JY: Welcome to GearTalk. How does the whole story of Scripture progress, integrate and climax in Christ? Jason DeRouchie took up this question in a message titled The Biblical Covenants in Salvation History, which he presented at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in 2021.

JD: “Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. May my teaching drop as the rain, my speech distill as the dew, like gentle rain upon the tender grass and like showers upon the herb, for I will proclaim the name Yahweh, ascribe greatness to our God.” Father, we thank You for the opportunity to be here at ETS, the opportunity to learn from one another. I stand underneath Your Book, simply longing to grant greater clarity, yet knowing my efforts are not perfect. Lead us all in paths of righteousness for Your name’s sake. To the glory of Christ, I pray, amen.

I remember sitting in my very first semester of my Master of Divinity program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Gordon Hugenberger was my prof. Theology of the Pentateuch was the course. It was the very first time anyone had ever unpacked for me, from Genesis to Revelation, the story of God’s glory in Christ. Now, Dr. Hugenberger worked it through a classic covenantal perspective, and not everyone in this room would hold to such a view. And yet, it fired me up. It was the very first time I saw Jesus from Genesis to Revelation, Theology of the Pentateuch. It was the week before Thanksgiving, before we crested over Genesis 12. Yet, every single week we were moving from Genesis to Revelation, Genesis to Revelation, and Jesus met me there. And when Gary Pratico said, you have to decide whether you’re going to go Old or New Testament, it was Old Testament all the way. Jesus’ Bible. And I have not turned back. The biblical covenants in salvation history. This is my attempt, after 16 years of academic ministry, to put it all together for the first time in a way that would serve pastors and my students in a very short, succinct synthesis.

Covenant. It’s the Bible’s term for a chosen as opposed to natural relationship in which two parties make binding promises to each other, often with God as the witness. That is a covenant–at a covenant’s core is a non-biological oath bound relationship like those in clan alliances, personal agreements, international treaties, national agreements, and loyalty agreements, including marriage. Some scholars assert that covenant, or the covenantal kingdom, is the controlling center, the controlling center of the Christian canon. Others more modestly argue that the covenants progression forms the backbone of Scripture’s meta-narrative. Through covenants, God relates to others, reverses sins ruinous effects, and introduces his saving reign into the world. The concept of covenant correlates closely with that of canon, for the latter is by nature the authoritative written word of a covenant lord. The Bible grew up in the context of covenant and is therefore covenantal revelation. This fact led the early church fathers to designate the Bible’s two parts as testaments, that is, covenants, with the Mosaic Old Covenant controlling the first and the New Covenant dominating the second. A development of the covenants guides the Biblical storyline. Each historical covenant includes both common grace and saving grace elements that Jesus’ person and work culminate or realize. This study overviews the nature and inner relationship of the five main historical covenants between God and His creatures, which I refer to as the Adamic, Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic and New. The specific covenant head or mediator determines the names of the first four and the title New Covenant derives from its contrast with and superseding of the Old Mosaic administration.

The Adamic, Noahic Covenant. Adam’s headship in the covenant with creation. Because the word covenant, berit, first appears in Genesis 6:18 in relation to Noah, some question if God formally makes a covenant with creation through Adam. However, Yahweh’s interactions with David in 2 Samuel 7 identify that the substance of a covenant can exist without the term. Furthermore, the Bible’s earliest chapters depict the results of God’s choosing to initiate a kinship-type bond with creation through Adam’s representative headship. And this is a covenant’s essence. While creation was very good, it was incomplete. Thus, the elected relationship includes both God’s pledge to providentially sustain terrestrial life, Genesis 1:29-30, and humanity’s conditional responsibility to fulfill the Lord’s charge to serve as his image-bearing priest kings who expand a God-dependent community in the Garden Sanctuary to the ends of the earth. Adam and his offspring were to obey in order to enjoy wisdom and lasting life. Adam transgressed the covenant when he, functioning as covenant head or representative, failed to listen to God’s word and to protect and lead his wife. As a result, God cursed the earth and condemned humanity to spiritual and physical death. Thus, one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, and through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners. Though Adam failed his antitype, the last Adam, Jesus Christ, would succeed, securing justification of life for all people. Hence, the Lord subjected the creation to frustration in hope. Before Adam’s punishment, God cursed the serpent and promised that the woman’s offspring would eventually destroy the evil one. By naming his wife Hawa, Eve, which resembles the Hebrew term for life, Hai, or in the Archaic pronunciation, How, Adam professes his faith in the promise that the coming Savior would overcome the curse of death. God then clothed his royal priests with animal skin garments, likely because a substitutionary sacrifice was necessary to reestablish his relationship and partnership with them.

