The law says, “Do this and live.” The gospel says, “It has already been done,” and points us to Christ’s finished work. That is the key difference between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. The former required obedience: the latter, faith–which is in itself a gift of God.
What Is the Covenant of Works?
A covenant, according to Reformed theologian Louis Berkhof, is a “pact or agreement between two parties,” where each party “binds himself” to fulfill “certain promises,” given that the conditions of the covenant are met.[1] There was a covenant between God and Adam in the Garden of Eden called the covenant of works. If Adam had obeyed God’s law, summed up in the command to “not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” he would have earned eternal life. If he disobeyed, “he would surely die.”[2] Of course, we know how that ended. Adam and Eve ate from the tree and were expelled from the garden, and Adam did not merit eternal life.
The Covenant of Grace
The Covenant of Grace — one promise in Christ, revealed across redemptive history
Thankfully, the story does not end there. In fact, it is just part of the beginning. God made another covenant: the covenant of grace. The covenant of grace is the way that God has worked out His eternal plan of salvation through history, and it is the covenant through which we are saved. (The eternal plan of salvation, i.e. the pretemporal agreement between the Father and the Son that the Son would be “Sponsor and Surety ”of the elect and complete the work of redemption,[3] while the Father promised to form a church for His Son, to give Him the Spirit without measure, to be “ever at His right hand” and “bruise Satan under His feet”, to deliver Him from death and exalt Him to His right hand, that Christ would have to Spirit to send to whom He willed, to ensure that all given by the Father to the Son would never be lost, and that Christ would see the travail of His soul and be satisfied, is known as the covenant of redemption[4]).
While the covenant of works required Adam’s obedience as a condition that must be met in order for him to merit what was promised, eternal life, members of the covenant of grace meet the conditions of the covenant only by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. Unable to produce their own merit, having sinned with Adam in the garden and now radically corrupted by sin, believers receive the benefits of Christ’s fulfillment of the covenant of redemption.[5]
Herman Witsius puts it this way:
“The covenant of grace is a compact or agreement between God and the elect sinner; God on his part declaring his free good-will concerning eternal salvation, and every thing relative thereto, freely to be given to those in covenant, by, and for the mediator Christ; and man on his part consenting to that good-will by a sincere faith.”[6]
On the basis of Christ’s obedience and righteous, the unrighteous, elect sinner is declared to be righteous and receives the eternal life Adam would have merited. This time, however, it is not by works, but by grace.
Administrations of One Covenant
Since God’s promise to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:15 that the offspring of the woman would crush the serpent’s head, all believers have been saved under the covenant of grace. But how is that possible, when Christ would not complete His work on the cross for thousands of years?
Old Testament believers were not saved through a different covenant than New Testament believers. Rather, as the Westminster Confession of Faith says, the covenant was “administered differently” during the period of Old Testament (Mosaic) law.[7] Though they had “full remission of sins” in Christ, the covenant was “administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the [Passover] lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews.”[8] These were types and shadows of what Christ has now accomplished.[9]
These types and shadows, nonetheless, were, by the work of the Spirit, “sufficient and efficacious” to “instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah” until the Messiah came and fulfilled them.[10] Now that the substance of the shadows has been made known, the ordinances of the covenant people are the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.[11]
A Thread Throughout Redemptive History
The continuity of the covenant of grace from Genesis to Revelation is best seen in the continual refrain, “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” When God makes a covenant with Abraham, giving him the sign of circumcision as the sign and seal of this covenant, God tells Abraham that He is “to be a God to you and your offspring after you.”[12] The refrain comes again to the Israelites, Abraham’s direct descendants, when they are in slavery in Egypt four hundred years later: “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God.”[13] And again, when He makes the covenant with Israel at Sinai, saying, “And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.”[14]
When God promises a new covenant in the prophets, the refrain is repeated once more. These promises are also applied to New Testament believers, Jew and Gentile alike, seen in 2 Cor. 6:16. “If you are Christ’s,” Paul writes to the Galatians, “then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”[15] Romans 11:17 tells us that Gentile believers have been grafted in to belong to God’s covenant people. All those who belong to Christ belong to the covenant of grace, which has been the very same since Genesis.
In Revelation, we see the refrain one last time, promising us that in the new heavens and the new earth, God will be our God, we will be His people, and He will dwell with us.[16] The uniformity and continuity of the story in the Bible is made evident by this repetition.
Question 19 of the Heidelberg Catechism summarizes this idea well:
Q. How do you come to know [that Christ, both true and righteous man and true God, is the mediator given to us for our complete deliverance and righteousness]?
A. The holy gospel tells me. God himself began to reveal the gospel already in Paradise; later, he proclaimed it by the holy patriarchs and prophets and foreshadowed it by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law; and finally he fulfilled it through his own beloved Son.
It Is Finished!
The conditions of the covenant of works were perfect obedience, which none of us could ever perform. The conditions of the covenant of grace are much lighter ones, for they are not even met by our own works. Witsius describes the covenant of grace as a “new hope [shining] upon ruined mortals.” Indeed, it shines brightly and warmly, for the conditions are not met by our works, but “by him who would not part with his life before he had truly said, It is finished.”[17] It is done!
This is the pinnacle of redemptive history, the greatest moment, the one in which the God-man obeys where sinful man never could and pays the penalty for those sins. Christ is both our substitute and our representative. God counts His elect as righteous on the basis of Christ’s obedience, not our own. It has always been this way.
What a beautiful thing it is to consider that God’s people have always been saved by grace, through the work of Christ!
The first Adam failed. The second Adam obeyed perfectly, and by His obedience, those who had faith in Him are justified and counted as righteous.
[1] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), 264.
[2] Genesis 2:17
[3] Herman Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man, vol. 1, trans. William Crookshank (1693, trans. 1822; repr. Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2010), 165.
[4] Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. ii (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1940), 362.
[5] Romans 5:12-14
[6] Ibid, 164.
[7] Westminster Confession of Faith VII.V.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Hebrews 8:1-13
[10] Westminster Confession of Faith VII.V.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Genesis 17:7
[13] Exodus 6:7
[14] Leviticus 26:12
[15] Galatians 3:28-29
[16] Revelation 21:3
[17] The Economy, 164-165
