgiveness and live in the joy of his love. Or you can drink heavily and make sardonic remarks until you destroy everyone you care about and then keel over dead – that’s honest too. But what a lot of people do is try to escape their sense of shame dishonestly by constructing elaborate moral frameworks that allow them to parade their virtue and their lavish repentance without any real inconvenience to themselves while simultaneously indulging in self-righteousness by condemning others for their impenitent evil. That’s the bad version of religion – the sort of religion Jesus came to dismantle.

via Andrew Klavan: My Way Into and Out of the Left – by Jamie Glazov | FrontPage Magazine.

Of course, I prefer to say that Jesus came to save us.  But having done so, it is inevitable that he would show by his life in word and in deed the evil that is self-salvation.

Not sure how much I agree or disagree (I assume both) with things said in the interview.  But I do think that what Klavan points to above is a problem found in other places beside the culture Klavan is analyzing.

The TULIP subculture comes to my mind.  “Grace” is a pharisaical slogan more often than not.

Here is Jeremiah 49.11 from the ESV:

So I was talking to Derrick about my response to Michael Horton regarding the Manhattan Declaration and he asked me in a nice way what on earth I was thinking of beginning my response in the Gospels and not earlier.  Well, I could do it, but I’d just be repeating his labors.  Consider:

In its most basic form, the term ‘gospel’ (Greek nouns euaggelion and euaggelia, verbs euaggelizo and euaggelizomai) means “good news.” But even before we get to the specific gospel that was proclaimed throughout the NT, we find that the “generic” use of the term is almost always related to a certain kind of news. This news is either the defeat/death of a king, the ascension of a new king, or both. And the news is good because the old king was usually a tyrant, enemy, or the like.

So for example, Saul’s death was “proclaimed” (euaggelizo, euaggelizomai) among Philistia as the good news of a vanquished king (I Sam. 31:8, 9; II Sam. 1:20). From the standpoint of the Philisites, this was gospel. But someone tried to proclaim this “good news” to David and he did not take it very well (II Sam. 4:9, 10). David mourned another gospel proclamation as well. His son Absalom had treasonously grabed the throne of Israel and forced David into exile. But David’s men later defeated Israel’s army and Absalom was killed. This meant that David could return as king to Israel; thus, this “good news” was brought to him (II Sam. 18:19-32 where some form of ‘gospel’ occurs nine times). David was distraught because his son had died (II Sam. 18:33), but this does not take away from the fact that the message was indeed gospel. The usurper had been killed and the true king would reign.

Years later, Adonijah thought that Jonathan was bringing “good news” regarding Adonijah’s attempt to be David’s successor (I Kin. 1:41-43). It was indeed good news of a new correnation, but the new king was Solomon. Progressing through the kingdom years, we find that the the Lord scared off some invading Syrians so that Israelites were able to plunder their empty camps. This deliverance from the Syrians – their defeat and plunder – was described as a day of “good news” (II Kin. 7:9). The prophet Nahum described the judgment and destruction of the Assyrians as “good news” that would come from a messager and result in feasting for Judah (Nah. 1:15; 2:1 in LXX). Finally, we can see that when God gains victory over His enemies, many “proclaim” (euaggelizo) the defeat and plunder of kings (Ps. 68:11, 12; 69:12, 13 in LXX).

So the bottom line with respect to these “generic” references is that the gospel relates news of a tyrant’s defeat and/or the ascension of a new king. But the NT clearly refers to a promised “gospel” that we have not yet addressed. Is this specific gospel – the “big gospel” – like the more generic ones that we have reviewed thus far? In fact it is, because what it promised was just like these smaller gospels. The ultimate OT gospel was the announcement that God the King would return to gather His people from exile and rule among them.

“Comfort, yes, comfort My people!”
says your God.
“Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her,
that her warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned;
for she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.”