Covenant affirmation through Noah. Rebellious humanity expands and Yahweh preserves a remnant of those calling on his name. Yet because of mankind’s wickedness, the Lord sent a great flood that resulted in the death of everything in the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life. He saved only eight people, the head of whom was Noah, who found favor, that is grace, in the eyes of Yahweh, and who in turn walked faithfully with God and was a righteous man blameless among the people of his time. After the flood, Yahweh fulfilled his promise to establish the everlasting covenant between himself and all creatures on the earth, including Noah and his descendants. The singular covenant included God’s promise to never again destroy all life with a flood. Recalling his earlier command to the first couple, God charges Noah and his offspring to fill the earth with his image. The sign of the covenant was his rainbow in the clouds, which symbolically portrays that Yahweh’s war bow was raised and that a season of common grace was now blowing over the world. A substitutionary blood sacrifice was necessary for the Lord to declare, never again will I curse the ground because of humans, and never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done. The burnt offering of clean animals was a pleasing aroma to Yahweh, and it moved him to proclaim the covenant promises. Because even among the survivors of the flood, the inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood, the Lord’s blood-bought grace alone could justly allow him to make his Son to rise on the evil and on the good, and to send rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. That is, the symbolic and predictive nature of the substitutionary sacrifice of clean animals after the flood anticipates the atoning work of Jesus. This fact identifies that what God would ultimately accomplish through Christ purchased the very context of common grace that allows for saving grace to become operative. At least two features identify that God affirms with Noah his pre-existing relationship with creation under Adam’s headship, thus the Adamic-Noahic covenant singular, though with some developments.

First, parallels suggest that God creates the world with Noah as covenant head. Recreation begins in a watery chaos, the spirit wind moves, God’s image-bearers are creation stewards, animals are according to their kind, God blesses or commands humans to be fruitful, He designates food and He restricts food. Both families include father, mother and three sons.

Second, God’s establishing, that is, the Hiphil of kum, rather than cutting or making the Qal of karat, the Noahic covenant, points to God’s affirming or sustaining His earlier covenant with creation, rather than His initiating or renewing an old one either after it or–sorry, or renewing an old one either after it has been broken or with a new party. Scripture applies affirmation language with the Noahic, patriarchal, Mosaic and New Covenants. Additionally, God’s affirmation with Noah develops the divine creation relationship. Fear and defense of human life now occur within humanity’s domain. God sanctions animal life as food and He also guarantees the new context’s perpetuity for redemption by specific promises and the covenant sign of the rainbow.

The Abrahamic covenant. After the flood and Shem, Ham and Japheth’s families multiplied and rebelled against God by exalting themselves, Yahweh confused their languages and dispersed some 70 nations across the globe. From one of them, He then distinguished Abram and his offspring, through whom He purposed to reverse the global curse and reconcile the world to Himself. God fulfills this covenant in two stages. Yahweh commissioned Abraham to go to the land of Canaan and there be a blessing. These two coordinated commands are each followed by one or more conditional promises. And the second command, promise unit, includes the ultimate promissory result, global blessing. You can see my translation of Genesis 12 there. Go and then be a blessing are the two imperatives. The second building off the first, contingent on the fulfillment of the first. And each of these imperatives, followed by a series of conjoined weyiqtol forms that express the purpose and then culminating in a weqatal form that expresses the ultimate result. The two command promise units identify how God would reverse the punishments of property and progeny from Genesis 3:14-19. They also foresee two major stages in salvation history.

Stage one relates to Abraham fathering one nation with a kingdom centered in Canaan, which the Lord fulfills through the Mosaic covenant after Egypt was afflicted 400 years. Sorry, after Egypt afflicted Israel 400 years. God gave Israel Canaan for the 12 tribes during the days of Joshua, but it is not until Kings David and Solomon reigned that Israel’s realm stretched from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates River.

