An Introduction To the Doctrine of the Covenant

Rev Dr Iain D. Campbell

In a sermon on the words of Hebrews 13:8, 'Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever', preached in 1738, Jonathan Edwards highlighted that Jesus is unchangeable in two respects: first, in his divine nature, and second, in his office as Mediator. Coming to explain the second of these points, Edwards pointed out that Jesus always acts as Saviour and Mediator in the same way, that is, with respect to the rules that govern his office. Edwards goes on to explain this in the following paragraphs:

The rules that Christ acts by, in the execution of his office, are contained in a twofold covenant.

1. The covenant of redemption, or the eternal covenant that was between the Father and the Son, wherein Christ undertook to stand as Mediator with fallen man, and was appointed thereto of the Father. In that covenant, all things concerning Christ's execution of his mediatorial office were agreed between Christ and his Father, and established by them. And this covenant or eternal agreement is the highest rule that Christ acts by in his office. And it is a rule that he never in the least departs from. He never does anything, more or less, than is contained in that eternal covenant. Christ does the work that God gave him to do in that covenant, and no other. He saves those, and those only, that the Father gave him in that covenant to save. And he brings them to such a degree of happiness as was therein agreed. To this rule, Christ is unchangeable in his regard. It stands good with Christ in every article of it, yesterday, today, and forever.

2. Another covenant that Christ has regard to in the execution of his mediatorial office is that covenant of grace which God established with man. Though indeed this be less properly the rule by which Christ acts as Mediator than the covenant of redemption, yet it may be called a rule. God does, as it were, make his promises which he makes to his creatures, his rule to act by: i.e. all his actions are in an exact conformity to his promises, and he never departs in the least degree from them, as is the case with men with regard to what they make the rule of their actions. Yet it is not a rule to God in the same sense as a rule is to a created agent, which must be considered as something antecedent to the purposes of the agent, and that by which his purposes are regulated. But God's promises are consequent on his purposes, and are no other than the expressions of them. And the covenant of grace is not essentially different from the covenant of redemption. It is but an expression of it. It is only that covenant of redemption partly revealed to mankind for their encouragement, faith, and comfort. And therefore the fact that Christ never departs from the covenant of redemption, infers that he will never depart from the covenant of grace. For all that was promised to men in the covenant of grace was agreed on between the Father and the Son in the covenant of redemption. However, there is one thing wherein Christ's unchangeableness in his office appears: that he never departs from the promises that he has made to man. There is the same covenant of grace in all ages of the world. The covenant is not essentially different now from what it was under the Old Testament, and even before the flood. And it always will remain the same. It is therefore called an everlasting covenant, Isa. 55:3.

Sermon on Hebrews 13:8, Sermon XIV, Collected Writings of Jonathan Edwards, Vol 2, Banner of Truth edition, p950

Edwards' presentation of the work of Christ is couched and expressed explicitly in covenantal terms and in covenantal language. That is because covenant theology -- or federal theology (from the Latin foedus, a covenant) -- brings us to the heart and essence of the Gospel. It is such a widespread and large theme that we can hardly do justice to it in a short lecture, but it is important to remind ourselves continually of the important elements of our covenant salvation.

The Development of Covenant Theology

The casting of the Gospel in a covenantal form was not peculiar to the New England of Jonathan Edwwards' day. A century earlier than this, a distinctive Scottish contribution was made to Covenant Theology with the publication of The Sum of Saving Knowledge in 1650. This was written by David Dickson and James Durham, and was based on a series of sermons by Dickson. It has often been published in editions of the Westminster Confession of Faith, although it never achieved the status of a standard of the church.

As a summary of Gospel truth, however, The Sum of Saving Knowledge is helpful, not least in its covenantal expression of the teaching of the Bible. It emphasises four things:

1. Our woeful condition by nature through breaking the covenant of works;

2. the remedy provided in Jesus Christ for the elect by the covenant of grace;

3. the outward means appointed to make the elect partakers of this covenant, and all the rest that are called, to be inexcusable; and

4. the blessings which are effectually conveyed by these means to the Lord's elect or chosen ones.

The presentation of the Gospel within the Scottish church was clearly covenantal. Today, however, there is continued attack on the doctrine of the covenant, not least within Scotland itself. Professor T.F. Torrance, in his work on Scottish Theology from John Knox to John McLeod Campbell (Edinburgh, 1996, especially pages 111-122) argues that the dynamic of the Gospel is lost in the attempt to formalise it with covenant language. Professor Torrance accuses the covenantal scheme of misleading people, robbing of their assurance, throwing them back on themselves to find marks of grace in themselves, and severely limiting evangelism. After studying the content of The Sum of Saving Knowledge, Torrance says that

in spite of the fact that all the conditions of man's redemption had been fulfilled by Christ, the recurring stress at every point upon the conditional 'if' of the covenant of grace and reconciliation as well as of works, meant that the problems of assurance kept pressing for answers -- in the last analysis believers were thrown back upon themselves (Scottish Theology, p121).

These are formidable challenges to our traditional Scottish theology, with its emphasis on the covenant. In spite of them, I still believe that The Sum of Saving Knowledge had it right -- that the reason we need the Gospel is because of a broken covenant; and that the Gospel comes to us in the form of a certain covenant. Nor do I think that the federalism of Dickson and others hindered the free offer of the Gospel or left men and women preoccupied with an introspective faith which threw them back on thmselves rather than upon Christ. As we shall see, the concept of the covenant enables us to bring all the parts and elements of Scripture together, explains to us why we stand in need of a Saviour, and glorifies the finished work of Christ as the only basis for our everlasting salvation.

At the outset we need to stress that we believe in covenant salvation because we believe in sovereign grace. The Gospel of God's love comes to us on the crest of the wave of God's sovereignty. To quote from Hugh Martin, "Christ executes his kingly office by covenant" (The Atonement, p22). In a sense, that is the fundamental point: our covenant theology -- our Gospel -- is rooted in the fact that Christ is sovereign, and that his kingship is absolute.

The Covenant In the Bible

There are examples of covenants between people in the Bible.

Genesis 21:27 -- Abraham and Abimelech "made (literally 'cut') a covenant".

Genesis 31:44 -- Jacob and Laban; on Laban's initiative -- Laban said "let us make ('cut') a covenant".

1 Samuel 18:3 -- Jonathan and David "made ('cut') a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul". As a token of this bond, Jonathan gave everything he had to David.

Covenants bind people or parties together, formalising a relationship between them. It involves them in surrender to one another, and the covenant is 'cut' between them, signifying that it involves the parties in a life-or-death commitment. It does not create the relationship, but it does establish it. Jonathan and David did not become deep friends and soul-mates because they made a covenant; the covenant set limits around an already-existing friendship. In the same way, a man and woman do not fall in love when they marry: the marriage covenant formalises the relationship that already exists.

The Bible makes it clear that covenants are intensely personal bonds, which speak of the continuance of a personal relationship. When we speak of God entering into covenant, therefore, we are emphasising the fact that God is PERSONAL, as well as the fact that he is sovereign. In spite of the insistence of Torrance and others that talk of covenants formalise and depersonalise, the fact is that the whole notion of God's covenants throws us back on the personal God of Scripture. Covenants bind personal agents to one another. Because God is personal, he is able to relate to other persons. And in his sovereign grace, he is able to formalise these relationships which he does in covenant.

Covenant theology has traditionally spoken of three distinctive covenants on God's part: the covenant of Redemption, the covenant of Works and the covenant of Grace. This is the order in which we will look at this great theme.

The Covenant of Redemption

This, according to the Sum of Saving Knowledge, is what lies back of the whole scheme of redemption: that there is a formal arrangement between two Persons of the Trinity -- the Father and the Son.

From all eternity there has been a relationship of love, towardness and togetherness between them, a personal relationship, which brings us to the mystery of the Trinity. John expresses it thus when he says that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God" (John 1:1). We are here confronted immediately with concepts that are deep and mysterious. How can A be WITH B, and also BE B? Jesus also says, "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30), thereby making himself equal with God. The Father is God, and the Son is God. There is equality of status and nature between them. In the eternal Trinity, no Person is subordinate to any other Person.

Yet, in addition to this, Jesus uses the language of subordination. He says that the Father is greater than he is (John 14:28), that the Father has sent him (John 6:57; 8:18), that the Father's will is his meat and drink (John 4:34). He says that he came to earth not to do his own will, but the will of the one who sent him (John 6:38); and he is conscious of a particularity in connection with that will -- it focusses particularly upon the people whom the Father has given the Son, whom the Son is to keep, and ultimately to raise up in glory (John 6:39). He is conscious of having been given a commandment respecting his life, in consequence of the fulfilling of which he is assured of the Father's love (John 10:17-18), and he goes to the cross in order to display the love he has for the Father (John 14:31).

The high priestly prayer of John 17, in which Jesus prays to the Father is couched in very particular terms. A designated time has come in which the Son will give the Father glory (17:1) by finishing a designated work (17:4). In consequence of that completed task, the Son requests that he be glorified (17:5), that his people, the gift of the Father be kept and sanctified (17:9-16), and that they be brought with him at last to Heaven (17:24). This prayer deals in specifics -- a specific work, done at a specific time, with a specific purpose, by a specific Person; the completing of that work becoming the basis of specific requests.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this is something more than filial language. At the very least, it is the language of Sonship; but it is also the language of covenant -- the language of official arrangements between Father and Son. The Father has promised a people to the Son, and set him apart as their Saviour and Mediator. On condition of his fulfilling the obligations which fall on him as their sponsor, he will have the reward of universal sovereignty, judgement and glory.

In the same way as Adam was appointed head of the race under the relationship of a covenant, so Christ was set apart as "a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles" (Isaiah 42:16). It is in this light that we must interpret the emphasis on the necessity of his sufferings -- in the garden, he knows that the cup of suffering and shame is the Father's will for him, and on the road to Emmaus he argues that it was necessary for the Saviour to suffer before entering into his glory (Luke 24:26). Paul explains it thus: "the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God" (1 Corinthians 11:3). Just as man and woman have spiritual equality before God, yet have different roles which involve male authority and female submission in marriage, home and church, so 'Christ' and 'God' have equality of status and personal attributes, yet have different roles within the economy of grace.

John Owen also suggests that wherever Jesus calls his Father "God", a covenantal relationship is indicated. This is an important and helpful insight. The Jews recognised that when Jesus called God his Father, he was making himself equal with God (John 5:18); we must in turn recognise that when Jesus calls his Father God, he is highlighting his official subordination as the servant of Jehovah. One example of this is John 20:17, in the words of Jesus to Mary: "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God."

