02.17. Covenant of Works.
Chapter 17 Covenant of Works.
1. In what different senses is the term covenant used in Scripture?
1st. For a natural ordinance.—Jeremiah 33:20.
2nd. For an unconditional promise.—Genesis 9:11-12.
3rd. For a conditional promise.—Isaiah 1:19-20.
4th. A dispensation or mode of administration.—Hebrews 8:6-9. For the usage with respect to the Greek term
2. What are the several elements essential to a covenant?
1st. Contracting parties.
2nd. Conditions. These conditions in a covenant between equals are mutually imposed and mutually binding, but in a sovereign constitution, imposed by the Creator upon the creature, those “conditions” are better expressed as (1) promises on the part of the Creator suspended upon (2) conditions to be fulfilled by the creature. And (3) an alternative penalty to be inflicted in case the condition fails.
3. Show that the constitution under which Adam was placed by God at his creation may be rightly called a covenant. The inspired record of God’s transactions with Adam presents definitely all the essential elements of a covenant as coexisting in that constitution.
1st. “contracting parties.”—
(1.) God, the moral Governor, by necessity of nature and relation demanding perfect conformity to moral law.
(2.) Adam, the free moral agent, by necessity of nature and relation under the inalienable obligation of moral law.
2nd. The “promises,” life and favor.—Matthew 19:16-17; Galatians 3:12. The “conditions” upon which the promises were suspended, perfect obedience, in this instance subjected to a special test, that of abstaining from the fruit of the “tree of knowledge.”
3rd. The “alternative penalty.”“In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”—Genesis 3:16-17. This constitution is called a covenant.—Hosea 6:1-11 4. How is it defined in our standards?
“Confession Faith,” Chap. 4., Sec. 2; Chap. 7., Sec. l and 2; Chap. 19., Sec. l; “Larger Catechism,” Q. 20; “Shorter Catechism,” Q. 12.
5. Why is it not absurd to apply the term “Covenant” to a sovereign constitution imposed by the Creator upon the creature without consulting his will?
1st. Although it was a sovereign constitution imposed by God, there is no reason to suppose that Adam did not enter upon it voluntarily. He was a holy being, and the arrangement was preeminently to his advantage.
2nd. We call it a Covenant because that is the proper word to express a conditional promise made to a free agent.
3rd. The term “Covenant” is constantly applied in Scripture to other sovereign constitutions of like character which the Creator has imposed upon men. If God could make covenants with fallen and guilty Noah, Genesis 9:11-12, and with Abraham. Genesis 17:1-21, why could he not make a covenant with unfallen Adam?
6. By what titles has this covenant been designated and why?
1st. It has been called the Covenant of Nature, because it expresses the relationship which man in his natural state as newly created and unfallen sustained to the Creator and Moral Governor of the universe. It is adjusted to the natural man, just as the Covenant of Grace is adjusted to unnatural or fallen man.
2nd. It has been called a legal covenant, because its “condition” is perfect conformity to the law of absolute moral perfection.
3rd. It has been called the Covenant of Works, because its demands terminate upon man’s own being and doing.
4th. It has been called a Covenant of Life, because the promise attached to well–doing was life.
It was also essentially a gracious covenant, because although every creature is, as such, bound to serve the Creator to the full extent of his powers, the Creator cannot be bound as a mere matter of justice to the natural justice to grant the creature fellowship with himself, or to raise him to an infallible standard of moral power, or to crown him with eternal and inalienable felicity.
7. Who were the parties to this covenant, and how may it be proved that Adam therein represented all his natural descendants? The “parties” were God and Adam, and in him representatively all natural posterity. That he did thus represent his descendants is evident—
1st. From the parallel which is drawn in Scripture between Adam in his relation to his descendants, and Christ in his relation to his elect.—Romans 5:12-19, and 1 Corinthians 15:22; 1 Corinthians 15:47.