Stage two occurs when God’s representative blesses the clans or families Yahweh dispersed. Christ fulfills this stage by creating the New Covenant community. Genesis 17 contrasts Abraham’s fatherhood of a single covenant nation in Canaan with his becoming a father of a multitude of many families, many nations, which fulfills the promise in Genesis 12:3 and 15:5. Fulfilling the promise of a singular offspring in Genesis 3:15, Yahweh will raise up the patriarchal biological offspring and multiply him like the stars. He will be named through Isaac, conquer his enemy’s gate, and stand as the agent of blessing for all nations. Although God refers to both the limited Canaan and the larger suzerain state with the singular land, this singular offspring from Genesis 22:17-18 would inherit, plural, lands, Genesis 26: 3-4. Thus, God would overcome the world’s curse, and Abraham would inherit the world. Citing the land promise in Genesis 13:15, 17-8, and 24-7, and with an allusion to Genesis 22:18, Paul identifies Christ as the offspring or seed that blesses the world, and those belonging to him become Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.

The fulfillment of God’s promise is both conditional and certain. The Abrahamic covenant testifies to the conditional nature and certain fulfillment of its promises. Conditionally, the patriarch must go to the land and there be a blessing to overcome curse and bless the world. For Yahweh to confirm the covenant, the patriarch must walk before God and be blameless. The covenant sign of circumcision reminded the recipients of this priestly commission, portrayed the curse of excision for violators, and distinguished Abraham’s offspring from all other ancient peoples. Alternatively, Yahweh stresses certain fulfillment through his self-imprecatory oath sign and promise, and by swearing upon himself, following Abraham’s faith-filled obedience, wherein he nearly sacrificed Isaac. Hence, Yahweh vows to fulfill both covenant stages, stage one, the great nation, stage two, blessing the world, but he would do so only in response to his covenant son’s obedience. Using the infinitive absolute plus yiqtol construction in Genesis 18:18, followed by the conditional reason plus purposes statements in 18:19, highlights the certainty, yet contingent nature of God’s promise. Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him, for I have chosen him so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised. Abraham’s covenant mediating obedience does secure initial fulfillment, but his faith rested on the promised obedience of a singular male offspring who would become numerous like the stars, expand the kingdom turf from land to lands, and be the agent through whom the nations regard themselves blessed. The Abrahamic covenant parallels ancient royal grants, which obligated every generation to loyalty, but promised irrevocable or perpetual promises, ensuring the pledge land or kingship remained in the family, even if disloyal individuals forfeited their own participation in the covenant blessings. This stands in contrast to suzerain vassal treaties, which a suzerain could terminate when a vassal rebelled. The following excerpt supplies an example of a grant of royal succession and land that Hatsusili III of Hati bestowed on Umiteshub of Tarhuntasa. “If any son or grandson of yours commits an offense, then king of Hati shall question him. If he is deserving of death, then he shall perish, but his household and land shall not be taken from him and given to the progeny of another.” Whereas both grants and suzerain vassal treaties were conditional for every generation, grants alone ensured that the property or dynasty would remain in the family. The Mosaic Covenant is similar to the suzerain vassal treaties in the way Israel’s rebellion resulted in the covenant’s termination. In contrast, the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants expressed the conditional yet perpetual qualities found in ancient grants. Paul likely emphasizes this distinction when he draws attention to the Abrahamic covenant’s promissory quality in contrast to the Mosaic law’s administration. The law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by promise. Galatians 3.

The Single Abrahamic Covenant. Williamson argues that Yahweh builds off his commission in Genesis 12:1-3 by initiating two distinct covenants with Abraham. One, in Genesis 15’s temporary national and unilateral covenant, and two, in Genesis 17’s eternal international and bilateral covenant. However, both chapters include national and international elements. Later scripture always speaks of a single covenant with the patriarchs, and the switch from God’s cutting to affirming a covenant strongly suggests a single covenant administration that develops over two redemptive historical stages. Both the Mosaic and New Covenants fulfill different aspects of the single Abrahamic covenant.

