JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on biblical theology. Last week, we aired the first part of a two part podcast focused on the Abrahamic covenant and its importance to biblical theology. Today we’re playing part two. If you missed the first part, I’d encourage you to listen to The Nature of the Covenant God Made with Abraham, Part One. This interview with Jason DeRouchie originally aired on Caleb Leonard’s Theology for the Church podcast on July 8, 2025. It is part of an eight episode series that walks through all the biblical covenants and we highly encourage you to listen to all of them.

CL: Sometimes they’ll run into those who argue for two covenants with Abraham. Right? And so rather than one covenant, two stages, it’ll be two different covenants.

And so why do people argue for that? What’s their rationale for seeing that? And why do you think it’s more convincing to hold to one Abrahamic covenant?

JD: Good question. There are individuals like T. Desmond Alexander and Paul Williamson who have attempted to make a case for multiple Abrahamic covenants.

They look at Genesis 15, and the second half of Genesis 15. They see that it’s focused on the land, singular, and God’s promise to give Abraham and his offspring the land, singular.

They see that it’s mentioning how it’s going to be four hundred years of oppression in Egypt and then the Exodus. It seems as though this is focused on the temporary, what will become the Mosaic covenant.

It’s a national focus, and God alone goes through the parts. So he unilaterally is making a declaration ensuring the fulfillment of the covenant.

But then they come to a passage like Genesis 17, and they say, look. The passage is covenantal, and it opens with “walk before me and be blameless.”

It opens with conditions.

And it gives the depiction of Abraham becoming the father of a multitude of nations. It’s international. And both God is offering promises, and Abraham has responsibilities.

And so, this is two different covenants that we’re seeing. We’re seeing in Genesis 15, a temporary national unilateral covenant, and in Genesis 17, an eternal international bilateral covenant.

And I hear that, and I say, let’s read a little more carefully. So first off, I note that Genesis 15 doesn’t begin with Genesis 15:7.

It opens with this vision of offspring and that offspring multiplying into as many as the stars of the sky.

And Genesis 22 is going to draw on that passage, say that that’s going to happen in the days of a singular offspring when all the nations of the earth regard themselves blessed in him.

That is, Genesis 15 is not just national. It’s also international. And—

CL: Yeah.

JD: And then I say, yes. God is making this unilateral symbolic oath that this covenant is absolutely certain to be fulfilled.

But that does not squelch the fact that the covenant is, nevertheless, conditioned. Throughout the ancient world, we have covenants that can be both perpetual and conditional.

That is, they’re called land grants or dynastic grants, wherein the land and the dynasty, the big king who’s called the suzerain, is declaring to a vassal that the land and dynasty that I am bestowing upon you will stay in the family.

Whether you or your descendants forfeit their right to it through disobedience, I can kill you, but I’m telling you, the promise is certain. And I want to propose that’s exactly what’s actually going on here.

It’s not that the covenant is only unconditional or unilateral. No. It’s a covenant that includes both the certainty and the necessity for obedience to enjoy it.

And this is why, for example, stage one of the Abrahamic covenant, called the Mosaic covenant, ends in destruction because the generations fail to honor God.

And as we’re going to see, the obedience that’s demanded of Abraham, “walk before me and be blameless,” is an obedience that is also necessary for his offspring to enjoy the fulfillment of the promises.

If we, for example, turn to Genesis 18, I’ll just turn over there. We see this tension in one covenant between its absolute certainty and its conditionality.

So we read, “God says, shall I hide from Abraham that he will surely become a great and mighty nation, and that all the nations of the earth will be blessed in him?”

Should I hide it from him? Because, and here it is, on the one side, absolutely certain that the Abrahamic covenant will reach its ultimate end.

Stage two will be fulfilled, and all the families of the ground will be blessed. But then he says, “Should I hold that from him? For I have known Abraham,” or I have chosen him, as my ESV says, “to what end?”

That he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice. And then it adds, “So that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised.”