So Owen: "this expression of being a God unto anyone is declarative of a covenant, and is the word whereby God constantly declares his relation unto any in a way of covenant" (XIX, p84).

John Owen explores this in Part IV of his commentary on Hebrews, where he discusses "federal transactions between the Father and the Son", and explores the nature of the covenant of redemption:

* the will of the Father and the Son freely engaging in the covenant

* the things to be disposed of in the covenant lying within the competence of both parties

* the salvation of sinners the thing to be disposed of

* the glory of God in general, and of the Son in particular, the end of the covenant

* the promises made to the Son in the covenant

* this covenant as the origin of the priesthood of Christ.

In other words, in the covenant of redemption, the eternal Father says to the only-begotten Son, "I will be your God", and sets Jesus apart to the office of Mediator. This covenant arrangement formalises the relationship between them by setting parameters of obligation and reward, duty and promise.

Jonathan Edwards summarises it in this way:

Some things were done before the world was created, yea from eternity. The persons of the Trinity were, as it were, confederated in a design, and a covenant of redemption. In this covenant the Father had appointed the Son, and the Son had undertaken the work; and all things to be accomplished in the work were stipulated and agreed.

Jonathan Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption (Works, i.534)

Two Questions

First, where is the Holy Spirit in all of this? Some have objected to this scheme on the basis that it gives no place to the Spirit. Jon Zens asks:

The covenant theologians consistently assert that in this covenant the Father and the Son are the parties. On what basis is the Holy Spirit left out? Must not any plan of the Godhead necessarily be Trinitarian?"

("Is there a 'Covenant of Grace'?", http://www.cet.com/~dlavoie/sol...isto/theology/nct/covenant.html).

To this we must answer that amid the commitments covenanted to the Son was the promise of Holy Spirit anointing, and consequently the Holy Spirit cannot be excluded from the deliberate counsel of God in the covenant of redemption. This is actualised at the baptism of Jesus, where the Father speaks, the Son is baptised, and the Spirit descends on him. It is further highlighted in Acts 10:38-43, where Peter declares that "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power", in a context which clearly alludes to the provisions of the covenant of redemption -- God raising Jesus, and ordaining him to be supreme Judge of all. Some theologians have spoken of the Holy Spirit acquiescing in the arrangement between the Father and the Son, but the biblical material is much more explicit. The Spirit is part of the Father's gift to Christ, and will also be Christ's gift to his people.

Second, how many plans of redemption are there? In his History of the Work of Redemption, Jonathan Edwards is at pains to remind us that there is only one scheme of redemption:

"...it is all but one work, one design. The various dispensations or works that belong to it are but the several parts of one scheme" (i.534).

These 'dispensations' Edwards likens to "several succesive motions of one machine". But this then begs the question -- is there one covenant?

The debate within Reformed theology can be highlighted with two quotations:

Thomas Boston: "the covenant of redemption and the covenant of grace are not two distinct covenants, but one and the same covenant" (quoted in A.T.B. McGowan The

Federal Theology of Thomas Boston, p40). On this view, the work of redemption is to be regarded as a single covenant, in which God makes a covenant with the Son as Mediator, and, in him, with all of his people.

John Owen: "we must distinguish between the covenant that God made with men concerning Christ, and the covenant that he made with his Son concerning men. That God created man in and under the terms and law of a covenant, with a prescription of duties and promise of reward, is by all acknowledged. After the fall he entered into another covenant with mankind which, from the principle, nature and end of it, is commonly called the covenant of grace ... This is not that which at present we enquire into; but it is the personal compact that was between the Father and the Son before the world was, as it is revealed in the Scripture, that is to be declared" (XIX, p78).

In fact, what Owen goes on to argue is that the covenant of redemption is the foundation of the covenant of grace, and this, I believe, is the most helpful way to view the data of Scripture. This brings us back to our original quotation from Edwards:

"the rules that Christ acts by, in the execution of his [mediatorial] office, are contained in a twofold covenant:

1. The covenant of redemption, or the eternal covenant that was between the Father and the Son, wherein Christ undertook to stand as Mediator with fallen man, and was appointed thereto of the Father ...

2. Another covenant that Christ has regard to in the execution of his mediatorial office, is that covenant of grace which God established with man ...

And therefore the fact that Christ never departs from the covenant of redemption infers that he will never depart from the covenant of grace; for all that was promised to men in the covenant of grace, was agreed on between the Father and the Son in the covenant of redemption".

Sermon on Hebrews 13:8 (ii.950)

Covenant of Works

This is the terminology by which Reformed theology traditionally described the relationship between God and Adam when Adam was first created. The Westminster Confession of Faith, in its chapter on God's covenant with man (VII) reminds us of the necessity for some such arrangement -- the distance between Creator and creature was so vast, it argues, that only by virtue of a sovereign act of condescension could man relate to God.

The nature of that relationship is spelt out in Genesis 2:15-17. Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden, there to work to the glory of God, and to enjoy all that was in the garden, with the exception of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The warning is stark: disobedience to God's law will lead to death. Obedience to God will ensure continuance of life.

Professor John Murray raises two main objections to the designation "Covenant of Works". He has a three-fold argument:

1. He argues that "the term is not felicitous, for the reason that the elements of grace entering into the administration are not properly provided for by the term 'works'";

2. The relation between God and Adam in innocence is not designated a covenant in Scripture; and

3. Scripture uses the term 'covenant' to denote "the oath-bound confirmation of promise" related to God's redemptive design.

"The Adamic Administration" in Collected Writings Volume 2: Systematic Theology, p49

However, Robert L. Reymond points out that the word "covenant" does not need to be present for there to be a covenant -- he cites 2 Samuel 7, where, although the word covenant is not used, nonetheless the promises to David are covenantal, as other Scriptures indicate. He also indicates that the elements of covenant are present in Genesis 2, and that the parallel in Romans 5 between Adam and Christ means that, like Christ, "Adam acted as a federal representative of a covenant arrangement" (A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, p430).

In addition, Wayne Grudem highlights the fact that the tree life had the nature of a covenantal sign; its fruit, to which man had access in his state of innocence, had no magical quality, but confirmed the reality of the covenant stipulations and promise. It was a sign "by which God outwardly guaranteed that the inward reality would occur" (Systematic Theology, p517). Berkhof describes it as "an appointed symbol or sign" (Systematic Theology, p217), from which man was debarred when he lost that which was signified. This makes the restoration of the tree of life in Revelation 22 highly significant.

There are several points about God's relationship with man at the beginning, in a state of innocence, which must be emphaised.

First, this provision of the covenant of works was one of grace and mercy. If the relationship is to be designated a covenant, then Murray prefers the language of the Catechisms, which, although using the term 'covenant of works' (LC 30), also designates the relationship into which God entered with man as a 'covenant of life' (LC 20), made with Adam as a 'public person' (LC 22) and requiring 'personal, perfect and perpetual obedience' (LC 20).

Second, God entered into a relationship which consisted of a conditional promise made to man. If certain conditions were met, then a specific promise would be fulfilled. The promise was life -- the condition was obedience. As John Owen points out, God might have related to man simply in terms of his absolute sovereignty (XIX, p337); He was under no obligation to promise man anything. But having graciously condescended to make the promise, it belongs to the nature of a covenant.

Third, under the covenant of works, God placed man in a position of probation. This arises from the condition of the covenant -- that of obedience. The particular focus on the tree of knowledge of good and evil itself represented the fact that God was calling for complete submission to his law and to his will. Adam had the capability not to sin, and was created in integrity before God, with God's law testing him continually. What would have been the result of a successful probation? Murray argues that the naming of the tree suggests that a successful probation "would have imparted a renewed and greatly increased knowledge of the contrast between good and evil, and a renewed appreciation of the good as the opposite of the evil" (Collected Writings, Vol 2, p52). With this renewed sense of the benefit of the good, he could have continued in this condition of innocence. However, the probation was not successful, and they came to experience instead the bitterness of sin and the spiritual death which resulted. This was made vivid in the fact that the way to the tree of life was blocked.

Fourth, no provision was made within the covenant of works itself for salvation from the consequences of sin and covenant breaking. The covenant stipulated the penalty of disobedience (and implicitly, the reward of obedience), but did not, and could not, provide for the event of an unsuccessful probation. This shows that there was moral freedom on man's part: "God gave to man the power of contrary choice. Man of his own will, by no external compulsion or determination, used that power in the commission of sin" (Collected Writings, Vol 2, p69). The result was that man was shut out of fellowship and estranged from God.

Fifth, apart from a covenantal scheme, it is impossible to answer the question as to why the personal sin of Adam should affect anyone else. The teaching of Romans 5 is that through Adam's transgression, sin and death passed on all men. Why should that be?

The answer, which Paul himself supplies, is that we were in Adam -- that he was our representative. There was union and solidarity between us and him. Some have argued that the solidarity was on account of human identity. But if this is the case, why are we not held accountable for ALL Adam's sins -- why is it just the first that has brought us to ruin?

A second view is that of racial solidarity, which argues that when Adam sinned, his posterity inherited a corrupt nature, on the basis of which Adam's guilt is imputed to them. This is called mediate imputation, and argues that our standing before God is the result of our condition, inherited from our first parent.

But the Reformed view has favoured a federalist, or covenantal approach, in which Adam is viewed as the covenant head and representative of the race. When he fell, we fell in him, and guilt and corruption were imputed immediately (hence immediate imputation), and result in the corruption of our nature.

So John Owen:

Man in his creation, with respect unto the ends of God therein, was constituted under a covenant. That is, the law of his obedience was attended with promises and threatenings, rewards and punishments, suited unto the goodness and holiness of God; for every law with rewards and recompenses annexed hath the nature of a covenant (XIX, p337).

In the covenant of works, therefore, there was a promise given, which God had the ability to fulfill, and which was conditional upon the honouring of certain obligations. Man broke that covenant, and found himself estranged from God. But the question remains -- is the covenant of works still in force? What is its present status? Does it have any 'continuing normativeness' (Reymond, New Systematic Theology, p439)?

Clearly we are no longer under the probation of Adam -- we fell from that in him and with him. But Reformed theology has always held that the covenant of works is not wholly abrogated, for the following reasons:

1. Like Adam we owe God perfect obedience. The fact that we are unable to render such obedience does not free us from our obligation.

2. The fact of death as a consequence of sin was explicitly stated in the covenant of works. Therefore the warning is still valid: 'in the day you eat of it, you will surely die'. That was never changed.