The Mosaic Covenant. The Mosaic Covenant fulfills stage one of the Abrahamic covenant. After Yahweh brought Israel through the Exodus to Mount Sinai, he charged them to respond to his salvation by heeding his voice, keeping his covenant, and being his treasured possession amid the world so that they might ultimately serve him as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. God called Israel to love him with all their hearts and to love their neighbor as themselves. By treasuring God and valuing his image in others, they would mediate and display his worth and beauty to their neighbors through lives of surrendered loyalty. Something that could happen only by the Lord’s presence igniting holiness. The covenant they were to keep, Exodus 19:5, fulfilled stage one of the Abrahamic covenant. This link between Sinai and Abraham is apparent in at least three ways. After the Golden Calf Rebellion, Moses pleads for the people’s pardon by urging him to remember his covenant promises to the patriarchs. And this resulted in Yahweh’s restoring the covenant. Two, Moses’ covenant renewal sermons at Moab and Deuteronomy frequently identify that what God was doing in giving Israel the land was in direct fulfillment of his pledge to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Three, the Abrahamic covenant sign of circumcision continues into the Mosaic covenant as a mark of God’s covenant people. After synthesizing and detailing the covenant obligations, Yahweh formalized his relationship with Israel. Leviticus and Deuteronomy’s Book of the Law then developed the covenant through their holiness instructions and sanctions. And Deuteronomy’s Book of the Law supplies a formal covenant renewal after the Exodus generation’s rebellion in the wilderness. The way that Deuteronomy organizes the Book of the Law resembles the second millennial BC suzerain vassal treaty. And this link aligns with the way Scripture describes this covenant’s contingent and temporary nature. The Mosaic covenant guided the evaluation of Israel’s history, determined the indictments, instructions, warnings and hopes of the prophets, and supplied the framework for the wisdom of the sages. It governed God’s people’s experience until the coming of Christ. But now the new covenant has superseded it. As Paul states, “Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law,” that is the law covenant, I believe, “imprisoned until the coming of faith would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under the guardian. For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.” The Mosaic Covenant sign was the Sabbath. Yahweh instituted it to supply rest and to develop holiness by testing obedience and nurturing trust. Ultimately, though, the weekly and yearly Sabbath cycles reminded Israel that through them and their Messiah, Yahweh would reestablish right order in his world and would restore the sovereign peace he enjoyed with his creation in the beginning. Israel’s Sabbath, therefore, represented a future reality to which both Israel and the world were to hope, a hope now realized in Jesus.

The Mosaic Covenant brings death. While displaying similarities to both Second Millennial Law Codes and Suzerain Vassal Treaties, the Mosaic Covenant’s conditionality and revocability most approximate the latter. Yahweh’s gift of righteousness, blessing and lasting life depended upon Israel perfectly obeying all God’s commands. Thus, in the Old Covenant, righteousness was the goal and not the ground. Where disobedience prevailed, curse and death reigned. Israel’s problem was that at the core, they were unrighteous and spiritually disabled. They needed heart surgery. They were stubborn, unbelieving and rebellious. Their spiritual inability would have moved them to recognize, should have moved them, to recognize their need, their deep neediness and that their only hope was for God to reconcile them by grace through faith in His provision of a substitutionary sacrifice, which would atone for them if they realized their guilt and confessed their sins. If they were to enjoy any blessing, it would be solely because of God’s grace and not because they earned it. It would be because they would enjoy a right standing only attainable by faith and because the Lord’s past pardoning of them would produce for them power to obey and purchase promises that would motivate loyalty. While a remnant of true believers existed in Israel, people like Moses and Rahab, Ruth, David, Isaiah, etc. The majority needed heart surgery, for they were unrighteous, stubborn, unbelieving and rebellious. Due to their spiritual inability, Israel should have recognized that their only hope was God’s reconciling them by grace through the substitutionary provision of substitute. Nevertheless, Moses saw that Israel’s stubbornness would lead them to rebel even more in the land and then experience God’s just, exilic wrath. The lengthy covenant curse list, much longer than the blessings, forecasted what was to come, and Israel’s history unfolded just as Moses predicted. Because the Mosaic Covenant era included a sustained hardness that resulted in the people’s destruction, Paul rightly noted that the law is not of faith, which I understand to mean the age of law covenant was not ultimately characterized by faith. The Mosaic covenant bore a ministry of condemnation, says Paul, and it demonstrated Israel and the world’s need for the promised deliverer, whose new covenant mediation would result in a ministry of righteousness.