2nd. From the matter of fact that the very penalty denounced upon Adam, in case of his disobedience, has taken effect in each individual descendant.—Genesis 2:17; Genesis 3:17-18.
3rd. From the Biblical declaration that sin, death, and all penal evil came into the world through Adam.—Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 15:22. See Chapter 21., on “Imputation of Adam’s Sin.”
8. What was the promise attached to the Covenant? The promise was “life”—
1st. Because necessarily implied in the penalty “death,” which is expressly denounced. If disobedience is linked to death, obedience is linked to life.
2nd. It is clearly taught in other passages of Scripture.—Leviticus 18:5; Nehemiah 9:29; Matthew 19:16-17; Galatians 3:12; Romans 10:5. This life was not a mere continuation of the existence with which man was endowed by creation as a fallible, moral agent, but it was an additional gift of infallible, moral excellence, and inalienable blessedness, conditioned upon obedience during a probationary period.—
1st. This is evident because the reward suspended on “conditions” must involve something more than had been already granted.
2nd. Because man was as created liable to sin, and there could be no permanent and secure bliss nor high excellence in that condition.
3rd. Because the granting of the reward necessarily closes the probation, supersedes the conditions, and secures inalienable blessedness.
4th. Because the angels who had not left their first estate had been rewarded with such a life.
5th. Because the life promised must correspond to the death threatened, and the death threatened involved eternal separation from God and irretrievable destruction.
6th. Because the life secured to us by the “Second Adam” is of this nature.
9. What is a “Probation”? and when and where did the human race have its probation under the Covenant of Works? A probation is a trial. The word is variously used to express the state, or the time, or the act of trial. The time of probation under such a constitution as the covenant of works must be a definitely limited one, because it is self–evident that either the infliction of the penalty or the granting of the reward would, ipso facto, close the probation forever, and the reward could not accrue until the period of probation was completed. The probation of the human race took place once for all in the trial of Adam in the garden of Eden. That trial resulted in loss, and since then the conditions of the covenant being impossible, and its penalty having been incurred, any probation is of course impossible. Men are now by nature children of wrath.
10. What was the condition of that covenant? and why was the command not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil selected as a test?
Perfect conformity of heart, and perfect obedience in act to the whole will of God as far as revealed.—Deuteronomy 27:26; Galatians 3:10; James 2:10. The command to abstain from eating the forbidden fruit was only made a special and decisive test of that general obedience. As the matter forbidden was morally indifferent in itself, the command was admirably adapted to be a clear and naked test of submission to God’s absolute will as such. The forbidden tree was doubtless called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because through the disobedient eating of it mankind came to the thorough experience of the value of goodness and of the infinite evil of sin. The obedience required by the law as a rule of duty is of. course perpetual. But the demand of the law for obedience as a covenant condition of life must be limited to the period of probation. The term “perpetual” in “Confession F.,” Ch. 19., § 1, and “Larger Catechism,” Q. 20, was admitted doubtless by inadvertence.
11. What was the nature of the death threatened in case of disobedience? This word, “dying thou shalt die,” in this connection evidently includes all the penal consequences of sin. These are—
1st., death, natural, Ecclesiastes 12:7;
2nd., death, moral and spiritual, Matthew 8:22; Ephesians 2:1; 1 Timothy 5:6; Revelation 3:1;
3rd., death, eternal, Revelation 20:6-14. The instant the law was violated its penalty began to operate, although on account of the intervention of the dispensation of grace the full effect during the present life. The Spirit of God was withdrawn the instant man fell, and he at once became spiritually dead, physically mortal, and under sentence of death eternal. This appears—
1st. From the nature of man as a spiritual being. “This is life eternal to know the only true God,” etc.—John 17:3. The instant the soul is cut off from God it dies, and his wrath and curse is incurred, and the entire person, body and soul, involved in an endless series of evil conditions.
2nd. The Scriptures everywhere declare that the wages of sin is death.—Romans 6:23; Ezekiel 18:4. The nature of this death is to be determined.
