Covenant, Part 1
Many people today talk about how we should try to think of God. All the other religions of the world are based on the idea of man seeking after ‘god’ or ‘gods.’ But Scripture teaches something much different. God seeks after man. God does not wait for man to seek him because man on his own will never find God or seek after Him.
The Westminster Confession of Faith in Chapter 7 speaks of the distance between God and man as being so great that we could never experience any enjoyment of God as our blessing and reward if God did not take the initiative to come to us. And God has done this through the means of covenant.
There are different definitions for covenant:
Covenant – an agreement or promise between two or more persons.
Covenant – a bond in blood, kingly given, broken only by death.
Covenant – the relationship that God begins and determines with His people.
Theologians debate on whether to call God’s dealing with Adam in the Garden of Eden a covenant. The word is not found in Genesis 1-3, but there are basic elements of what can be called a covenant. The covenant between God and Adam is sometimes called the covenant of works or the covenant of life. Looking at Genesis 2:15-17, there are the basic parts of a covenant. Adam was given permission to eat of every tree of the garden and forbidden at this time to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Gen. 2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Genesis 3:17-19 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Note that Adam and Eve are then kicked out of the Garden of Eden with no hope of return. They were cut of covenantally from the life that they had one enjoyed. But before Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden they were given a promise in Genesis 3:15.
Genesis 3:15 “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Here in these words we see that God would bring salvation to Adam and Eve not through their own obedience but through a coming Savior.
The Westminster Confession of Faith states that following the fall of Adam (and Eve), the Lord was pleased to establish a new covenant.
Westminster Confession of Faith: 7.3 – Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace; wherein he freely offers unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ; requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to believe.
Now you know enough about the Bible to realize that there are at least 4000 years of OT history before the coming of Christ. God prepared the way for the coming of Christ in a number of ways. God raised up the godly line of Seth. God then chose Noah and his family to be the ones who would continue the human race after God brought an incredible judgment on the entire world.
Then in Genesis 12 we have what can be described almost as a new creation. We have in Genesis 12 the beginning of Abraham’s story (it actually is introduced at the end of chapter 11).
Gen. 12:1 Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
We will continue looking at the Abrahamic Covenant next.