The Mosaic covenant anticipates the new covenant. Moses himself recognized that the covenant he mediated would bring Israel’s death, and also that after exile Yahweh would remember his covenant promises to the patriarchs and the Exodus generation, restore his people, transform their hearts, the remnant’s hearts, curse their enemies and secure their life. Through Yahweh’s promised Savior’s new Exodus blessing and global dominion, all of which are mentioned in the Pentateuch, other nations would gather to and rejoice in Yahweh, and this would ignite jealousy to draw Israelites back to God. In this age, the remnant would heed Moses’ commandments because a prophet like Moses would supersede Moses’ role, perform signs and wonders, clarify the divine word, and ensure its internalization within God’s people. All that, I believe, mentioned in the Pentateuch.

The Davidic Covenant. During the Mosaic Covenant era, after Israel settled the promised land, Yahweh advanced his promise of a coming royal, coming savior by pledging to David an eternal covenant. While the narrative accounts do not call the event a covenant, other Scriptures do.

The nature of the Davidic Covenant. Scripture progressively reveals God’s commitment to raise up a royal offspring to deliver the world. He would overcome the curse with blessing, expand God’s kingdom and come from the first woman and from the lines of Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Judah. He would lead a new Exodus, overcome enemies and bestow blessings. His reign would curb the self-rule of God’s people, be the means by which the Lord would judge the ends of the earth and fulfill the hope for a faithful royal priest around whom Yahweh would build a sure house. All that before 2 Samuel 7. God’s covenant with David now also reveals that the Savior would come from his royal line. While describing his prior and subsequent accomplishments for David, Yahweh echoes the Abrahamic covenant. Yahweh then vowed that after David’s death, he would build David a house or dynasty. David’s biological descendant, his offspring, would build a house for God’s name, enjoy a lasting kingdom, and be Yahweh’s royal son. David’s house, kingdom and throne would remain steadfast and established forever. In response, David recognized that such promises bore hope and guidance for the whole world. Thus, David’s final words before death unpack his hope for this deliverer to work justice, overcome the curse, and establish a new creation. Because of the royal son’s potential for sin in 2 Samuel 7:14, and because Solomon was convinced that his temple fulfilled God’s promise that David’s son would build Yahweh’s house, 1 Kings 8, Solomon initially and typologically fulfilled God’s promise of a royal son. Nevertheless, as with royal grants, Yahweh promised that the royal son’s throne would last forever, but also stressed how fulfillment was conditioned on the king’s lasting loyalty. Hence, only a monarch with a perfect obedience and an eternal reign would fulfill God’s Davidic promises. Facts manifest only in the New Covenant through Jesus the Christ.

Other scriptural reflections on the Davidic Covenant. The writing prophets identified the promised savior of the Pentateuch and former prophets with David’s seed and noted that through him, God would work a new Exodus and new creation and reconcile many from Israel and other nations to himself. The Royal Psalms also anticipate this Davidide, who would be Yahweh’s begotten son, receive Yahweh’s everlasting blessing, fulfill the Davidic Covenant promises, and inherit both the nations and Melchizedekian priesthood. Peter identifies the Christ as the descendant whom God promised to sit on David’s throne. The author of Hebrews views Jesus as fulfilling the promise, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.” And the rest of the New Testament stresses that Jesus already and not yet–Jesus is already and not yet, end times reign, realizes all Davidic Kingdom hopes.

The New Covenant. The New Covenant in Christ, between God and His church, realizes the hopes of Scripture’s previous divine human covenants. The New Covenant solves the global problem of sin and death that the Adamic Noahic Covenant creates. It also fulfills the universal blessings promised to the patriarchs, overcomes the Mosaic Administration’s condemnation, and realizes its restoration blessings, and embodies the Davidic Kingdom hopes. The Old Testament seers, sages, sovereigns, and singers foresaw from a distance the glories that you and I now enjoy in the person of Jesus.