Throughout church history, many people have called the Abrahamic covenant an unconditional covenant, and they’re thinking about the unilateral symbolic act of God in Genesis 15.

I don’t think that’s helpful language because the conditions are all over, and indeed, Genesis 18:19 says, “Abraham must teach his children to obey so that I may fulfill what I’ve promised.”

So, on the one hand, you have the certainty, the absolute certainty that the covenant will be fulfilled, and the absolute necessity for perfect obedience to be present in order for God to fulfill all the promises.

And we’re going to see initial obedience in the covenant head called Abraham, but we will only see the ultimate obedience happen not in Israel, the people, but in the ultimate representative of Israel, the person.

He, Jesus, is going to ultimately bring about the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant because he alone is the one who fulfills the command, “be a blessing.”

He’s the one who perfectly walks before God and is blameless. He is the ultimate offspring of Abraham, the embodiment of being his representative who fulfills all the commands, all the charges, who lives absolutely rightly, and therefore, God is able to fulfill the covenant.

We can’t minimize the need for the perfect Abrahamic representative. We just need to celebrate that Jesus is he, is that perfect representative, and he has come.

And now, we magnify the greatness of Christ. And if we are in Christ, if we are Jesus’, then only in that way, by adoption, do we become Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

CL: Yeah. Absolutely. That’s really helpful. Thanks for wading into that question a little bit. We have one more.

JD: Well, let me do it. Right? Can I just jump right in real quick? For it. One more thing. I didn’t fully answer your question. Go for it. It’s not only the fact that both Genesis 15 and Genesis 17 include an international vision, and they seem to be talking about the same covenant.

It’s not only that they’re both international, they’re also both national. Because even Genesis 17 goes on to focus on Abraham, the covenant of circumcision, the giving of the land of Canaan, and it also uses language that’s different.

Rather than saying that God cut his covenant, it uses the language you already pointed to—that God will affirm his covenant.

I agree with someone like Peter Gentry, who has noted that affirmation language always assumes a previously made covenant.

And that when we move from Genesis 15, which is cutting the covenant, making the covenant, to Genesis 17, affirming the covenant, we’re talking about a new stage. And I’ll just add, this is why I don’t distinguish—I don’t distinguish the Adamic-Noahic Covenant.

Because the language of affirmation is what we read in Genesis 6 and Genesis 9. And what it suggests is that, in the same way, Genesis 15 and 17 are one Abrahamic covenant.

So too, there’s one creation covenant with Adam, reaffirmed then with Noah. So, and then we could just add that all throughout the rest of the Bible—from Exodus 2, Exodus 6, 2 Kings 13, Acts 3:25—there’s only one covenant with the fathers, one covenant with the patriarchs that’s ever mentioned.

It’s the covenant, not the covenants, that God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So I think there’s one Abrahamic covenant, and it’s being progressively revealed and unpacked throughout Abraham’s life.

CL: Yeah. That’s good. I appreciate that. And so, if we look now, we’ve seen the covenant that’s given, it’s made, it’s affirmed, and then we have a confirming of the covenant with Abraham’s obedience in Genesis 22.

And so, in Genesis 22, we see Abraham’s faith-filled obedience, wherein he nearly sacrifices his son Isaac. Right? So maybe walk us through what takes place here and why it’s so important for understanding God’s covenant with Abraham, because sometimes it’s almost like an afterthought.

Right? We think about the Abrahamic covenant, especially if you’re thinking about, you know, kind of for the average church member, maybe they’re not necessarily connecting it to Genesis 12, 15, and 17.

It’s maybe seen as kind of its own, you know, story if you will. So help us see why we should see it as connected here.

JD: Oh, it’s beautiful and massively important. I think about James 2, where he recalls Genesis 15:6, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”

But what James says is that it’s in this Isaac episode that Scripture is fulfilled. That’s James’ language. The Scripture is fulfilled.

Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. That is the faith that justified had to be fulfilled in a life of that same faith, sanctifying him.

And this, like, proves Abraham is indeed one who is absolutely trusting in his God of promise. God promised Abraham in Genesis 21, and it’s through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.

It’s not through Ishmael, through no other means. It’s through Isaac. And so, when we hear sacrifice your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, we’re supposed to feel the weight, not just of a father offering his only son, Isaac.

We’re supposed to feel the weight of all the promises reaching back to Genesis 3:15 are in the balance, and Abraham is willing to trust those promises.

Indeed, he even tells his servants, “I and my son will go and worship there, and then we will return.” And I think that’s where the writer of Hebrews in chapter 11 says, “Abraham believed in the resurrection.”

We get all the way to the angel of the Lord holding back Abraham’s hand, saying, “Now I know that you fear me.” And we read this statement after God supplies the substitutionary ram.

We read, “Abraham called the name of this place, The Lord will see. The Lord will provide.”

Then Moses adds, “As it is said to this day, on the mount of the Lord, it will be provided.” And just here, as we’re entering into the promises, the direct predictions of the Messiah’s coming that are about to follow, I’m just struck that in this first part of Genesis 22, what Abraham saw happening in the substitutionary sacrifice of his son and then the provision of a substitute for Isaac was a declaration of future hope that, on the mountain, on Moriah, the very place where the temple would be built, says 2 Chronicles 3:1.

On Moriah, the very place where Abraham met Melchizedek in the region of Salem. A sacrificial substitute was provided, and it declared to Abraham, “It’s going to happen again.”

He doesn’t say, “On the mount, it has been provided.”

CL: Yeah.

JD: he puts it in future tense. And then Moses, right in the context of setting all the legislation for the sacrificial offerings at the tabernacle, says, “We’re still longing. As it is said to this day, on the Mount of the Lord, it will be provided.” As if what we’re supposed to see in the first part of Genesis 22 is merely typology, foreshadowing, predicting a greater substitution that is to come.

And so, it is that we read, “God loved the world in this way, that he gave his only son,” or “He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all,” how will he not also graciously give us all things with him?

I think both John 3:16 and Romans 8:32 are simply recalling the hope of Abraham and Moses. Now, after we see this initial interchange, this angel of the Lord speaks a second time.

And it’s here in Genesis 22 that we move from typological prediction, that is, indirect prophecy, to direct prophecy about the Messiah.

And we already touched on this, but I’ll just draw attention to a few points. God says, “I will bless you, Abraham, and I will multiply your offspring like the stars of the sky and like the sand that is on the sea.”

Now, someone like Desmond Alexander says this first use of offspring is plural. I don’t think so.

Because the second offspring, as we’re going to see, is explicitly singular. I think this first offspring is singular. And that the offspring, we’re supposed to see, is a singular person coming.

The same offspring of the woman. This male individual deliverer is going to come. And when he comes, he will multiply, like the church, the stars in the sky, like the sand on the sea.

He will multiply. And God adds emphasis: “I will surely bless you. I will surely multiply you.” But then he changes the verb form.

And at the end of 17, the change of verb suggests to me that I will surely multiply you with the result that your offspring will possess the gate of his enemies.

So what we see here is an individual descendant of Abraham. Abraham. Now, the NIV, the CSB, the New American Standard—they still translate this text as a plural offspring.

They use language like descendants. But the Hebrew text, I’ve already shown in Genesis—think back to Genesis 17:7-8—the pronoun that was used was plural to designate the seed or offspring as a people.

Here, as in Genesis 3:15 and Genesis 24:60, the pronoun that’s used is explicitly singular. So what we’re getting is an individual offspring of Abraham who’s, like, on conquest.

He’s going to be expanding the kingdom turf such that he is going to possess the gate of his enemies. We’re seeing this movement outward.

And then it says that it’s through this offspring: “In your offspring shall all the nations of the earth regard themselves blessed.”

