June 1, God s Covenant with man. Chapter 3 Putting up the Bond ( or, Okay, so now what?)

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1 June 1, 2000 God s Covenant with man Chapter 3 Putting up the Bond ( or, Okay, so now what?) We talked last time about the idea of a covenant of works between God and Adam. In it, we saw that God implicitly promised Adam life, demanding of him perfect obedience to His precepts. As a perfect man, Adam was created in communion with Go. Nothing came between him and the Father they had a much fuller relationship than we can really imagine. Adam s life, both eternal, and his day-to-day relationship with God, was contingent upon his obedience, and from that state, he fell. Adam broke that covenant, and fell from grace. God would rightly have struck Adam down and wiped His hands of the whole matter. However, this was not God s intent. He is a merciful as well as a just God he had other plans for the history of the world. So the subject we re taking up this week is God s response to Adam s fall. We ll talk about the punishment, and the institution of a new promise, a Covenant of Grace, which God makes soon after Adam s transgression. We see in Genesis 3 what is called the protoevangelion, or the prototype of the gospel. This promise of God to save is the first hint at the Covenant of Grace. Illustrating briefly the difference between these two covenants is Charles Spurgeon, in a sermon on Hebrews 13:20 - The blood of the everlasting covenant. Now the covenant of works was not everlasting in any sense whatever. It was not eternal; it was first made in the garden of Eden. It had a beginning, it has been broken; it will be violated continually and will soon be wound up and pass away: therefore, it is not everlasting in any sense. The covenant of works cannot bear an everlasting title; but as the one in my text is an everlasting covenant, therefore it is not a

2 covenant of works. God made a covenant first of all with the human race, which ran in this wise: If thou, O man, wilt be obedient, thou shalt live and be happy, but if thou wilt be disobedient, thou shalt perish. In the day that thou disobey me thou shalt die. That covenant was made with all of us in the person of our representative, the first Adam. If Adam had kept that covenant, we believe we should everyone of us have been preserved. But inasmuch as he broke the covenant, you and I, and all of us, fell down and were consideredhenceforth as the heirs of wrath, as inheritors of sin as prone to every evil and subject to every misery. That covenant has passed away with regard to God s people; it has been put away through the new and better covenant which has utterly and entirely eclipsed it by its gracious glory.

3 Questions for discussion 1. Adam fell what were the effects of that fall, both on man, and on creation? a. on his relationship with God? b. on his relationship with Eve? c. on Eve & her relationship with Adam? d. on the world and his relationship to the world?

4 2. In Genesis 3:15 we read, And I will put enmity between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel. a. Who are the seeds spoken of in this verse? Are there perhaps multiple identifications possible? b. How does the concept of the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman (and their conflict) and the enmity between them play out in history i. in the generations after Adam? ii. in the history of national Israel? iii. in the time of Christ? iv. Today? c. The enmity between the seeds has been actively put there by God. What s up with that?

5 3. How is it that we inherit Adam s sin? How do Adam and Christ parallel each other? Specifically, reflect on Romans 5:12-19, 1 Cor. 15:22, and 15: Is it important for Christians to recognize our inheritance from Adam? Why? What are the effects of accounting the Genesis story as myth, as many do today?

6 5. What promise does God make to Adam after the fall? What does God promise to reconcile to Himself, and how? 6. A point to ponder Are we still subject to the covenant of works in any way at all? Why or why not? If so, how is the covenant of works still normative for us? In what ways does it not apply?

7 Concluding thoughts Thanks be to God for our identification with Christ! No longer are we, like Adam, under the covenant of works, but by faith we have been translated into the covenant of Grace. The Lord has blessed us by fulfilling all of the works of the Law in our stead and has given us a new life, a new relationship, a new covenant with the Holy Trinity. The gift of God is life, glorious life. Quotes & quips for rumination I ve included here some words from prominent pastors and theologians in the reformed tradition, on the subject of God s gracious salvation of Adam s descendants. From a sermon by George Whitefield, on 1 Corinthians 1:30, But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. Christ s whole personal righteousness is made over to, and accounted theirs. They are enabled to lay hold on Christ by faith, and God the Father blots out their transgressions, as with a thick cloud: their sins and their iniquities he remembers no more; they are made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, who is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. In one sense, God now sees no sin in them; the whole covenant of works is fulfilled in them; they are actually justified, acquitted, and looked upon as righteous in the sight of God; they are perfectly accepted in the beloved; they are complete in him; the flaming sword of God s wrath, which before moved every way, is not removed, and free access given to the tree of life; they are enabled to reach out the arm of faith, and pluck, and live for evermore. Hence it is that the apostle, under a sense of this blessed privilege, breaks out into this triumphant language; It is Christ that justifies, who is he that condemns? Does sin condemn? Christ s righteousness delivers believers from the guilt of it: Christ is their Savior, and is become a propitiation for their sins: who therefore shall lay any thing to the charge of God s elect? Does the law condemn?

8 By having Christ s righteousness imputed to them, they are dead to the law, as a covenant of works; Christ has fulfilled it for them, and in their stead. Does death threaten them? They need not fear: the sting of death is sin, the strength of sin is the law; but God has given them the victory by imputing to them the righteousness of the Lord Jesus. From Robert Haldane s Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, The information which the Scriptures give us of the sin of the first man, show that it was a complete subversion of nature, and the establishment of the kingdom of Satan in the world; they also show us that the purpose of sending Jesus Christ into the world was to destroy the empire of Satan, sin, and death. We read, says Mr. Bell On the Covenants, of two Adams, 1 Corinthians 15: As the one is called the first man, the other is called the second, even the Lord from heaven. Now, as there were innumerable multitudes of men between the first man and Him, it is plain that He is called the second man for some very peculiar reason. And what else can that be, but because He is the representative and father of all His spiritual seed, as the first man was of all his natural seed? The one is the head, the federal head of the earthly men, the other of the heavenly. Since the one is called the second man, not because He was the second in the order of creation, but because He was the second public head, it follows that the other is called the first man not because he was first created, or in opposition to his descendants, but because he was the first public head in opposition to Christ the second. Thus the two Adams are the heads of the two covenants. The one the representative of all who are under the covenant of works, communicating his image unto them; the other the representative of all who are under the covenant of grace, and communicating His image unto them. By the one man s disobedience many were made sinners, and by the obedience of the other many shall be made righteous.

9 From a sermon by Charles Spurgeon on Galatians 4:24 - These are the two covenants. The covenant of works was, Do this and live, O man! but the covenant of grace is, Do this, O Christ, and thou shalt live, O man! The difference of covenants rests here. The one was made with man, the other with Christ; the one was a conditional covenant, conditional on Adam s standing, the other is a conditional covenant with Christ, but as perfectly unconditional with us. There are no conditions whatever in the covenant of grace, or if there be conditions, the covenant gives them. The covenant gives faith, gives repentance, gives good works, gives salvation,as a purely gratuitous unconditional act; nor does our continuance in that covenant depend in the least degree on ourselves. The covenant was made by God with Christ, signed, sealed, and ratified, in all things ordered well.