3. The promise of life on condition of obedience is also still valid. Cf. Leviticus 18:5 -- "Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgements: which if a man do, he shall live in them; I am the Lord"; a verse quoted in Romans 10:5 to show that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness, and in Galatians 3:12 to show that the law is not of faith, and that we are saved by the righteousness of Christ. Paul's use of Leviticus 18:5 is rooted in the principle on which the covenant of works is grounded -- that perfect law-keeping leads to life.

4. The terms of the covenant of works are the terms on which Christ has secured our redemption. He kept the law for us, as the last Adam, the one who did no sin, but fulfilled all the law's demands, upholding the law and making it honourable. Thus the race is saved on the same basis as that on which it was established at the very outset. Or, to put it another way, there is a covenant of grace with us precisely because, in accordance with the terms of the covenant of redemption, the covenant of works has been kept by Christ as a public figure, and there is an immediate imputation of his righteousness to us.

Covenant of Grace

Man, by nature, is a covenant-breaker. That is the very essence of our sin. But the essence of the Gospel is that by grace God restores man into his fellowship. He does that by relating to man through his grace, and consolidating that relationship in covenant.

When Reformed thought speaks of the covenant of grace, it is describing the application of God's plan of salvation to men and women in the history of the world. Jonathan Edwards begins his History of the Work of Redemption by quoting Isaiah 51:8 -- "For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool; but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation from generation to generation". Edwards' purpose is to show that God is here speaking about the covenant of grace; he says "of these two, God's righteousness and his salvation, the one is the cause, of which the other is the effect. God's righteousness, or covenant mercy, is the root, of which his salvation is the fruit. Both of them relate to the covenant of grace" (i.533). And this is, Edwards argues, forever, and in all generations. So the covenant of grace is a way in which we can speak of God's saving work in time/space history, in which he inaugurates something that is eternal, and brings us, in a point in time, into a relationship with himself that is everlasting. It is, therefore, part of the supreme, over-arching, purpose of God's salvation. Two quotations will illustrate this.

Jonathan Edwards:

"As soon as man fell, Christ entered on his mediatorial work. Then it was that he began to execute the work and office of a mediator. He had undertaken it before the world was made. He stood engaged with the Father to appear as man's mediator, and to take on that office when there should be occasion, from all eternity. But now the time was come. Christ the eternal Son of God clothed himself with the mediatorial character, and therein presented himself before the Father. He immediately stepped in between a holy, infinite and offended Majesty, and offending mankind. He was accepted in his interposition; and so wrath was prevented from going forth in the full execution of that amazing curse that man had brought on himself" (i.536).

James Henley Thornwell:

"The scheme of redemption, otherewise called the Covenant of Grace, is the answer which god gives to the question, How shall a sinner be justified and established in holiness for ever? As the Covenant of Works was an answer to the question, How shall a moral creature be justified and confirmed? They are both evolutions of the same purpose, the same grace in God." (Collected Writings, Vol2, p18).

Terminology

Throughout Scripture, covenant terminology is consistently used to describe that saving, redemptive relationship which binds God to his people.

God says to Noah before the flood: "But with you I will establish my covenant" (Genesis 6:18). This is the alternative to destruction -- while the rest of mankind will perish, Noah will be saved because of God's covenant.

Genesis 15:18 says that "the Lord made a covenant with Abram". While the Amorites are to be destroyed, Abram and his descendants are to enjoy covenant salvation and mercy.

In Exodus 2:24, God hears the groaning of his people in Egypt, "and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob".

In Deuteronomy 4:23, the people are warned: "Take heed to yourselves lest you forget the covenant of the Lord", and in verse 31 they are encouraged to believe that "the Lord thy God is a merciful God, he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers"

The Psalms are replete with the theme of the covenant, as are the prophets. When we come into the New Testament, we find Jesus described as the Mediator of the covenant, and his blood the foundation of the everlasting covenant. From beginning to end, the Bible is dominated with the theme of the covenant of God's grace with fallen men in Jesus Christ.

The Hebrew language uses the word תירב (berith) for a covenant. It is difficult to know the etymology and root meaning of this word -- its meaning has to be determined by its usage. Many commentators and scholars interpret it in terms of the so called vassal-treaty of the Ancient Near East. This was the treaty made by a conquering king or lord when he brought another nation into subjection to him. There were several aspects to that treaty form:

1. The title of the treaty, introducing the parties

2. A historical prologue, which gave the background to their relations

3. The stipulations and requirements of the treaty.

4. A clause detailing the provision for preserving the treaty

5. A list of gods as witnesses of the treaty

6. A statement of blessings and curses, depending on whether the stipulations would be honoured or violated

This is a recognised treaty form, particularly among the Hittites, and scholars tend to see it as the background against which we have to understand the word berith. In particular, it has helped to provide a form by which to interpret the Bible -- "the basic principle for interpreting the theology of Deuteronomy rests upon its character as a covenant document" (P. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy, NICOT, p36).

The treaty form between a conquering sovereign and a conquered vassal was usually cast in a written form. From this point of view, it is interesting that the commandments were engraven in stone, and are described as the words of the covenant. Exodus 24:7 says of Moses that "he took the Book of the Covenant and read in the hearing of the people. And they said, 'All that the Lord has said will we do, and be obedient'". Some evangelical scholars have suggested that the two tables of stone on which the law was written both contained all ten commandments, in the same way as a duplicate copy of treaties was made.

In addition, it is argued that the importance of writing the treaty in order to preserve its contents relates clearly to the canonical writing of the Scriptures. We might note, however, that O. Palmer Robertson suggests that one major item missing from the list of elements of the vassal treaty is the oath, which he suggests is the essence of a covenant (Christ of the Covenants, p6 n.7); this ought to highlight for us that whatever similarity there may be between the biblical covenant and the Near Eastern treaty, the covenant of grace is quite unique.

When the Greek translators of the Old Testament came to produce the LXX, they did something very interesting. The natural Greek word for a covenant is s u n q h k h , (suntheke) which literally means to place together. It can be used for a 'composition of words', but is well attested to mean 'a covenant', either between individuals or nations. It appears frequently in the plural to mean the 'articles of agreement', that is, the terms of the compact, contract or treaty. It is used to translate 'covenant' in 2 Kings 17:15 and Isaiah 28:15, ? in Isaiah 30:1, and 'agreement' in Daniel 11:6. Only in the first of these passages does it refer to God's covenant with Israel.

Instead of using the natural word for a covenant to translate the Hebrew, the translators of the LXX opted for another word - d i a q h k h , (diatheke) which has the meaning of a 'last will' or 'testament', and it is this word that is used commonly in the New Testament.

The reason for preferring this latter word is the recognition that in the covenant of grace, the two parties are not equal. The translators recognised that when God enters into covenant with Israel, for example, it is more akin to the vassal treaty of the Hittites than to the Greek notion of s u n q h k h . In the latter, two parties of equal status enter into a contracted relationship. This is the force of Daniel 11:6, where the daughter of the king of the south comes to the king of the north in order to make a treaty -- the historical reference is to the daughter of Ptolemy of Egypt (Berenice) marrying Antiochus II, who ruled Palestine after the conquests of Alexander the Great. This is the basis for a contract between equals.

But in order to preserve the emphasis on the sovereignty of God, the translators opt for the word d i a q h k h , which does refer to a formal agreement, but one in which one party bequeaths something to the other. The result is a problem -- ought we to translate this word (particularly in the New Testament) as 'covenant' or 'testament'? Of the 33 usages of d i a q h k h in the New Testament, the AV translates it 'covenant' 21 times, and 'testament' 12 times. For example, in Matthew 26:28, in the narrative of the Last Supper, the AV says that Jesus gave the cup and said "this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins" (see also Mark 14:24 and Luke 22:20). But in other passages the same word is translated 'covenant', such as in Luke 1:72, where Zacharias praises God for having remembered his holy covenant, or Ephesians 2:12, where Paul says that we were once strangers from the 'covenants of promise', or Hebrews 12:24, which describes Jesus as the Mediator of the 'new covenant'.

To complicate it further, Hebrews 9 does use the word d i a q h k h in its literal sense of a 'last will and testament', and urges that the death of Christ is equivalent to the death of a testator, one who arranges beforehand the disposal of his property. In this limited sense, God's covenant with us is analogous to a testament to us. The argument of Hebrews 9 in this connection is that Christ's death was absolutely necessary.

The problem is that 'covenant' and 'testament' do not mean the same thing. And to identify them is to impart an alien sense into the Old Testament. As Geerhardus Vos puts it, "if berith means 'covenant' and d i a q h k h 'testament', then the rendering of the former by the latter involves from the linguistic point of view a serious misconception. A character is attributed to the berith of the Hebrew Scriptures which it did not possess" ("'Covenant' or 'Testament'?", Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, pp401-2).

So when the AV uses 'testament', it is translating the word literally; even if it does not do so consistently. But we ought not to imagine that 'covenant' and 'testament' are synonyms. The Greek word 'testament' was chosen as a translation of berith simply to avoid the implication that in the covenant the parties have equal status; the choice of 'testament' was to safeguard the sovereignty of God and the priority of grace. So Leon Morris: "The main point to be kept in mind is that the word denotes a divine action, with man the recipient of blessing" (Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, p89).

Administration of the Covenant of Grace

At what point did God begin to reveal the covenant to a lost world? Where does the administration of the covenant of grace begin? There are some who wish to make the Abrahamic covenant the first clear indication of the covenant of grace; Donald Macleod, for example, having discussed the Adamic Covenant and the Covenant of Preservation made with Noah, says that the covenant of grace is between God and the believer, "and I take that decision because the archetypal biblical revelation of the Covenant of Grace is the covenant of God with Abraham" (A Faith to Live By, p100). In his work The Covenant of Grace, Professor John Murray argued that the covenant with Noah teaches us what a covenant is; he highlights distinctive features of this covenant:

1. It is God's covenant in that it is conceived, devised, determined, established, confirmed, and dispensed by God Himself

2. It is universal in its scope

3. It is unconditional

4. It is "intensively and pervasively monergistic"

5. It is everlasting

(John Murray, The Covenant of Grace, at http://www.the-highway.com/Covenant_Murray.html).

Murray says that "when we come to the Abrahamic covenant we find features which are entirely new in connection with covenant administration". In particular, he argues, we find God taking an oath in order to confirm the promise, and, in connection with circumcision, laying emphasis on keeping the covenant.