The very nations that were cast out at the Tower of Babel are now going to regard themselves blessed in the offspring. I think this is the foundation for in Christ theology.

Union with Christ is designated right here. It’s in your offspring that all the nations of the earth will be blessed.

But both of these are the result of the offspring multiplying like the stars of the sky. So what this suggests to me is that the way Jesus will possess the gate of his enemies and the way that the ultimate result of all the nations of the earth regarding themselves blessed will happen is through the multiplication.

The singular offspring will multiply into a people, with the result that the singular offspring will possess the gate of his enemies. And with the ultimate end being that in him, all the nations of the earth will regard themselves blessed.

What I’m seeing here is that it is the movement, like from the gospel of Luke to the book of Acts. What the book of Acts is, is what Jesus is continuing to do after all that he did and taught in the gospel of Luke.

CL: Yeah.

JD: But now he’s doing it through the church. How is it that Jesus will possess the gate of his enemies? Well, he tells us in Matthew 16:18. He says, “You are Peter, and on this declaration that I am you are the Christ and the Son of the living God, on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against her.”

It’s the church that is the means by which Christ, in his ascendancy as king, is now claiming a global kingdom.

And it’s through the church that all the nations of the earth are now being regarded as blessed. I’m seeing it operate right here in Genesis 22.

CL: Yeah. That’s really, really beautiful. And, you know, I just want to talk about the church for a minute, and I want to quote you for just a second here.

And you say that “The new covenant community is made up of only the regenerate, and within the new covenant, soteriology gives birth to ecclesiology in a way that the two completely overlap. It is those who are in Christ who are sons of God. Those who have put on Christ who are baptized, and those who are Christ’s who are counted Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”

Right? And so, when you think of things like, we’ve mentioned before, Galatians 3, Romans 6, 1 Peter 3, passages like that, how significant is the Abrahamic covenant for understanding ecclesiology?

Right? And just maybe unpack this statement for us a little bit.

JD: I think it’s the foundation of new covenant ecclesiology. It’s helping us understand better the movement from Abraham being the father of one nation, Mosaic covenant, to what are we supposed to anticipate when Abraham becomes the father of a multitude of nations?

The new covenant. It seems clear to me because the promise is first made to Abraham that he would become the father of a multitude, that kings would come from him.

It’s then repeated. That’s Genesis 17:6. In Genesis 17:16, it’s repeated to Sarah that she would be multiplied into many nations and that kings would come from her.

Now, what this suggests to me is that Ishmael, we’re not supposed to think of Abraham’s fatherhood of Ishmael and the rise of the Ishmaelites, for example, as part of Abraham’s fatherhood because the promise is reiterated to Sarah.

Out of Sarah only comes Jacob and Esau, only comes Edom, the nation of Edom, and the nation of Israel. That’s it.

And I struggle to see that two nations flowing from Abraham and Sarah would fulfill what God means: “I will make you a father of a multitude of nations.”

Indeed, Paul is able to reach back to that promise and say, “This is why God is now bringing in Jew and Gentile alike into the family of God. It’s because of these promises to Abraham.”

But what it means is that already, Abraham’s fatherhood is recognized as a fatherhood that would come by adoption, not by biology.

That the creation of an offspring people is the means for getting us to the offspring person. Jesus never married a physical bride.

So when we get to a book like Isaiah, and it talks about, in Isaiah 53:10-11, if that servant of God would become a guilt offering, he would see, on the other side of his death, offspring. Indeed, he would see that offspring, and he would be satisfied.

And that offspring would possess the nations, it says in Isaiah 54. That’s the text that sparked the global mission of William Carey.

Isaiah 54:1-3, building right off of the suffering servant text of Isaiah 53. It’s this explosion of the need to expand Jerusalem’s tent because the offspring of the Messiah and of Jerusalem would now possess the nations.

And when you get to a text like Galatians 3, it says, when we’re talking about the relationship of the old Mosaic covenant and the era associated with it of Abraham’s fatherhood of one nation and one land, old covenant Israel, that was a period of imprisonment, Paul says.