The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord;
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted
and every mountain and hill brought low;
the crooked places shall be made straight
and the rough places smooth;
the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together;
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

The voice said, “Cry out!”
And he said, “What shall I cry?”…

O Zion,
you who bring good tidings [euaggelizo],
get up into the high mountain;
O Jerusalem,
you who bring good tidings [euaggelizo],
lift up your voice with strength,
lift it up, be not afraid;
say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”

Behold, the Lord God shall come with a strong hand,
and His arm shall rule for Him;
behold, His reward is with Him,
and His work before Him.
He will feed His flock like a shepherd;
He will gather the lambs with His arm,
and carry them in His bosom,
and gently lead those who are with young. (Is. 40:1-6, 9-11)

Awake, awake!
Put on your strength, O Zion;
put on your beautiful garments,
O Jerusalem, the holy city!
For the uncircumcised and the unclean
shall no longer come to you.
Shake yourself from the dust, arise;
sit down, O Jerusalem!
Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck,
O captive daughter of Zion!…

For thus says the Lord God:

“My People went down at first
into Egypt to dwell there;
then the Assyrian oppressed them without cause.
Now therefore, what have I here,” says the Lord,
“That My people are taken away for nothing?
Those who rule over them
make them wail,” says the Lord,
“and My name is blasphemed continually every day.
Therefore My people shall know My name;
therefore they shall know in that day
that I am He who speaks:
‘Behold, it is I.’”

How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him who brings good news [euaggelizo],
who proclaims peace,
who brings glad tidings [euaggelizo] of good things,
who proclaims salvation,
who says to Zion,
“Your God reigns!”
Your watchmen shall lift up their voices,
with their voices they shall sing together;
for they shall see eye to eye
when the Lord brings back Zion.
Break forth into joy, sing together,
you waste places of Jerusalem!
For the Lord has comforted His people,
He has redeemed Jerusalem.
The Lord has made bare His holy arm
in the eyes of all the nations;
and all the ends of the earth shall see
the salvation of our God.” (Is. 52:1, 2, 4-10)

So the gospel was the promise that the glory of the Lord would be revealed in that He would come with power to gather and shepherd His flock. We can sum this up by describing the gospel with the proclamation that “Our God reigns!” (Is. 52:7). It refers to the time when God would return to His people in order to redeem them from exile and reign as King. But this new exodus would include more than just the Jews, for “all the ends of the earth” would see “the salvation of God.” Isaiah made this point several times. The Servant by whom all of this was to take place would also be a light and a covenant to the nations (Is. 42:5-7; 49:5, 6). The foreigner and even the eunuch (who was excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, Deut. 23:1) would be joined to the Lord and would receive an everlasting name (Is. 56:3-6), because “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Is. 56:7). The Redeemer would come to Zion (Is. 59:15-21) and draw the gentiles to the city of God.

Arise, shine;
for your light has come!
And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.
For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth,
and deep darkness the people;
but the Lord will arise over you,
and His glory will be seen upon you.
The gentiles shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your rising.

“Lift up your eyes all around, and see:
they all gather together, they come to you;
your sons shall come from afar,
and your daughters shall be nursed at your side.
Then you shall see and become radiant,
and your heart shall swell with joy;
because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you,
the wealth of the gentiles shall come to you.
The multitude of camels shall cover your land,
the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah;
all those from Sheba shall come;
they shall bring gold and incense,
and they shall proclaim the praises [euaggelizo] of the Lord.
All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together to you,
the rams of Nebaioth shall minister to you;
they shall ascend with acceptance on My altar,
and I will glorify the house of My glory.” (Is. 60:1-7)

If this was to be Israel’s salvation and if it was to be a return from exile and a release from captivity (Is. 61:1), then there must have been an enemy that would have to be defeated first. And so this proclamation of God’s kingly return to His people included descriptions of judgment on the old tyrant kings. The nations were lightweights compared to Yahweh and He would “take them away like stubble” (Is. 40:15-24). This meant Babylon in particular. Just before describing the gospel, Isaiah recorded that the Southern Kingdom would be defeated and plundered by Babylon (Is. 39:5-7). So it is only fitting that the gospel proclamation would announce judgment on this particular enemy (Is. 47). The new King would kill the old one and take his kingdom. He would restore His people and reign over them by trampling their oppressors in the winepress of His wrath (Is. 63:1-6). Thus, the promised gospel would be liberty for the one (Is. 61:1) and vengeance for the other (Is 61:2)

All of the above is from The Gospel: The Return of the King.  It is well worth reading in full.