The Old Testament terminology associated with the New Covenant. Among the various labels the Old Testament uses for the end times relationship between Yahweh and those reconciled in Christ are covenant, new covenant, everlasting covenant, and covenant of peace. Yahweh also tags the Messianic servant himself a covenant. The relationship is commonly associated with other features like New Exodus, New David, restoring past fortunes to both a remnant of Israel and Judah, and to a remnant of other nations, a new heart, the outpouring of God’s Spirit, both on the Messianic servant and on the people, a new Jerusalem that appears coterminous with a new creation. From one perspective, in the New Covenant, Yahweh affirms original patriarchal covenant promises, using hakim barit in Ezekiel 16, for example, with Leviticus 26. But contrasting with the temporary Mosaic Covenant, Scripture also is able to treat the covenant Christ mediates as both new and freshly initiated, karat barit in Jeremiah 31:32; Ezekiel 34 and 37. Only in Jeremiah 31:31 does the Old Testament use the adjective new to describe the end times relationship between God and humanity that Jesus inaugurates through his death and resurrection. This covenant’s newness brings righteousness in contrast with the Old Mosaic Covenant that brought death and condemnation. In relation to the outworking of the Abrahamic covenant promises, Hebrews’s author notes that the Mosaic administration was the first covenant and the New Covenant the second, and that because of Christ the New Covenant supersedes the old, which is now becoming obsolete and growing old and will soon vanish away.

The Old Covenant depiction of the New Covenant community. The prophets at times portray the New Covenant in national terms. I’m thinking about Jeremiah 31, Micah 4, Ezekiel 37. Nevertheless, they also testify that the restored community includes a remnant from Israel and Judah and fulfilling the Abrahamic promises, many from other nations. Because of the righteous servant person’s substitutionary sacrifice and victorious resurrection, Yahweh incorporates the latter group, these from the nations. He incorporates them into the single people. Together, they serve Yahweh their God and David their king, and all are part of one family enjoying new birth certificates identified with the New Jerusalem. Thus, God counts as Abraham’s offspring the single Israel of God, whom Yahweh’s servant person Israel justifies. These are Christ’s church and God’s new holy nation, says Peter, identified with the heavenly Jerusalem, says Paul and the writer to the Hebrews. Whereas sin once characterized the hearts of foreigners and Israelite and Judeans alike, every member of the New Covenant community will gain new, united, law-filled hearts. Yahweh will restore his relationship with them, and from the least to the greatest, all will know, fear, and obey God, because every covenant member will have experienced blood-bought forgiveness. God will count many as righteous, all on account of the righteous servant-person’s substitutionary sacrifice and victorious resurrection.

The New Testament sets forth how the New Covenant is realized. Jesus’ ministry inaugurates the New Covenant and God’s end-times reign that the Old Testament anticipates. Christ is Abraham’s singular male offspring. Through him, believers from every nation become God’s children and inherit every promise. Many faithful evangelicals, especially in paedobaptist circles, claim that Christ has only partially inaugurated the New Covenant, thus allowing both regenerate and non-regenerate Covenant membership. The use of the perfect verbs in Hebrews 8, however, suggests to me that Christ is fully initiated, though not both brought to completion the New Covenant. Christ has obtained a ministry that is much more excellent than the old, as the Covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. Indeed, by calling the Covenant new, God has made the first one obsolete. And what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear. If the New Covenant is fully inaugurated, then all and not just some of its members are already experiencing the internal transformation that God promised. Furthermore, we know that by a single offering, Christ has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. That is, those who are part of the New Covenant in whose hearts Yahweh has already put his law and whose sins he remembers no more. Such teaching reaffirms that only those who actually share in Christ, the New Covenant priestly mediator, hold our original confidence firm to the end for sustained sinning results in punishment. One does not over realize the New Covenant by stressing that membership into it comes only by faith in Christ’s covenant mediating priestly, salvific work. Within the Abrahamic Covenant, physical circumcision depicted an excising curse marked one out for God’s service and typologically foreshadowed a heart circumcision that would bring about the required devotion. Until Christ’s coming, for most Israelites, the sign announced only their coming punishment rather than actual loyalty. However, in his death, Jesus underwent the excising curse to which the physical circumcision pointed and secured the New Covenant sign of promised heart circumcision for those believing in him, thus identifying the new people of God as true Jews. Baptizing believers in the triune God’s name externally testifies to this inward reality and signifies membership in Christ Church as the new people of God. Rather than replacing circumcision of the flesh, water baptism symbolizes primarily the believers’ union with Christ in his death and resurrection and secondarily the believers’ cleansing from sin. Because heart circumcision as the antitype is now realized among all New Covenant members, I believe physical circumcision as a type is no longer necessary. Along with the one-time rite of water baptism, gathered members of Christ Church regularly partake of the Lord’s Supper in order to remember Christ and receive spiritual nourishment. We eat bread signifying his body given for his people, and we drink the Lord’s cup signifying the New Covenant in his blood. The contrast of the Old and New Covenants parallel a number of other New Testament end times Old and New contrasts, like old wine and old wine skins, and new wine and fresh wine skins. Old man versus new man, oldness of the letter versus newness of the spirit, old leaven versus new leaven, and old creation versus new creation. Furthermore, Paul highlights a series of theological contrasts that often parallel the Old and New Covenant distinction. Law versus faith, first Adam versus last Adam, sin versus righteousness, flesh versus spirit, letter versus spirit, and slavery versus freedom. All of these highlight two different ages and place Jesus’ person and work as the decisive turning point in salvation history. In Christ, God fulfills what he promised, and Christ realizes what the Old Testament anticipates. Jesus is a better covenant mediator than Moses, because he offers a superior sacrifice that brings better results, better provision, and better promises. Whereas the first Adam failed to secure lasting life, Christ as the last Adam succeeds, winning justification unto life for all who believe. Through his perfect covenant keeping unto death, he triumphs over all powers of darkness, satisfies God’s wrath against his elect, and secures for them every eternal blessing and consummate inheritance, including eternal redemption, forgiveness, adoption, sonship, peace with God, righteousness, sanctification, and glorification. Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. In that day, the victorious king will punish his enemies, consummate his new creation, and empower all his redeemed to reign with him forever.

