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Blog Series - Covenants

If there is anything that every person on the face of the earth can agree on, it is that this present world is full of sorrow, death, and suffering. But that’s about the extent of where we all agree. For the world, it is merely a matter of bad karma or Darwinian evolution running its natural course over millions of years. But, for the Christian, it is a temporary setback that will one day be brought to an end when God restores all of creation. As the apostle Paul wrote, “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21). Death and suffering are commonly thought of as a normal part of creation and life itself, but that’s not how it was originally supposed to be. In the beginning, when God created all things, He said it was “very good” (Genesis 1:31). In other words, creation was perfect, and there was absolutely no death nor suffering

But we all know that something happened that upended this perfect utopia. Mankind was given a single prohibition, and they failed to obey that command. Consequently, God cursed the creation, and from that day on, suffering and death became a part of our existence. But, what if I told you that this single act of disobedience was not only a sinful action on the part of Adam and Eve, but it was also the breaking of a covenant that was established between God and mankind? In the previous blog, we established that a covenant is similar to a contract, but it is binding at the deepest possible level. It follows then, that if breaking a simple contract can have consequences, how much greater the consequence when breaking a covenant established by God! This would have very serious repercussions.

It is this specific covenant, often referred to as the Edenic Covenant and/or the Adamic Covenant, that will be my focus.. What exactly is this covenant, and what scriptural evidence do we have that such a covenant was established between God and mankind? To answer this question, we need to go to a couple different places. First, we need to look at the historical narrative where the establishment of the covenant in question took place. In Genesis 1:28, we have the very first commission God gave to mankind: to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Then in Genesis 2:16-17, we read the following: “The Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.’” So in effect, there is a command to do something, as well as a command to not do something. Great blessing comes if the Word of God is obeyed, but great cursing will result if it is not obeyed. If this sounds like the kind of covenant that God later made with the nation Israel under the leadership of Moses, that’s because it is exactly that: a conditional covenant. Some may also refer to it as a covenant of works, because it involves the works of mankind in order to keep our end of the bargain. This covenantal language is evident when we read the first two chapters of Genesis. But, oddly enough, the word “covenant” is completely missing from the narrative. So how do we know that God did in fact make a covenant with Adam?

To answer this, we turn to our other supporting passage in Hosea 6:7. There we find something interesting. The text reads, “But like Adam they have transgressed the covenant; there they have dealt treacherously against Me”. The context of this passage fits with the overall theme of the book of Hosea. Israel has sinned against Yahweh and has, like a harlot forsaking her husband to go after other men, forsaken Yahweh to go after false gods. But, notice how the text says, “like Adam they have transgressed the covenant”. We know that God made a covenant with the nation Israel based on multiple passages throughout the Old Testament, but according to what we find here in Hosea, they broke the covenant just as Adam did. This means that as far as God is concerned, a covenant was made between Him and Adam! In his book Covenant and God’s Purpose for the World, Thomas Schreiner made a similar observation and wrote the following: “Israel in a sense was a new Adam, and like the first Adam they violated God’s covenant".

If you continue reading the narrative in Genesis, we find that God did indeed curse creation on account of Adam’s breaking of the covenant. But in the midst of His pronouncement of curses, we find something very interesting: a silver lining that is the very first messianic prophecy. Contained in this prophecy is a glimmer of hope even in the midst of unimaginable consequences that mankind must bear because of sin. God said to the serpent in Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel”. And God doesn’t stop there in His gracious actions! He also made for Adam and Eve garments of skin to cover up their nakedness (Genesis 3:21), implying that a blood sacrifice was needed for atonement. He then proceeded to banish Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and block access to the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:23-24). At first, this may sound like another consequence of their sin, and to a certain extent it is, but let’s not forget the fact that this was also a gracious act of God. Had Adam and Eve continued to have access to the Tree of Life and eat of it, they would have forever remained in their sinful state with no hope of redemption, just like the fallen angels. But unlike the angels, God has a special plan of redemption for humanity, and so “…as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).

This grace that God bestows on Adam and Eve, culminates with the promise of the coming Seed in verse 15. This very first promise parallels the promise of the Seed that was repeated to both Abraham and David. Again, the covenantal language is very clear in all three scenarios. If we are to think of Genesis 3:15 in covenantal terms, we see something different this time around. Unlike the covenant of works that we saw previously, this covenant is not based upon any conditions or anything that mankind does. Rather, it is an unconditional promise. God will fulfill His promise no matter what! It is for this reason that the promise of Genesis 3:15, often referred to as the protoevangelium, or the “first gospel”, came to fulfillment 2,000 years ago when the long awaited Seed of the woman came into the world: Jesus of Nazareth. He went to the cross to die for sinners, “bruising His heel” in the process. But three days later, Christ defeated death and rose again, effectively crushing the serpent’s head. While the first Adam failed to keep the covenant, the Second Adam kept it perfectly on our behalf, never once violating the Law. Because He took on our sin and died on the cross as though He were a sinner, we in exchange received His imputed righteousness by faith. As Paul wrote, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

The fuzzy pictures we see in the Old Testament that are present all the way back in the very beginning, come into clear focus in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Next time, we will be looking at even more of these fuzzy pictures in the life of Noah and in the covenant that God made with him.

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 1 (Schreiner, 2017)