It is true that the Abrahamic covenant is a distinctive point of departure, and is alluded to in the New Testament; Paul says that God preached the Gospel beforehand to Abraham, and that the design of the death of Christ was to bring the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant upon the Gentiles (Galatians 3:8,14). Nonetheless, the Confession of Faith reminds us that under the law, the covenant was administered by "promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews" (vii.5). This alerts us to the fact that the very first promise given to man -- the protevangelium of Genesis 3:15 -- was itself an administration of the covenant of grace, which inaugurated the covenant, and also intimated the grace which was to be extended to sinners. The Noahic covenant, which did focus on the preservation of the earth has also to be seen in the light of the curse following man's fall. The ground would bring forth thorns and thistles, disasters and floods. There would be a perpetual judgement in the earth. But there would be grace, preserving the world and providing a theatre in which the drama of redemption would be displayed. To use Geerhardus Vos's terminology, the covenant of grace is the dogmatic term for "redemptive special revelation" (Biblical Theology, p32).

In other words, the covenant of grace is inaugurated at the point at which God begins to reveal his saving purpose in human experience. This takes us to the revelation in the garden. But we recognise with Robert Reymond that "...with the call of Abraham, the covenant of grace underwent a remarkable advance, definitive for all time to come." (New Systematic Theology, p513). In addition, Reymond argues that Genesis 12-22, dealing with the Abrahamic covenant, contain, from the perspective of covenant theology "the most important verses in the Bible" (ibid.).

Administrations of the Covenant

Adam

When Adam, the covenant head and federal representative of the human race, broke covenant with God, all mankind sinned in him and fell with him. God met him in the Garden and pronounced the curse. Interwoven with the words of the curse was the promise of healing, restoration and recovery. The words of curse and the words of promise relate to the experience of sin and the fall.

1. God promises to break the bond between the woman and Satan (Genesis 3:14-15). In his address to the devil, he reduces the serpent to a crawling creature, and sovereignly puts enmity between Satan and those whom Satan has deluded and deceived. Part of the provision of the covenant of grace, therefore, is to break the power of sin and Satan in human life.

2. The enmity will be extended to the seed of the woman and to the seed of the serpent. There will be a spiritual barrier erected in all generations between the kingdoms of sin and grace, light and darkness. Mankind will find itself placed in two diametrically opposed camps. Either we are for God or against him, in Christ or outside of Christ. There is no middle ground, and no common ground between these two camps. This enmity is a provision of the covenant of grace.

3. At last, the seed of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent, who will, in turn, bruise his heel. This verse finds its realisation in the advent of the Son of God, who has appeared to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), and who was bruised by his shameful death on the cross. This was known only vaguely at the beginning -- "OT Revelation approaches the concept of a Messiah very gradually" (Vos, Biblical Theology, p55). Eve's words in Genesis 4:1 may indicate her belief that Cain was the promised deliverer, but that notion was soon dispelled. Cain, in fact, was of the wicked one.

Noah

Subsequent biblical history follows the degeneration of the human race, apart from in the line of Seth, which is the line in which true religion is found (Genesis 4:26), and the line from which Enoch and Noah come. The wickedness of the world, in spite of God's goodness and restraining grace, brings upon the earth a judgement in which the world is destroyed by a flood. Noah and his family alone are preserved, and it is to Noah that God promises (Genesis 9:18) that he will establish his covenant.

The reason for the covenant is that Noah found grace in God's sight (Genesis 6:8). We must not take this to mean that Noah deserved his salvation. Instead, we are to take it as a reference back to the grace of the covenant, revealed at Genesis 3:15. It was an instance of there being enmity with Satan; in a world that was friendly towards sin and Satan, Noah remained hostile to the devil and his wiles, to Satan and his temptations, to evil in all its forms. Through grace, Noah, like his famous ancestor, walked with God.

The elements of the covenant with Noah are as follows:

1. God's gracious provision of a means of safety. God made provision for an ark, which was suited to the nature of the judgement -- while other things might be destroyed in a flood, an ark could ride the storm. A unique feature of this covenant provision was that Noah himself is involved in the preparation of the means of safety. So Murray: "In this case Noah was commanded to do certain things and the doing of these things on the part of Noah was the indispensable condition of the fulfilment of the grace provided for in the covenant". Noah does not deserve the salvation, and he does not earn the salvation. But the grace of the covenant is enjoyed by him through faith, as Hebrews 11:7 -- "by faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith".

2. God's dealing with Noah and his family corporately. It is not simply Noah individually who is saved, but his wife, his sons and their wives. This injects a note of corporate solidarity into the revelation of the covenant. Salvation is individual but never individualistic -- God determines to deal with families, with societies, with a people.

3. God's promise to preserve the earth (Genesis 8:20-22). While some have read this as a covenant of preservation for the earth, it is better to see it as an integral provision of the covenant of grace. There will be no more such judgement -- the world will be kept and it will be the place in which God's redemption will be enjoyed. Through the death of the Saviour, there will be a renewed cosmos. The fall brought a curse upon the ground, and even now the whole creation groans and travails. But the prince of the power of the air will be restricted.

4. God's provision of a covenant sign in the sky (Genesis 9:12-13). Just as the tree of life had functioned "sacramentally", so there would be a sign in the sky, a bow in the cloud, to be a sign of the covenant. The remarkable thing is that the bow was to function as a sign to God , which, when he would see it, he would recall his covenant. Clearly God has no need of a reminder or a memorial -- this is a conspicuous anthropomorphism. But it is one that speaks clearly of the sovereign grace of the covenant -- the sign was not one that man could produce, but one that God alone could paint across the sky. So Murray: "it is anthropomorphism for the purpose of bringing to the forefront the unilateral character of the covenant. It is true that the revelatory purpose of the bow in the cloud is not to be forgotten. But the significant fact is that the revelatory purpose is to bear witness to the divine faithfulness. It is the constant reminder that God will not prove unfaithful to His promise. The main point to be stressed now, however, is that this continuance is dependent upon divine faithfulness alone; in anthropomorphic terms, upon the divine remembrance alone".

5. God's promise to enlarge the tents of Shem (Genesis 9:27). This is a clear anticipatory element in the Noahic covenant. God looks forward to a day when the sons of Japheth (the Gentiles, according to Genesis 10:5), would enter into, and inherit the blessing of Seth, the faithful son of Noah. There is an indication here that it is God's purpose to bring those who naturally lie outwith the gracious provisions and parameters of the covenant to enjoy its blessings. As Gentiles trusting in Christ, we are Japhethites in Shem's tents (see Vos, Biblical Theology, p71).

We can thus see the principle embedded in the protevangelium of Genesis 3:15 enlarged and expanded in the covenant with Noah. The seed of the woman has not yet come, but the holy line is preserved in the salvation of Noah's family, and there is continued enmity between the holy seed and the enemy of God. Thus the Noahic covenant builds on what has gone before, and aniticipates more to come.

Abraham

Abraham was the greatest son of Shem, living, when God called him, in Ur of the Chaldees, 'on the other side of the flood, serving other gods' (Joshua 24:2ff). His call, and the revelation of the covenant of grace in the time of the patriarchs, is foundational for all that follows, precisely because of the specific promises of salvation which find their expression in God's dealings with Abraham.

bullet The elements of the covenant

First, there is the element of sovereign election. The Abrahamic covenant is clearly not a contract entered into by two parties of equal status. God sovereignly calls Abram to follow him. The call of God is unique and unprecedented in Abram's experience.

Second, there is the element of gracious promise, which focus on:

1. The land -- which God would give to Abram. This inheritance was to be in Canaan, and would ultimately be the inheritance of God's people. This again is to be seen against the backdrop of an inheritance lost in Eden, and a world lost at the time of the flood. God will restore his seed to the land.

2. The nation -- to whom the special revelation would be given. This is to be seen against the background of the seed promise -- God would have a people for himself. The rooots of the church are to be found here.

3. The name -- Abram's name would be great. Certainly within redemptive history his name would be great, and would be on the lips of both the Old Testament saints and the New Testament writers.

4. The blessing -- This is spelt out in a fourfold statement: Abram would be a blessing, those who bless him would be blessed, those who curse him would be cursed, and all the families of the earth would have a reason to thank him.

Faith and assurance - The inauguration of the covenant

Following the call of God and the dramatic movements of Genesis 12-14, Abram again encounters God, who promises him that his seed will be as numerous as the stars of the heavens (Genesis 15:5). Abram believes God, and this counted to him for righteousness.

Abram's faith is highlighted in Romans 4:11 as the paradigm for our faith, and the phraseology of Genesis 15:6 is picked up in Romans 4:3, 9 and 11. There, Paul teaches that as Abram was justified by faith in the promise of God, so our justification in Christ is not independent of faith -- it is being justified by faith that we have peace with God (Romans 5:1).

But part of the grandeur of Genesis 15 is that it highlights the important distinction between faith and assurance. Abram believes God (as the covenant requires), but still requires to be assured of his possession of the promised inheritance, which is why he asks 'how shall I know that I will inherit [the land]?'

It is the request for assurance that leads to the formal inauguration of the Abrahamic covenant in the ceremony of Genesis 15:9ff, where animals are slain, the promise is ratified and the bright, burning lamp passes between the slain pieces. John Murray in his The Covenant of Grace draws attention to the fact that "it is not Abraham who passes through between the divided pieces of the animals; it is the theophany. And the theophany represents God. The action therefore is divinely unilateral. It is confirmation to Abraham, not confirmation from him." What Abraham requires is assurance, and that assurance he receives in the theophanic appearance, in which God himself seems to call down his own dismemberment should he fail to honour every aspect of the covenant.

This is an important ceremony, which confirms the promise to Abram by an oath. This is the argument of Hebrews 6:13 -- "for when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself". We have the same assurance given to us in the fulfilled work of Christ, our high priest after the order of Melchisedek.

bullet The sign of the covenant

The corporate nature of the covenant is emphasised by the fact that it is not made merely with Abram, but also with his seed. The covenant was to be placed in the flesh of his male children and household members through circumcision. The relation between reality and sign is so intimately close that God says "my covenant shall be in your flesh" (Genesis 17:13).

However, God says that the uncircumcised man "shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant" (Genesis 17:14). If the covenant is to be perpetual (or everlasting, as in Genesis 17:7), in what sense may it be broken? In the sense that its promises may be forfeited and its provisions lost through disobedience. The required responses of faith, trust and obedience do not establish the covenant relationship -- that is established by grace. But these responses, which assume the establishing of the covenant, are the conditions of enjoyment of its provisions. Murray: "in a word, keeping the covenant presupposes the covenant relation as established rather than the condition upon which its establishment is contingent" (Covenant of Grace).