My summary. The Bible’s storyline progresses through the historical covenants between God and his people. Jesus fulfills each covenant in different ways. The Adamic Noahic covenant with creation establishes the crisis in the context of global curse and common grace, out of which the other covenants clarify God’s solution in saving grace. The Abrahamic covenant forecasts the hope of Christ and new creation through its conditional, yet certain kingdom promises of lands, seed, blessing and divine presence. The remaining covenants clarify how God fulfilled these promises in two progressive stages. In the Mosaic covenant, stage one, Abraham’s offspring as a single nation experience blessing and curse, which results in their exile from the promised land. The Davidic covenant recalls the promises of a royal deliverer and declares the specific line through whom he will rise. Then the new covenant, stage two, realizes these hopes in an already but not yet way through the person and perfect obedience of Christ Jesus, whose kingdom work overcomes the curse with universal blessing, makes Abraham the father of many nations to the ends of the earth, and reconciles all things to God through the new creation. Thank you. Questions? Yeah.

Audience: If you hold Adam as the head of the head in relation to the promised messianic salvation in Genesis 3:15, how do you avoid the implication of universalism? How do you explain Paul’s strong contrast between Adam and Christ? You’re either in Adam or you’re in Christ. Adam is the head of the promised messianic salvation.

JD: So I didn’t say that he was the head of the promised messianic salvation. He’s the head of the original creation covenant that is then answered by the promised offspring. I would say that Jesus is the head of the global salvation covenant.

Audience: But you tie in 3:15 to the creation of the covenant.

JD: It is in the same way that the mosaic covenant promises a new covenant, so too the original creation covenant promises the day when the new creation will happen. So I understand Adam initiating a destruction that brings about death for all the world. And what is anticipated through the promise in the overcoming of the very instigator of the global curse would naturally be the reversal of that curse and the bringing about of a new creation. So the work of Christ sets in stage, as Lewis says in the Chronicles of Narnia, the reversal of death so that it goes in the opposite direction. So the promise is built into the original covenant, but the new covenant is still distinct from that original creation covenant.

Audience: The new covenant being realized in Christ, fantastic. How then should we understand the parts of the new covenant, such as forgiveness of sins, the law being written on the heart, they will be my God, I will be their God, they will be my people. All of those elements being found in the Old Testament, and particularly in the Pentateuch. How do we understand this? It’s fulfilled in Jesus in the New Covenant era, historically, but elements of the New Covenant are also found in the Old Testament.

JD: With respect to your question, are you raising a question regarding the differences of election in the Old versus election in the New? Or are you simply identifying that there was a remnant in the Old during the Old Covenant age that has similarities to the church? Which are you asking?

Audience: I guess the latter.