That it has now been overcome by an era of faith. The era of law has been overcome by an era of faith. We’ve entered into the new covenant era, and now he says, “You want to be Abraham’s offspring?”

By faith, you’ve got to link up with Jesus, who is the offspring. He is the individual offspring. And so, Paul goes on in his argument in Galatians 4 to say, “We all have been adopted.”

So biological descent is no longer what carries us on in relationship with God.

We’ve moved to the spiritual context, the necessity of spiritual adoption to be associated with the new covenant mediator.

There is no participation in the covenant apart from the covenant mediator. And the only way we link with him is by faith, not by being born into a family with at least one parent who’s spiritually connected to that mediator.

No. The only way is to have Jerusalem that is above as our mother, as Paul goes on to say. He calls the Galatians his children in the faith.

And that’s the kind of children that we’re talking about here. A spiritual children who now are united to God through Christ. And if you’re in Christ, you become Abraham’s offspring.

So it’s very important, I think, in relation to our understanding of ecclesiology that even as Genesis is laying things out, there will be no understanding of a covenant community apart from the individual offspring of Abraham multiplying into a people.

And now we talk about that. The new covenant, the New Testament, talks about that in the language of the church has been birthed at Pentecost, and you’re only in Christ or in Adam.

And if you don’t have that spiritual union with Christ by faith through adoption, Abraham is not your father, and Jesus is not your savior.

You’re not part of the covenant community. So I do think it has massive implications for both our understanding of the covenant community and its relationship to what we call soteriology, a doctrine of salvation.

CL: Yeah. That’s really helpful. And so just because we’re, you know, both Baptists, why not here? I mentioned earlier, coming back to this relationship between, because of what we believe about the Abrahamic covenant, this relationship between circumcision and baptism.

Right? So how do these conclusions that you’ve kind of drawn for us, this reality of being in Christ, those are the proper recipients of baptism.

Right? Those who have, who actually have faith, can profess faith in Christ, and so we’d hold to believer’s baptism or a regenerate church.

And so, how is it that circumcision is related to baptism? And how does a covenantal understanding of Scripture help us say, well, it’s not just about what we think are positive examples in the New Testament, but this is actually very theologically significant in a pretty big way.

JD: The relationship between circumcision and baptism is the massive difference between a type and an antitype.

That is, physical circumcision pointed to spiritual or heart circumcision. And baptism symbolizes the ultimate reality, not the type.

You can’t compare the type to the antitype. It’s merely a pointer. It’s a form. And I’m seeing the symbolism of water baptism to be representing the antitype, the spiritual reality, the actual union with Christ.

I think of Romans 4. The language that’s used is that for Abraham, he was the father of—oh, it says, “He received the sign of circumcision.”

That’s Genesis 17.

As a seal. So it was a sign, and now it’s a seal, but it’s a seal of a certain thing. A seal of the righteousness that he had by faith.

Now, I hear classical covenant theologians or pedobaptists talk about baptism being a sign and a seal, and I say, yes.

It is for Baptists, but not for Presbyterians who are baptizing babies.

JD: You can’t compare it to what it was for Abraham. In fact, even within the Abrahamic covenant, not one other person who received circumcision as a baby was this true of.

Because for Abraham, it was a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith. And you can’t say that of any of Abraham’s children or any of the later Israelites who were just born into the covenant community.

Circumcision for Abraham was operating in a different way than it was for the majority of Old Covenant Israel. Circumcision was just a physical sign.

It didn’t mean that their hearts were changed. Baptism by its nature is associated in the new covenant with these changed hearts. It’s the new covenant sign, and the new covenant is by its nature a regenerated community because it’s only those who have been associated with the new covenant mediator who performs a priestly, saving task.

I think of Colossians chapter 2. Yes. It mentions circumcision in that text. But it specifically speaks of circumcision as we are—sorry.