Throughout the Old Testament, circumcision is significant as a symbol not of national identity, nor of religious affiliation, but of relationship to God. So Professor O. Palmer Robertson states: "circumcision persistently speaks to the question of man's relation to God" (Christ of the Covenants, pp156-7). That is why Paul can speak of circumcision turning into uncircumcision (Romans 2:25) -- the rite itself, though full of significance and indicative of privilege, urges the bearer of the covenant sign to persist in obedience to the God of the covenant. If he does not, then his being circumcised procures no spiritual advantage, but witnesses against him.

The same message is present in the prophets, who speak of circumcision of the heart. As early as Deuteronomy 10:16 Moses urges Israel to be circumcised in their hearts, and as late as Jeremiah 9:26 God promises to punish those who are disobedient to him, declaring that "all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart".

The council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) recognised that New Covenant believers did not require to be circumcised. This was revolutionary. Paul declared that "if you receive circumcision, Christ is of no benefit to you" (Galatians 5:2). On the other hand he could affirm to the Colossians that they were circumcised with the circumcision which is without hands, by being buried with Christ in baptism (Colossians 2:11-12). The meaning of New Testament baptism is the same as that of Old Testament circumcision -- it is a sign and seal of God's covenant, signifying inclusion within the covenant community, and calling for obedience to the God of the covenant.

As far as infant baptism is concerned, John Murray is correct to state that: "the basic premise for the argument for infant baptism is that the New Testament economy is the unfolding and fulfilment of the covenant made with Abraham and that the necessary implication is the unity and continuity of the church" (Christian Baptism, p45). And to the objection that infants are to be excluded from the New Testament sign, Murray says "is the new covenant in this respect less generous than was the Abrahamic" (CB, p49). Given the movement from narrowness to breadth across the Testaments, it seems strange to see infants included in the Old Testament church, but excluded from the New.

bullet Later references to the Abrahamic covenant

It is important to note the successive references in Scripture to the Abrahamic covenant. It was confirmed to Isaac (Genesis 17:19 -- "I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant and with his seed after him") and to Jacob (Genesis 28:13-15 to Jacob at Bethel -- "I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac ... I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of"). It is referred to frequently throughout the Pentateuch, such as at Deuteronomy 29:12-13 -- "You are standing here in order to enter into a covenant with the Lord your God, a covenant the Lord is making with you this day and sealing it with an oath, to confirm you this day as his people, that he may be your God as he promised you, and as he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob".

When Zechariah prophesied in Luke 1:67ff, being filled with the Holy Spirit, he blessed God that he was now going "to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he sware to our father Abraham" (Luke 1:72-3). In his appeal to the Jews in Acts 3:25, Peter says that they are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, 'and in your seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed'). It is Abraham who is cited as the father of the faithful (Romans 4:11-12).

Again we see the principle, that the covenant made with Abraham builds on the previous revelations of the covenant of grace, extends the revelation given to Adam and Noah, and anticipates greater things to come.

Moses

O. Palmer Robertson correctly draws our attention to the fact that "the covenant with Moses has provoked some of the greatest debates within Christendom's history ... The precise relationship of the Mosaic covenant to the promises that preceded it and to the fulfillments that followed has proven to be one of the most persistent problems of biblical interpretation" (Christ of the Covenants, p167). The covenant of Moses is rightly described as a covenant of law. But this raises interesting questions about the relation of law to covenant, the relation of law to grace, and the continuing normativeness of the Mosaic covenant for the new covenant believer.

Three introductory remarks:

1. In looking at the significance of the Mosaic covenant, we must take care to begin with the observation that covenant is a larger concept than law, and that "whatever concept of law may be advanced, it must remain at all times subservient to the broader concept of the covenant" (Christ of the Covenants, p171). Indeed, it is highly significant that the events surrounding the exodus and the giving of the law are said to work out the terms and promises of the Abrahamic covenant (Exodus 2:24-25)

2. Law features in the previous covenantal revelations. After having given the promise of Genesis 3:15, Adam is commanded by God to work, so that life will be sustained until the deliverer comes (Genesis 3:19); Noah is commanded to build an ark, to worship God and to put to death the murderer (Genesis 9:6); Abraham is to give obedience to the command to circumcise, and to walk before God in perfection (Genesis 17:1). Law is not novel in the Mosaic covenant, but it does become predominant.

3. There is grace in the Mosaic covenant. The giving of the law is as part of the administration of the covenant of grace, so that to create a dichotomy between law and grace has to be nuanced very carefully. It is true that the law came by Moses while grace came by Christ (John 1:17), but this contrast has to be understood within the context of biblical revelation which sees Christ as the fulfillment of all that Moses symbolised. It must not be taken to mean that no grace was evident under the law or that no law is authoritative under grace.

The Mosaic covenant focuses on the giving of the law at Sinai. John Murray summarises:

The first express reference to the covenant made with Israel at Sinai occurs in connection with keeping the covenant. 'Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine. And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation' (Ex. xix. 5, 6). The next explicit reference appears as the sequel to the promise of the people, 'All that the Lord hath spoken will we do, and be obedient' (Ex. xxiv. 7, RV) and Moses sprinkled the blood and said, 'Behold, the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words' (Ex. xxiv. 8) (Covenant of Grace).

Again, it must be pointed out that the covenant is not dependent upon the obedience of the people. The covenant has been established by God's grace. What is dependent upon their obedience is their enjoyment of the promised blessings.

What were these blessings? They are recounted in Exodus 6:2-8, in answer to the question which Moses puts to God in Exodus 5:22 -- "Why have you sent me?". God's answer is:

And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the LORD: And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them. And I have also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers. And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant. Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments: And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for an heritage: I am the LORD.

This passage makes clear the fact that the Mosaic covenant is dependent on the Abrahamic. Even dispensational theologians, who tend to downplay the inter-connectedness of the various epochs of salvation history, recognise this; Craig Blaising writes that "the Mosaic covenant is a form of the Abrahamic covenant" (Progressive Dispensationalism, p145). It is not surprising, therefore, that the themes of the Mosaic covenant should echo earlier revelation. There are some clear motifs appearing in this answer of God to Moses:

1. There is God's self-identification, as Jehovah. Moses had already heard this name in Chapter 3; now it is given to him in the context of re-affirming the covenant. Part of the purpose is that they will KNOW this God to be their own (verse 7)

2. There is God's purpose of redemption. God remembers the covenant, THEREFORE he will bring them out of Egypt.

3. There is God's establishing of his people as a community -- "I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God" (verse 7)

4. There is God's promise of a land, fulfilling earlier covenantal promises (verse 8).

Redemption -- knowledge of God -- covenant community -- land inheritance. These are the four pivotal elements of covenant blessing which Israel will enjoy. In his book God's Design: A Focus on Old Testament Theology, Elmer Martens suggests that this fourfold design "is an appropriate and articulate grid according to which to present the whole of the Old Testament material" (p27). It is a grid which has already been articulated in earlier revelations of the covenant of grace, but now finds concrete and externalised expression in the law of Moses.

Two features of the covenant promise and blessing are highlighted in Exodus 24, which is another covenant ratifying ceremony.

First is the reference in Exodus 24:7 to the "book of the covenant". In this passage, Moses is fulfilling a priestly function, ministering between God and people. He can point to a book -- a clear and definitive summary of the will of God for his people.

The importance of this cannot be overemphasised. According to the teaching of Paul in Galatians 3:17, the law, which was given some 430 years after the promise was made to Abraham, did not disannul the covenant of promise. Instead, the law was added "because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made" (Galatians 3:19). The function of the book of the law was to highlight the nature of sin and to point to the one who alone could be the Saviour of sinners. The law is a schoolmaster, leading to Christ (Galatians 3:24).

The book contained commandments, which revealed the nature of God in his holiness, righteousness and spotless purity. It contained precepts for worship, for tabernacle and sacrifice, by which atonement could be made for the sins of the people. It enumerated sacrifices which were to be offered, and established the formal priestly office as the office which pertained to sacrifice and atonement. This itself shows the gracious character of the law administration -- unlike the covenant of works, the covenant of grace contains within its provision a means for dealing with transgression and lawbreaking. It contained a rule of life for Israel, laws which were relevant for Israel as a nation, and which provide us with unchanging moral absolutes for governing our own personal lives and the lives of nations still.

The second emphasis in the ceremony of Exodus 24 is on the "blood of the covenant" which was sprinkled on the people. Previous administrations of the covenant were not without bloodshed, from the shedding of the blood of the animals in Genesis 3, to the sacrifice of Noah in Genesis 9, to the rite of circumcision in Genesis 17. But in the Mosaic covenant, the blood takes on primary significance. Blood is to be sprinkled on the doorposts for the redemption of the people. Blood is to be sprinkled on the people for their consecration and commitment to the Lord. And the blood of bulls and goats is to be shed on the altar for perpetuity, witnessing to the necessity of sacrifice and death -- without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.

It is not without reason, therefore, that O. Palmer Robertson defines a covenant as a "bond in blood, sovereignly administered" (Christ of Covenants, p15). Just as in the case of Abraham, the bloodshed points to commitment that has life and death implications and consequences. The bloodshed is a sign that God will not renege on his covenant pledge.

This comes to clear expression in the New Testament, where Christ speaks of the covenant as being in his blood (Luke 22:20), and the writer to the Hebrews speaks of the blood of the everlasting covenant (Hebrews 13:20). Central to the vision of glory in Revelation is the lamb in the throne -- the sacrificial, paschal lamb, whose blood has washed sins away and given right of access to Heaven (Revelation 7:14).

These are distinctive elements of the Mosaic administration of the covenant of grace. The covenant relationship has been established sovereignly by God. He makes himself known. He constitutes a people to himself. He provides an inheritance, to which he leads his people. But they must obey his voice and keep his covenant if they are to know his blessing. So in Judges 2:20 we read that "the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel; and he said, Because this people hath transgressed my covenant which I commanded their fathers, and have not hearkened unto my voice, I also will not henceforth drvie out any from them of the nations which Joshua left when he died". Disobedience to the law is interpreted in the light of the covenant, and by it, blessings are lost.

The Priestly Covenant and its relation to the Mosaic Covenant

There is another element of the covenant revelation which we should take note of, and that is the priestly covenant which was made with Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, in Numbers 25:10-13. The action of Phinehas in slaying a Moabite woman in Numbers 25:8 is seen as the reason why the Lord's plague-judgement did not fall on the children of Israel. The action of Phinehas, and its consequences, are celebrated in Psalm 106:29-31, where we read "Thus they provoked him to anger with their inventions, and the plague brake in upon them. Then stood up Phinehas, and executed judgement, and so the plague was stayed. And that was counted unto him for righteousness unto all generations for evermore." In fact, what Numbers 25:12-13 states is that God gave to Phinheas his "covenant of peace", and said "he shall have it, and his seed after him, even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood, because he was zealous for his God and made an atonement for the children of Israel".