JD: Okay, so I would understand that Abraham’s righteousness by faith is the same righteousness that we enjoy. It was a preemptive righteousness that would be purchased, Romans chapter 3, ultimately through Christ. And so there are members like Ruth, like Rahab, and numerous other saints, often tied to the authors of Scripture, that are enjoying something that is only going to be realized in a covenant, secured for them, in a covenant greater than what they’re participating in. If Jesus didn’t come, Abraham could never be saved. Never. And yet, he was a man of faith, in not simply God in general, but in an offspring promise, that that offspring that he was longing for, which I think within the Book of Genesis is directly related to Genesis 3:15, would be the agent of blessing to the whole world. In the context of the Mosaic Covenant, yes, there was the built-in sacrificial system. Most of Israel did not enjoy it because the contingency was they had to confess their sins and realize their guilt. Without that, they would not be effective. But unless Christ came, the blood of bulls and goats would not at all have secured anything for them. So even the success of the remnant within the context of the various covenants was contingent upon the ultimate realities that would be secured only in Christ. The mention of ecclesia in Hebrews chapter 12 is the only text that comes to my mind that includes as part of the church all those reaching all the way back to Adam and Eve and Abraham and beyond, all of those who are now gathered around the throne in the heavenly Jerusalem. But it uses that term, ecclesia, which is usually, I think, related to those growing out of Pentecost, but in that text it’s referring to Church Universal reaching all the way back and including people like Abraham in the blessings, the new covenant blessings that Christ has secured for us.

Audience: I was just going to say, some of what you said here about the inability of the biblical sacrificial system to actually atone for sin. I didn’t get the sense that was emphasized in the paper very much, unless I missed it. And so that would have helped, I think, for me to flesh out the inability of the Mosaic law, rather than just being about anthropological inability, it’s also about the sacrificial system itself.

JD: It’s in some of the footnotes, but a key would be Jeremiah 31, that contrast between the old and the new. Central is not only that Israel broke the law, but that why is it that everyone from the least to the greatest will finally know the Lord? Because all of their sins will be forgiven. That’s a contrast between the old and the new covenant eras. There’s an internalization that is realized among all in the new covenant that was only enjoyed by very few, and it was dependent on a future work beyond the covenant itself. Justin.

Audience: So I’m a pastor as well, and I came into our church preaching about covenants and their typological nature. Some of them struggled with, if it’s typological in. Nature, then why would God make it become obsolete? I found it helpful that when most people talk about typology, they think of correspondences. So I added a didactic purpose to the old typology. It’s not just typological, it’s also got a didactic purpose.

JD: I absolutely agree. So the statement is, if we only think about types as predictive, then once the antitype comes, why do we need the type at all? And why did God even include the types? It’s because types are not only predictive, they’re clarifying. That when we read in Luke 9 that Jesus has an exodus to perform in Jerusalem, it’s calling us to go back and learn more about his crosswork from the exodus. But then with that, when we encounter the crosswork, it gives us greater clarity to understand properly what the type is about. So it’s actually working both ways, but you’re absolutely right that types, we still need types today. Because the way God has set up scripture is that we will not understand, rightly, fully, the antitype. Even though he has come, we will not understand him unless we’ve got our Old Testament open and are bathing ourselves in the types that anticipate his work and clarify the nature of it for us. So they are both clarifying and predictive.

Audience: What do you think about saving grace providing the context for common grace?

JD: Other way around. The common grace provides the context for saving grace. What I’m saying is that I believe Genesis chapter 8:20, 21, the seven of each clean animal that God puts on the ark for Noah to sacrifice, it says explicitly the inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Just as it did back in Genesis 6:5. What it says is that the eight people who came off the ark were by nature no different than those who preceded it. And God sets up a burnt offering, which is the only substitutionary offering for sin prior to the tabernacle. And that purchases, as the pleasing aroma hits God’s nose, it’s from that that he proclaims, I will never again curse man, because evil from his youth is his heart. And so my understanding is that common grace, the Noahic covenant, provides the context for the cross. Without it, God could have just destroyed the whole world again. But it provides a context for saving grace to be operative. And I believe it also argues for common grace being blood bought, that Jesus purchased both the common grace that provides the context for his saving grace to be operative.

JY: Thank you for listening to GearTalk. See the show notes for the handout and for an updated published version of this presentation.