It says, “In Jesus, you were circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands.” So that’s not a physical circumcision.

That seems to be speaking of our spiritual union with Jesus. And then it says, “By the putting off of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ.”

Well, that language of the putting off of the flesh in Colossians 1 relates to the death of Jesus. So it says in 1:22 that God has now reconciled in Jesus’ body of flesh by his death, those who are in Christ.

So the body of flesh is a symbol of death, of—Christ’s death, where he underwent the curse. Remember how I said circumcision was a picture of curse if you fail to keep the covenant.

Well, Jesus took that curse. He, at the cross, received God’s cutting judgment on behalf of the many, and we by faith in him die.

So that, it says, “Having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith by the powerful working of God.”

That the baptism is intimately related to faith. And the baptism is the symbol of our having died with Christ in his circumcision death.

I see the one text that brings together circumcision and baptism as not linking physical circumcision with baptism, but the antitype, the spiritual circumcision. That’s right. Of baptism. And the fact that we have identified with Christ in his death so that by faith, we might also identify with him in his resurrection. So I think it hints—we have to be able to distinguish the type from the antitype and recognize that what baptism represents is the antitype.

And, therefore, we can’t equate it with circumcision, which is the type. We have to move ahead in redemptive history, move beyond stage one to stage two, And recognize that in Jesus, everyone, as it says in Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 10, everyone who is part of this covenant has been forgiven.

Everyone who’s part of this covenant has a personal relationship with Jesus. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly to the end the confidence that we had at the beginning, Hebrews 3:14.

And if we don’t persevere, then we ultimately never shared in new covenant grace. We never shared in Christ at all, the writer of Hebrews would say.

So I think that’s speaking of a regenerate church membership, and a regenerated covenant community where our doctrine of salvation is now perfectly overlapping with our doctrine of the church.

That’s the new covenant community because Jesus is the perfect obeyer. Jesus has fully secured all the promises of Abraham. In Christ, we become full heirs, and that can’t be said of any nonbelievers.

So there’s only covenant blessings if you’re part of the covenant, and you’re only part of the covenant by faith in the ultimate perfect covenant mediator.

CL: Yeah. That’s really, really helpful. And we could talk about this forever, but that’s a good place, I think, for us to land the conversation here.

And so, maybe just a final question for you. I’m going to link to a couple of your writings on the Abrahamic covenant. You have an edited Progressive Covenantalism volume, a chapter, “The Father of a Multitude of Nations: New Covenant Ecclesiology and Old Testament Perspective.”

I think that one’s really helpful. You’ve got a short chapter in the 40 Questions about Biblical Theology, kind of a summary of all the biblical covenants that I think’s helpful there.

And you’ve got another one that’s on “The People of God,” which I think connects well here too. Anything else that you would recommend for listeners to check out, either from yourself or others, that you found helpful in this topic?

JD: I think the “Father of a Multitude” essay you mentioned has an expanded version in an article, “Counting Stars with Abraham and the Prophets,” and that could be found on my website.

I took the covenant chapter in the “40 Questions” and expanded it, first to a smaller level in the “Dictionary of the New Testament Use of the Old,” the article on covenant in there.

But then there’s a full, longer version called “An Arc of the Biblical Covenants: How the Bible Storyline Climaxes in Christ,” which is part of the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology issue on covenant.

And I can send you the link for that. Chapter 4 in “Delighting in the Old Testament” also provides overviews of redemptive history and covers many of the aspects we’ve discussed today.

CL: Yeah. Awesome. I’ll make sure to put some links in the show notes. And, brother, thanks for joining me for this conversation. It was fun to chat again, and I pray it’s a blessing to the people of God who listen to this in the future.

JD: Amen. Thank you, brother.

JY: Thank you for joining for GearTalk. For resource connected to biblical theology, visit handstotheplow.org and jasonderouchie.com. To support the work of Hands to the Plow, visit handstotheplow.org.