It is probably to this that Malachi is referring when he says that God's covenant is with Levi (2:4), a covenant of life and peace (2:5); and the promise given in 3:1 is that the Messiah would be the messenger of the covenant.

O. Palmer Robertson dismisses this priestly covenant in a footnote as an "adjunct to the Mosaic covenant, developing one specific aspect of the priestly legislation given to Moses." (Christ of the Covenants, p27n.1). He says that along with the covenant renewals to Isaac and Jacob, that with Phinehas does not have epoch-making significance. Yet the terminology ought to give us pause -- this priestly covenant was to be everlasting, and was specifically for the purpose of atonement. So while Robertson is right to say that this was part of the administration of the Mosaic covenant, we ought not to dismiss it as insignificant. It represents an emphasis within the covenant revelation on the central provision of grace -- God calls it my covenant, he says it is everlasting, he says that it is for atonement, he says that it is a covenant of shalom, peace, and that it was for all the children of Israel.

Is it going too far, therefore, to see in the covenant with Phinehas not merely an adjunct to the Mosaic covenant, but to see in it the very heart of the Mosaic covenant? In other words, is the promise of an everlasting priesthood, one which would fulfill all that the law required, not the end of the Mosaic administration? The messenger of the Lord has come to his temple, in order to fulfill his role as Mediator of the covenant, of whom Hebrews 7:24 says that his suitability to save is determined by his having an eternal and unchangeable priesthood, just as God promised.

I think more exegetical work is required on the priestly covenant with Phinehas. Murray does not mention it in his Covenant of Grace, but it seems to me to bring us to the heart of the Mosaic promise. There was no 'epoch-making' significance, but we ought to recognise the critical and pivotal promise made with him and his descendants in this period of the Old Testament.

Indeed, as the Old Testament history unfolds, there is a unique concentration on the priesthood. During the time of the Judges the priesthood passes from the line of Eleazer (the father of Phinehas) to Ithamar, the other son of Aaron. When 1 Samuel opens, Eli, a descendant of Ithamar, is high priest, but neither of his sons are capable of fulfilling that role. The promise given by an unnamed prophet in 1 Samuel 2:35 is "I will raise me up a faithful priest that shall do according to that which is in mine heart and in my mind, and I will build him a sure house, and he [or 'it' -- the reference is to the house] will walk [cf. verse 30 for a reference to a house walking/serving before the Lord] before mine anointed for ever".

This promise is surely messianic. The faithful priest is Christ, who is set forth in the provisions of the Mosaic covenant. For this reason we ought to move away from seeing the Mosaic covenant as a covenant of law to seeing it is particularly as a covenant of priesthood.

Again, therefore, the Mosaic covenant builds upon previous revelations of the covenant of grace and anticipates greater things to come.

David

The fact that God made a covenant with David is clearly celebrated in the Psalms; Psalm 89:3, for example declares "I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant". Similarly Isaiah 55:3 promises "I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David".

The occasion of the covenant with David is given in 2 Samuel 7 (paralleled in 1 Chronicles 17). Several elements of the context are worth noting.

First, God had given David rest from his enemies (2 Sam 7:1,11). Intermittent warfare had characterised the people up until this point. Now David had rest. Part of the significance of this was the fact that God would promise rest for his people (v10).

Second, David was in Jerusalem. He "sat in his house". The city of David is God's unique regard. Psalm 132:11-13 ties these themes together: 'The LORD hath sworn in truth unto David; he will not turn from it; Of the fruit of thy bodyb will I set upon thy throne. If thy children will keep my covenant and my testimony that I shall teach them, their children shall also sit upon thy throne for evermore. For the LORD hath chosen Zion; he hath desired it for his habitation.' In the context of 1 Samuel, chapter 5 relates how David took Jerusalem from the Jebusites and ruled there, instead of at Hebron as previously.

Third, David's desire is for the ark and its resting-place. This is an indication that David is in a spiritual frame of mind at this point in his life. It was not always so, and soon he will be responsible for adultery and murder in his the land. But God deals with him at a point where he wishes to serve the Lord in a very distinctive way. He shares this with Nathan, who initially encourages him to proceed with his request.

So it is that the stage is set for the intimation of specific promises to David, which, although the word itself is not used in the narrative, form the covenant with David. What are the elements of the promise?

1. The greatness of David's name (v9). There is a contrast between David's humble origins and his present position. But the greatness of the present is nothing compared to the greatness of his name in the future. This links back to the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:2.

2. The provision of an inheritance for God's people (v10). They will be planted in their own place.

3. The Lord will build a house for David (v11). This plays on the twofold use of the word 'house' in Scripture. It not only means a house, but a dynasty, a royal line.

4. David's son will build a house for the Lord (v13). The privilege of building the Temple would belong to Solomon. But in the light of redemptive history, the promise went much further than that. The great 'housebuilder' is David's greater Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

5. Covenant blessings will accompany covenant obedience; covenant curses will accompany disobedience, but the grounds for assurance lie in God's commitment to his own promise (v15)

6. The permanence of David's kingdom and throne. In this connection, the words of 1 Chronicles 29:23 are significant -- "then Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord as king instead of David his father, and prospered". This throne is the throne of God himself!

David's response to this is very instructive. In verses 18,19 he responds with humility before God, that God has favoured him in this way. But he also recognises the future aspect of the promises -- God has spoken for a long time to come. Then he asks "is this the manner of man, O Lord God?" This is probably better translated as a statement, as Walter Kaiser puts it "David blurts out in uncontainable joy, 'And this is the Charter for all mankind, O Lord God!" (The Law and the Prophets, p315). David recognises a new stage in the programme of salvation which has been unfolding in the ages, now settling upon David and his royal house.

This is explicitly stated by Peter in Acts 2:29-31, in connection with the messianic prophecy of Psalm 16:8-11 (quoted in Acts 2:25-8):

Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption.

So Walter Kaiser summarises:

David did not speak better than he knew nor did the NT writers attribute more to the words they quoted from this passage than the authorial will intended in them ... David was a prophet who knowingly and specifically spoke of the Christ to come from his descendants, even of his resurrection (Law and Prophets, p317).

Equally significant is the reflection of David in 2 Samuel 23:5, where he declares: "Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow." This is a clear indication that, although David has not been all that he ought to have been, and although many in his household have transgressed the law of God, the covenant remains his one hope. God has spoken, and his word is sure and certain.

This is to be seen in the outworking of God's purposes of salvation in the subsequent history of the Davidic kings. When he dedicates the temple, Solomon recognises in its construction and consecration a fulfillment of the promises God made to David: "And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, which spake with his mouth unto David my father, and hath with his hand fulfilled it." (1 Kings 8:15); again he says: "And the LORD hath performed his word that he spake, and I am risen up in the room of David my father, and sit on the throne of Israel, as the LORD promised, and have built an house for the name of the LORD God of Israel" (1 Kings 8:20).

It is also to be seen in the emphasis on the Davidic covenant in the reign of particular kings. When Jeroboam rebels, the prophet Ahijah met him and tore his cloak into twelve pieces. He gave ten to Jeroboam, saying, "Take thee ten pieces: for thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel, Behold, I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee: (But he shall have one tribe for my servant David's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel". The Davidic covenant overrides every consideration regarding the future of the kingdom.

For example, we read of wicked king Abijam: "And he walked in all the sins of his father, which he had done before him: and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father. Nevertheless for David's sake did the LORD his God give him a lamp in Jerusalem, to set up his son after him, and to establish Jerusalem: Because David did that which was right in the eyes of the LORD, and turned not aside from any thing that he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite." (1 Kings 15:3-5). Again, the Davidic covenant is dominant -- in spite of personal sin on Abijam's part, covenant grace preserves the kingdom.

This is true right up to the exile. In 2 Kings 25, the southern kingdom falls to Babylon, and Jehoiachin, the last king of David's line to govern in Jerusalem, languishes in prison (2 Kings 25:27-30). Right up to the end, God is faithful to the word of the covenant, and he chastises those of David's sons who go astray. But he never falsifies his promise, or reneges on his oath. He does not forget covenant mercies.

So Palmer Robertson:

the drama concludes with the stage set for a return of David's son to the throne of Israel. The consummation of God's covenant purposes has not yet been realised. The prophetic projection concerning a greater David builds on the surety of God's covenant, and anticipates the ultimate realisation of all of God's promises (Christ of the Covenants, p269).

Again, therefore, the Davidic covenant builds on what God has revealed in the past, and anticipates something greater to come.

New Covenant

As the line of David is subjected to the chastisement of God, Jeremiah prophesies regarding a new, final and consummate stage of covenant grace and mercy:

Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

The word 'new' in Jer 31:31 obviously contrasts with 'old' or 'former', and in verse 32 the 'former' covenant is that which God made after redeeming his people from Egypt. This covenant has been broken (v32).

John Murray reminds us that the contrast spoken of here "is not expressed in terms of difference between covenant and something else not a covenant. The contrast is within the ambit of covenant" (Covenant of Grace), that is, it is within the covenant itself. That is seen within the prophet's own description of the new covenant, in which God will put his law in the inward hearts of his people. The newness of the new covenant is not in terms of the features of covenant -- the same law is to be upheld and applied -- but in terms of its internalisation. The covenant will provide, as it always has done, for a personal relationship between God and his own -- "I ... will be their God and they shall be my people" (v33), and they will know him, and will know him as a God who forgives sin (v34). As the Westminster Confession of Faith puts it, "there are not therefore two covenants of grace, differing in substance, but one and the same, under various dispensations" (vii.6).

The reason for this change in covenant administration is twofold, and is explained in the New Testament. First, because of the power of sin in human life, no adequate provision was made under the old covenant to deal fully with sin. Paul makes this clear in Romans 8:3 -- "what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh". This is not a statement about the weakness of the law, but about the weakening of the law by our sinful nature. Similarly Hebrews 10:1 argues that the law, with its perpetuation of sacrifices "can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect". Hebrews 8:8ff quotes from Jeremiah 31 and says that the first covenant is ready to vanish away (Heb 8:13).