(1.) By the is narrative of the effects produced in our first parents, e. g., shame of nakedness, fear, alienation from God, until after a time dissolution of body, etc.
(2.) By the experience of its effects in their descendants, e. g., corruption of nature, mortality, miseries of body, miseries in this life, the second death.
12. What do C. F. Hudson and others hold to be the penalty of the Covenant of Works? The annihilationists, of whom C. F. Hudson is one of the ablest, hold that the precise thing God said to Adam was “THOU, thyself, thine entire person art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.” They quote Numbers 23:10; Judges 16:30, etc. They hold that death means precisely and only cessation of being. They say Adam could have had no other idea associated with the word. Death in this sense had preexisted in the world for innumerable ages among the lower orders of creatures, and this was all Adam knew on the subject.
It is idle for us to speculate as to what the original language God spoke to Adam was, or what the word he used corresponding to our word, death, precisely signified and suggested. Adam probably simply understood God to say that if he sinned he should be utterly and irretrievably cut off from the divine favor. That is precisely what happened. But the facts are clear.
1st. The word death in Scripture is used to express not cessation of being but a certain godless condition of being.—Revelation 3:1; Ephesians 2:1-5; Ephesians 5:14; 1 Timothy 5:6, Romans 6:13; Romans 11:15; John 5:24; John 6:47.
2nd. It will be shown below, Chapters 37 and 40, that the Scriptures do not allow the notion either of the sleep of the soul during the intermediate state, or of the annihilation of the wicked after the judgment.
13. What is meant by the seal of a covenant, and what was the seal of the Covenant of Works? A seal of a covenant is an outward visible sign, appointed by God as a pledge of his faithfulness, and as an earnest of the blessings promised in the covenant
Thus the rainbow is the seal of the covenant made with Noah.—Genesis 9:12-13. Circumcision was the original seal of the covenant made with Abraham (Genesis 17:9-11; Romans 4:11), in the place of which baptism is now instituted.—Colossians 2:11-12; Galatians 3:26-27. The tree of life was the seal of the covenant of works, because it was the outward sign and seal of that life which was promised in the covenant, and from which man was excluded on account of sin, and to which he is restored through the second Adam in the Paradise regained.—Compare Genesis 2:9; Genesis 3:22; Genesis 3:24, with Revelation 2:7; Revelation 22:2-14.
14. What according to Witsius, his great work “on the Covenants,” are the seals or sacraments of the Covenant of Works? In Vol. 1., Ch. 6., Witsius enumerates four—
1st. Paradise.
2nd. The tree of life.
3rd. The tree of knowledge of good and evil.
4th. The Sabbath.
These were all doubtless symbolical institutions connected with the original divine dispensation of which the Covenant of Works was the foundation. But there appears to be no reason for designating them as belonging to that particular class of symbolical institutions called sacraments under the New Testament. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil sealed death, and therefore could not have been a seal of the Covenant of Works which offered life.
15. In what sense is the Covenant of Works abolished, and in what sense is it in force? This Covenant having been broken by Adam, not one of his natural descendants is ever able to fulfill its conditions, and Christ having fulfilled all of its conditions in behalf of all his own people, salvation is offered now on the condition of faith. In this sense the Covenant of Works having been fulfilled by the second Adam is henceforth abrogated under the gospel.
Nevertheless, since it is founded upon the principles of immutable justice, it still binds all men who have not fled to the refuge offered in the righteousness of Christ. It is true that “he that doeth these things shall live that them.” and “the soul that sinneth it shall die.” This law in this sense remains, and in consequence of the unrighteousness of men condemns them, and in consequence of their absolute inability to fulfill it, it acts as a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ. For he having fulfilled alike its condition wherein Adam failed, and its penalty which Adam incurred, he has become the end of this covenant for righteousness to every one who believes, who in him is regarded and treated as one who has fulfilled the covenant, and merited its promised reward.