Second, the new covenant is established upon the finished work of the one whom God had all along purposed to be the Saviour of sinners. There were office-bearers and 'ministers' under the old covenant, but Jesus "has obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises" (Heb 8:6). Jesus Christ fulfills all the promises of the old covenant -- he is the seed of the woman, the son of Shem, the seed of Abraham, the faithful priest who will discharge the duties of the Mosaic covenant, the son of David who will occupy David's throne and rule in righteousness for ever. He also fulfills all the demands required for a covenantal relationship with God. Our covenant breaking is met by his covenant keeping. He is the last Adam, the federal head, the covenant representative of all his people, whose sins he bears in his own body to the tree. All the streams of Old Testament prophecy meet in him, the great covenant mediator of his people. To summarise, "Jeremiah anticipates the day when the actual shall replace the typical" (Christ of the Covenants, p283).

Because of this, the new covenant is to have an internal dimension scarcely known before. While the religion of the Old Testament was every bit a religion of the heart, like the new, the internal dimension will now predominate. Ezekiel spells it out in this way:

Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God (Ezekiel 36:25-28).

The same covenant motifs are present -- a knowledge of God is promised, a land is promised, forgiveness is promised. The Lord will give a new heart to his people, one which will respond in love and willing obedience to all that he requires. Jesus puts it otherwise when he says "if you love me, keep my commandments" -- the laws are honoured out of hearts willing to obey.

Another feature here is the fact that the new covenant is also the last administration of the everlasting covenant of grace. All that Christ does satisfies all that the Old Testament longed for and hoped for. The promises of the covenant are sealed to us not in the blood of slain carcases, as to Abraham, or of sacrificial animals, as to Moses, but in the precious blood of Christ, in whom we are bound to God in terms of sovereign, unbreakable covenant union.

Summary

There are three principles which sum up for us this sweep of the historical outworking of God's purpose of salvation in the covenant of grace:

1. With each successive era of redemptive revelation, each administration of the covenant built on what went before, substantially developed and added to it, and anticipated a further revelation to come. Each administration constitutes a re-casting and re-forming of the previous administrations, until the covenant is cast in its perfect form with the coming and the work of Jesus Christ.

2. As redemptive history progressed, the arc of OT revelation got wider, and the focus of God's redemptive purpose became narrower, until at last all the covenant provision of grace focussed on Christ.

3. At that point, the interest became wider again, as more and more are brought into the covenant of grace, fulfilling the promise of the covenant of redemption, because of the perfect discharging of the obligations of the covenant of works on the part of the Saviour.

Questions Which Arise In Discussion of the Covenant

Is the covenant unilateral (one-sided) or bilateral (two-sided)?

The answer here is that it is both. Each successive revelation of the covenant highlights the fact that it is sovereignly administered. But what is sovereignly administered is a bond of fellowship and of union. There are two sides to every covenant arrangement, once that arrangement is in place.

Who are the parties to the covenant?

This is a question which covenant theology has found difficult to answer. While the Confession of Faith and the Shorter Catechism are non-specific on this point, the Larger Catechism is clear: "The covenant of grace was made with Christ as the second Adam, and in him with all the elect as his seed" (Q.31). But Reformed theology has also emphasised the fact that because of the Mediatorial and representative role of Christ, it is also true that the covenant of grace is made with us in Christ. So Francis Turretine: "The Covenant of Grace is a gratuitous pact between God the offended one and man the offender, entered into in Christ, in which God freely on account of Christ promises to man the remission of sins and salvation, and man in dependence upon the same grace promises faith and obedience" (quoted in Murray, Vol 4, p228).

Certainly the New Testament believer does not have less than David had when he could say in 2 Samuel 23:5 -- "he has made an everlasting covenant with me". It is true that the covenant is not made with us merely as human beings, but it is made with us in Christ, whose standing before God is sufficient to bring us into full possession of all the blessings of salvation.

Is the covenant conditional or unconditional?

The answer again is -- it is both. From the perspective of planning, administration and execution, the covenant is truly a covenant of grace. It is all of grace. And grace is sovereign and unconditional. The blessings of the Gospel come our way without any deserving or merit on our part.

Yet once the bond is established, there are elements of conditionality attached to it. To enjoy the blessings which the covenant offers and promises requires of us that we live and act in obedience to the claims of God. John Owen affirms that there are conditions in every covenant. In his discussion of this question, John Murray makes these important points:

1. "No theologian within the Reformed camp took the position that, in the saving provisions of which the Covenant of Grace is the administration, the thought of condition is to be completely eliminated"; and

2. "Those who maintained the conditional nature of the covenant were jealous at the same time to maintain that the fulfilment of the conditions on the part of men was wholly of God's grace"

(Collected Writings, Vol 4, p229)

Perhaps the clearest scriptural assertion of this it at Psalm 103:17, which states that "the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him and his righteousness unto children's children, to such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them".

Is faith a condition of the covenant?

It is certainly the case that without faith we cannot please God (Hebrews 11:6), and nor can we enjoy the blessings of salvation. They belong to those who believe. Faith, therefore, is the means by which we can enjoy all the provisions of the covenant; but, in addition, faith itself is one of these provisions! This shows the wonder of God's grace. "You are saved by faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8). The faith by which we appropriate all the blessings of Christ's salvation was itself obtained for us by the Son.

Some Practical Implications of the Doctrine of the Covenant

Covenant and Scripture

The Bible is a collection of sixty-six books, written by several authors over several centuries. For as long as it has been read people have been asking questions about its interpretation: does it have a unifying theme? A central message? Is there some cord of meaning which binds all these books together? And, if so, how can we trace the relation between the Testaments, or between the books within the Testaments? What has Genesis to do with John? Amos with Acts? Ruth with Revelation?

Some have viewed the connection of the books of the Bible in terms of development of different themes, such as the kingdom of God or the promise. Others have described the Bible as a book of dispensations, and dispensational theology has had a major influence on biblical interpretation within certain sections of the Christian church. In its older form (represented in the Scofield Reference Bible of 1909, for example), dispensationalism broke the time-line of historical redemption into isolated units, which had little interconnectedness. Recently, however, dispensational interpreters have been more ready to admit that there is, in fact, a great deal of common ground between these units of history (see, for example, C.L. Blaising and D.L. Bock, Progressive Dispensationalism, Baker Books, 1993).

But it seems to me that the most satisfactory principle for the unification of the Scriptures is the doctrine of the covenant of God's grace. We have already noted how each stage of redemptive history builds on what has gone before, substantially adding to it and re-casting it, until at last, in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the covenant mediator, the work of salvation is complete.

Moreover, the Bible itself speaks in this way. Galatians 3 tells us, for example, that God proclaimed the gospel to Abraham (verse 8) and that Christ was made a curse for us in order that the Gentiles might receive the blessing of Abraham (verses 13-14). What blessing is this? The blessing, surely, of the covenant promise, in which God pledged himself to Abraham and consecrated Abraham to himself. The atoning blood is described in Hebrews 13:20 as the 'blood of the everlasting covenant', a clear witness to the unifying theme of Scripture, which enables us to see the relevance of bloodshed in the Old Testament.

Some writers speak of the covenant as the skeleton of Scripture (see D.M Jones, "Back to the Covenant" in D.G. Hagopian (ed.) Back to Basics, 1996, p69), which is fleshed out by the scriptural writings. While the image is good, I would prefer to speak about the covenant as the heart of Scripture, the vital organ which gives its own life to every other area of Bible teaching.

This also enables us to see the relevance of particular sections of the Bible. How, for example, might we preach on the Book of Ruth? As a simple love story, with moral lessons to teach us on the nature of relationships? In the light of the theology and development of the covenant, its meaning goes much deeper. It stands as an example of how a stranger to the covenant people of God is brought through redemption and marriage within the bond of the covenant of God's grace. It is the revelation of God's covenant salvation, and the unity of his covenant purpose, that enables us to see the deep relevance of every element of God's Word.

bullet Covenant and the Church

The Bible uses the word 'church' to refer to the people of God: a society of believers committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and confessing him as Saviour and Lord. Christ promised to build his church (Matthew 16:18), and the New Testament is replete with references to the church, both as the collective people of God whom he saves through Christ (cf. Ephesians 5:25), or as the local gathering of believers in a specific community (cf. Philemon 2). But when Stephen was about to be martyred for the faith, he used an interesting expression in Acts 7:38 when he spoke of "the church in the wilderness". One study Bible which I use describes this term as "unfortunate"! But in fact it helps to clarify for us what the true nature of the church is: it is the people of God in covenant with himself. David McKay is correct to point out that "it is entirely appropriate that covenant language should be used in defining the Church" (The Bond of Love, p198). This allows us to understand verses such as 1 Peter 2:9 which describes the church as a priesthood and a holy nation, terms which are rooted in Old Testament passages such as Exodus 19:6. It was the heart of the covenant that God would have a people for himself, and that people is the covenant community.

The covenant idea enables us to understand the role of ministry within the church, since we are ministers of a new covenant (2 Corinthians 3:6), and enables us to define the Sacraments. Baptism is a contentious issue within modern evangelicalism, nonetheless the validity of infant baptism is grounded on the doctrine of the unity of the covenant of grace and its continuity across the Testaments. Robert Booth, in his excellent work on baptism, puts it like this:

The new covenant people of God are an extension or expansion of the old covenant people of God. There is a progressive development of the church from the Old Testament to the New; however, there are not two separate peoples of God. There is only one covenant of grace throughout all the ages for all the people of God and their children. Since the Old Testament church was spiritual and included the children of believers, we must assume that the spiritual church of the New Testament also includes the children of believers.

(Children of the Promise: The Biblical Case for Infant Baptism, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co, 1995, p74)

This view of baptism regards the sacrament as a 'covenant sign and seal', in which baptism comes to signify not a subjective confession of faith but an objective promise from God.

In the same way, the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is a covenant meal of remembrance. The words of institution are explicitly covenantal: "This cup is the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:20). In the Lord's Supper the people of God are to examine themselves as to their authority and right to sit at the Lord's Table, to remember the love displayed for them by Christ in his dying, and to anticipate his return. There is an introspective element, a retrospective element and a prospective element in the Sacrament, which mirrors the sweep of the covenant as God's purpose of grace embracing past, present and future.

There are times, of course, when the church appears to be threatened by the movements of modernism and postmodernism, when her numbers are dwindling and her leaders are gone. It is in times like these that the people of God can take up the prayer of the Old Testament: "God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth ... Have regard for the covenant!" (Psalm 74:12,20). Because he is the same in all ages, his people in every age are able to pray to him with confidence, with assurance and with hope that he will not break his covenant but have a people for himself in every generation.

Covenant and Evangelism

Hugh Martin, in The Atonement, reminds us that there can be no Gospel unless there is an atonement, and there is no atonement except the atonement provided from within the covenant of grace. Martin asks: what is the relation between the Gospel call and the covenant of grace? He answers:

that relation is very intimate. The gospel call comes forth from the covenant, and summons sinners into it. It is a voice from within the covenant, addressed to those that are without, with the view of bringing them within ... the call is a voice from within the covenant summoning sinners to come within its gracious bonds. Of course, therefore, it is a universal call. The one thing which it takes for granted is that sinners are outside the covenant ... it is thereofre a universal call because it is a call addressed to those that are without... (The Atonement, pp21-22).

Martin explores the relationship between a limited atonement and a universal call. He recognises that Christ died for his own, and that the covenant provision is as limited as the Father's donation to him and requirement of him. But he also recognises that if the Gospel is addressed to those standing outside the covenant bond, then it is addressed to us all. He goes on to argue that if the Call of the Gospel is a call to the covenant, then it has no value unless it comes from the covenant itself. He even argues that it would have no value though it were to come from Christ, unless it were to come from him in his role and office as a covenant head (p23).

It is also because of the covenant that we can assure sinners that whatever is in their lives, Christ can deal with. He is able to save to the uttermost, because he has an unchangeable and perpetual priesthood, which can deal with anything that comes between sinners and their God. So Alexander Stewart of Cromarty:

Enumerate and combine everything that you can conceive to stand in the way of man's salvation, and, if you can, yet add another, it will be but another proof of Christ's abilit to save; for He can overcome it. The guilt of sin, the justice of God, the power and the ceaseless and merciless wiles and accusations of Satan, the power of man to hurt or seduce -- all these He can meet. The curse, with all its benumbing, blinding, perverting effects, the love of backsliding, His power can deal with. How gloriously does the love of the everlasting Saviour in the covenant, well ordered in all things and sure, and which has been satisfied by His own blood, triumphantly overcome every difficulty!

(Tree of Promise, p90).

Covenant and Discipleship

How does the doctrine of the covenant enable us to live our individual Christian lives? This is obviously a wide question to ask, and a wonderful theme to explore. Let me simply ennumerate the following elements of our discipleship in the light of the teaching of the covenant:

Covenant security

What assurance do I have as a believer that I will make it to Heaven? The Bible is studded with warnings about turning round and going back (for example, Luke 9:62, Hebrews 10:38), on the basis of which some have argued that it is possible to be born again and yet to fall from grace and be lost. Yet, although there are such things as false professions on the part of hypocrites, as well as sin and backsliding on the part of believers, nonetheless the Bible reminds us constantly of the security of all of God's people. That security is not grounded in anything we can do ourselves, or in anything the church can do for us. It is grounded solely upon the covenant of God which is everlasting, and which is ordered and sure (2 Samuel 23:5). Our hope is not in what we do for God, but what he does for us. He loses none of those for whom Jesus died (John 6:40). Once saved, we are always saved, because to be saved means to be brought into the bond of an unbreakable and unassailable covenant. That covenant relationship is strong enough to resist every attempt to assail it or to destroy those who are within it. Neither their sins nor the devil's strategies can undermine their security. As our great Mediator, Jesus ensures, by his continual intercession, that his people have grace and strength for each moment of their journey through life.

Covenant direction

As believers, we are not left to live as we please. Indeed, the very definition of what it is to be a Christian is that we have stopped pleasing ourselves, and live now to please Jesus Christ. How are we to do so? He himself says to us "If you love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15), wording that is directly related to the terms on which the law was given at Sinai, in which God spoke of "those who love me and keep my commandments" (Exodus 20:6).

Yet the place of law in the Christian life has also proved a contentious issue, relating to statements in the New Testament such as Paul's "you are not under law but under grace" (Romans 6:14) or John's statement that "the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17). Statements such as these seem to suggest that the law of the Old Testament has no longer any jurisdiction in the life of the Christian believer.

This cannot be an absolute position, however, given that Christ himself taught that he had not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it (Matthew 5:17). His ministry involved many debates and arguments over the interpretation of the commandments and the proper fulfillment of them. But the moral principles which God taught his people in the Old Testament were never abrogated. How then does Old Testament law relate to Spirit-led life?

The covenant concept supplies the answer. The law was given to Israel who were already in a covenant relationship with God. It was not through keeping the law or obeying the commandments that such a relationship was established. It was established through grace, by which Israel was consecrated as a holy nation to the law-giving God of Sinai. Some of the laws given to Israel were civil laws, for the governing of her life as a people in the ancient Semitic world. Other laws related to her religious life, and involved sacrifice and ritual, most of which has been done away with, not because God no longer requires such things but because Christ has fulfilled all the constraints and requirements of these religious sacrificial rituals for us (see, for example, 2 Corinthians 3:7, which speaks of a glory which was to be done away with in Christ, and Hebrews 10:1-18, which argues that the old ritual has been abolished with the perfect offering of Jesus Christ).

But the moral precepts of the law, relating to God as the only object of worship, his name, his day, the sanctity of life, marriage, property and truth -- the moral principles summed up for us in the ten commandments -- these have not been abolished. Indeed, their authority has been demonstrated by Jesus to be binding on his covenant people. Like a second Moses speaking to a new Israel in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches that the demands of the law extend beyond external observance to inward motive and purity.

We must avoid legalism (the view that keeping laws and commandments is necessary to salvation), but we must also avoid antinomianism (the view that being no longer under law means having no laws to keep). To be freed in Christ from the curse of the law is to be free to keep the law to the glory of God, with hearts that love him and wish to please him.

As we have already noted, covenant precedes law, but is never established apart from law. Christ's perfect obedience for us means that his righteousness is ours, so that by living a Spirit-filled life, we too can fulfil the righteousness which is in the law (Romans 8:4). So although no-one may judge us on the basis of commandments or external religious observance (Colossians 2:16-17), nevertheless the New Testament covenant community can say with the Old Testament believer "Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day" (Psalm 119:97).

The covenant, therefore, maps out for us the route by which we can enjoy its favours. To use an analogy, when God gave the law to Israel, it was as if he constructed a fence and said 'By remaining within these parameters, you may enjoy the blessings, privileges and favours of the covenant. By going outwith them, you will still be in covenant, but you will forfeit your right to these blessings'. That is why, when a believer sins, he is not lost completely, for it is the covenant that provides his security on the basis of the law-keeping of Jesus Christ; but he does lose his peace, his assurance, his joy, and countless other privileges, because he has disobeyed God. Our law-keeping is not the basis of our relationship with God, but the law remains our rule of life.

Covenant discipline

The reality, however, is that we do continue to wander away from God. We sin and backslide, we allow sin to work in our thoughts, motives and behaviour. What happens then? When we are unfaithful to our side of the covenant relationship, what does God do?

The answer of the Bible is that he demonstrates his faithfulness to the covenant of his grace by disciplining his wayward children and bringing them to repentance and to renewed commitment. One of the clearest expressions of this is in Psalm 89:30-34, regarding God's covenant relationship to David:

If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; If they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless my lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.

Covenant and Providence

The Psalmists clearly found refuge in their trials within the covenant. When the cause of God was threatened, and the day dark, their prayer was "Have regard for the covenant" (Psalm 74:20); and when individual chastisements are our portion, we can recall the words of God to David, "My covenant I will not break" (Psalm 89:34). Calvin says of this, "that the faithful, therefore, may not harass themselves beyond measure in debating in their own minds whether or no they are in favour with God, they are enjoined to look to the covenant..." (quoted in F.Leahy, "The Psalms as a Manual of Praise", RTJ, 18 (Nov 2002), p47).

In his biography of Jonathan Edwards, Iain Murray notes that when Edwards was removed from Northampton, he wrote to William McCulloch: "I have now nothing visible to depend upon for my future usefulness, or the subsistence of my numerous family. But I hope we have an all-sufficient faithful, covenant God to depend upon" (Jonathan Edwards p355).

In the same biography there is a reference to a grandaughter of Jonathan Edwards who sent a note to the Edwards Family Meeting in 1870 to say "that God had fulfilled to her and hers the covenant which he made with her grandfather, even as he did to Abraham. She wants all her grandfather's descendants to study more and put greater faith in that covenant..." (p447).

For Edwards, and his descendants, the covenant was more than an article of faith -- it was a worldview. It was a principle which shaped their outlook on life and their attitude to life. For the believer still, it is when we see our lives as covenanted to God that we can appreciate the richness and the grandeur of God's covenantal scheme of redemption. Everything about us is to be consecrated to him in covenant: all our time, our gifts, our abilities and talents. If we keep covenant with God, we will enjoy his favour and blessing. And those who are willing to bow before the sovereign God of the covenant, by whose grace they are saved, know the meaning of true freedom. They have forgiveness for their past, grace for their present, and hope for their future.

In Summary

The covenant is a formalising of the relationship between God and his people in Jesus Christ. It is the foundation of all our salvation and all our hope. As John Murray puts it:

At the centre of covenant revelation as its constant refrain is the assurance 'I will be your God, and ye shall be my people'. The new covenant does not differ from the earlier covenants because it inaugurates this peculiar intimacy. It differs simply because it brings to the ripest and richest fruition the relationship epitomized in that promise. In this respect also the new covenant is an everlasting covenant ? there is no further expansion or enrichment. The mediator of the new covenant is none other than God's own Son, the effulgence of the Father's glory and the express image of His substance, the heir of all things. He is its surety also. And because there can be no higher mediator or surety than the Lord of glory, since there can be no sacrifice more transcendent in its efficacy and finality than the sacrifice of Him who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot unto God, this covenant cannot give place to another. Grace and truth, promise and fulfilment, have in this covenant received their pleroma, and it is in terms of the new covenant that it will be said, 'Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them' (Rev. xxi. 3).

(conclusion of Covenant of Grace)

FOR FURTHER READING

D.M. Jones III, "Back to the Covenant" in D.G. Hagopian (ed.), Back to Basics: Rediscovering the Richness of the Reformed Faith, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1996, Part Two.

D. McKay, The Bond of Love: God's Covenantal Relationship with his Church, Fearn: Mentor, 2001

D. Macleod, "Covenant Theology", in N.M. de S. Cameron (ed), Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993

J. Murray, The Covenant of Grace, available on the internet at http://www.the-highway.com/Covenant_Murray.html).

R.Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998, especially chapter 14, "The Unity of the Covenant of Grace".

O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1980

G. Vos, "The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology", in R.B. Gaffin (ed.), Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co, 1980